During the Great Depression, a period from about 1929 until the late 1930s, when a confluence of variables ranging from stock market

crashes to agricultural depletion to a deflationary spiral led to the most devastating and long-lasting

global economic collapse of modern history, it became common for stores of various sorts to offer what became known as

layaway purchasing plans to their customers. Fundamentally, this meant allowing customers to pay

some portion of the cost of an item up front, then allowing them to pay for the rest of that

item over time, usually in pre-agreed-upon

installments, but not always, though there was almost always a deadline, at which point the

item in question would be put back on the shelves. The benefit for customers was that they could

slowly pay for more expensive items over the course of weeks

or months without risking that item being sold to someone else. Remember, this was during the Great

Depression, but also the 1930s. So higher-end items weren't necessarily consistently available

because of production issues and because

manufacturing and globalization and shipping just were not what they are today. If an appliance or

car that you wanted became available locally, if you didn't snap it up, you might not have the

option of buying that item again for a very long time.

So this type of plan allowed someone who only had 10% of the total cost of the appliance or

car to pay that 10% and then have the object they wanted and could eventually pay for,

set aside, laid away, usually in a warehouse or similar storage area by

the store owner. Once they paid the total sticker price, they would be able to take that product

home. If they failed to do so, the store owner could just put it back on the shelf, which means they

would have essentially been paid to

store that object for that period. The benefit for the seller under this setup was that more

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