(p. 299) It was easy – and for many agents irresistibly tempting – to offload on to Americans clothes and furnishings that were unsold because they were no longer fashionable in England. ‘You cannot really form an idea of the trash that is to be found in the best shops,’ an English visitor named Margaret Hall wrote home to a friend. A cheerful catchphrase of English (p. 300) factories became: ‘It’s good enough for America.’ Being over-charged was a constant suspicion. Washington wrote furiously to Cary after one consignment that many of the products supplied were ‘mean in quality but not in price, for in this they excel indeed far above any I have ever had’.
Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.