Stan Miller, May 22, 2014

Stan Miller, May 22, 2014

Stan Miller talks about how his father, a young immigrant, got started in manufacturing children’s pajamas in New York City, and later moved the production to Allentown. The sales office of the company remained in New York and was run by Stan’s father’s partner. When Stan and his family moved to Allentown, Stan was 17 years old and would soon start college. Stan attended Muhlenberg College, majoring in Accounting and Economics. After college and the service, Stan and his brother-in-law entered the family business. As did the son of Stan’s father’s partner. Stan is very proud that the business operated harmoniously among the partners during its more than seventy-five years in business. The firm closed in 1994, due to stiff competition from globalization.

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

Muhlenberg College Special Collections and College Archives

2014-05-22

Copyright remains with the interview subject and their heirs.

video

LVTNT-07

Susan Clemens-Bruder

Stan Miller

01:24:44

5.4 May 22, 2014 Stan Miller, May 22, 2014 LVTNT-07 1:24:44 LVTNT Lehigh Valley Textile and Needlework Trades Muhlenberg College: Trexler Library Oral History Repository trexlerlibrarymuhlenberg Stan Miller Susan Clemens-Bruder Gail Eisenberg video/mp4 MillerStan_20140522.mp4 1.0:|37(8)|62(6)|87(8)|112(2)|131(15)|152(9)|177(15)|200(15)|225(7)|248(16)|271(15)|292(4)|311(4)|332(5)|359(6)|382(11)|403(12)|428(6)|455(2)|478(2)|495(6)|514(13)|533(8)|552(3)|571(15)|596(16)|615(5)|640(8)|663(8)|684(12)|707(18)|730(16)|757(7)|780(7)|799(7)|818(3)|843(2)|872(12)|893(5)|916(5)|933(15)|952(3)|977(2)|994(13)|1015(8)|1042(2)|1071(4)|1102(5)|1125(5)|1150(15)|1173(12)|1202(13)|1223(8)|1252(4)|1271(15)|1292(12)|1309(7)|1328(16)|1353(2)|1386(5)|1407(8)|1430(9)|1451(18)|1474(3)|1495(13)|1516(7)|1537(3)|1558(7)|1581(12)|1614(3)|1631(7)|1650(17)|1669(12)|1690(14)|1717(16)|1736(8)|1759(8)|1786(12)|1809(2)|1836(8)|1855(10)|1876(11)|1897(5)|1918(15)|1931(4) 0 https://youtu.be/fr_LeNNxwFs YouTube video 8 Introduction—Stan Miller SC: OK. Today is May 22nd. This is an interview with Stan Miller. And what I’d like to do first is just put you into place very briefly and then we'll go back to your family. So just if you could give me your full name when you were born, where you were born, where and where you grew up?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Stanley Zane Miller, or May 24th, 1932. I was born in Brooklyn. What else do you want?&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And where did you grow up?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: I grew up in Brooklyn til I went through high school in Brooklyn.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Do you remember that address . . . &#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Of the high school?&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Of where you were born and where you grew up.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Yeah, 2047 East 37th Street. I don't know the zip. &#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Did they have one? Didn't have one when I was a kid.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't remember my phone number. Actually, I remember my father's phone number where he used to work. I was always calling my father. 0 95 Family History SC: And so let's talk a little bit about your family as far back as you remember, your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Never. I never knew my grandparents. I, I never had them. They were around, I suppose. My mother's parents, well, her mother died when she was a teenager. And I think her father ran off and left she and her two sisters. So I know nothing about her parents. &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Can you tell us their names?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: My mother's maiden . . . my mother was Ruth Vernick was her maiden name. That is V-E-R-N-I-C-K. She had a sister Lena and another sister Ida.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And and you mentioned her parents, what were their names?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Don't know. OK. I don't know. 0 258 Louis Miller's Start in the Garment Industry SC: So can you talk a little bit about you mentioned the business and any of the businesses that they were involved with?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Well, let's see. My father, when he came here, I think it was his first job. He started working for a gentleman named August Neilsen. Mr. Nielsen had an embroidery business and made some infant sleepwear. And, well, I'm sure you haven't used these, but remember when years ago when babies were born, they used belly bands?&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yes, I read about that..&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: And these belly bands really were just strips of cloth, strips of flannel so long and the edges weren't finished, the edges were pink. You know that this so that it doesn't ravel. I still have this pinking machine downstairs. And they made belly bands, so he started working for Mr. Nielsen.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: And and this is in Brooklyn?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: This was in New York City on Wooster Street, not far from where NYU is, OK. And he started working for Mr. Nielsen and became his right hand man. And then for sales, they hired another fellow named Irving Wollims. And as time went on, I think Mr. Nielsen . . .I think his wife became ill, and he made some arrangements with my father and Irving Wollims to take the business and they paid him, or either paid off his wife's bills, or took care of him . . . I don't remember what the deal was, but they paid him out. They kept the name. &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: The name was?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: August Nielsen Company. 0 642 1949: Miller Family Moves Business to Allentown, PA GE: Or do we want to start . . .with what came after high school. He only told us up to high school for yourself.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yeah. OK, so I should start there. Yes. Just go on with your life.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: I graduated high school and my parents, the business, is moving out here. I had to go to college, so I applied to Lehigh and Muhlenberg, and I went to Muhlenberg. The first year I lived in the dorm because they hadn't moved out here physically, the home. My father came out with my brother-in-law and set up the business out here in the summer of 1949 or maybe in the spring. And then we didn't move out here until the fall of 1949. So he was a weekend husband for that period of time. I don't . . and he did go into business with Mort Miller's father. Mort Miller's father, Harry, owned the building out here. 0 749 Stan Miller's Education at Muhlenberg College/Early Work Experiences SM: As for me, I know on your sheet you had something about what kind of work I did. I guess my first job must have been as every young boy, a waiter in the Catskills. I was a counselor at summer camp. I was a lifeguard when I was at Muhlenberg at the old Jewish Community Center, when it was on 6th Street. And then in my spare time or sometimes summers or what have you, I worked at the factory. And, of course, as a young guy who was young and strong, I did all the scutwork, you know, took out the garbage . . .And I think my most interesting job was I was working in the shipping room, and my first duty to the guy who ran the shipping was at two o'clock every day. I had to stop whatever I was doing, and listen to the radio, and get the results of the horse races that he was betting on, and then somehow getting the daily number. He was a gambler and that . . . I had to do that.&#13 ; &#13 ; I was . . . I took out the garbage. I loaded the trucks. And I did find out that for years I was unloading trucks. And I discovered now that I've done it all wrong because now they offload trucks. And all these years I was screwing up. 0 922 Stan Miller Works in the United States Army Finance Department, 1952-1953 SM: Anyway, I was in the Army, they sent me to Korea. &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: That's about what year . . . 1952?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: 1953 — 22 months and 27 days later, I got out. I was in Korea and then I was in Hawaii.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: What was your position in the services?