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“That Mysterious People”: Jewish Merchants, Transparency, and Community in Mid-Nineteenth Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Rowena Olegario
Rowena Olegario
Affiliation:
ROWENA OLEGARIO is Visiting Assistant Professor of Law,History, and Communications, andResearch Fellow of the Society of Scholars at University of Michigan Business School.
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Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, American wholesalers began increasingly to rely on credit-reporting agencies to provide information about customers in distant localities. The demand for dependable information, coupled with the dynamism and competitiveness of the American market, helped usher into place a business culture that favored transparency and open networks. This article examines one group of merchants—immigrant Jews—whose traditions stood in contrast to the business elite's growing demand for disclosure.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , Summer 1999 , pp. 161 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1999

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References

1 Assumptions about what constitutes creditworthiness can vary widely among cultures. See, for example, Fafchamps, Marcel, “The Enforcement of Commercial Contracts in Ghana,” World Development 24 (1996): 427–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The records used in this study were those of R.G. Dun & Co. (formerly the Mercantile Agency), originally established to serve New York's large wholesalers. The agency quickly found clients among manufacturers and, eventually, banks and insurance companies. However, Dun's primary clients throughout the nineteenth century remained those that advanced goods to other businesses. These clients included manufacturers, importers, jobbers, commission agents, and other types of wholesalers. For an explanation of the distribution system that existed during the nineteenth century, including a definition of terms, see Porter, Glenn and Livesay, Harold, Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth-Century Marketing (Baltimore, 1971).Google Scholar

3 The term “Jew” had a negative connotation and even entered American slang as a verb, meaning to haggle aggressively with or to cheat another. The more respectful term, and the one that Jews themselves preferred, was “Israelite.” Leonard Dinnerstein argues that American antisemitism was founded not primarily on status anxiety or economic competition, but on the hostility that Christians have historically felt towards Jews. See his Anti-Semitism in America (New York, 1994), xiii.

4 For a study of antisemitism in American business which looks at similar evidence but comes to different conclusions, see Gerber, David A., “Cutting Out Shylock: Elite Anti-Semitism and the Quest for Moral Order in the Mid Nineteenth-Century American Market Place,” Journal of American History 69 (Dec. 1982): 615–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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11 Sachar, 42, 86–87; Thernstrom, 576, 579.

12 The diary kept by twenty-three-year-old Abraham Kohn, who arrived with his brothers in New York in 1842, illustrates how quickly young Jewish men could find work peddling goods for Jewish suppliers. Goodman, Abram V., “A Jewish Peddlers Diary,” Critical Studies in American Jewish History: Selected Articles from American Jewish Archives, vol. 1 (New York, 1971), 45–73.Google Scholar

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14 Ashkenazi, 151. See also Tulchinsky, Gerald, “‘Said To Be A Very Honest Jew’: The R.G. Dun Credit Reports and Jewish Business Activity in Mid-19th Century Montreal,” Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine 18 (Feb. 1990): 207Google Scholar; Griffen, Clyde and Griffen, Sally, Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Poughkeepsie (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 122–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerber, “Cutting Out Shylock,” 631.

15 R.G. Dun & Co. Collection, Illinois vol. 198:44 (Hirshfeld); Illinois vol. 199:503 (Franks), Baker Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration.

16 See, for example, Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 7 (Aug. 1842): 182.

17 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 26 (Jan. 1852): 91–92. The new law appears to have encouraged “salvaging,” or making money by cherry-picking the assets in a bankrupt's estate. In a number of cases, the bankrupts themselves became adept at this enterprise. See Balleisen, Edward, “Vulture Capitalism in Antebellum America: The 1841 Federal Bankruptcy Act and the Exploitation of Financial Distress,” Business History Review 70 (Winter 1996): 473–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 For a history of the national bankruptcy laws, see Warren, Charles, Bankruptcy in United States History (Cambridge, Mass., 1935).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the unintended consequences of the 1841 national bankruptcy law, see Balleisen. The development of state bankruptcy laws has not been adequately studied. This is unfortunate, given that state laws were more important throughout the nineteenth century. In the late twentieth century, fears were voiced about a global business order that operated without adequate international bankruptcy laws and mechanisms. As in the previous century, insufficient legal structures in no way hampered trade, but did prompt concerns about fairness, economic stability, and moral hazard.

