Greetings.
I am studying the house and shoddy mill of Moritz and Bertha
Bergstein, Jews from Hungary and Bohemia, respectively, who
emigrated to a small town in Minnesota in 1880. By 1896 (and
perhaps earlier) Moritz had built a large warehouse, a small
stone mill (to house a machine for tearing up rags), and a large
home. He chose a site by the railroad. Moritz obtained waste
materials--paper, rags, scrap metal, wood shavings--and processed
and re-sold them. He used rags to make shoddy, which he
apparently used to make mattresses. The mattresses were stuffed
with excelsior, and local women (many were German and not Jewish)
made the mattresses. He and his brother had a mattress
manufacturing business in Minneapolis from at least 1900 through
the 1920s. Bertha left an estate in 1925 of about $70,000. If
you are still with me, my question is this: do you know of
similar extant examples of a Jewish-American cottage industry?
What can we learn from the buildings and site? Are they
representative of other known examples of this property type?
Has there been any research on Jewish-American daily life,
especially in small towns? I welcome any and all comment.
Barbara Long, Rivercrest Associates, Rvcrest@aol.com