GLR September-October 2025

an ape than a man; but belonging to a distinct tribe, somewhere between the two. O’Brien compares store clerks to orangutans in appearance and behavior and warns of the importance of putting these ob noxious creatures in their proper place. “Many of the hand somest specimens become quite intolerable on the least encouragement, and it is to be regretted that they are frequently petted by inconsiderate ladies. The COUNTER - JUMPER , thus spoiled, changes from a harmless, pretty, and agreeable crea ture, to an insufferable, chattering, noisy nuisance; and goes strutting about, with airs of alternate self-admiration and con tempt for others of its kind.” O’Brien zeroes in on the question of gender. “A great peculiarity with the COUNTER - JUMPER , and one which it would be almost impossible to believe, were it not firmly established as a fact, is its total want of sex. It is neither male nor female, though its manners are more feminine than masculine.” He ends with a suggestion that was to grow in pop ularity: “Much has been said about the usefulness of the C OUNTER - JUMPER , as a domestic animal, but I know of nothing that it does, which might not be much better performed by human beings—say young women, for instance.” The attacks on male sales clerks ran parallel to a campaign to replace them with women. Social reformers recognized that it would be a significant economic and social step for a woman if, instead of sewing blouses in a sweatshop, she could sell them from behind a counter. Many store owners approved of the no tion because they believed that female customers would be more comfortable buying from a female clerk—and because they knew they could pay a woman less than a man for doing the same job. In Philadelphia and in Boston, the change was ea gerly adopted, but in New York, the old ways prevailed. Male sales clerks outnumbered female clerks in department stores until the 20th century. With these twin campaigns to denigrate and to replace them, why did so many young men go into the retail sales profession in the first place, and why did so many stay? Why seek a clerk ship in a department store, rather than in a bank, a law office, or a construction firm? Here we can only speculate, but for gender nonconforming men, there was a type of sanctuary behind the counter. As they had for generations, men in 19th-century Amer ica who were attracted to other men migrated to the cities, where a larger population offered both anonymity and options. By the late 1860s, A. T. Stewart & Co. alone employed over a thou sand sales clerks, so there were always openings. The long-run ning disparagement of counter jumpers may even have served as a recruitment tool, with men assuming they could find oth ers of their kind waiting behind the notions counter. These men were “damaged goods” in the eyes of the public—and perhaps even in their own—but under the dome of the Marble Palace many a queen found a place to reign. R EFERENCES Cohen, Patricia Cline. “Unregulated Youth: Masculinity and Murder in the 1830s City.” Radical History Review , vol. 52, 1992. Luskey, Brian P. “Jumping Counters in White Collars: Manliness, Respectability, and Work in the Antebellum City.” J. of the Early Republic , vol. 26 no. 2, 2006. Luskey, Brian P. On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth Century America. NYU Press, 2010. Resseguie, Harry E. “A. T. Stewart’s Marble Palace: The Cradle of the Depart ment Store.” New-York Historical Society Quarterly , vol. 48 no. 2, 1964. September–October 2025

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