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Finance, fortunately. I was told by a friend of a friend who was working in personnel at the time that if you want to get into Army finance, which is the cushiest job you can find, don't tell them that you were an accounting major. I said why not? He says, because then the army feels that they have to unteach you regular accounting and teach you the army way. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the army way. And they feel that if you had accounting knowledge before, it's really going to be a mess. 0 1015 Strong Partnership and New Technology in the Family Business SM: When I got out, I started working and started learning. I think one of the . . . as I mentioned before, how well we got along. It wasn't a problem where you might hear that if you want to put in a new machine, the older gentleman like the father, oh, no, no, we can't do that or not. Not with my father took just a little explaining. The first thing we put in, I think, was a conveyor belt because we had a machine that would put the garments in plastic bags that we used to put them in boxes and have to pick the boxes up. Conveyor belt . . so at first he said, no, no, we don't need a conveyor belt. We can use boxes. But once we put it in, I remember he used to stand there and smoke a cigar and watch the conveyor belt and the garments go up. It was wonderful. We got along extremely well, extremely.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: And this was you and your father . . . &#13 ; &#13 ; SM: and my brother-in-law, and we all got along extremely well. Ultimately, when my father died, it was my brother in law and I and my father's partner who was still alive, and his son. Ultimately, my father's partner died. So it was the one, the son in New York, and Walter and I in Pennsylvania. And and we we ran, we were, I think, in business for maybe seventy seven years. 0 1109 1957: Stan and Lois Meet SC: How did you meet your wife?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Blind date — Cedar Crest. She was . . . strange. She had gone to some party in Philadelphia with some guy from Lehigh and one of my friends from Muhlenberg. Well, his sister was at this party. You probably know her-- Sheva Rapaport. Remember Sheva Rapoport? She was a periodontist. You know, the judge Arnold Rappoport, he is a federal judge. Well, anyway, anyway, Sheva was at this party, and she told her brother, my friend, there's this nice girl for you. He called her, didn't work out. Picked up the phone, he called me, and he says, there's this girl she's just right for you. So I went over to Cedar Crest, and I met her, and I asked her out. And she told me the first thing she said to her roommate after our little parlor date, she says, if I ever go out with him again, I'm going to have to change the way he dresses. So we met in October. We were married in June. 0 1255 Stan Miller's Children SC: Can you tell us about your children?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: My children. I have my oldest daughter, who was born in nineteen sixty, who is currently not married. She's living in Florida with a wonderful, wonderful guy and she's a travel agent. His occupation, which is sort of unusual. You've heard of concierge medicine. &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Yes.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: But he's selling it, he's getting doctors to go into concierge medicine. He's establishing their practices as concierge doctors. It's really interesting.&#13 ; &#13 ; My number two daughter was born in [19]62 and she is now director of marketing for the United States and Canada for a software company that specializes in software design for anybody fooling around with real estate. For example, Hanes underwear ; they've got facilities all over the place. That was one of them. Not Seventh Day Adventists. What's the other one? Ones with Kingdom Halls?&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Jehovah Witnesses.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: That’s it, they just signed Jehovah's Witnesses. They must have thousands of establishments, and you need this software so that you can know when to pay the taxes. If you own apartments, it's perfect. Your percentage of rentals of occupancy will. So it's all to do with with real estate as opposed to some who will have for medical or dental or something. 0 1494 Community Involvement SC: Were you and your wife active in the greater community and the Jewish community?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: My wife was active in ORT. &#13 ; &#13 ; GE: What's your wife's name?&#13 ; &#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Lois. She was active in ORT, especially when it first came to town. Is it still active? Is it still around?&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Not really.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: OK, well, it used to be. And she was president at one time. And this was all her contemporaries at that time, all the young women of the time. Other than that, she didn't get involved in the Jewish community at all. She ended up spending about six years with my youngest daughter when she was doing television. They were spending time in Hollywood, in Los Angeles --for seven, eight, nine months. I was home. Sometimes with no daughters, sometimes with one daughter who was going to Rider for a while. And so all I had was a cat and a dog. So she didn't do much with the Jewish community. Quite honestly. I guess I really, I think, wasn't active in the community center and I wasn't active at Temple Bethel. I did sing in their choir for about forty some odd years. So I guess that was my contribution. Other than that, that wasn't my thing. 0 1678 Home Addresses SC: Where did you live in Allentown after you came with your parents and all the way through?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: You know where Alton Park is? You go down 24th Street, you remember there was a covered bridge,&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yes.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: All right, and go up further. And before you get to Lehigh Street, it's off to the right a little bit.The block we lived on was a block that was two blocks long. I had a real nice house. After you you come from New York where you live in a semi-detached house with grass about the size of that hassock and no property. We had this house with an adjacent lot and a big, big house, I mean, big compared to what we lived in. And it was planted trees, I planted all the shrubs, it was wonderful. I never had such a good time. I love mowing the lawn. We had a power mower then. Power mowers were sort of new at that time. And and my father loved to love to put a cigar in his mouth.And he cut the property, and he loved it. And we could look out the front door, from before there were a lot of buildings, and you could see, well, they were not mountains, you know hills in Emaus. But you could you could see green green hills. For him after living in New York and for me, it was a treat. Then they continued to live there, and after Lois and I got married, we lived one block away at Tremont Apartments. And from there we moved, we built a house on South Glenwood Street, within spitting distance of the Swain school. And my kids went to Swain school while we were there. And then when we had our third child, we needed more room. So we built here and we've been here for forty six years. I was the first one on the block. So we've been here, raised our kids here. 0 1817 Factory Machinery SM: I also have -it's a toy- not a toy - this is my father's original cutting machine, you've seen factories with the cutting machines that are electric.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yes.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Yes.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Ibis is his cutting machine, it's still as sharp as can be, and the way it worked is, they had a table with a slot cut in it and the slot was shielded by metal so you couldn't cut the wood and you ran this up and down up and down in the slot and you moved the fabric around. To cut out an arm hole you'd just keep going and you'd move this around. And his handwriting says 1918, on here. 0 1946 Louis Miller's Pinless Diapers SM: Matter of fact, my oldest sister, when she was an infant, I don't know how it happened but she was stuck with a pin, and she ended up with this serious infection, which she ultimately got over. And my father was so angry about using pins that he created,- it didn't go anywhere- he created - back then they called it the pinless diaper. And he had the diaper and it had ties as I recall it, where you would be able to tie it onto the child as snugly as possible. I still have a diaper downstairs somewhere. And he patented it, but it went nowhere.