Commercial Traveller

Commercial Traveller, the regular representative of a wholesale business house, travelling, usually with samples, to sell their wares to other business houses (usually retailers). They are essentially a modern institution, and probably, in the United Kingdom, member some 50,000. There are many valuable charities created for the widows, orphans, or disabled members of the body, and liberally supported by them, the Commercial Travellers' Schools at Pinner and the Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institution being the chief, and, it need hardly be said, they are the mainstay of the smaller provincial hotels. Some ("town travellers") confine themselves to London or to some one other large town. The American term is "drummer."