| OCR Text |
Show Joel Shapiro 6/9/82 tp 1 .L This is the second interview with JV!I' . Shapiro . Why don't we go back to some comrrents you made in the first interview. Cne of the things you mentioned last time that struck me was that you were one of the last of the merchant class. JS I mean that in the sense of sheer numbers . I suppose that somewhere in the 20 ' s and 30 ' s you had a great, a larger group of Jewish men who were businessmen on the streets: stores, shopkeepers . L Within your own lifetime, right? J S Oh , yes . In the post--up until post war, 194 0 , you still had a lot of merchants out on the streets who were recognizable as Jewish merchants . Bowntown Jewish merchants. wnen I said that, there really are as downtown Jewish merchants, family owned businesses, there really are very few any more. L How is the town made different by that? JS I suppose there were some negatives in the general population. There were--there was a class of people referred to as Jewish merchants. And , I suppose, the merchant class from the larger community had some identification as being a Jewish merchant class. Although , even at the peak there weren't that many Jewish merchants. There were small ones, there were larger ones, and so on, and so forth. But , now, they've almost all gone . But, that has not got to do necessarily with the demise of interest in Jews in being good merchants . It has to do with what happened in merchandising, in the whole community of merchandising. L I'm just trying to find out what kinds of businesses at the peak. How many businesses were down here at peak time ••• JS There were a number of little shDp owners who ran shirt and pant shops. That is, small clothiers. You had several in the furniture business. I can think of 3, at least. All of them are gone. Maybe 4. You had several in the loan business. I guess maybe there's two left. In the pawnbroker-loan type of business. You had 2 to 3 in the late 50's, up until the 50's and 60's, and up until the present in sporting goods, dominating sporting goods. They're all gone. The larger clothiers, there were 2 or 3, almost all gone. Now , I don't know the significance of this, except, perhaps, with the Jewish people in Salt Lake City leaving the merchandising and become more professionalized. We are, really, at (the) present |
