Broom and rug peddler, Cuba

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A street vendor with a bundle of brooms and a rolled rug is the subject here, one of the everyday trades that filled Cuban towns in the years between the Spanish-American War and the 1920s. The image comes from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress, a body of photographs assembled by a husband-and-wife writing team who traveled widely and used pictures to illustrate their travel books and newspaper articles. Peddlers like this one carried goods door to door or along the street, offering household wares that many families could not easily buy in shops. Their presence in photographs of the period shows how commerce moved through the streets of the island.

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