All this is not quite so true of other commercial peoples, notably the Americans. The following instance may not be typical nor may it prove the rule, and would no doubt be attributed to a Jew, had it not occurred in the college town in which I live and where all the clothing dealers are Gentiles, if not Christians.
One of them was suddenly taken to a distant city to be operated on for appendicitis, and the next day a local paper contained the following advertisement:
"I have gone to Rochester, Minn., to have my appendix cut out. This will be a great cut, but it will not compare with the cut I am making in clothing at my store on the corner of X and Y Streets."
After the operation, while the man hovered between the unknown places, a second advertisement appeared.
"I am having a hot time holding down a bed in this hospital; but it does not compare with the hot time my competitors will have in meeting my prices in clothing at my store, on the corner of X and Y Streets."
My readers will agree with me that this "beats the Jews."
The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that I wish to discuss in another chapter.
I have not set myself the task of playing the apologist for the Jew or for any of the groups of which I treat. I freely acknowledge that there are disagreeable qualities in the Jew which explain in a measure, at least, the prejudice aroused by him.
Foremost, I suppose, is the type which, when it is most pronounced, is apt to be unpleasant and unsympathetic.
The offenses against good taste in dress are marked in many of them; but that lies more in the air with which the clothes are worn than in the clothes themselves. They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles. The love of display is to some degree common to both Jew and Gentile; but is more noticeable among Jewish women, because they cannot conceal their feelings as well as the Gentile woman can.
The Jewish woman who has "arrived" and knows it, wants the whole world to know it also; while the Gentile woman, especially the Gentile American woman, wears her first imported gown and diamonds as if her swaddling clothes had been made in Paris and her original baby pins encrusted with jewels.