The Meat Boycott of 1902
I was reading White Feminism by Koa Beck (out in January! preorder now, because it is great) and she mentions the 1902 kosher meat boycott. That book has made me think a lot about collective action vs. the idea of the gifted individual. I’m still definitely going to talk about individual women on here, because individual lives are INTERESTING, but change almost always happens because of a group and not any one person.
Ok! So what happened in 1902 and what changed because of it? Meat prices. Butchers in NYC decided to raise the price of kosher meat from 12 cents a pound to 18 cents a pound. Right, yes, that is a 50% increase. Women on the Lower East Side led the boycott, which, let’s be clear, was not the fault of the butchers, but the robber barons of the Gilded Age who raised the price of meat. 400 kosher butchers led their own boycott against the meat trust, but it failed and the prices stayed at 18 cents.
Two women, Fanny Levy and Sarah Edelson, started a boycott that gathered 20,000 women who did things like do PAN checks to make sure other people weren’t cooking meat (can you imagine? “WHAT IS THIS?” they would ask, holding up a grease-streaked finger). They distributed flyers and circulars, saying “Eat no meat while the Trust is taking meat from the bones of your women and children.” They raised funds to bail out protestors.
In one week, the kosher butchers collectively agreed to continue their own boycott, which meant “kosher restaurants throughout NYC removed meat from their menus.” (x) In less than a month from the start of the boycott, prices dropped to 14 cents a pound. SUCCESS. YAY JEWISH WOMEN OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE.
To learn more, check out these articles from the Jewish Virtual Library, Lower East Side History Month, and Boycott1902.com.