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Right. If only he'd tweaked it a little bit to become the disposable diaper or...&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yeah, or tabs or snaps.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Well, or Velcro.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Or Velcro, yeah, oh my gosh. 0 2010 Manufacturers versus Contractors SM: So are we talking about the um?&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: So my recollection is, we were talking about the business, and if you wanted to maybe start by saying a little bit how you see your manufacturers, compared to maybe, the other businesses or contractors. &#13 ; &#13 ; SM: We manufactured as opposed to most of the people in the needle trades here in town. As big as they were, they were contractors. There's nothing wrong with that, their product strictly was labor. They supplied the labor and the thread, and paid the rent, and all they did was take in the fabric. Sometimes they cut it, sometimes it came in already cut. They sewed it up, according to specifications, finished it, packaged it, whatever and sent it back to whoever was handling it. And that's all they had to do, so their job basically was pay the labor and they took care of um, - they had unions, paid the rent, and so on. And that's it. As opposed to our operation which I guess you could call to some extent, vertical. We didn't make the fabric but we had to design the garments, fit them into certain price ranges and then purchase the fabric with contracts and what not. 0 2777 Discussion on Vertical Integration SC: I was just thinking, with the vertical integration you always think of vertical integration as highly capitalized industries, but it was possible in the garment industry, not to be like the old Lowell [mills] factories that were totally vertically integrated- you could get in and out fairly quickly, even though you had to have more capital and contractors.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Yeah, well we were I guess the true vertical integration is starting from...&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Raw material.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Raw materials to sales. We skipped the raw materials. We did not make the fabric, we didn't knit it, we purchased the fabric. From then on,&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: You were vertically integrated.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: It was a vertical operation because we did the styling, and the creating the samples, the pricing the whole business, the stocking, the billing, getting printed, the whole thing and&#13 ; as you said, you needed capital for that, so you needed good relations with the bank, or with whatever bank you're going to deal with. 0 3099 Manufacturing in the '70s: Expansion, Lawsuits, and Downsizing SM: I have to tell you one story.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Sure.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: When we bought our new building,&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: And this was about when?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: This was in the 70's, and at the time, the building was certainly worth the price. It was a great deal for a bank for a mortgage. For whatever reason, I don't remember, there was no mortgage money around. I guess banks have certain amounts in their portfolios that they could put into mortgages and whatnot there was none, and we were just dying. We were trying every bank in town, they would say, normally we would take a baseball bat and keep you here to make the deal, but they had no money. And we had a French poodle at the time, and the French poodle had an accident in the bedroom. And I got up at night, not knowing, go to the bathroom, and I stepped in it. Which is sort of, you know, well, funny experience, I told my mother, the next day I told my mother this, and she said, you're going to get your mortgage, and I said why, and she says, it's an old tale, that if you step in shit, something good is going to happen to you. Don't you think, the next day--&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Your mother was right!&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: We got a call that they- I think it was union bank at the time -was going to take the mortgage. 0 3674 Max Charcov's Used Machines SM: Fellow named Max Charcov. Max Charcov's daughter married Roland Sigal. Sigal had a building by Sacred Heart Hospital where he had dress shops. I don't remember the names of the dress shops but he was very successful. And he was very philanthropic. And Max, Max was a real old slovenly Jewish fella, and he would pedal machines.&#13 ; &#13 ; He would buy anybody's machine, sewing machine, for 50 bucks and would um,- he would fix them up, like a used car's fixed up. How would he fix them up, he'd take a rag, he dusted it off, had no idea whether the machine worked. But it's like new, he said. And he would then sell the machine for $100 or whatever. If you needed a used machine, Max had it. He never had a building, he had various garages around town where he would store the machines. He had a driver, because he couldn't drive anymore. He would run, he had the machines, and he had nothing on paper. He knew every machine that he had ; he had hundreds of machines. And they were all used and when it was time, you needed a machine, you call Charcov if you want to get a used machine. And sometimes he would buy our machines, and I remember he would come in and we would sell him 2 or 3 machines, and he would owe us three or four hundred dollars, and he would take his checkbook and he would give it to me. He says write out a check. He has no remittance- no um, check stubs, no check register, so I write out a check to August Nielsen for three hundred dollars. I give it to Max to sign, and I take the check and that's good. I don't know who kept his books. I don't know if he ever paid income tax but he was a guy that- he was a fixture in the business. 0 3822 Naming the Business SC: [H]ow did you choose the name of Nielsen?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: We didn't.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Oh it was.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: That was the gentleman that my father went to work for in the early 1890s or early 1900s. His name was August F Nielsen. And they ultimately made the company incorporated, and I don't remember the terms. But I know that my father took over the business either because his wife was sick, and he was going to die, and they would support the wife until she died, or some kind of arrangement like that. They would pay him off or pay him in some way. I don't remember [details] but it was an interesting setup. But that name was there and no point in changing it ; it was unique. 0 3903 The End of the Business GE: Can you share with us a little bit, let's say the last ten years as it was beginning to a little ·bit unwind and slowdown for you&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Well during that time we knew the handwriting was on the wall because we were having trouble competing with folks, the other big manufacturers who then they ended up switching and manufacturing their stuff not in their plants down south, but in the Caribbean. There was this plan 807-- it was some kind of bill or something where goods can be made in the Caribbean, that made Guatemala and Haiti and Dominican Republic come into the United States with no duty as long as a certain percentage of the cost of the garment was done in the United States. I don't know what the percentage was, but it was pretty small. So, goods were sent uncut down to the Caribbean, it was cut, it was sewn, everything was done to it and it was sent back to the United States, and maybe we put a plastic bag over the garment and put a hang tag on which amounted to the proper percentage of labor. Something ridiculous and their costs were -- I may have said this before--their costs were five dollars a day. They were paying five dollars a day and this was in the 90's and the late 80's where we were paying five dollars an hour. And that was good, plus vacations and blue cross and blue shield, and holidays and all this other garbage and taxes and unemployment. They were paying just five dollars a day and there's no way you can compete with that. Plus these-- our competitors-- had the better licenses, so we were making an inferior garment for lack of a better term, or a less desirable garment. 