21 Mostov, Stephen G., “Dun and Bradstreet Reports as a Source of Jewish Economic History: Cincinnati, 1840–1875,” American Jewish History 72 (Mar. 1983): 350.Google Scholar

22 Ashkenazi, 110–114.

23 Mostov, “Dun and Bradstreet Reports,” 351–352.

24 One study found this pattern among lenders in the Bombay Deccan during the nineteenth century. Ironically, the introduction of civil courts by the British discouraged lenders from assisting debtors through rough times. Kranton, Rachel E. and Swamy, Anand V., “The Hazards of Piecemeal Reform: British Civil Courts and the Credit Market in Colonial India,” Journal of Development Economics 58 (Feb. 1999): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric, “A Meaning for Turner's Frontier, Part I: Democracy in the Old Northwest,” Political Science Quarterly 69 (Sept. 1954): 341.Google Scholar There is a large literature on town-building and boosterism during the nineteenth century. See especially Abbott, Carl, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth in the Antebellum Middle West (Westport, Conn., 1981)Google Scholar; Scheiber, Harry, “Urban Rivalry and Internal Improvements in the Old Northwest, 1820–1860,” Ohio History 71 (Oct. 1962): 227–239Google Scholar; Schnell, J., Cristopher, J., and Clinton, Katherine B., “The New West: Themes in Nineteenth Century Urban Promotion,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 30 (Jan. 1974): 75–88Google Scholar; and Hamer, David, New Towns in the New World: Images and Perceptions of the Nineteenth-Century Urban Frontier (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

27 Excerpted in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 24 (May 1851): 648–649.

28 The statistic appears in numerous articles and books from the 1840s to the end of the century and is almost certainly exaggerated. Samuel Terry, a former retailer and one of the period's most astute business writers, estimated in 1869 that the proportion of retailers who failed outright or were forced to make arrangements with their creditors was closer to 60 percent. Terry, Samuel H., The Retailer's Manual (Newark, N.J., 1869), 17.Google Scholar

29 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 24 (Jan. 1851): 47–48. Emphasis in the original.

30 Quoted in Norris, James D., R.G. Dun & Co. 1841–1900: The Development of Credit-Reporting in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1978), 22.Google Scholar

31 Wahlstad, Peter P., Credit and the Credit Man (New York, 1917), 125Google Scholar; Ettinger, R. T. and Golieb, D. E., Credits and Collections (New York, 1917), 137Google Scholar; Prendergast, William A., Credit and Its Uses (New York, 1906), 206.Google Scholar

32 R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Illinois vol. 198:142–D, Illinois vol. 199:365, Illinois vol. 200:646, 879 (Rosenwald); Illinois vol. 198:166, Illinois vol. 199:313, 435, 491, 508, 512, Illinois vol. 200:787, 872, 917, 953 (Benjamin).

33 Gerber, “Cutting Out Shylock,” 624; Higham, John, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America, rev. ed. (Baltimore, 1984), 158Google Scholar; Diner, 144–145, 149. See also Mayo, Louise A., The Ambivalent Image: Nineteenth-Century America's Perception of the Jew (Rutherford, N.J., 1988), 112–113.Google Scholar

34 A typical example of this genre is Power, John C., History of Springfield, Illinois: Its Attractions as a Home and Advantages for Business, Manufacturing, etc. (Springfield, Ill., 1871).Google Scholar

35 Themstrom, 577; Mostov, “Dun and Bradstreet Reports,” 341–346.

36 Weissbach, 83, 88–89; Griffen and Griffen, 122–123; Decker, Peter R., “Jewish Merchants in San Francisco: Social Mobility on the Urban Frontier,” American Jewish History 68 (June 1979): 405Google Scholar; Hertzberg, 143; Raphael, 48.

37 Niles' Weekly Register 7 (21 Oct. 1820): 114; Decker, 397; Diner, 151.

38 R.G. Dun & Co. Collection, Illinois vol. 198:97, 100; Hertzberg, 20. Hertzberg points out that the Southern Mutual Insurance Company's Atlanta agent, Adoph J. Brady; was Jewish.

39 Ashkenazi, 62, 165.

40 Gerber, “Cutting Out Shylock,” 627–629.

41 Hertzberg, 141. See also Ashkenazi, 150–151.

42 Diner, 47; Sachar, 39–40; Hertzberg, 37–41.

43 Jaffee, David, “Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760–1860,” Journal of American History 78 (Sept. 1991): 522CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diner, 68; Higham, 114; Pollak, Oliver B., “The Jewish Peddlers of Omaha,” Nebraska History 63 (Winter 1982): 474–501.Google Scholar

44 Raphael, 35–36; Thernstrom, 576; Barkai, 45, 56–57.

45 Excerpted in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 26 (May 1852): 649.

46 Jaffee, 531–532, 533. Fears surrounding Jewish peddlers resulted in an 1851 California licensing law. See Loftis, Ann, California: Where the Twain Did Meet (New York, 1973), 116.Google Scholar After the Civil War many states enacted laws regulating commercial travelers (traveling salesmen). See Spear, Timothy, 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture (New Haven, Conn., 1995), 70–77.Google Scholar

47 Johnson, Paul E., A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Doyle, Don H., The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825–1870 (Urbana, Ill., 1978), 111–112Google Scholar; Jaffee, 532. In his study of “associational” market values during the antebellum period, Tony Freyer observes that Jews in the community were often equated with outside capitalists. Freyer, 75–76.

48 Rumors circulated that Jews committed arson in order to collect insurance money. See Cohen, 25–26; and Dinnerstein, 36–37, 57.

