traveling salesmen

the youngster in the photo is possibly Roy Jackson Baltimore

To insure continued high quality the mill performed every operation in its own plant under rigid controls. Its efforts were well rewarded. By 1909 sales had gone well over $300,000 and hovered at that peak until war broke in 1914.
For a time after 1882 the company attempted to sell its output through commission houses rather than by traveling salesmen. Furbush from his vantage point in Philadelphia looked around for satisfactory terms and an agent was dispatched to Philadelphia and New York. The houses which entered into agreements proved unreliable and the experiment failed. Thereafter, the mill returned to the use of salesmen, a practice which most mills were also adopting.--Harry Poindexter