Secondhand Goods and Old Clothes, Trade in
SECONDHAND GOODS AND OLD CLOTHES, TRADE IN
SECONDHAND GOODS AND OLD CLOTHES, TRADE IN . In Western and Central Europe and Italy trade in secondhand goods and old clothes was an integral part of *moneylending against pledges, as the pawned and forfeited articles (jewelry, clothing, etc.) had to be sold. As many of the goods had to be refurbished or repaired, dyeing, tailoring, and mending became ancillary occupations. Later it became a separate trade which, until the spread of the industrial and technological revolutions, catered to the needs of large sectors of the population.
The trade in old clothes in Italy, known as strazzaria (from straccio, strazzo, "rag"), was conducted mainly through *peddling and eventually came to include trade in new garments and cloth as well. From the 16th to the 18th centuries it was the most important Jewish occupation after moneylending. The strazzaiuoli often dealt in imported wares, thereby angering the local textile and clothing manufacturers. A 1667 list of 112 Jewish households in Mantua (about one-half of the community) included eight traders in secondhand goods, five tailors, three renovators of clothes, two clothing shops, three scrap-iron traders, and 15 "general" merchants. Fifty years later there were 25 dealers in old clothes and secondhand goods, 19 textile and cloth merchants, and nine traders in scrap iron. Strazzaria was a major and characteristic occupation of Roman Jewry even before the issue of Pope *Paul iv's extremely restrictive and discriminatory bull of 1555, Cum nimis absurdum, which made it the sole trade permitted to them. In the mid-19th century the historian F. Gregorovius reported:
If we now enter the streets of the ghetto itself we find Israel before its booths, buried in restless toil and distress. They sit in their doorways or outdoors on the street which affords scarcely more light than their damp and dismal rooms, and tend their ragged merchandise or industriously patch and sew… The daughters of Zion sit upon these rags and stitch anything that can be stitched. They have a reputation for great art in patching, darning, and piecing, and it is said that no rent in any sort of drapery or fabric can be so fearful that these Arachnes cannot make it invisible and untraceable… It was frequently with painful sympathy that I looked upon them, pale and exhausted and stooped, as they diligently plied their needles, men as well as women, girls, and children (The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome (1966), 66f.).
Their lot and vocation continued well into the 20th century, though many branched off into the antiques trade and the clothing industry. In 1940 the licenses of the street vendors of old and new clothes were revoked and in the subsequent persecutions they were particularly hard hit.
Elsewhere in Europe Jews frequently traded in old clothes, at first in association with moneylending and later, in conjunction with related crafts, peddling, and textile trading. In the Netherlands and England, as well as other countries with large numbers of Jewish immigrants, Jews were active in the trade in secondhand goods. In Amsterdam poor Ashkenazi Jews were officially designated as "repairers of old clothes." The mended clothes were exported in large quantities to various destinations. One of the richest merchants in Amsterdam was instructed by a Jew in Poland to pay a Polish Jew in Amsterdam a sum of 10,000 to 12,000 guilders for the sale of rags. These may have been utilized for paper production. In London the old clothes trade was situated in the "Rag Fair," in Rosemary Lane (Royal Mint Street), where there were about 500 to 600 Jewish old clothes dealers in 1850 (in 1800 there had been about 1,000). The "old clo" men, as they were called after their traditional call, brought their wares to two exchanges, Isaac's & Simmons and Levy, from where they were resold either to wholesale merchants or to retail dealers for a variety of purposes. The German and Dutch Jews who entered the secondhand-clothing and rag dealers' markets at Houndsditch in the East End in the 18th century, later dominated the trade and thereby fixed the area of future Jewish settlement in London. The rag trade became obsolete with the rise in the standard of living of the masses and the introduction of Isaac Singer's sewing machine and modern methods of mass production of ready-made clothing. In different countries and at various times when traditional Jewish occupations were attacked (as in Prussia in the 18th century) the trade in secondhand goods also came under pressure. In Paris in 1911 there were about 1,500 Jewish old clothes dealers (brocanteurs) and 400 ragpickers (chiffonniers); in 1941, 2,533 traders in secondhand goods were recorded. Their real number on both dates was probably larger; the majority were impecunious immigrants from Eastern Europe (M. Roblin, Les Juifs de Paris (1952), 108).
Both in England and the U.S. some Jews extended their activities from the secondhand goods trade to buying and selling waste products in general. A case study on Detroit by J.S. Fauman (in jsos, 3 (1941), 41ff.) revealed that while there had been no Jewish dealers in waste products (such as paper and scrap metal) there until 1870, from 1880 Jews were predominant, and the location of the lots and junkyards moved in relation to the areas of Jewish residence. "The waste industry, low in status, poorly organized, requiring little capital and unattractive to other groups, was easily accessible to Jews." Enterprises of this kind attracted and held Jews because of resemblances to their traditional commercial activities, because of strong familial ties, and because the independence of this type of trade enabled them to close their businesses on the Sabbath and festivals. The Detroit pattern prevailed in many other cities. An economic survey made by Fortune magazine ("Jews in America" (1936), 43) estimated that 90% of the scrap-iron and steel industry (worth half a billion dollars in 1929) was Jewish-owned. Through trade in waste materials and particularly in ferrous and nonferrous metals many Jews entered the metal industry, especially in Germany (see *Metals and Mining).
bibliography:
R. Glanz, Jew in the Old American Folklore (1961), 147–65; S. Simonsohn, Toledot ha-Yehudim be-Dukkasut Mantovah (1964), index s.v.Misḥar Seḥorot Meshummashot; V.D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England (1954), 13, 31ff.; Roth, Italy, index s.v.Ragpickers and Second-hand Dealers; idem, in: huca, 5 (1928), 353ff.; idem, History of the Jews in Venice (1930), 173ff.; Z. Szajkowski, Franco-Judaica (1962), nos. 48, 191, 309, 1395–493; H. Heilig, in: jggjc, 3 (1931), 307–448; H. Bloom, Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam (1935), index s.v.Old Clothes; J. Rumney, in: jhset, 13 (1932–35), 332ff.; L.P. Gartner, Jewish Immigrants in England (1960), 82–4; W.M. Glicksman, In the Mirror of Literature (1966), 195f.
[Henry Wasserman]