As surely was true for every Jewish immigrant of his time, the struggle for financial security was David Blumenfeld’s recurring preoccupation. His father had failed to prosper in the decades prior to their immigration, and when my great-grandfather arrived in the United States with his parents in 1884, he was an uneducated twenty-year-old Latvian tailor. Yet, in ways that were unmatched by any of his siblings, within twenty years he owned a successful men’s clothing store and was able to house his family in a commodious house. Soon thereafter he was able to open a second store, and by 1919 he was able to purchase the building in which his substantially larger store was located.
Thirty-five years from impoverished arrival to middle-class success.
David’s inner reflections on his financial challenges reveal a world that in some ways seems very distant, and yet in other ways so familiar to me. Consider, for example, his pivotal statement on what it takes for a Jew to be successful in America, written in 1920, when David was nearing 60 years old and shortly after his father Ben-Zion had died:
“While fortune smiled on many of these immigrants and they soon acquired wealth and even positions which enabled them to write their lives with golden letters on the pages of New World history, still these successful ones were only a small minority. The majority, like [my father], failed in their efforts to acquire a decent competency, a failure which was mostly due to their tenacious loyalty to their faith and conscientiousness in their religious activities. This became a stumbling block to their material success in life. Of this class [my father’s] life was a typical one.”
Ben-Zion was penniless when he arrived in the United States in 1883, but in less than a year he had earned enough money to send for his wife and children, including David. And yet, Ben-Zion subsequently was forced to make his way through Michigan and Minnesota and for a time even Oregon and California, living on the margins as a peddler and a tinsmith. He even tried to become a farmer in Oregon and then resided briefly in Berkeley, California, only to live out his latter days in a Jewish home for the aged in Minnesota, abandoned by his wife and supported by his then-prosperous son. But from David’s perspective neither a lack of education nor his age upon immigration (nearly 40) explain his father’s lack of success: it was his religiosity, in David’s eyes, that held him back.
Such a harsh judgment seems so out of place coming from David, who remained an observant Jew his entire life, and whose “magnum opus” was a translation of the entire Old Testament into rhyming verse. But David was, quintessentially, a modern American Jew: to the end of his life he was as active in his local Masonic Temple as he was in the newly-founded Conservative synagogue, and when the exigencies of business mandated that he open his store in a small town several miles from the closest synagogue he readily made this move. He willingly kept his store open on Saturdays, thus prioritizing business success ahead of any Sabbath observance.
Not that there were no false starts, and to me that is where David’s true “recipe for success” can be discerned. Under the tutelage of his parents, he and his siblings first opened “a small shop” in the rural town of Ludington, Michigan in the 1880s, and while at first “life began to grow easier and improvement cautiously crept into daily existence.... [His father] became very arbitrary and insisted that all money earned be handed over to him. The girls [David’s sisters] wanted some of their money for respectable clothes but father could see no need of it and there was much waste of money and he left the family.”
Perseverance in the face of disappointment certainly was one more ingredient for success. David moved first to Chicago, where he found that “unless he yielded and broke the [Sabbath] commandment he could find no work in any desirable shop.” Not finding work in Chicago, even when free from religious strictures, he then moved north to Minneapolis. He worked for a local merchant for about a year, and soon earned enough money to open a small shop by himself. But even this was insufficient for David’s needs, and within a few years he moved back to Chicago, by then married and raising a young daughter.
Again he opened up “a little shop,” probably a clothing store, where he did fairly well “for a man without capital.” But life soon turned difficult again; his wife was frequently ill, another child was born, and greater success evaded him. In 1894 the Chicago economy deteriorated; the World’s Fair had closed, many immigrants were without work, labor strikes decimated the local industries, and “work of any kind was hard to get at a premium.” David once again decided to return with his family to Minneapolis, but since he “had not saved any money for traveling expenses”... “he sold his house furniture and left Chicago barehanded.”
Not to be deterred by his prior failures, back in Minneapolis David opened up a dressmaking parlor, but soon that began to flounder as well – and not simply because of any excess religiosity. As he wrote from the vantage point of twenty years’ hindsight:
“But troubles and want had completely conquered [David]. They had washed him out and left him colorless for the time being. Nevertheless he stubbornly refused to deliver up his lively spirit, though he could not develop any philosophical humor himself and the hard times seemed to leave little humor in anything.”
