THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

Dry goods are products such as textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and sundries. In U.S. retailing, a dry goods store carries consumer goods that are distinct from those carried by hardware stores and grocery stores, though "dry goods" as a term for textiles has been dated back to 1742 in England . Dry goods can be carried by stores specializing just in those products, or may be carried by a general store or a department store or more recently, a big box store. In the beginning of the 19 th century, dry goods were often combined with other commodities to form the merchant's stock in trade, that it was difficult to determine where the former began or the latter ended. Trading of all kinds was of a generalized character, merchants handling a like dry goods, groceries, and sundries in the same establishments. The stocks represented in such stores were incongruous in the extreme; cottons and silks from India , and velvets and woolens from Europe , were placed in...

While color trade cards abound and the black and white versions are rarer, that is the exact opposite for billheads. As the popularity of trade cards died out, color became more popular on billheads. Also probably due to the decreasing cost of using color and the increasing importance o billheads as a means of advertising to companies. See below for some neat examples.