Promotional Advertising Steel Bank"SEROCO"c 1903-4 +Advertising 1929

Hi
Everyone.
Here is another promotional advertising steel bank from my collection, i acquire that in the 90s, i research long time before i found what it is, there no Internet at the time, i use phone call, library and talking with other collectors, i build my database on all the info i collected.
SEROCO stand for SEars ROebuck CO,Sears (officially Sears, Roebuck & Company) is a chain of American department stores. The company was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1886 ...
This Steel Bank was manufactured by "Home Saving bank MFG.Co. N.Y"1903-4
Promoted by Sears, Roebuck & Co, in the 1920 for the user get access to savings in regards buying House.
Picture #4 is an advertising coming from" Ladies Home Journal" December 1929
This steel Bank was 4.25 inch long, 3.50 inch tall, on a 2.25 inch deep.

Thanks for Viewing.
Alan

-----------------------------Mail order catalog--------------------------------------
Richard Warren Sears was a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota, when he received from a Chicago jeweler an impressive shipment of watches which were unwanted by a local jeweler. Sears purchased them, then sold the watches for a considerable profit to other station agents, then ordered more for resale. Soon he started a business selling watches throughmail order catalogs. The next year, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he met Alvah C. Roebuck, who joined him in the business. Farmers did business in small rural towns. Before the Sears catalog, farmers typically bought supplies (often at high prices and on credit) from local general stores with narrow selections of goods. Prices were negotiated, and depended on the storekeeper's estimate of a customer's creditworthiness. Sears took advantage of this by publishing catalogs offering customers a wider selection of products at clearly stated prices. The business grew quickly. The first Sears catalog was published in 1888. In 1893, Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck renamed their watch company Sears, Roebuck & Company and began to diversify. By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, featuring sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods, automobiles (produced from 1905 to 1915 by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago, no relation to the current Ford line),[6] and a host of other new items. By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog. Sales were greater than $400,000 in 1893 and more than $750,000 two years later By 1896, dolls, stoves and groceries had been added to the catalog.

The company had sales of $800,000 in 1895, but the national Panic of 1893—a full scale depression—caused a cash squeeze and large quantities of unsold merchandise. Roebuck decided to quit (though he later returned in a publicity role). Sears offered Roebuck's half of the company to Chicago businessman Aaron Nusbaum, who in turn brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald, to whom Sears owed money. In August 1895, they bought Roebuck's half of the company for $75,000. The new Sears, Roebuck and Company was re-incorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $150,000 in August 1895. The transaction was handled by Albert Henry Loeb of the Chicago Law Firm of Loeb & Adler (now known as Arnstein & Lehr, LLP). Copies of the transaction documents are now displayed on the walls of the Law Firm.Sears and Rosenwald got along well with each other, but not with Nusbaum. Sears and Rosenwald bought him out for $1.3 million in 1903.[9] Rosenwald brought to the mail order firm a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly anything else a farm household could desire. From 1895 to 1907, under Rosenwald's leadership as Vice President and Treasurer, annual sales of the company climbed from $750,000 to upwards of $50 million. The prosperity of the company and their vision for greater expansion led Sears and Rosenwald to take the company public in 1906, with $40 million in stock. After Sears resigned the presidency in 1908 due to declining health, Rosenwald was named president and chairman of the board and had full control.Sears's successful 1906 initial public offering (IPO) marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented a coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector.
In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago. Also, by that time, the Sears catalog had become known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". In 1933, Sears issued the first of its famous Christmas catalogs known as the "Sears Wishbook", a catalog featuring toys and gifts, separate from the annual Christmas Catalog. The catalog also entered the language, particularly of rural dwellers, as a euphemism for toilet paper. From 1908 to 1940, the catalog even included ready-to-assemble kit houses. Novelists and story writers often portrayed the importance of the catalog in the emotional lives of rural folk. For children and their parents, the catalog was a "wish book" that was eagerly flipped through. It was not a question of purchasing but of dreaming; they made up stories about the lives of the models on the pages. The catalog was a means of entertainment, though much of its magic wore off with the passing of childhood. The company was badly hurt during 1919-21 as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had overexpanded their holdings. To bail out the company, Rosenwald pledged $21 million of his personal wealth. By 1922, Sears had regained financial stability. First he oversaw the design and construction of the company's first department store within Sears, Roebuck's massive 16-hectare (40-acre) headquarters complex of offices, laboratories and mail-order operations at Homan Ave. and Arthington St. on Chicago's West Side. The store opened in 1925. In 1924, Rosenwald resigned the presidency, but remained as chairman until his death in 1932; his goal was to devote more time to philanthropy.