By Carlo Wolff, Globe Correspondent, 5/16/2004

Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America Walter A. Friedman, Harvard University Press, 356 pp., $27.95

"Birth of a Salesman" contextualizes the American salesman in a largely successful attempt to restore him to a place of honor in the country's iconography.

Its title reflects the dominance of the male in the history and imagery of sales, even though, as of the 2000 census, nearly half of all salespeople were women. The title serves another purpose, too, pointedly refuting Arthur Miller's dark portrayal of the suicidal Willy Loman of "Death of a Salesman." One might view this analytical, upbeat book by Harvard Business School historian Walter A. Friedman as a successful sales effort of its own.

Friedman has certainly tapped the right sources, commenting on everything from 19th-century treatises on phrenology to Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie," the work of William James, and William Whyte's "The Organization Man." One only wishes he had done more firsthand reporting, interviewing contemporary salesmen and saleswomen to give "Birth of a Salesman" more impact and immediacy.

Even though the book stops short of exploring modern developments like Internet sales and telemarketing, Friedman convincingly argues that salespeople are key to the country's economic fabric.

"Although advertising grew in volume and sophistication throughout the twentieth century, it did not replace salesmen," he writes. "As this book has shown, selling and advertising are different. Sales workers played a unique function in the nation's economy. This was true in the late 19th century and has remained so through the beginning of the 21st. Face-to-face sales pitches, confrontation, persuasion, and the exchange of information between buyer and seller remain at least as valid to capitalism today as in 1776, when Adam Smith noted man's propensity to 'truck, barter, and exchange.' "

Friedman traces the rise of the salesman from the canvassers and book peddlers of the early 19th century to his institutionalization at the start of the 20th, his near-deification during the 1920s, his fall from grace between the '30s and the '50s, and his slow rise back to respectability in the '90s. By the turn of the 20th century, salesmanship had not only become a "science," it had permeated (and created) the national market. By 1930, according to a Temple University survey of Philadelphia and its suburbs, 45 percent of respondents had bought brushes from a door-to-door salesman at least once, 23 percent had bought vacuum cleaners, and 8 percent, electric appliances.

The history Friedman weaves is engrossing, and the book hits stride with entertaining chapters on Mark Twain's marketing of the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (apparently, Twain was as talented a businessman as a writer) and on the shift from the drummer -- the middleman between wholesalers and regional shopkeepers -- to the department store.

Friedman profiles Henry John Heinz, the prepared foods pioneer who dreamed up "57 varieties" because "he liked the sound of the number"; National Cash Register founder John H. Patterson, who was "determined to create a class of white-collar representatives" and devised the Pyramid Plan, an organizational structure designed to promote efficiency; and Walter Dill Scott, an expert on promotion whose stress on personality and motivation led to the academic enshrinement of salesmanship.

Personality isn't Friedman's only focus, however. He's just as interested in context. Drummers wouldn't have replaced canvassers without the growth of the modern railroad. H.J. Heinz couldn't have developed his multivariety prepared foods line without a background in urban peddling, "selling vegetables off the back of his wagon."

At its core, this could be interpreted as evangelical history, the story of men who, at least in the early stages, viewed their work as partly commercial, partly missionary. In "Birth of a Salesman," Friedman has crafted a history of an "inherently unlikable process" with depth, affection and intelligent analysis.

This story ran on page C2 of the Boston Globe on 5/16/2004.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Back to the E-Zine Archives | Main Menu