today has an additional story to tell: how the children and grandchildren and, in fact, now the great-grandchildren of Harry and Ida Attman have built other successful enterprises and careers as well. And they have accomplished these successes by learning from and employing many of the business and ethical principles Harry and Ida practiced and taught.
This unusual and compelling story can be said to start with a pair of scissors.
Chapter Two
WHEN HARRY MET IDA
My grandmother taught us how to live.
My grandfather taught us how to work.
— Steven Attman
Between 1880 and 1924 when U.S. immigration laws became highly restrictive, 24 million immigrants of various nationalities streamed into the United Sates. Of those, an estimated 2.2 million were Jewish, most of them from Eastern Europe, in what has been termed the third wave of Jewish immigration to America. This wave dwarfed the first wave, of Spanish or Sephardic Jews from 1640 to 1820, and the second, of German Jews, from 1820 to 1880. In the case of Eastern European Jews, they were not only “yearning to breathe free,” but fleeing from gathering threats to their safety. Among those millions were two families: the Gettmans (the original name of the Attmans in Europe) and the Shapiros who came at different times in different ways during those years, but all of whom eventually settled in Baltimore, Maryland and gave rise to this family’s history.
The mass of Jewish people who lived through those times witnessed years of great turmoil. With the emancipation of Western Europe’s Jewry in the 19th century, Jews were beginning to enter into general society. But Eastern Europe itself was undergoing seismic changes in their governments and society. In the past, social and economic upheaval often led to the implementation of anti-Jewish policies and physical attacks on Jews as the general populace looked for reasons for their woes, and lashed out at scapegoats in their midst. In Russia, for instance, in 1881, revolutionaries assassinated Czar Alexander II. The death of this czar, an advocate of many anti-Semitic policies, only led to more social unrest and to the next czar who was even more anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism was ever present, either in the form of discriminatory government policies or in peasant-inspired destructive, deadly pogroms that swept periodically through Jewish shtetls and villages in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. The years leading up to the eruption of World War I in 1914 and in the war’s aftermath proved to be a time of additional troubles for the Jews. Through all this, America beckoned as a welcoming haven of acceptance for Jews, spurring many to leave their homes in Europe and seek new lives in America.
Troubled by the ever-constant threat of pogroms, the dire economic times, and the restrictions on employment and religious practices, Harry Attman’s parents urged him to go to America. It was the general practice among Jews for one family member to travel to the United States, find work and, it was hoped, save enough money to help bring other family members over. And so in November 1912, 20-year-old Harry Attman became the first in his family to emigrate to America.
Harry (his Hebrew name was Tzvi) was born in Kusmien, Russia, a village near the Polish border, on October 26, 1893, to Shmarja and Sluva Gettman (in English their names became Shmariah and Sylvia). Shmarja was a grain dealer. The eldest of nine children, Harry had three brothers and five sisters (two of whom were born after he left home). In one of many sacrifices he would make for his family, Harry, by traveling alone to America, would not see his parents, brothers and sisters for eleven years.
Small but athletic and solidly built, Harry was adventuresome and looked forward to his new life. He first traveled from his home to the port city of Rotterdam where he boarded the ship Uranium for voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. It was just several months after the Titanic had sunk in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Joining the crowded third class passenger area far below deck, he carried with his meager possessions an unusual set of implements for him: a pair of scissors, a razor, and a comb with which he planned to cut hair. It was one of the first indications of his enterprising spirit that would eventually find full display in his own business. While America at that time was a welcoming country to immigrants, government authorities were also careful to screen passengers for diseases and other problems before allowing anyone to disembark. Those who looked sickly or exhibited any of a series of disabilities faced the prospect of being sent back to their country of origin. In a Special Notice to Passengers given out at entry points and kept thereafter by Harry among his papers, the following warning was issued:
No person who is Insane, Imbecile, Deaf, Dumb, Blind, Crippled or otherwise infirm or suffering from Trachoma, Tuberculosis, Favus, or any other contagious disease will be permitted to land, nor any person without money or baggage, or in any way liable to become a public charge, nor any person who has been an inmate of a prison, poor-house or work-house or any charitable institution.
Only those who passed scrutiny were allowed into the United States. Others were sent back, even if it meant breaking-up families. The lucky ones admitted into the country often found immigrant officials marking on their clothing an “OK” in chalk.
Harry used his set of scissors/razor/comb to earn money by charging for his services as a barber for his fellow travelers, but he was also helping them avoid those dreaded problems with inspection. In those days, a transatlantic voyage could take two weeks or more. The rough Atlantic seas could make the trip difficult, especially for the third class passengers below deck where most of the immigrants booked the cheapest passage. In fact, one young passenger who came across at about the same time as Harry later remembered how many of the passengers became violently seasick. Harry’s barber services must have seemed appealing to those who wished to look healthy and their children well-cared-for when they disembarked and had to pass the scrutiny of U.S. officials.
Young Harry was showing how he instinctively grasped what the author of one of the most successful business books of that and future eras advocated. Napoleon Hill, born into poverty in America in 1883 ten years before Harry was born and living through the same time period as Harry, advised individuals in Think and Grow Rich that the road to business success in the America of the time (and at any time thereafter) was to “find a need and fill it.” Harry had sensed a need on that voyage and filled it. He and later his sons exhibited this entrepreneurial spirit and implemented such a strategy as they each built highly successful enterprises. Interestingly, family members cannot recall any time that Harry, before or after that voyage to America, ever picked up scissors and gave anyone a haircut.
When Harry arrived at Ellis Island on November 23, 1912, he experienced the first change in his life in the New World. Immigration agents gave him a new name. At birth, he was named Harry Gettman, but after passing through the immigration process he found that his last name was printed out on documents as Ettman, which was later transcribed as Attman. Such a name-change was not an uncommon experience for immigrants. Many of these officials could not understand the language or read the writing of immigrants. In the processing of hundreds if not thousands of people a day, many speaking Yiddish, Polish, German, or Russian, officials often recorded names in variant English. ‘Gettman’ may have sounded or looked like ‘Ettman’ and so Harry Gettman of Russia eventually became Harry Attman in America. [A similar name change occurred to another immigrant to Baltimore who eventually entered the food business. A kosher caterer named Baida, who operated in Baltimore in the latter half of the 1900s, was given that name after he followed his brother through the immigration line; when asked his last name, he replied in Yiddish, “Baida dazelba,” which means “the same as his.” He subsequently found on his papers that his last name in English was now Baida.]
After being admitted into the United States, Harry traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where a cousin on his mother’s side, Harry Mittelman, lived and operated a deli/confectionery store. This was Harry’s first introduction to employment in the food business. He worked in the store for several years, was paid $5 a week, and lived upstairs. By 1915, Harry was ready
