|
Memories of Work
“My mother... [was] a wig maker and maker of hair switches and other hair goods. [She] taught us all how to weave human hair and we became
fairly adept at it, but we could never make our fingers fly like our mother did... Kopelman’s Beauty Shop was one of the very first beauty shops in Fargo... Rose, Dorothy and I helped to make the shop a going business, all of us merely helping our mother who was quite a business woman.”
Jeanette Kopelman Saval, letter, 1977. In 1909, Lena Kopelman, the mother of six children and pregnant, became widowed. Fortunately, as her daughter related, she had a business that she was able to expand. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“[My neighbor] told them I was sixteen, not fifteen, and that I was his sister. They gave me a job... I sewed the zippers on overall pants... It was all piecework, and we were paid according to how much we did. I was fast and I wanted to make as much money as possible. The moment I finished a bundle, I would rush over to get another one. After a while, I was making $25 a week... There were men in the factory, some of them married, who made only $12 a week.”
Edith Modelevsky Linoff Edelman, The Wisdom of Love, 1981. Edelman reached America with her mother and siblings in 1922. She went to work one year later, at age fifteen.
top photo: Lena Kopelman store, which sold wigs and other hair-goods, Fargo, North Dakota, 1913. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
inset photo: Kopelman also ran the local mikvah (ritual bath). Shown here is the mikvah agreement between her and the Fargo Hebrew Congregation. Courtesy of the American Jewish Archives.
|
|
|
|
|