0 4713 Stan Miller's Values SC: Okay, so my other question is what do you value most in life?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: What do I value most in life? I suppose good health and the health of my family. I can't think of much else that's important and ultimately you die with a good name. Because they never caught me.&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: Right and as you say you checked it out on the internet.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Yeah there was nothing bad, although the NSA has been checking my computers. I never...&#13 ; &#13 ; GE: They're checking everybody's&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: That's the new democracy, we all get checked.&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Well, you've got these crazies in the world.&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: Yeah I know,&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: You wonder, right now everybody says oh don't check me you're invading my privacy. As soon as we have another 9/11- why didn't you know about these people!? So there's no happy medium there. 0 4774 Stan Miller: Performer SC: And what makes you feel the most creative, artistic, I mean in the broadest sense of creative or maybe a sense of completion in your life?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: In my life, other than being very proud of your three kids, me, I like to sing. So I was in the Temple choir for about forty years. We ended up, my family ended up somehow getting involved in theater, so besides my daughter, my wife became a manager and I was a theater um. I did shows at Cedar Crest, Muhlenberg, at Civic, and Pennsylvania Playhouse ; I did them all over in the [area].&#13 ; &#13 ; SC: You acted?&#13 ; &#13 ; SM: Yeah, so I did that. I found we all agreed, this group that we-- this last group that we were with-- that one of the greatest joys in life, the biggest kick that we would get is to be in a room full of people and make them laugh. And that's what we were doing, we were doing murder mysteries. Believe me they were funny, and we were good, because we handled- it's a different procedure than being on a proscenium stage because on a proscenium stage there's an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. There's no ad-libbing to speak of, you do your thing, when you do dinner theater or murder mysteries. You are this close to them, and some of the people shoot off their mouths. 0 MovingImage Stan Miller talks about how his father, a young immigrant, got started in manufacturing children’s pajamas in New York City, and later moved the production to Allentown. The sales office of the company remained in New York and was run by Stan’s father’s partner. When Stan and his family moved to Allentown, Stan was 17 years old and would soon start college. Stan attended Muhlenberg College, majoring in Accounting and Economics. After college and the service, Stan and his brother-in-law entered the family business. As did the son of Stan’s father’s partner. Stan is very proud that the business operated harmoniously among the partners during its more than seventy-five years in business. The firm closed in 1994, due to stiff competition from globalization. Interview with Stan Miller, May 22, 2014 GAIL EISENBERG: Today is May 22nd. STAN MILLER: May 22nd? SUSAN CLEMENS-BRUDER: Yes SM: Then I put the wrong date down.. SC: OK. Today is May 22nd. This is an interview with Stan Miller. And what I'd like to do first is just put you into place very briefly and then we'll go back to your family. So just if you could give me your full name when you were born, where you were born, where and where you grew up? SM: Stanley Zane Miller, or May 24th, 1932. I was born in Brooklyn. What else do you want? SC: And where did you grow up? SM: I grew up in Brooklyn til I went through high school in Brooklyn. SC: Do you remember that address . . . SM: Of the high school? SC: Of where you were born and where you grew up. SM: Yeah, 2047 East 37th Street. I don't know the zip. SC: Did they have one? Didn't have one when I was a kid. SM: Oh, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't remember my phone number. Actually, I remember my father's phone number where he used to work. I was always calling my father. SC: Yeah. Oh, course. So you lived there until you were an adult and you went to high school there. SM: Until I was 17, then finished high school. And at that time my family moved to Allentown. SC: Where did you go to high school? SM: James Madison High School in Brooklyn. SC: And so let's talk a little bit about your family as far back as you remember, your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents. SM: Never. I never knew my grandparents. I, I never had them. They were around, I suppose. My mother's parents, well, her mother died when she was a teenager. And I think her father ran off and left she and her two sisters. So I know nothing about her parents. GE: Can you tell us their names? SM: My mother's maiden . . . my mother was Ruth Vernick was her maiden name. That is V-E-R-N-I-C-K. She had a sister Lena and another sister Ida. SC: And and you mentioned her parents, what were their names? SM: Don't know. OK. I don't know. GE: So the mother died young? SM: Well, I think when my my mother was a teenager -- 14, 15, or 16. SC: What did they live? In the United States? SM: I think in New Jersey. My mother was born in the United States. Where her parents are from, whether they were born here or not, I don't know. I think there's some Russian in my mother's family. As far as my father, again, his parents were left in Poland. He's one of seven children. GE: And what was your father's name? SM: Louis -- L-O-U-I-S Miller. Of the seven, one brother left and went to Sweden, and he settled there and had raised a big family. My father and three other brothers and a sister came to the United States, and one sister stayed there and the Germans got her. SC: Was this in the 1920s that they came? SM: My father came here something like 1910 or 1911. SC: OK, so it was older. SM: He was maybe 15, 16, 17 years old. SC: Yeah. And your mother's family, do you know when they came? SM: I have no idea just because I think they may even have been born here, I don't know. SC: And if we know their names, we could actually look them up on the ancestry. We find anything, we'll let you know. Oh, yeah, I have everything ancestry. So can you talk a little bit about you mentioned the business and any of the businesses that they were involved with? SM: Well, let's see. My father, when he came here, I think it was his first job. He started working for a gentleman named August Neilsen. Mr. Nielsen had an embroidery business and made some infant sleepwear. And, well, I'm sure you haven't used these, but remember when years ago when babies were born, they used belly bands? SC: Yes, I read about that.. SM: And these belly bands really were just strips of cloth, strips of flannel so long and the edges weren't finished, the edges were pink. You know that this so that it doesn't ravel. I still have this pinking machine downstairs. And they made belly bands, so he started working for Mr. Nielsen. GE: And and this is in Brooklyn? SM: This was in New York City on Wooster Street, not far from where NYU is, OK. And he started working for Mr. Nielsen and became his right hand man. And then for sales, they hired another fellow named Irving Wollims. And as time went on, I think Mr. Nielsen . . .I think his wife became ill, and he made some arrangements with my father and Irving Wollims to take the business and they paid him, or either paid off his wife's bills, or took care of him . . . I don't remember what the deal was, but they paid him out. They kept the name. GE: The name was? SM: August Nielsen Company. Okay. GE: And August Nielsen, was he Jewish? SM: No, he was German. SC: That was my question. I wondered if he was German or if he was Scandinavian because of a family member going to Sweden. SM: No, no, nothing to do with the other. Oh, that was my father's brother. SC: OK . . . Right. I realize that. But I wondered if there was any connection there. SM: They took over and they they ran the business. They started making more children's sleepwear, baby's gowns and kimonos and sleeping bags, things like that for them. GE: Just so that I know . . . Louis and what was the other