HOUDINI, TRUMP & BERNIE

Socialist rally in Union Square, NYC

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair….” 

In short, it was a time very much like the present. 

Come back with us to Houdini’s time, election season plus or minus 125 years ago. Then as now, our country was at war with itself about the Second Amendment, about police shooting down civilians, about immigration, about “the one percent” and about socialism. 

Socialist leader Debs ran for President five times, won nearly a million votes in 1900.

Houdini’s family found itself smack in the middle of this political and economic maelstrom. In fact, his family was a microcosm of the entire Gestalt, to use the German word he probably heard in his own household. 

It all began with yeast.

We’ve written about Harry’s uncle Simon Newman, who married the sister of Harry’s mother. They moved from Europe to New York just after the American Civil War and just in time to avoid a war between Austria and Prussia. Newman had been a distiller in Budapest, one of the best, according to a colleague who testified at his trial. Being a distiller also means you are in the yeast business. Yeast plus sugar equals alcohol. 

European distillers, especially those from bread-and-beer-loving Vienna and Budapest, were experts in making yeast, and Newman saw a huge business opportunity in the emerging United States, whose population was rising fast with European immigrants. He was right on the heels of Charles Fleischmann, also a Hungarian distiller and yeast maker from Vienna. Fleischmann emigrated to the USA at the same time Newman did, and their lives and businesses became deeply intertwined.

By 1891, 125 years ago, Fleischmann had made a fortune selling compressed yeast, the same kind you buy today in foil packets. His only serious rival was Simon Newman. 

We believe they were social as well as business rivals. Fleischmann's flamboyant son "Major Max" was the Donald Trump of his day, traveling the country in a private railroad car with his string of polo ponies; his other children became patrons of the theater and the opera. Newman's son Henry worked with the American Gaiety Girls, selling a piece of the burlesque act to Houdini in the 1890s.

One of the many American "Gaiety Girl" troupes.

Fleischmann's family spent hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing its yeast. Newman spent similar sums and likewise built a lucrative business. Charles and his brother Maximilian Fleischmann began suing Newman in 1883 and continued doing so in a series of lawsuits for the next seven years. 

The Fleischmanns lost every time, but kept appealing until the case reached New York State’s highest court. Newman testified that Fleischmann threatened him, and was using lawsuits to destroy his business:

When the Court of Appeals finally threw out the Fleischmanns' case, Harry’s Uncle Newman retaliated, using hardball tactics backed by the Socialists, who were growing increasingly powerful in New York politics. That story next time.

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