The Jews in America Trilogy

The Jews in America Trilogy by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

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Authors: Stephen; Birmingham
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cataclysmic events. It had become a New England tradition to cherish the people who would play such an important role in Puritan salvation, and to encourage their conversion. This lingering belief that Jews were worthy of special respect and honor would stand them in good stead when they began to enter the financial community of Wall Street, a world whose dominant figures were men whose roots extended back to Puritan New England.
    At the end of the first year Packer wanted to raise Joseph’s salary to $500 a year, but Joseph, who had managed to save $200, was anxious to go out on his own. Reluctantly, Packer let him go.
    During his stay in Mauch Chunk Joseph had noticed that men and women from outlying farms made occasional, and laborious, wagon trips to market in the town. He had also made note of the things people bought. His theory was that for the convenience of having goods brought to their doors farm families would be willing to pay a bit more than the prices charged in town, miles away. With his savings, he bought some merchandise—small jewelry, some watches, rings, and knives—and, with a pack, set off on foot, peddling his wares through rural Pennsylvania. Within six months he had put aside $500, enough to send passage to his two next oldest brothers, William and James, who, back in Baiersdorf, itched to join him.
    They were a strange-looking lot, the three Seligman brothers and peddlers like them—bearded, shaggy-headed, their faces dusty from the road, in long ill-fitting coats and baggy trousers, walking in mud-caked shoes, with a shuffling gait, stooped under their packs—but how theylooked didn’t matter to them. They carried sticks to ward off dogs, and they had to endure children who came running out after them crying, “Jew! Sheeny! Christ-killer!” Boys pelted them with handfuls of gravel, sticks, and green apples, and leaped at them to pull their beards or knock off their hats. They shuffled on with their dreams bottled inside them, driven by a furious singleness of purpose—to make money. At night they slept in open fields, under their coats, with a pack for a lumpy pillow. In return for a few chores a farmer might let a peddler sleep in his barn. A true bed was a luxury and baths were rare. Keeping the dietary laws was an impossibility. Yet the Seligman boys always assured old David, in their letters home, that the laws were being faithfully kept.
    Joseph’s selling theory was a simple one: “Sell anything that can be bought cheaply, sold quickly at a little profit, small enough to place inside a pack and light enough to carry.” The boys sold bolts of woolen and cotton cloth, lace trimmings, velvet ribbons, thread, men’s handkerchiefs and undershirts, women’s shawls, sashes, tablecloths, napkins, pins, needles, bobbins, buttons, thimbles, shoehorns, and cheap spectacles. Their packs weighed from one to two hundred pounds.
    If an item was needed in an area, the boys were willing to walk to a town where it was available, buy it, and bring it back. A local store had run out of tobacco. William Seligman walked twelve miles to another town where he traded a German silver ring, which he had bought for under a dollar, for a hundred penny cigars. He then walked twelve miles back and sold the cigars for four cents apiece. The 300 percent profit made it worth the walk. A peddlers’ grapevine, composed of men like themselves, kept peddlers informed of conditions in surrounding areas.
    Joseph learned that “Newcastle disease” had infected the poultry flocks of a nearby village. He traded two yards of cotton print for a pair of healthy laying hens, and carried them there, clucking and flapping, one under each arm. He sold them at a tidy profit. As he grew to know his territory and customers, Joseph was also able to initiate a practice that made him a popular peddler. He extended a bit of credit here and there, and this was appreciated.
    But the

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