Editor: Crass Cash
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-The Statue of Liberty
I'm currently reading a book on the great real estate dynasties of NYC. A passage about the wave of Jewish immigrants, who would go on to make up many of these titans, struck me as quite interesting. Please see below...
"Collateral accounts of Jewish immigrant culture reveal that males who were over the age of twenty at the time of arrival in NYC generally led very different lives compared with younger boys - they immediately became burdened with grown-up responsibilities and later were less inclined to court risks in business. A willingness to live with risk is critical to high stakes real estate endevours. Older immigrants didn't have it; neither did those who were younger than 10 when they emigrated, for they tended to spend their time and energies assimilating into mainstream American culture. Those between ten and twenty at time of passage had persecution seared into them in the Pale and in the NYC ghettos, but not deeply enough to undercut their optimism. They became the group most likely to succeed."
-THE GREAT REAL ESTATE DYNASTIES OF NEW YORK p.81
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