he Racket is a comparatively new but flourishing business house of Redlands under the proprietorship of George D. Barber and M. L. Wright. It carries full lines of ladies' and gentlemen's furnishings, shoes, stationery, laces and ribbon, notions and novelties, and is located in the Chittenden block, Orange street, nearly opposite the postoffice.

Mr. Wright is in charge of the business at Redlands, his partner, Mr. Barber, living at Pomona and being interested in the Racket store at that city. Both of the members of this firm are young and stirring business men. Mr. Barber is from Moravia, N. Y. He visited Southern California for the first time last summer, and returned to stay last spring. Mr. Wright is a native of Arkansas, where he was born January 17, 1870. In the same year the family came to California and settled on a farm in Los Angeles county, near the site of the present city of Pomona.

In 1890 Mr. Wright went to Cinidad Porfirio Diaz, Mexico, where he remained until 1893, employed as a stenographer in one of the general offices of the M. I. R. R. Co. From Mexico he went to Alexandria, La., and engaged in business with an older brother. Having satisfied themselves by their experience elsewhere that there is no place like Southern California, the brothers sold out their interests in Alexandria after about a year and returned to Southern California.

They engaged in business in Pomona, starting the Racket store there, and in November, 1896, opened the store in this city as a branch of that in Pomona. Last April Mr. Barber bought an interest and the two enterprises separated. Messrs. Barber and Wright have found Redlands a satisfactory location for their business, which has steadily grown since it was established. They have added new lines from time to time. The Racket carries a large assortment of articles of daily consumption in every family, and studies to reduce the cost of these to the consumer to the lowest limit consistent with satisfactory quality.

(Source: Illustrated Redlands, 1897, p. 85)