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Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Creation of a Legacy
3. A Legacy Transformed
4. The Virtues of a Middle Class
5. Vested Interest
6. Trading on Conventions
7. Institutionalism Triumphs
8. Lasting Images
9. Conclusion

The Virtues of a Middle Class

By 1750 America enjoyed a material well-being that no other nation or colony of the world experienced, not even England. Merchants and their interests were entrenched as the business of colonial society and helped form a strong secular New England middle class. No other American colony was as economically diversified and able to compete in the marketplaces of the world as New England was by the mid-eighteenth century. The export of raw materials to England provided a strong and important colonial economy. New and exotic products were available to a relatively wealthy society eager to partake of the bounties that the world had to offer. New products were soon followed by rituals of use and symbols usually modified by English precedent. Tea and coffee drinking acquired particular etiquette and special equipment. Wines and distilled spirits had their particular place in social situations too, as did tobacco (Roth 1961; Troyer and Markle 1983).

Until the mid-eighteenth century there had been no vested interest or infrastructure in colonial society to engender a commercial spirit. Word of mouth, merchant's business-like listings in the very few urban newspapers announcing new arrivals of goods, printed broadsides, and shop signs, were the colonial efforts at advertising and promotion of available commodities. Only with the development of a robust middle-class society could enough people afford to purchase imported goods which tended to be more expensive and convenient than home-produced products. It was under such circumstances that colonists began to purchase English proprietary medicines in greater quantity. It was the same circumstances that induced English proprietary medicine entrepreneurs to advertise their wares in America by means of printed broadsides and pamphlets -- material to be noted and then discarded. Such advertising often displayed drawings of the product package or device being offered, packaging and brand name product identification efforts made an impact on consumers in the eighteenth century. The appeal of purchasing medicine in greater quantities and at a lower price than what could be had through the local physician and apothecary was attractive. Also, English proprietary medicines were often equivalent to the various professional formulas, plus or minus an ingredient or proportion or two. Embellished and overstated text was the English standard of advertising and promotion which America began to assimilate (Young 1961).