And so David closed his shop and moved to nearby St. Paul and found “a job” — yet within a year or two he moved yet again, this time back to rural Michigan. He thought he could find permanent work in a thriving copper mining area of the state, but the only available work was peddling. For a while he sought occasional work as a tailor, but soon he found himself peddling again, this time selling maps, “but after four months [David] came up against stiff competition as newspapers began to give away maps as subscription premiums.” It was clear that this venture was also bound to fail, despite his “lively spirit,” and so he returned to Minnesota. Again, David rebounds from disappointment and holds to his vision of what is possible, with a humility and flexibility that are equally critical ingredients in his quest.
Only then, after six long-distance moves in less than twenty years’ time, was his quest for success finally rewarded. In 1902 he moved to South St. Paul, a then-rustic town with a booming new meatpacking industry a few miles down river from St. Paul, offering unpaved streets, outhouses for most homes, and stables in the backyards. David was the only Jewish dry goods merchant there, and soon he was able to open a larger store and finally achieve his financial goals. Within two years he opened a second store in St. Paul, and he had reached the pinnacle of success: he was able to build a “real house” for his family:
“It was a seven-room house with a spacious room in the attic for a maid. It had a full concrete basement piped for gas and electricity. The main floor was finished in golden birch. The dining room was red burlap with golden oak panels and a three-inch fancy molding around the room for bric-a-brac display.... The house front faced east and the morning sunshine.... [David] felt proud of his new home, especially when he woke up mornings with the sun’s rays shining in his face.”
By 1912 David’s success was even more evident: his eldest daughter was marrying a recent law school graduate, his oldest son was attending university, his two younger children were thriving, and he was involved in civic and commercial activities befitting a successful “American” businessman. Capping his quest for success, in 1919 he was able to buy a substantial downtown South St. Paul building, into which he relocated his expanded store. It had taken thirty-five years of shifting directions, trying out new ventures, rebounding from disappointment, relocating from state to state, and adjusting his sense of what it meant to be Jewish and American — but the struggle had not been in vain.
David never conceals his evident frustration that his success still put him in the “minority,” something that is continually fascinating to me now. His father had died a pauper abandoned by his wife, and most of his siblings had gone aground as well, either dying young, living as itinerant peddlers, or simply disappearing far away from any established Jewish community. One younger brother, for example, ended up “a human wreck, without any religious training, with no respectable trade or profession to support himself decently.”
Reading these tales of woe and achievement, I cannot but wonder whether it was truly their religious rigidity that doomed these other immigrants to failure, as David had suggested. Rather, it appears that it was those more amorphous qualities of personality (that lively spirit he referred to) that made all the difference. And if so, what were the sources of David’s special qualities — and of utmost concern to me, whence did my own qualities, both good and bad, truly emerge?
Most revealing of David’s thinking is the extent to which even his own children apparently fail to meet his standards, and it is in David’s descriptions of his eldest son Albert, my grandfather, that I hear his harshest criticisms. Commenting on Albert’s personality at the time of the Great War (only later to be named the First World War), David considered him “sadly lax in his scholastic studies. He was inarticulate. He was selfish, hard headed, with a military nature... Like most narrow, conceited corporals, he was set on having his own way... It seemed that his selfishness went beyond the limit of human endurance, although there was nothing basically wrong with him.”
Nothing wrong with him? Hardly, according to his father David. Over the course of the subsequent ten years this son was a recurring source of disappointment for David. Albert considered attending medical school but David felt there was no use in his pursuing this avenue, since Albert’s grades were in decline and David believed that he “had no mind for study.” Albert tried to conduct his own scientific experiments, but even that went nowhere, as “he soon got tired and dropped his experimental work, as he lost patience.” Albert lost his next job, and David was told by the boss that Albert “had no spark of enthusiasm about his work... [and] no personality of a pleasing type to make him grow into the company” — and as David felt so passionately, a pleasant personality and a great deal of “spark” was necessary for economic success.
Disregarding Albert’s military training, David could only focus on the personal barriers to his son’s financial success, though eventually he is able to see them from a broader societal perspective: “Our schools have totally failed to train minds. So have most homes.” He noted that “a great amount of pride was built up by the World War. Some rose from poverty to wealth. Many became rich and became social climbers trying to ape the Joneses. There seemed to be only a few pure and fine characteristics developed in home nowadays.” Then, enlarging his search for an explanation for Albert’s problems, David offers further theories for the lack of economic success, both societally and that of his own son:
“Many of the soldier boys who had been getting money from home and gifts from friends had become lazy. They led a shiftless life while abroad and were unable to do a day’s work. Some of them were too proud to work at anything they could find. But more, indifferent and dissatisfied with the turn of events, have adopted a revolutionary attitude, saying, ‘We saved our country. We staked our lives to shield your hides. Now you must pay us for doing so.’”
