The History That Speaks for Itself  

Oral Histories of Families Who Once Owned Textile and Needle Trade Businesses in the Greater Lehigh Valley

By

Gail Rothberg Eisenberg and Susan Clemens Bruder

Introduction:

In the mid-twentieth century, the Lehigh Valley had a thriving needle trade and textile industry.  The business owners were the largest employer of women in the area and many were pillars of the local Jewish community.  The stories of the owners, their families, and their businesses have not been told.

From 2011-2018, Gail Eisenberg and Susan Clemens conducted interviews with about 40 people from 30 families.  The team spoke to the owners, the wives, and children who took over the businesses.  Contained here are stories of this once thriving industry, as told by the people who lived it, in their own words.

Through this project, the team learned not only about this slice of local history, but also the unique experiences of each person interviewed.  Below are some of the primary themes that emerged from these interviews:

  1. The American Dream story where immigrants or children of immigrants started modest textile and needle-trade businesses, worked hard and securely moved their family into the middle class.
  2. The women’s stories and how they navigated roles as wives and mothers, career women, community leaders, and entrepreneurs.
  3. The great diversity of businesses that made up this local industry.
  4. The demise of the Lehigh Valley textile and needle-trade industry due to free-trade and globalization and how different families adapted.

This archive includes two separate, hour-long curated videos showcasing the aforementioned themes of the American dream and the women’s stories.

Goals of the project:

The goal of this project was two-fold: to collect and preserve the family histories and to create and disseminate digital curated stories from these oral history interviews. This collection hosts raw video interviews with transcripts along with two curated video talks, each highlighting one of the primary themes from the interviews. One curated talk is of the businesses through the lens of the American Dream and the other is of the wives’ stories.  

Who was interviewed:

Gail Eisenberg and Susan Clemens conducted oral histories with local textile and needle trade owners and their spouses. The businesses included cut and sew clothing contracting, small textile manufacturing, knitting mills, wholesale operations, textile waste, slipcover manufacturing, and pocketbook manufacturing. 

Connection to the Jewish community:

The owners of the needle trade and textile factories represented many different religions and cultures, the most common being Italian and Jewish.  The majority of the families in this collection were culturally and religiously connected to the Jewish community. These businesses and the families who owned them contributed substantially to the economic development of the Lehigh Valley and of the local Jewish community, from around 1930 to 1990. 

Oral history methodology:  The History that Speaks for Itself

Oral history methodology preserves the history of those who lived it by recording their personal narratives in their own words. The interviews typically lasted a few hours and, sometimes, there were multiple interview sessions.  Further, in this collection you get to hear and see the subjects as they are sharing their stories.

A major challenge of this project was that the once thriving Lehigh Valley textile and needle-trade industry began shrinking by the 1970s as textile production migrated first to the South, and later overseas, seeking to lower costs.  As a result, by the time Gail and Susan began this project in 2011, many owners were deceased or no longer lived in the area. With an elderly and shrinking population, Susan and Gail were always racing the clock.