The Junior Historian, Volume 11, Number 6, May 1951 Page: 7
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THE JUNIOR HISTORIAN
FEATHERS SOFTEN THE BLOWS
by PEARL KATZ
Paschal High School, Fort WorthTO the average person feathers
mean little more than fillers for
pillows, comforters, and feather-
beds at grandmother's. Fine feathers
have long been used to adorn ladies'
hats. This is a story of how feathers, all
kinds of feathers, have opened doors
of opportunity to a poor immigrant
farmboy born in the Austrian section
of Poland during the rule of Franz
Joseph II.
Max Katz came to America at the
age of twenty-six to find a better way
of life. As a boy he had lived on his
father's farm in Krakowicz. Occasion-
ally he had accompanied his father to
Vienna, where Samuel Katz traded in
feathers, some of them brought from
America. Because the foreign feathers
yielded attractive profits, Max was one
clay to seek a place in the American
feather trade.
Max inherited his keen business sense
from his father. Once father and son
journeyed to a near-by village to buy
a cow. The animal chosen was owned
by a speculator who demanded forty
dollars more than the cow was worth.
Max's father offered $120 for the cow,
but the owner refused. Neither would
budge from his position. Finally, Sam-
uel extended a handful of bills to the
cowman, who accepted the money and
began counting carefully. Finding that
Samuel had given him $130, the crafty
cowman handed over the cow. Appar-
ently he never suspected that the extra
ten dollars was to settle the deal.
On another occasion Samuel decided
to sell his farm, which was yielding
him practically nothing. He placed a
sign near the road which read:
BUY THIS FARM
CLIMATE WONDERFUL
GUARANTEED YOU WIIL LIVE I10 YEARS
Many persons came to look over the
property, and one man in particular wasabout ready to buy it when a funeral
passed. Turning to Samuel, he asked,
"What is the meaning of this?" Samuel
solemnly replied, "This undertaker
came to town looking for business, but
since no one ever dies here, he had no
business. All that he could do was to
lie down and die himself; that is the
undertaker's procession which you see."
The farm was sold.
In the Poland of Max's youth, op-
portunities for education and new oc-
cupations were so limited that his life
seemed destined to be that of a farmer
like his father. Most boys were content
with such conditions but not Max. He
wanted a business of his own. To reach
his goal he knew that he would have
to find his fortune in another land,
perhaps in America. Furthermore, there
were hard times in Poland; many young
men were going to war to fight the
Russians to the East or the British and
French to the West. By this time Max
Katz had a wife and a son to support;
times were difficult for his parents'
family too. He decided to ease the
burden by going to America. There he
hoped to make enough money to en-
able his family to join him.
Max Katz arrived in the United
States in 1916. Through his relatives
in New York he soon learned that times
could be hard there too. His first job was
in a tailor's shop, where he worked for
two weeks. For a month he was a press-
man, but the seasonal irregularity of
that trade was discouraging. In the
streets of East Side New York, Katz
saw feather merchants going about their
business, and he tried in vain to find
an opening. At the end of his second
month in the new land, he saw a boy
with a pushcart loaded with bales of
feathers. Katz offered to help with the
load. In return for this favor, the boy
invited Katz to his home, where the
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Texas State Historical Association. The Junior Historian, Volume 11, Number 6, May 1951, periodical, May 1951; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391577/m1/9/?q=%22mex-tex%22: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.