Explore "White Collar" by C. Wright Mills on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The American Salesman has gone through several major phases, each of which corresponds to a phase in the organization of the business system. This system is a vast and intricate network of institutions, each strand of which is a salesman of one sort or another. Any change in this system and of its relations to society as a whole will be reflected in the development of types of salesmen and of the kind of salesmanship that prevails.
When demand was generally greater than production, selling occurred largely in a seller's market, and was in the main a more or less effortless matter of being in a certain place at a certain time in order to take an order. When demands balanced supplies the salesman as a means of distribution merely provided information. But when the pressure from the producer to sell became much greater than the capacity of the consumer to buy, the role of the salesman shifted into high gear. In the twentieth century, as surpluses piled up, the need has been for distribution to national markets; and with the spread of national advertising, coextensive sales organizations have been needed to cash in on its effects.