The seventieth birthday of Maurice L. Rothschild, well known State street merchant, was celebrated by 850 employees of his Chicago department store. A replica of Rothschild’s first store in Seneca, Kansas, which he opened fifty years ago, served as the setting for a party held at the Standard Club.
Rothschild, born in Germany, came to the United States at the age of fourteen and opened the Seneca general store when he was twenty-one. As a promotion stunt, the young merchant threw from the roof of his two-story establishment twenty-five overcoats to the crowd below. The free coats, tossed down to the accompaniment of the village cornet band, were supposed to demonstrate to the crowd that woolens would protect them from the cold as well as the hairy buffalo ulsters in use at that time.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