man's name? SM: Irving Wollims. W o l l i m s -- was he Jewish? SM: Yeah. GE: OK, and so Irving Wollims was more sales and your dad is more the production or the operations. The two of them then bought out ultimately the . . .. SM: In some arrangement, I don't remember what it was, and they became partners, and they stayed partners until they died. It was a really a very interesting and pleasant relationship. And it went on because Irving Wollim's son went into the sales and took over the sales, and my father's son, which is me, and one son-in-law, ended up in the production. I would have to say that I think it's it's more the exception than the rule that family members get along, and we got along. I mean, I know of so many. . . GE: Can you tell me, I'm sorry, your brother in law's name? SM: Walter Ostrow -- O-S-T-R-O-W. GE: So you and Walter really did the production. SM: Yeah, yeah, down the line. SC: So, do you have any other stories about when your family entered business any of the connections with business? Was this pretty much a straight line? SM: And so it just happened that my father got this job. He . . . I don't think he knew anything about the garment business. Well, you know, as far as I know. I don't know what his father was. I don't know that. I do know that when he was younger, he was an itinerant cantor in Poland, and he used to go around and sing and do whatever services until, I think one time he told a story that he used to sleep in somebody's barn. One time at one place, and it was dark, and he lit a match, and he dropped it. The place burned. He ran like hell. It was another village and they never found him. GE: Right. When your father came to this country, how old was he about? SM: I'm guessing around 17ish. And oddly enough, as time went on, my father and his partner were running the business, and he ended up marrying my mother who was working for him. SC: Do you know what she did? SM: No, I don't know. I don't know. Thinking back, I can't remember her ever sewing much. I mean, she with a needle and thread, but we never had a machine at home. And I don't know what she did there, but he met her there and he married her. SC: So now we can get back to you a little bit more about you, unless you have any more questions. GE: No, no, that's good. SC: So how did you know . . .Can you talk a little bit more about where you went from that moment when you started the business, more of your personal life, what you did? Were you involved at all in the greater community or the Jewish community? GE: Or do we want to start . . .with what came after high school. He only told us up to high school for yourself. SC: Yeah. OK, so I should start there. Yes. Just go on with your life. SM: I graduated high school and my parents, the business, is moving out here. I had to go to college, so I applied to Lehigh and Muhlenberg, and I went to Muhlenberg. The first year I lived in the dorm because they hadn't moved out here physically, the home. My father came out with my brother-in-law and set up the business out here in the summer of 1949 or maybe in the spring. And then we didn't move out here until the fall of 1949. So he was a weekend husband for that period of time. I don't . . and he did go into business with Mort Miller's father. Mort Miller's father, Harry, owned the building out here. SC: Where was the building? SM: In Fountain Hill on Seneca Street. And I think it's now a home for elderly people, I think. Anyway, Harry had the building, and I think he had lots of machines, and he was making similar garments so they went into business. Ultimately, Harry had to get out because he had some kind of skin disease, and he ended up in El Paso 11 months out of the year. So so it ended up that the business was running in Fountain Hill. As for me, I know on your sheet you had something about what kind of work I did. I guess my first job must have been as every young boy, a waiter in the Catskills. I was a counselor at summer camp. I was a lifeguard when I was at Muhlenberg at the old Jewish Community Center, when it was on 6th Street. And then in my spare time or sometimes summers or what have you, I worked at the factory. And, of course, as a young guy who was young and strong, I did all the scutwork, you know, took out the garbage . . .And I think my most interesting job was I was working in the shipping room, and my first duty to the guy who ran the shipping was at two o'clock every day. I had to stop whatever I was doing, and listen to the radio, and get the results of the horse races that he was betting on, and then somehow getting the daily number. He was a gambler and that . . . I had to do that. I was . . . I took out the garbage. I loaded the trucks. And I did find out that for years I was unloading trucks. And I discovered now that I've done it all wrong because now they offload trucks. And all these years I was screwing up. Oh, am I suppposed to look . . . SC: That's why I moved over to try to get you to look over here. SM: OK. SC: Just because if we would use this, it's better to have . . . SM: You should have one of those red lights. SC: So that's fascinating. SM: So I went to Muhlenberg and worked in summers either as a counselor or at the factory. And then I was drafted. SC: What did you major in at Muhlenberg? SM: In economics . . . economics and accounting. And it really wasn't much of a course somehow or other. I found that it really didn't, in retrospect, it didn't do much good except for the accounting. The Money and Banking and Corporation Finance. And I think I did very poorly in one of them because I discovered the Municipal Opera Company here in town. Did you ever see any of their shows? I guess I was a junior at Muhlenberg, and I discovered the opera company. I tried out and I ended up in some of their shows, and I loved it so much I didn't do anything except for the rehearsal. It was it was really a treat. Anyway, I was in the Army, they sent me to Korea. GE: That's about what year . . . 1952? SM: 1953 -- 22 months and 27 days later, I got out. I was in Korea and then I was in Hawaii. SC: What was your position in the services? SM: Finance, fortunately. I was told by a friend of a friend who was working in personnel at the time that if you want to get into Army finance, which is the cushiest job you can find, don't tell them that you were an accounting major. I said why not? He says, because then the army feels that they have to unteach you regular accounting and teach you the army way. There is the right way, the wrong way, and the army way. And they feel that if you had accounting knowledge before, it's really going to be a mess. So he says, tell them you were an economics major, which I told them, and I got into finance, which was lucky. I stayed out of trouble. So I was in Korea for about nine months. And then they sent the entire division to Hawaii to go back to Schofield Barracks. And I was there for about nine months. And I got out. When I got out, I started working and started learning. I think one of the . . . as I mentioned before, how well we got along. It wasn't a problem where you might hear that if you want to put in a new machine, the older gentleman like the father, oh, no, no, we can't do that or not. Not with my father took just a little explaining. The first thing we put in, I think, was a conveyor belt because we had a machine that would put the garments in plastic bags that we used to put them in boxes and have to pick the boxes up. Conveyor belt . . so at first he said, no, no, we don't need a conveyor belt. We can use boxes. But once we put it in, I remember he used to stand there and smoke a cigar and watch the conveyor belt and the garments go up. It was wonderful. We got along extremely well, extremely. SC: And this was you and your father . . . SM: and my brother-in-law, and we all got along extremely well. Ultimately, when my father died, it was my brother in law and I and my father's partner who was still alive, and his son. Ultimately, my father's partner died. So it was the one, the son in New York, and Walter and I in Pennsylvania. And and we we ran, we were, I think, in business for maybe seventy seven years. GE: Yeah. Wow. SM: Long time. GE: Yeah. Wow. Seventy seven years. SM: I think it was seventy seven years. SC: How did you meet your wife? SM: Blind date -- Cedar Crest. She was . . . strange. She had gone to some party in Philadelphia with some guy from Lehigh and one of my friends from Muhlenberg. Well, his sister was at this party. You probably know her-- Sheva Rapaport. Remember Sheva Rapoport? She was a periodontist. You know, the judge Arnold Rappoport, he is a federal