Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era (Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History) by Michael R. Cohen

Author:Michael R. Cohen [Cohen, Michael R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2017-12-26T05:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.2. “Receipt for Bonnet from Mrs. B. Gans.” Image courtesy of Temple B’nai Israel, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Following the death of her husband in 1900, Mrs. Gans moved to New York to be with her daughter, but her family members carried on the business. In 1912 the Little Rock Board of Trade wrote that no dry goods store or millinery could beat the “well stocked and enterprising establishment of Mrs. B. Gans.” The company’s slogan was “Outfitters for All Womankind,” and in 1912 the firm had thirty-three assistants and remained one of the leading stores in Little Rock. Gans died in 1915, and she was buried in the Oakland Jewish Cemetery in Little Rock.55

Downriver from Little Rock, Lehman Brothers also worked with Gabe Meyer in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Meyer was born in Bavaria in 1834 and arrived in New Orleans via Antwerp at the age of fifteen. He began as a peddler, and from 1852 to 1856, he owned a shop in Marion, Louisiana. According to an oft-cited story, Meyer decided to visit his cousins in Grand Lake, Arkansas, but he was forced to detour through Pine Bluff because of extensive flooding. He ended up settling in Pine Bluff around 1856, and once there, he purchased a stock of goods from New York, quite possibly with the aid of his uncle Isaias Meyer, the mercantile scion who, as we have already seen, had a strong presence in New York, Natchez, and Bayou Sara. In Pine Bluff, Gabe Meyer opened a shop on what became the main thoroughfare of the city.56

Gabe Meyer apparently lost money during the war, so he needed to start essentially from scratch in the postbellum years. When Gabe and his brother Bennett opened G. Meyer & Bro., they planned to “promptly settle the indebtedness of the firm,” and they “were in a bold fix after the war but came out all right,” noted a Dun recorder. By 1867 they were considered a “good house” in excellent credit and standing, and they were slow in their payments in 1868 because of the “smallness” of the previous years’ crop. But they weathered the downturn, and by 1870 the firm had become “one of our best houses.” They were “reputable Jews,” “have the confidence of the community,” and they operated a “flourishing” business. The firm sold “principally” on credit and “dealt in Cotton considerably,” although at times they claimed to “have lost money on it.”57

The firm conducted an estimated $80,000 in business in 1873 and had an estimated capital of $75,000. While it, like most others, appear to have been in a bit of financial trouble in 1874, it seemed to be on more solid footing by 1875, when it was “generally considered” to be worth $100,000. Meyer sold out in 1876, although the firm remained in the family, but one credit reporter nevertheless supposed that it continued to be backed by Gabe Meyer because nobody else had any visible capital. Meyer also “cultivates about 3500 acres of cotton” and

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