In the early 1900s, Charlie Harger, a writer for this magazine, visited a small country store on “the frontier” to talk to its proprietor. (He did not mention, in the eight full pages of the story where exactly that small retailer was located, because that’s how journalism was done in those days.) The unnamed proprietor was looking out beyond his windows stocked with hoes and pancake flour, to the parcels sitting at the train depot that were mail-ordered from Chicago and New York. The rise of mail-order delivery was going to drive him out of business, he worried. {snip} Just...
