Corps de l’article

Scott D. Seligman’s new book is a lively account of a food boycott or “strike” led by Jewish women immigrants faced with a 50 per cent rise in meat prices (51). The boycott of kosher butcher shops began in May 1902 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, and spread to other boroughs and other cities. It comprised mass meetings; fund-raising; picketing; seizures of meat; leafletting; the establishment of cooperative butcher shops; and the organization of the Ladies’ Anti-Beef Trust Association and later the Allied Conference for Cheap Kosher Meat. The latter signalled men’s rising leadership of the cause (242). Sadly, the boycott also involved violence, including from an anti-Semitic police force that brutally arrested boycotters.

Prior to the boycott, the butchers attempted to force lower wholesale prices by closing up shop. They were bullied by the major packing houses known as the Beef Trust, found by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905 to be “an illegal combination in restraint of trade” (221). The Beef Trust continued to manipulate prices through mechanisms such as the National Packing Company, disbanded by the Justice Department in 1912 (229). Further restraints on anticompetitive tactics included a 1920 federal government directive for packers “to sell their interests in stockyards and railroads and dissociate themselves from retail business and lines unrelated to meat.” (238).

Seligman also highlights later meat strikes, broader food price protests, and rent strikes that used similar tactics. In 1917, for example, the Mothers’ Anti-High Price League is set up at a meeting organized by the Socialist Party (233). Seligman’s enthusiasm about the main players and the importance of bringing this tale to a 21st century audience to recognize the political leadership of women in early 20th century food strikes comes through on every page. His achievement is especially noteworthy, given the paucity of information about many of the participants: “Two women particularly successful … we know today only as Mrs. Kiseloff and Mrs. Silver; their given names, unfortunately, are lost to history, as are their biographies” (123). This book would provide an excellent basis for further studies of gender and food resistance through the lens of social reproduction theory, wherein class struggle takes place in an array of arenas.[1] It also aligns with intersectional approaches that consider how class, gender, ethnicity and race, religion, geographical location, access to transportation, age, and other situationalities and identities affect individuals’ relative food (in)securities and sovereignties, cuisine, and the role of food activities in their social relationships.[2] As Psyche Williams-Forson notes, it is crucial to think about “food as an inherent part of the social inequality of our lives”.[3]

One of the compelling speeches delivered by women leaders in Seligman’s book is an exchange with Mayor John P. Mitchel during a meeting with members of the Mothers’ Anti-High Price League. In response to the mayor’s placating remarks, a woman countered:

“Excuse me, sir, you do not feel it. You think you feel as we do, but if you are not hungry you cannot. This morning you had your breakfast, today you will have your luncheon, tonight you will have your dinner. How, then, can you feel what it is not to have food?” (233)

Seligman positions his book as an expansion on a journal article by the late Paula E. Hyman.[4] He effectively draws on extensive citations of English and Yiddish newspaper stories and enlivens the text with photographs and other illustrations, including satirical cartoons. It was surprising, however, that he did not reference Hyman’s article and other secondary sources on specific points of argumentation where they converge or diverge with his own. As well, some details could have been explained further for readers unfamiliar with Jewish food customs. Examples include a reference to veining meat (159) and mentions of the practice of serving meat at the Passover seder (59-60, 63, 230, 235).

Seligman notes that many protesting unaffordable food through the 1910s and later were influenced by “a collective memory of 1902” (235), despite having no personal memories of the earlier boycott. His book contributes significantly to this collective memory and to studies of the food procurement challenges of specific cultural communities. In the current context when so many residents of Canada, the United States, and other countries are unable to afford food staples and housing costs, such a reminder is timely. For example, “The number of Canadians living in food-insecure households in 2017-18 … [was] higher than any prior national estimate”. [5] Food Secure Canada then registered an exacerbation of rising levels of food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic, “with disproportionate impacts on Indigenous, Black and racialized communities,” outlining faults in the country’s food chain that include “the concentration of food chain ownership by a handful of large, often multinational corporations – including the control of seeds and inputs; the dramatic centralisation of abattoirs and food processing”. [6] Researchers and activists have highlighted the unaffordability of nutritious food staples in Northern and remote Indigenous locations such as Nunavut and the emergence of “food deserts” and “food swamps” in many lower-income urban neighbourhoods and in rural spaces over the past several decades. [7] Among others, two proposed solutions promoted by Food Secure Canada are “solidarity grocery stores and food cooperatives”. [8]