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Jan. 7th, 2021 09:00 amThe Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 by Scott Seligman
This was one of the most fun I've had reading nonfiction in ages, and then I gave it to my father and he's been having a lot of fun reading it, too, and I think my mother will probably read it after him. I highly recommend this if you're interested in the history of kosher meat or the history of US labor movements or both. And honestly who isn't?
In 1902, kosher beef in New York City increased in price from about twelve cents a pound to about eighteen cents a pound. The reasons for this are in total a little complicated and many things share blame, and Seligman goes through them all in detail, but the primary reason was the impact on the beef market of the so-called Beef Trust, a technology-enabled agreement in the late 19th century between several major beef companies to fix prices and split territories. The Beef Trust largely dealt in non-kosher meat, though, so their effect on the kosher market was indirect and harder to trace; as a result, the observant Jewish wives of the Lower East Side blamed not the Beef Trust but the local butchers who were actually selling them their meat. The butchers, meanwhile, blamed their distributors, who blamed the market.
When the price increased, not long after another smaller but significant increase, the Jews held big public meetings and decided to strike, agreeing not to buy beef and to prevent others from buying beef from local butchers. The protests got violent and lasted for months before a combination of settlement agreements and the strikes petering out calmed things down, but beef protests would remain a phenomenon for the next several decades. The cartoons of housewives smashing butcher shops that appeared in newspapers at the time are amazing.
Seligman singles it out as being an unusually female dominated movement for the time, with a couple of 50-something women being the initial organizers of the protests, although as the strike went on there was increasing pressure for the women to cede their leading roles to male labor leaders and Rabbinic figures. Seligman does a brilliant job, given limited primary source reference, of teasing out the ways in which it being a female dominated movement was significant- the fact that organizational meetings could take place when husbands were at work and the significance of female social networks and door to door activism, the struggle to get recognized to speak on the issue at the more conservative synagogues on Shabbos, the way that women being beaten by the police drew greater instantaneous sympathy than men doing the same. He also traces a line showing how important female labor and other activist figures of the 1910s and 1920s cut their teeth in the kosher meat wars, learning how protests were organized and taking inspiration from the leaders of the 1902 protests. I learned a lot that was facinating and I really enjoyed reading this.
This was one of the most fun I've had reading nonfiction in ages, and then I gave it to my father and he's been having a lot of fun reading it, too, and I think my mother will probably read it after him. I highly recommend this if you're interested in the history of kosher meat or the history of US labor movements or both. And honestly who isn't?
In 1902, kosher beef in New York City increased in price from about twelve cents a pound to about eighteen cents a pound. The reasons for this are in total a little complicated and many things share blame, and Seligman goes through them all in detail, but the primary reason was the impact on the beef market of the so-called Beef Trust, a technology-enabled agreement in the late 19th century between several major beef companies to fix prices and split territories. The Beef Trust largely dealt in non-kosher meat, though, so their effect on the kosher market was indirect and harder to trace; as a result, the observant Jewish wives of the Lower East Side blamed not the Beef Trust but the local butchers who were actually selling them their meat. The butchers, meanwhile, blamed their distributors, who blamed the market.
When the price increased, not long after another smaller but significant increase, the Jews held big public meetings and decided to strike, agreeing not to buy beef and to prevent others from buying beef from local butchers. The protests got violent and lasted for months before a combination of settlement agreements and the strikes petering out calmed things down, but beef protests would remain a phenomenon for the next several decades. The cartoons of housewives smashing butcher shops that appeared in newspapers at the time are amazing.
Seligman singles it out as being an unusually female dominated movement for the time, with a couple of 50-something women being the initial organizers of the protests, although as the strike went on there was increasing pressure for the women to cede their leading roles to male labor leaders and Rabbinic figures. Seligman does a brilliant job, given limited primary source reference, of teasing out the ways in which it being a female dominated movement was significant- the fact that organizational meetings could take place when husbands were at work and the significance of female social networks and door to door activism, the struggle to get recognized to speak on the issue at the more conservative synagogues on Shabbos, the way that women being beaten by the police drew greater instantaneous sympathy than men doing the same. He also traces a line showing how important female labor and other activist figures of the 1910s and 1920s cut their teeth in the kosher meat wars, learning how protests were organized and taking inspiration from the leaders of the 1902 protests. I learned a lot that was facinating and I really enjoyed reading this.