judge. Well, anyway, anyway, Sheva was at this party, and she told her brother, my friend, there's this nice girl for you. He called her, didn't work out. Picked up the phone, he called me, and he says, there's this girl she's just right for you. So I went over to Cedar Crest, and I met her, and I asked her out. And she told me the first thing she said to her roommate after our little parlor date, she says, if I ever go out with him again, I'm going to have to change the way he dresses. So we met in October. We were married in June. SC: What year was that? SM: Nineteen . . . met in fifty seven. And we were married in June, fifty eight. So this June will be fifty six years. At this point, she doesn't speak, she doesn't understand, she doesn't walk, she doesn't do anything but she still smiles. I can get her to smile. She still knows who I am. I go up there and feed her every day and get her to laugh. She doesn't laugh-- you know the voice doesn't work, but still . . .but she still smiles, laughs. And I think she still recognizes my children. The miracle of cell phones. This has the Facetime on it, and I hold it up for her and she sees any one of the kids and they sing to her or they talk to her and . . . it works out. It works out. I sing to her and that's. SC: Can you tell us about your children? SM: My children. I have my oldest daughter, who was born in nineteen sixty, who is currently not married. She's living in Florida with a wonderful, wonderful guy and she's a travel agent. His occupation, which is sort of unusual. You've heard of concierge medicine. GE: Yes. SM: But he's selling it, he's getting doctors to go into concierge medicine. He's establishing their practices as concierge doctors. It's really interesting. My number two daughter was born in [19]62 and she is now director of marketing for the United States and Canada for a software company that specializes in software design for anybody fooling around with real estate. For example, Hanes underwear ; they've got facilities all over the place. That was one of them. Not Seventh Day Adventists. What's the other one? Ones with Kingdom Halls? SC: Jehovah Witnesses. SM: That's it, they just signed Jehovah's Witnesses. They must have thousands of establishments, and you need this software so that you can know when to pay the taxes. If you own apartments, it's perfect. Your percentage of rentals of occupancy will. So it's all to do with with real estate as opposed to some who will have for medical or dental or something. And so my third daughter is she's a lawyer, but she isn't practicing. She's currently doing voices for Doc McStuffins and on television and Henry Hugglemonster and Clifford and what else. Wow! Wow! Wubbzy and she did all that. She was on on NBC for six years with Nell Carter back in the 80s. So she had, she had a nice a nice career, and then she went to law school, and she didn't like practicing law. Just just didn't like it. She went back back to California and having her her fun. SC: Did any of them have any interest in the business? SM: No, no. My oldest daughter, she went down to Florida with her boyfriend, which didn't last, and then she ended up staying there because she started working and going to school, and her grandparents lived there. So she, she had no interest. My second daughter and she had none . . . none of them had any interest. Of course, they all ended up working there during summers. And I must have employed half of the young people in Allentown beside my kids. We always need people in the summer. Alan Silverman, his son. Max Davison's boy . . . any of the friends of my daughters, you know, worked in the shipping room or in our testing lab. And so we employed a lot of the young boys around here. And we also clothed most of the babies in Allentown, our contemporaries. Somebody had a baby, they need a layette. SC: Were you and your wife active in the greater community and the Jewish community? SM: My wife was active in ORT. GE: What's your wife's name? SM: Lois. She was active in ORT, especially when it first came to town. Is it still active? Is it still around? GE: Not really. SM: OK, well, it used to be. And she was president at one time. And this was all her contemporaries at that time, all the young women of the time. Other than that, she didn't get involved in the Jewish community at all. She ended up spending about six years with my youngest daughter when she was doing television. They were spending time in Hollywood, in Los Angeles --for seven, eight, nine months. I was home. Sometimes with no daughters, sometimes with one daughter who was going to Rider for a while. And so all I had was a cat and a dog. So she didn't do much with the Jewish community. Quite honestly. I guess I really, I think, wasn't active in the community center and I wasn't active at Temple Bethel. I did sing in their choir for about forty some odd years. So I guess that was my contribution. Other than that, that wasn't my thing. SC: Were you active in the business community, in the garment industry's trades? SM: Well, we did belong to the . . there was an organization that was founded for needle trades with the Atlantic, something or other . . . I don't remember what it was. We used to go to the meetings and have the discussions and so on. But no, I wasn't that guy. I didn't do that. SC: Was that Arnold Delin's? SM: Yes, there you go, there you go. I found that I had certain problems. I think when I first came to town, when I was married, they started with a be in the Jewish Federation or something and here is some people to call for contributions. I could not, I could not do it. It wasn't me. And I kept putting it off. But gradually I'm not going to do this. And I just didn't get involved in the building fund for the synagogue or the community center. It just wasn't my cup of tea. SC: You have to be true to yourself. SM: So my recreation was singing in the choir, and I did a lot of theater in town. And that was my thing. SC: Where did you live in Allentown after you came with your parents and all the way through? SM: You know where Alton Park is? You go down 24th Street, you remember there was a covered bridge, SC: Yes. SM: All right, and go up further. And before you get to Lehigh Street, it's off to the right a little bit.The block we lived on was a block that was two blocks long. I had a real nice house. After you you come from New York where you live in a semi-detached house with grass about the size of that hassock and no property. We had this house with an adjacent lot and a big, big house, I mean, big compared to what we lived in. And it was planted trees, I planted all the shrubs, it was wonderful. I never had such a good time. I love mowing the lawn. We had a power mower then. Power mowers were sort of new at that time. And and my father loved to love to put a cigar in his mouth.And he cut the property, and he loved it. And we could look out the front door, from before there were a lot of buildings, and you could see, well, they were not mountains, you know hills in Emaus. But you could you could see green green hills. For him after living in New York and for me, it was a treat. Then they continued to live there, and after Lois and I got married, we lived one block away at Tremont Apartments. And from there we moved, we built a house on South Glenwood Street, within spitting distance of the Swain school. And my kids went to Swain school while we were there. And then when we had our third child, we needed more room. So we built here and we've been here for forty six years. I was the first one on the block. So we've been here, raised our kids here. SC: Okay, It's going to stop now. SM: I also have -it's a toy- not a toy - this is my father's original cutting machine, you've seen factories with the cutting machines that are electric. SC: Yes. GE: Yes. SM: Ibis is his cutting machine, it's still as sharp as can be, and the way it worked is, they had a table with a slot cut in it and the slot was shielded by metal so you couldn't cut the wood and you ran this up and down up and down in the slot and you moved the fabric around. To cut out an arm hole you'd just keep going and you'd move this around. And his handwriting says 1918, on here. SC: I think cutting with a really good pair of scissors was much easier for me when I used to sew. I would have killed myself on something like that. SM: I have one other piece of equipment downstairs, I'm not going to get it ; it's too heavy. It's a pinking machine. GE: And what is a Pinking machine? SM: You know what pinking is, when you edge the cloth with little jagged edges so it doesn't fray as easily. GE: Oh, okay. SM: