Employment: Peddling

From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, one issue persisted in the deaf community’s rhetoric and strategies for inclusion in American society: the perceived problem of deaf peddlers and impostors. For deaf people, peddling refers to the practice of selling items of little value and inducing sales by capitalizing on the public’s view of deaf people as objects of charity. The Deaf community defines impostors as peddlers who posed as deaf people in order to elicit sympathy and swindle an unsuspecting public. Anti-peddling activism was a central strategy in the Deaf community’s efforts to achieve equal access to citizenship during the late 19th and most of the 20th century.

Deaf leaders asserted that the eradication of deaf peddlers, both those who were authentically deaf as well as hearing impostors, was a central solution to the challenges that deaf people confronted in securing employment. Leaders and many members of the American Deaf community often conflated peddling with vagrancy, beggaring, charity, and welfare. They suggested that society’s failure to provide adequate education and economic opportunities for the deaf caused some to turn to peddling. Anti-peddling campaigns became one of the main strategies of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf (NFSD) in their efforts to cast deaf people not as dependent wards of society, but as fully capable members of society and deserving of all the rights and respect that hearing citizens enjoyed, including equal access to employment.

The campaign against peddling and impostorism began with rhetoric in the 1880s. This rhetoric evolved into organized publicity, legislative, enforcement, and policing efforts during the early 20th century that eventually led to aggressive efforts to eliminate peddling rings operated by deaf peddlers in the era after World War II.

In the late 19th century, deaf leaders identified peddling as a significant threat to schools for the deaf and thus deaf people’s economic access because the existence of peddlers suggested to the public that those schools were not accomplishing their objectives of producing a class of self-sufficient worker-citizens. Deaf people were also self-conscious about the public’s perception of their community as foreign and clannish. Desperate to preserve schools for [Page 397]the Deaf and improve deaf people’s economic opportunities in the midst of a changing economy, Deaf community leaders embarked on campaigns of self-preservation that included anti-peddling efforts.

Deaf leaders exhorted all able-bodied deaf adults, using ableist rhetoric, to invest themselves fully in their education, employment, and the uplift of the deaf as a class. Chief among their responsibilities was to present themselves as taxpaying, self-sufficient, industrious citizens. Deaf people could not engage in peddling and were expected to actively participate in anti-peddling campaigns. The handicapped deaf, defined by Deaf leaders as deaf people with additional disabilities, were excused from those obligations and granted permission to peddle in order to earn a living.

As the 19th century turned into the 20th century, deaf leaders narrowed their campaigns to elevate the deaf as a class by zeroing their focus in on peddling, portraying it as the province of impostors. They joined in the larger chorus of progressive reformers, believing that their campaigns to rid America of impostors would benefit deaf people and mainstream society alike. Presenting deaf leaders as experts in the uplift of deaf people and the anti-peddling crusade as a social reform benefiting all, deaf people called upon mainstream society to aid them in their anti-peddling campaign. They asked the public to support legislation aimed at the eradication of impostorism, the enforcement of anti-impostor legislation, and aid in combating employment discrimination. Their activism shifted from independent local and state action to a national campaign organized by the National Association of the Deaf that directed state and local action. The NAD was able to achieve legislation serving their purpose in 25 states but failed to achieve national anti-impostor legislation by the end of the Progressive Era.

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