49 Terry, 159–160.

50 Griffen and Griffen, 104; Mostov, “Dun and Bradstreet Reports,” 336–337.

51 Ashkenazi, 117–118; Tulchinsky, 206–207.

52 A 1938 study of Poughkeepsie, New York, established that 60 percent of businesses between 1843 and 1873 lasted less than four years. (However, the researchers counted all changes in partnerships as new firms.) In their more recent study of that city, Griffen and Griffen found that 32 percent of firms between 1845 and 1880 lasted three years or less. Wendy Gamber's study of Boston milliners reports that 60 percent were in business for five years or less. The birth and death rates of firms continued to be high during the later twentieth century. David L. Birch determined that in the period 1972–76, the United States lost about 34 percent of its firms and gained 37 percent, for a net gain of 3 percent. Hutchinson, R. G. R. G., Hutchinson, A. R., and Newcomer, Mabel, “A Study in Business Mortality: Length of Life of Business Enterprises in Poughkeepsie, New York, 1843–1936,” American Economic Review 28 (Sept. 1938)Google Scholar; Griffen and Griffen, 104; Gamber, Wendy, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1997), 37Google Scholar; Birch, David L., “Who Creates Jobs?” The Public Interest 65 (Fall 1981): 6–7.Google Scholar It should be pointed out that determining the longevity of small private businesses during the nineteenth century presents a number of problems. Directories and credit-reporting firms sometimes did not report on a business until several years after it began operating. And, as demonstrated by the Hutchinson-Newsomer study of Poughkeepsie, frequent changes in partnership structures complicate the definition of what constitutes a “new” firm. Birch also ran into a number of methodological difficulties when using the Dun & Bradstreet records for the late 1970s. His experiences with the data are outlined in Case, John, From the Ground Up: The Resurgence of American Entrepreneurship (New York, 1992), 26–35.Google Scholar

53 Waldinger, Roger D., Through the Eye of the Needle: Immigrants and Enterprise in New York's Garment Trades (New York, 1986), 30.Google Scholar

54 R.G. Dun & Co. Collection, Illinois vol. 198:44 (Hirshfeld); Illinois vol. 198:142–D, Illinois vol. 199:365, Illinois vol. 200:646, 879 (Rosenwald); Illinois vol. 199:491, 508, 512, Illinois vol. 200:787, 872, 917, 953 (Benjamin); Illinois vol. 198:391, Illinois vol. 199:442, 568, Illinois vol. 200:643 (Levi); Mostov, “Dun and Bradstreet Reports,” 349.

55 Daily State Journal (Springfield, Ill.), 16 Aug. 1866.

56 Isaac Markens, “Lincoln and the Jews,” in Karp, 239, 240; R.G. Dun & Co. Collection, Illinois vol. 198:166, 229. (The reports on the Hammersloughs contained several variations on the spelling of their names). Samuel Rosenwald eventually moved to Chicago. His son, Julius, later became a co-owner of Sears, Roebuck & Co. and among the nation s most influential retailers and philanthropists.

57 The treatment of Jews in the German states during the first half of the nineteenth century, when they were culturally and legally regarded as a separate people, was far different. Cohen, 6; Raphael, 13–14; Diner, 15–16.

58 May, 91, 112–113, 120.

59 Gerber, “Cutting Out Shylock,” 623; Sachar, 53; Fels, Tony, “Religious Assimilation in a Fraternal Organization: Jews and Freemasonry in Gilded Age San Francisco,” American Jewish History 74 (June 1985): 376.Google Scholar

60 Sachar, 70; Barkai, 105–106; Diner, 110.

61 Diner, 3; David A. Gerber, ed., Anti-Semitism in American History (Urbana, Ill., 1986), 18.

62 Raphael, 43–44; Griffen, Clyde, “Making It in America: Social Mobility in Mid-Nineteenth Century Poughkeepsie,” New York History 51 (Oct. 1970): 491Google Scholar; Decker, “Jewish Merchants in San Francisco,” 403; Hertzberg, 151–152; Cohen, 30.

63 For the reasons behind the intensified antisemitism that occurred beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, see Dinnerstein.

64 The insistence on conformity was probably economically beneficial. As economic historians have argued, shared and internalized rules of conduct encourage spontaneous cooperation and may lower the costs of transacting. This was especially important in a country where bankruptcy and other commercial laws lagged the market's development. Shared cultural values also contributed to the development of a unified American consumer market, which eventually became the world's largest. See North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (New York, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Casson, Mark, Entrepreneurship and Business Culture: Studies in the Economics of Trust, vol. 1 (Aldershot, U.K., 1995).Google Scholar

65 The propensity of Americans to impose their business culture on others became even more apparent at the end of the twentieth century, when the American-dominated International Monetary Fund insisted that other countries implement much more rigorous standards of disclosure based on the Anglo-American model.

66 Ettinger and Golieb, 166–167.

67 Gerber, “Cutting Out Shylock.”