Packing Served Transportation

Have you ever wondered how items come to be packaged in today's attractive boxes and parcels with colorful graphics and clever wording designed to make a sale?  This is the story of how those attention getting (and cost-raising) packages evolved...

Expensive items - watches and jewels - have basically always presented in elegantly wrapped packages.  The notion, however, that a pound of sugar or a bunch of crackers should be offered in a specially designed material was ridiculous.  The rise of factory-made clothing not only leveled the look all of classes of people as we have seen, but also made it increasingly difficult to distinguish a person's occupation, bank account, or family background by the clothes one wore.  Packaging followed that same pattern.

"Packing" was as old as moving things.  It meant to put something in a container for transporting or storing.  The purpose of packing was to keep a thing safe and secure, to make it portable and preservable.  The better it was packed, the less apt it was to be damaged, the further it could travel, and the longer it could be stored.  Packing served transportation.

Whether by wagons, railcars, automobiles, or airplanes - preparing and enclosing goods which had never left the maker's local market before presented a problem.  Refrigerated railcars and canning were early ways of packing good for distant markets, but didn't serve all products.

Before the Civil War, for example, flour was shipped in cotton sacks, which were used for other purposes on the farms.  Noone had yet made a paper bag that could hold many pounds of flour.  When the war stopped the supply of cotton, a papermaker in upstate New York produced a paper bag sturdy enough to hold 50 pounds of flour.  But during the post-war years, the design of parcels was still based on the needs of shipping and storage,with large, protective containers designed for the rural farm and country store.

Next time...Packaging, not packing
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On this day in Pioneer History:  "On February 3, 1889, the outlaw Bell Starr, the Bandit Queen, was shot and killed in Oklahoma.  Starr led a life of robbery, and horse stealing with the likes of the James-Younger gang.  No one was ever convicted of her death. (There is an earlier post on Belle in this blog - search Belle Starr)