When I was growing up in rural Pennsylvania, we had a mailman who drove by weekdays and Saturdays. My siblings and I (normally, I say “me and my siblings”) anxiously waited for the mail each day. It was in ancient times when a newspaper was delivered and when we also ordered things from the Sears and Roebuck catalog.
It was a large and heavily colored directory of everything that one could want to buy. My brother and I always went to the gun section and examined the JC Higgins 20 and 12 gauge shotguns. We couldn’t afford to buy one, but we loved looking at them and imagining how great it would be to hunt with one. (There was a recall of the 12 gauge in 2009 because a faulty bolt latch could cause the bolt to hit the shooter in the eye when fired.) Sears mailed out more than 50 million copies of their catalog annually. The images of items were as accurate as could be without photographs, taken directly from engravings of the photos, and included detailed descriptions of the items and their prices.
However, Montgomery Ward (aka Monkey Ward) was the first general mail order catalog, with its first sheet catalog issued in 1872, Two years later it had 32 pages and by 1875 it had grown to 152 pages with 3,000 items. We used to get that catalog as well as the Sears one. The company was founded by a dry goods merchant, Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872. We often had one of their catalogs as well.
JC Penny also had a popular mail-order catalog and after a hiatus of 5 years is bringing it back again, but in a reduced manner and mainly not by mail. JCPenney had gone bankrupt, but it was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management and Simon Property Group. At one time it had billions of dollars in sales but the internet has made the cost of sending out catalogs inefficient. I don’t remember ever seeing a JCPenney catalog in our home. The company is still struggling to make profits.
Spiegel was also a large mail-order company, but Amazon and Wal-Mart put it out of business almost 25 years ago. The company put out mail-order catalogs in 1905 and, at the time, they were the only company to offer credit through the mail.
Internet lists today’s 30 most popular mail-order catalogs. One of them, which I received because my wife bought me a shirt from them years ago, is the L.L. Bean catalog. It also sells one of the most expensive lines of clothing. I don’t know why I still get the catalog, but it shows that once you are on a mailing list, it is hard to get off.
I also get the Blair clothing catalogs because Joice would order from them. Blair is one of America's largest mail-order retailers, which was founded in 1910 by John Blair, and it celebrated its 100th year in 2010. You can reach them with toll-free telephone numbers, websites, and email. They do research that tells them my income, purchasing history, and other things, perhaps even the name of my mail carrier and my blood type.
Catalogs of information extend far belong mail merchandise like clothing, household items, and guns. For example, my organization (SIL Global, aka SIL International website) hosts Ethnologue.com, which is a catalog of information on all of the world’s 7,000 languages. Each language has a three-letter code for universal recognition and easy reference. For example, the languages that Joice and I studied in Papua New Guinea--East Kewa and South Kewa--are catalogued as kjs and kew, respectively. By using the codes, researchers can track their language families and find various other types of information.
There are other on-line language directories where information on Kewa can be found, including the SIL-PNG archives, SIL International, WALS online (the World Atlas of Language Structures) and OLAC (the Open Language Archives Community). Each of these is an extensive catalog of information.
Dictionaries, with their lists and catalogs of information, can also be found online. The dictionary of Kewa, which Joice and I and Kewa language speakers compiled, can be found on Webonary.org by clicking on drop-down choices of country and language. We uploaded information on 9151 West Kewa entries on September 29, 2014.
It seems like the amount of information and catalogs online is inexhaustible, but you can ask ChatGPT to make up one for you, if you can’t find what you want. Some students write their college essays using the App.
Sometimes lists are so long that cataloguing them is difficult. Consider Hebrews, chapter 11, where the author starts out reciting a roll call of faithful witnesses but gives up because there are so many: “Should I go on? There isn't enough time for me to speak of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. […] Others, refusing to accept freedom, died under torture in order to be raised to a better life. Some were mocked and whipped, and others were put in chains and taken off to prison. […] What a record all of these have won by their faith!”
That is the kind of catalog I want to be a part of!
Karl Franklin
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