In the end, David concluded, “There has come over the country... a wave of self-indulgence coincidently with the great wealth that came to us.”
Another ingredient of the mix has been identified: a sense of deprivation provides the motivation for overcoming that down-trodden status. So, conversely, I wonder, was it my family’s relative lack of wealth that has fueled my own career and financial ambitions? Without that negative “push,” would an inner spark ever be sufficient?
David was, nonetheless, endlessly determined to see his oldest son find a path to success, though his descriptions of his son’s fate tell us much about David’s world-view — and about Albert as well. Near the end of the diary we learn that when David refused to set up Albert in business or pay for the lease for a new store for his benefit, Albert turned elsewhere, to Abraham Mark, his more successful father-in-law, for financial backing. But apparently this could only happen if David gave up the shoe department in his own enlarged store, such that Albert could open up his own shoe store in the same town. “Nothing doing” was David’s response, proclaiming “Good God! Such nerve!” Clearly, David viewed his own success as something he did on his own, and so he saw no reason to help his own son — at least not at that stage of the drama.
Albert was devastated, and David did not flinch from describing his son’s response. “Albert crie[d] bitterly with tears before his mother because [David] would not set him up in business.” Albert repeatedly complained that his father would not help him, referring to his “misfortune” at not getting assistance in the greater metropolis of St. Paul, complaining that now he would have no choice but to head further out into the rural area to get his new start on his own. But not to be discouraged, that is just what he did: he rented his own store, in Belle Plaine, an even smaller town an hour or so away from home, and slowly he achieved a modicum of commercial success.
The good news is that eventually Albert was able to lift himself out of the lack of enthusiasm that had saddled his earlier ventures, and it seems that this change in his fortune finally was sufficient to win his father’s approval. Unfortunately for the reader, David never explains exactly what turned him from the persistent skeptic to the reluctant supporter; did Albert really turn an important corner, one wonders, or did David simply retreat from his focus on the perceived inadequacies of his son in favor of family harmony? It’s never made clear in the Diary, but early in 1920, on a day “bitter cold and frosty”... 18 degrees below, [David] met Albert and [his father-in-law] at the Ryan Hotel to talk matters over.” How we wish we could have overheard what transpired that day!
By the late afternoon David had reversed his position on entering a partnership with his son. A deal was struck, and he introduced Albert “to Finches’ credit man, St. Paul Rubber Company, Gordon and Ferguson and to several other wholesale houses, then to Dunn and Bradstreet’s, informing them of [their] new formed partnership under the firm name Blumenfeld and Son.” Albert’s recently opened rural store became a part of the larger, and now expanding, family business. Perhaps Albert’s independent efforts, however limited, were enough to assure David that his son could, in fact, become a success. Or perhaps it was simply that David was able to view a partnership with his son as a way to strengthen his own economic foundation.
Thus, our tale ends with reconciliation between father and son and the creation of a new economic joint venture, but in a way that leaves us with many unanswered questions about their respective quests for success. David’s concerns over excessive religiosity seem to have long since been forgotten, and it is unclear whether the torrent of disdain and criticism from David has dissipated, or more likely, merely suppressed. And while their partnership was to continue for many decades, one wonders about the long-term consequences for them, and for our family. The arrangement relieved David from the full time burdens of the business and allowed him to continue to write for several hours each day, and to participate actively in local civic affairs until his death at age 92. But there was sparse public recognition of his literary accomplishments, and little respect for all that he had accomplished.
And what of my grandfather Albert, the former slacker who for so long had disappointed his father? For the next fifty years he ran a family business that provided a comfortable income for his own family, but he never was able to accomplish any more than that. From my vantage point as a young child, Albert seemed forever burdened by the resonating condemnations of his father, disappointed in his lack of greater success and the limitations of his world, yet unable to move beyond the small-town commercial realm that had been established against such difficult odds by his father.
Discovering the story of David’s quest allows his path to emerge as a framework for accomplishment that has, or so it seems, guided my own evolution. Keeping the inner spark alive, balancing tradition and modernity, rebounding from disappointments, maintaining a constant beam on a sense of what it means to be successful, and having the flexibility necessary to find new paths when one road has become blocked — all of these have been vital ingredients for my own recipe for success.
And so, I keep asking myself, what would David have thought of me?