The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1900-01-06
YIDDISH MARKET PLACE.
Giimpses of Purchase and Barter d
the Chicago Ghetto-Odsrs
aad HIerogIyphics.

II whirls along jefferson street on
the West side. this Yiddlsh market
place, in the very heart OF the Ghetto,
IL is furious medley OF black boards,
watermelons, Gathering tongues, ba-
mana skins, hieroglyphics, live fish, cry
ing babies, rotting vegetables and
quaint, blaek-haired Yiddish women
who tear into the stands and counterS
like so many bats scratching out of
their hollow trees In search OF food.
Every Thursday afternoon curious
old board contrivances with wheels at
tached In various remarkable ways 70
taAseled and haltlng horses are driven
by ragged-haired, STOPPING Jews from
every quarter OF the city to Jeffer-
son street near Maxwell and 0'Brien.
Some are loaded with watermelons,
cantaloupes and green apples. others
with vegetables, Fish wagons stopping
with water tanks In which live carp
sputter draw up In front Of the fish
markets and dump their fish into the
big tanks in the stores.
Beef killed by the rabbis at the stock
yards is hauled to the meat shops, "Ice-
men" and ice cream men" drive their
heavy drsya through the pandemo-
mum Of feet and wheels and shout to
the housetops: "Icel Ice" In Yiddish
tongue. Everything ia In Yiddlsh
tongue. All the signs on the market
stores, all the cries OF the apple men.
the vegetable men, the butchers and
bakers. Even the Yiddish newsboys
fit over the rough board walk shout.
ing out Hebrew raT ant Ne 'cr x,
uncouth cry echoes like Wild cLant
over the screechlng buyers and sellers.
All Thursday afternoon and night, all
Friday the market street bolls and
tumbles, then settles down for peace
and quiet on the Sabbath.
Old men pushing rickety, empty
baby carriages, little boys with box
carts, women and girls with baskets
and babies by the hundred all crowd
into the market street. Jefferson is a
ragged-looking garbage box of u
street. The rough frame houses have
been eaten by many winters and their
gabled tops stretch against the smoky
sky like unhealed sores. The rough
cross streets run against them and fade
Off into freight tracks, with perhaps a
tiny brush Of green 10 break the gray.
Some Of the vegetable shops are built
into temple-like houses, crawling with
Yiddish hieroglyphics, and old men
with great black boards and hooked
noses guard these boxes and barrels
like hawks and the tiny, big-eyed chill
dren sent by their mothers to do the
marketing stand around with pumper-
nickels from the bakers and look wist-
fully at the watermelons.
The women gather around dry goods
stores" where cut-price skirts are sold,
and /hsggle over the prices. Last FRI
day there was little mite Of a Ghetto
child selling scraps of old curtains and
calico burned In a recent fire. He was
calling out to all who passed to come
and buy:
"Come an buy; one for one cent, two
for Two centsI YOU wash dem an clean
dem an iron dem, an vey will be whittier
men Enow!"
There was Withholding, scrawny
little girl, with u mop of matted black
hair over her white face and skinny
arms and knees, who sat like bat in
II watch tower, guarding a load of wa
Chlcngo Chronicle.