section_path: Social effects/Clothing and consumer goods
section_name: Clothing and consumer goods
paragraph_text: Clothing and consumer goods
  
  Consumers benefited from falling prices for clothing and household articles such as cast iron cooking utensils, and in the following decades, stoves for cooking and space heating. Coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, and chocolate became affordable to many in Europe. The consumer revolution in England from the early 17th century to the mid-18th century had seen a marked increase in the consumption and variety of luxury goods and products by individuals from different economic and social backgrounds. With improvements in transport and manufacturing technology, opportunities for buying and selling became faster and more efficient than previous. The expanding textile trade in the north of England meant the three-piece suit became affordable to the masses. Founded by potter and retail entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, Wedgwood fine china and porcelain tableware was starting to become a common feature on dining tables. Rising prosperity and social mobility in the 18th century increased the number of people with disposable income for consumption, and the marketing of goods (of which Wedgwood was a pioneer) for individuals, as opposed to items for the household, started to appear, and the new status of goods as status symbols related to changes in fashion and desired for aesthetic appeal.
  
  With the rapid growth of towns and cities, shopping became an important part of everyday life. Window shopping and the purchase of goods became a cultural activity in its own right, and many exclusive shops were opened in elegant urban districts: in the Strand and Piccadilly in London, for example, and in spa towns such as Bath and Harrogate. Prosperity and expansion in manufacturing industries such as pottery and metalware increased consumer choice dramatically. Where once labourers ate from metal platters with wooden implements, ordinary workers now dined on Wedgwood porcelain. Consumers came to demand an array of new household goods and furnishings: metal knives and forks, for example, as well as rugs, carpets, mirrors, cooking ranges, pots, pans, watches, clocks, and a dizzying array of furniture. The age of mass consumption had arrived.
  
  New businesses in various industries appeared in towns and cities throughout Britain. Confectionery was one such industry that saw rapid expansion. According to food historian Polly Russell: "chocolate and biscuits became products for the masses, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the consumers it created. By the mid-19th century, sweet biscuits were an affordable indulgence and business was booming. Manufacturers such as Huntley & Palmers in Reading, Carr's of Carlisle and McVitie's in Edinburgh transformed from small family-run businesses into state-of-the-art operations". In 1847 Fry's of Bristol produced the first chocolate bar. Their competitor Cadbury of Birmingham was the first to commercialize the association between confectionery and romance when they produced a heart-shaped box of chocolates for Valentine's Day in 1868. The department store became a common feature in major High Streets across Britain; one of the first was opened in 1796 by Harding, Howell & Co. on Pall Mall in London. In the 1860s, fish and chip shops emerged across the country in order to satisfy the needs of the growing industrial population.
  
  In addition to goods being sold in the growing number of stores, street sellers were common in an increasingly urbanized country. Matthew White: "Crowds swarmed in every thoroughfare. Scores of street sellers 'cried' merchandise from place to place, advertising the wealth of goods and services on offer. Milkmaids, orange sellers, fishwives and piemen, for example, all walked the streets offering their various wares for sale, while knife grinders and the menders of broken chairs and furniture could be found on street corners". An early soft drinks company, R. White's Lemonade, began in 1845 by selling drinks in London in a wheelbarrow.
  
  Increased literacy rates, industrialisation, and the invention of the railway created a new market for cheap popular literature for the masses and the ability for it to be circulated on a large scale. Penny dreadfuls were created in the 1830s to meet this demand. The Guardian described penny dreadfuls as "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young", and "the Victorian equivalent of video games". By the 1860s and 1870s more than one million boys' periodicals were sold per week. Labelled an "authorpreneur" by The Paris Review, Charles Dickens used innovations from the revolution to sell his books, such as the new printing presses, enhanced advertising revenues, and the expansion of railroads. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836), became a publishing phenomenon with its unprecedented success sparking numerous spin-offs and merchandise ranging from Pickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books. Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, "Literature" is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call "entertainment".
  
  In 1861, Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones formed the first mail order business, an idea which would change the nature of retail. Selling Welsh flannel, he created mail order catalogues, with customers able to order by mail for the first time — this following the Uniform Penny Post in 1840 and the invention of the postage stamp (Penny Black) where there was a charge of one penny for carriage and delivery between any two places in the United Kingdom irrespective of distance — and the goods were delivered throughout the UK via the newly created railway system. As the railway network expanded overseas, so did his business.