The Great Kosher Meat War Of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City
Dec 2020 · U of Nebraska Press
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About this ebook
2020-21 Reader Views Literary Award, Gold Medal Winner
2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner
2020 National Jewish Book Award, Finalist
2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards Finalist in the U.S. History category
2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist
In the wee hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York's Jewish quarter.
What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, while the butchers either shut their doors or had their doors shut for them. The newspapers called it a modern Jewish Boston Tea Party.
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices. With few resources and little experience but steely determination, this group of women organized themselves into a potent fighting force and, in their first foray into the political arena in their adopted country, successfully challenged powerful, vested corporate interests and set a pattern for future generations to follow.
2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner
2020 National Jewish Book Award, Finalist
2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards Finalist in the U.S. History category
2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist
In the wee hours of May 15, 1902, three thousand Jewish women quietly took up positions on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Convinced by the latest jump in the price of kosher meat that they were being gouged, they assembled in squads of five, intent on shutting down every kosher butcher shop in New York's Jewish quarter.
What was conceived as a nonviolent effort did not remain so for long. Customers who crossed the picket lines were heckled and assaulted and their parcels of meat hurled into the gutters. Butchers who remained open were attacked, their windows smashed, stock ruined, equipment destroyed. Brutal blows from police nightsticks sent women to local hospitals and to court. But soon Jewish housewives throughout the area took to the streets in solidarity, while the butchers either shut their doors or had their doors shut for them. The newspapers called it a modern Jewish Boston Tea Party.
The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices. With few resources and little experience but steely determination, this group of women organized themselves into a potent fighting force and, in their first foray into the political arena in their adopted country, successfully challenged powerful, vested corporate interests and set a pattern for future generations to follow.
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5.0
1 review
Janice Tangen
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December 5, 2020
Jewish-law, cultural-exploration, cultural-heritage, immigrants, photographs, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, history-and-culture, NYC, New-York-law, Anti-Trust Act, Theodore Roosevelt***** This is a meticulously researched study of practices which resulted in a large group of mostly unschooled female immigrants with limited English skills successfully challenging powerful vested corporate interests and gained the help of legal means as well as boycotts and the trustbuster Theodore Roosevelt and eventually some very noisy . Learn the realities of tenement life in 1902 in photos and rhetoric, as well as specific realities of European Jewish immigrants. Excellent! I requested and received a free ebook copy from University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books via NetGalley. Thank you!
About the author
Scott D. Seligman is a historian and retired corporate executive. He received degrees from Princeton University and Harvard University. He worked as a legislative assistant in Congress, a businessman in China, and a communications director of a Fortune 50 company. He is the author of several scholarly and business books including Chinese Business Etiquette, The First Chinese American, and Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money, and Murder in New York's Chinatown.
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