Jewish Scrap Metal Dealers in Detroit

My heroine Bess’s boyfriend Jack is the unhappy heir to his family’s scrap metal business. Jews dominated the scrap metal business in Detroit, as in many other American cities. Newly-arrived immigrants found it easy to start out as junk dealers, and if they were successful, they often moved into running junkyards and scrap metal yards. There’s an excellent article about Jewish scrap metal dealers in Detroit in Michigan Jewish History magazine (jump to page 36 for the story).