Back then they used belly bands for newborns to hold in the umbilical cord, and my father manufactured belly bauds big strips of cloth and they ran it through the pinking machine so that it had an edge and would sell belly bands. You put it around the child with a safety pin, and stick the child and the child gets an infection- you know, that was part of the problem back then. SC: Although they are going back evidently- one of my friend's daughters just had a baby­ and they are going back to bands and contraptions to hold the belly in and push the uterus in so it goes back. GE: For the woman... SC: Right, not for the baby. GE: Interesting, I never heard of that. SM: Matter of fact, my oldest sister, when she was an infant, I don't know how it happened but she was stuck with a pin, and she ended up with this serious infection, which she ultimately got over. And my father was so angry about using pins that he created,- it didn't go anywhere- he created - back then they called it the pinless diaper. And he had the diaper and it had ties as I recall it, where you would be able to tie it onto the child as snugly as possible. I still have a diaper downstairs somewhere. And he patented it, but it went nowhere GE: Right. If only he'd tweaked it a little bit to become the disposable diaper or... SC: Yeah, or tabs or snaps. SM: Well, or Velcro. SC: Or Velcro, yeah, oh my gosh. SC: Today is June 17 2014. Interview with Stan Miller. SM: So are we talking about the um? GE: So my recollection is, we were talking about the business, and if you wanted to maybe start by saying a little bit how you see your manufacturers, compared to maybe, the other businesses or contractors. · SM: We manufactured as opposed to most of the people in the needle trades here in town. As big as they were, they were contractors. There's nothing wrong with that, their product strictly was labor. They supplied the labor and the thread, and paid the rent, and all they did was take in the fabric. Sometimes they cut it, sometimes it came in already cut. They sewed it up, according to specifications, finished it, packaged it, whatever and sent it back to whoever was handling it. And that's all they had to do, so their job basically was pay the labor and they took care of um, - they had unions, paid the rent, and so on. And that's it. As opposed to our operation which I guess you could call to some extent, vertical. We didn't make the fabric but we had to design the garments, fit them into certain price ranges and then purchase the fabric with contracts and what not. And have the fabric, cut it, sometimes you'd cut it to order. Sometimes you'd cut if for spec. or you'd cut five hundred dozen to order and you'd cut another two hundred dozen for spec. and we then had to pay for the fabric, pay for the labor and the overhead, pay for the buttons and the bows, and the zippers and whatever else goes on it, and then sell it. And that sometimes is harder or easier depending- you may sell it easier if you have the order and you cut it to order. Otherwise you have stock, and you have to carry the stock then once you sell it you wait for your money, not like a contractor who invariably gets their money within a very short time. Labor is the first thing you pay, so that meant we had to have working capital. A lot of working capital. More than the regular contractor, because he could turn his money over in a couple of weeks, whereas we- quite a few months. And then of course you would sell it to a K-mart or a Sears. Or a Hess, and now you have to wait for your money. GE: Right, and you typically were paid from then, after it was sold, or after the season. SM: Oh yeah, after they received it, after they received it, they paid whatever the terms were. At thirty, or discount, whatever terms were agreed upon. And prior to getting the money we had to have enough cash to pay for the fabric, pay for the labor, pay for the trimmings, pay for overhead, and wait. GE: Right. GE: What do you see as being the advantages of your operation? You already told us a little bit about the advantages of theirs, but especially of yours, - in other words, what do you see as being the strengths or advantages of your operation, being vertically integrated? SM: Well, I suppose there are more opportunities, maybe to make more money because you're marking up everything but on the other hand you've got interest, and... GE: More risks. SM: Risk, and worry, ah, that was the business that we had. GE: And, if I'm understanding correctly somewhat, that's just the way your father had started it, and therefore you continued. SM: Yeah. GE: Okay, as opposed to a strategic decision saying this would be the best way. SM: We could have, toward the end we stopped manufacturing, the last year or so, and we were contractors. Because we weren't selling our goods anymore. And then of course, to sell the goods, you had competition. You had competition from some of the bigger manufacturers down south who had bigger names, bigger plants, they were able to get desirable licenses, Superman licenses, as opposed to some cartoon character that wasn't very popular. We had major league baseball, we did very well with that. We had striped fabric and we would put on a screen- a decal- made that to order.- but others had more desirable -whatever was popular at the time- I think it was Mickey Mouse, and we couldn't compete with these people. And these people were making it in the Caribbean, where it was so much cheaper so that's why we went out of business, we just couldn't compete. Have desirable licenses, the garment that we would sell for fifty dollars a dozen, they'd be selling it for forty because it cost them less. GE: Right. SM: And it was nicer than ours because they had the nicer cartoon character on it. There was no competing with them. GE: After a while they just- right. SM: We lost out in the early nineties, because we just couldn't compete with the Caribbean. GE: And so you were in business until around-? SM: 1994. GE: Okay, so prior to that, through the eighties you were still- SM: We were perking along, we did very well, and were very happy. I raised three children, my brother in law raised two, my partners raised three. I mean -we did very well and were very comfortable. Compared to some of the other people in town we weren't as successful. Some of the people in town they made a lot of money whether they were contractors, or manufacturers, there were a few manufacturers and it was a good business back then, and we all did reasonably well. We worked hard, I was there six days a week, and we ran a night shift, and that was me. -Just, never got home- that was... I was young, so I could do it. GE: Right, great, can you tell me a little bit about, the sales and marketing end that was done,­ in other words, one thing I'm curious- is, was it your own sales force or did you have sales reps, and then also about the brand, did you - you told us about licensing, but was there anything where you- where you had- your brand became known to the public? SM: We had our own sales force. It was headed by my partner who was the son of my father's partner. And he had helped in the office- we had an office in New York. On 34th Street, we were right in the district. And we had some salesmen on the road. Some reps for us, they may have been carrying other things, I don't know, but, um we had a guy in Pittsburgh, another guy down South and so on. We had our brand, it was Style by Nielsen, it was the brand. I can't remember some of the other competing brands but that was our name, but what was required quite often was to put the big retailers tag in there. So garments that were made for JC Penney didn't have anything about Nielsen. We had JC Penny's label in there ; we put in labels from Montgomery Ward, um, who else did we put labels for? I don't recall. GE: Sears, probably SM: Well yeah, and we put the hang tags on, and um, what was I thinking of? Well, that thought just went by me - so we did for them, - and we also ended up pre pricing them, that was the beginning of the UPC whatever you call those. GE: Yes, UPC codes. SM: Well we had to get pinning machines. We used to pin it on the garment and pre-priced everything, or else pre price them with stickers. If the garment was in a plastic bag, sometimes put the sticker on the front of them. See, you did almost everything. GE: Right. SM: So our brand, it was just a brand, it was known, matter of fact, many years ago I ran into someone that I knew in the army, when I was in Hawaii and hadn't seen this person for many many years since then. And we're talking about our lives and she told me that when her kids