The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire

306 Pages·2015·11.32 MB·English

by  Adam Mendelsohn

The Rag Race
THE GOLDSTEIN-GOREN SERIES IN
AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY
General editor: Hasia R. Diner
We Remember with Reverence and Love: 1929: Mapping the Jewish World
American Jews and the Myth of Silence Edited by Hasia R. Diner and Gennady
after the Holocaust, 1945 – 1 962 Estraikh
Hasia R. Diner
An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical
Is Diss a System? A Milt Gross Christians and Jews
Comic Reader Yaakov Ariel
Edited by Ari Y. Kelman
Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and
All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, American Literature
Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots Josh Lambert
of Multiculturalism
Hanukkah in America: A History
Daniel Katz
Dianne Ashton
Jews and Booze: Becoming American in
The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their
the Age of Prohibition
Way to Success in America and the
Marni Davis
British Empire
Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History Adam D. Mendelsohn
Tony Michels
The Rag Race
How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in
America and the British Empire
Adam D. Mendelsohn
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mendelsohn, Adam, 1979–
The rag race : how Jews sewed their way to success in America and the British Empire /
Adam D. Mendelsohn.
p. cm. — (The Goldstein-Goren series in American Jewish history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-4718-1 (cl : alk. paper)
1. Clothing trade — U nited States — H istory — 1 9th century. 2. Clothing trade —
United States — H istory — 2 0th century. 3. Jews — U nited States — E conomic conditions —
History. 4. Jews — E ngland — E conomic conditions — H istory. 5. Success in business —
United States — H istory — 1 9th century. 6. Success in business — U nited States —
History — 20th century. I. Title.
HD9940.U4M45 2014
331.6'3924073 — dc23 2014018129
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
For Odette and Enid,
a model mother and a much-missed grandmother
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Introduction: The Rag Race 1
1 Goblin Market: London, 1843 18
2 New York City: A Rag-Fair Sort of Place 37
3 Rumpled Foot Soldiers of the Market Revolution 58
4 Clothing Moses 91
5 The Empire’s New Clothes 112
6 A New Dawn in the West 134
7 Clothing the Blue and Gray 159
8 A Ready-Made Paradise 183
Conclusion 207
Acknowledgments 229
Notes 233
Index 287
About the Author 297
vii
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
The Rag Race
Why have Jews prospered so dramatically in the United States? Their
ascent has been exceptional. Other ethnic groups have succeeded in
America, but none quite like the Jews.1 So what was the alchemy that
transmuted them from economically abased immigrants to among Amer-
ica’s most successful citizens? Were they successful because they were Jews
or because of the particular circumstances they encountered in the United
States? And can their recipe for success be distilled and reproduced by the
nation’s newest immigrants?
Most of those who address these questions today tread gingerly on turf
first turned by an earlier generation more comfortable with racial and reli-
gious essentialism and determinism.2 Instead of heredity, scholars are now
more inclined to point to social and cultural capital — kinship networks,
hard-won commercial expertise, attitudes toward education and com-
merce, supportive institutions, and group solidarity — as key to explain-
ing the economic success of Jews.3 Shying from earlier claims that Jews
possess immutable and innate features derived from the primordial past
(that gelt was in their genes) most historians and sociologists now assume
that these traits and tendencies were acquired over time, like protective
cladding against the dread chill of an inhospitable climate (the view that
gelt is in their jeans).4 Restrictions that had long kept Jews on the fringes
of the formal economy in the medieval and early modern periods, so one
version of this argument goes, compelled them to develop skills and a
mentalité that stood them in good stead in America. Others emphasize
adaptations of more recent origin. Jews who flocked to America’s shores
in the nineteenth century from central Europe, for example, had been
exposed to public education and bourgeois values before their departure
1