SELLING: Propaganda by Mail Order

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"You could write thousands of words and not sum up the American way of life as well as the Sears catalogue does. There it is—the American way of life; our clothes, appliances, all in one convenient book." The U.S. Information Agency agrees with this boast by Edward Hardiman, foreign-sales representative of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and has sent 3,500 copies of Sears's 1,444-page fall and winter catalogue to its 225 overseas posts as an official weapon of anti-Communist propaganda.

The Government first began sending abroad a trickle of catalogues from Sears, Montgomery Ward, and a few other companies in 1946. Although they were mostly old and dog-eared, they were an instant hit. People on both sides of the Iron Curtain thumbed them to tatters. In Belgrade, Yugoslavs used them to learn English; in Athens, a shoemaker designed new shoes from the illustrations; in Djakarta, Indonesia, a Chinese tailor copied an entire Sears wedding ensemble, down to the flower girls' dresses. The impact even reached Moscow, where Russian diplomats consulted the catalogues on what to wear in the U.S. They are now so highly valued that old copies are patched up and rebound in new covers and any tattered copy brings a good price. At the Djakarta Airport, one old Sears catalogue recently sold for $20.