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Full Description
2020-21 Reader Views Literary Award, Gold Medal Winner
2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner
2020 National Jewish Book Award 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.
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Dramatis Personae
A Note on Language
Prologue
1. A City within a City
2. Greater Power Than Ten Standard Oil Companies
3. The Conscience of an Orthodox Jew Is Absolute
4. Each One Is an Authority unto Himself
5. A Despotic Meat Trust
6. As Scarce around Essex Street as Ham Sandwiches
7. Let the Women Make a Strike, Then There Will Be a Strike!
8. If We Cry at Home, Nobody Will See Us
9. They Never Saw Such Assemblages in Russia or Poland
10. Hebrews with Shaved Beards
11. And He Shall Rule over Thee
12. No Industry in the Country Is More Free from Single Control
13. Essentially It Is a Fight among Ourselves
14. Vein Him as He Veins His Meat
15. Patience Will Win the Battle
16. Disregard All Verbal or Written Agreements
17. This Cooperative Shop Is Here to Stay
18. There Was Never Such an Outrage on Our Race
19. We Don't Feel Like Paying Fifth Avenue Prices
20. It Is Not Our Fault That Meat Is So High
21. A Great Victory for the American People
Afterword
Notes
Further Reading
Index