were little she remembers going into the store and buying garments made by Nielsen. Little did she know that-- GE: So therefore it was even known by the public, in other words people at smaller stores - SM: Yeah, oh yeah, we sold to Hess and we sold to the big chains, Walmart, and over the years, it was some of the smaller department store chains, there was- I can't even remember the names any more, in fact, they probably don't exist! And to specialty shops, and we did, I don't remember the numbers anymore, did we do one or two million dollars a year back then in volume, I don't remember. But we did very well over the years and were very happy. GE: Right, besides obviously the main way that you sold and communicated was that you had this sales force, besides that, was there any kind of advertising that was involved? SM: No. We didn't really advertise, it was to sell the stuff was really the contact between our salesmen with the samples, the sample lines. GE: Okay and the buyers in the stores. SM: And their contacts, the buyers, or if they went on the road and stopped in different places or the buyers came into the showroom. Usually the big companies would come to New York, but some of the others, for example K-mart I think was in Royal Oak, Michigan, their headquarters, we used to send people out there. And Montgomery Ward they either came to New York, might have been in Chicago. SC: Might have been SM: So it was -you- went where- advertising was absolutely nothing - GE: Was absolutely- SM: We didn't do a thing with it, it wasn't necessary, the people that we were working with were buying the garment. They knew us, or they got to know us, and advertising just wasn't in the cards. It's a good thing, it would have been more aggravating. GE: Was there any other- can you think of any other questions in regards to the... SC: The business. GE: And then I will have you share with us, a little bit about the demise, a little bit about the last few years. SC: I was just thinking, with the vertical integration you always think of vertical integration as highly capitalized industries, but it was possible in the garment industry, not to be like the old Lowell [mills] factories that were totally vertically integrated- you could get in and out fairly quickly, even though you had to have more capital and contractors. SM: Yeah, well we were I guess the true vertical integration is starting from... SC: Raw material. SM: Raw materials to sales. We skipped the raw materials. We did not make the fabric, we didn't knit it, we purchased the fabric. From then on, GE: You were vertically integrated. SM: It was a vertical operation because we did the styling, and the creating the samples, the pricing the whole business, the stocking, the billing, getting printed, the whole thing and as you said, you needed capital for that, so you needed good relations with the bank, or with whatever bank you're going to deal with. SC: I've heard that Philadelphia was, had many places that were vertically integrated but out here, where there are a lot of, in the Allentown, Lehigh Valley area-- SM: I'll tell you, one that I know of was Sondra Manufacturing, the Kaplans. Do you know them? GE: Tell me- say their names. SM: Stanley Kaplan, Morris Kaplan was the father. GE: Are any of them still here? SM: Yeah. GE: Is that the name? SC: We should talk to them SM: Stanley well, the Kaplan's had- GE: That name is familiar, Stan Kaplan, but I don't think we've­... SM: Stan and Elaine Kaplan, they were doing real estate after a while. GE: And they still live here? SM: Yeah, but I think they are going to be staying in Florida but I think they are in town this summer. They live down toward Emmaus somewhere. GE: And they were all- what was the name, Sondra? SM: Sondra, S-0-N-D-R-A. It was a family. They were very similar to ours really, their father had a partner in New York, they had two daughters and a son, both sons in law were in the business, the son was in the business, they I think were more vertical. I think they knitted the fabric. SC: Okay. SM: And then they manufactured it, I do believe. I'm not sure, I'm trying to think, was there anybody else in town. GE: The other manufacturers, am I correct that the main place where they deviated from you was that many of them outsourced the sewing? You know, that was what the contractors did. But otherwise the other pieces that you're talking about they did as well, is that correct? SM: I don't follow you GE: I guess in other words, I guess all I'm saying is most of the clothes manufacturers. SM: Here in town? GE: Or in New York, they in a sense, did just as you did, where from fabric to the sales, the only thing that many of them did is many of them outsourced the sewing. SM: Yeah, so the companies-there were companies that owned nothing, they.would sell - some enterprising people-they would manage to sell a big batch of stuff, and they would buy the fabric, and they'd ship it to a contractor and the contractor would sew it up, and would ship it out to the customer for them. GE: Ok, so in other words, all they did was take care of the sale in a sense? SM: The sales, and getting hold of the fabric. And they didn't actually make the fabric, they bought the fabric, but there were other places that bought or made the fabric and- GE: Right, so you're saying it varied a lot. SM: Oh yeah, and there were- in order to capitalize, if you couldn't get your credit from the bank, they had what they call factors, you know about them? GE: You know what? Why don't you tell us, I've heard the term, and I know a little bit about them. SM: We never used the factor but he would sell your goods, and send the bill to him. He would pay it, less a percentage, and he would handle the accounts receivable. And he'd collect it, it's his problem. Of course, he would have to approve of the people you sell it to. GE: Right. So he took care of that part. SM: Right there you have another partner but that could work, because he's the one who's getting you the capital. GE: Right. SM: To buy the fabric, and do everything else. GE: And take care of the headache with the accounts receivable. SM: Oh yeah, that's a big headache, I have to tell you one story. GE: Sure. SM: When we bought our new building, GE: And this was about when? SM: This was in the 70's, and at the time, the building was certainly worth the price. It was a great deal for a bank for a mortgage. For whatever reason, I don't remember, there was no mortgage money around. I guess banks have certain amounts in their portfolios that they could put into mortgages and whatnot there was none, and we were just dying. We were trying every bank in town, they would say, normally we would take a baseball bat and keep you here to make the deal, but they had no money. And we had a French poodle at the time, and the French poodle had an accident in the bedroom. And I got up at night, not knowing, go to the bathroom, and I stepped in it. Which is sort of, you know, well, funny experience, I told my mother, the next day I told my mother this, and she said, you're going to get your mortgage, and I said why, and she says, it's an old tale, that if you step in shit, something good is going to happen to you. Don't you think, the next day-- GE: Your mother was right! SM: We got a call that they- I think it was union bank at the time -was going to take the mortgage. SC: That's funny. SM: It was just amazing. GE: Was that the time that you told us that you bought the building, I think from Finkelstein? SM: Yes. GE: Okay. SM: Yeah, that was in the earlier seventies. And then shortly after that, in '76, '77 we had this Tris fiasco and you'll read it in there. One of the unique things about it, is the consumer products safety commission was comparatively new, and well, they had an axe to grind. Well they went ahead and issued this ban, but the ban was illegal. The ban was illegal because they were supposed to give the people involved their day in court. To say, hey wait a minute, you can't ban this because.... or the tests were wrong... they just-- it was a unilateral thing. Ultimately, it went to the Supreme Court, and the ban was declared illegal, but the damage was done. Once they declared the ban, all the stores -- sell all the stuff back! And if they had paid for the merchandise, we had to repay them. If they hadn't paid for the merchandise, the account receivable was no good. So- but the ban was illegal. GE: How was that fought? Is there an association, or lobby? SM: We had no lobby, what we did, we had a very very strong advocate, I don't think you'll know the name, Louis Nizer was a very prominent lawyer in New York, who happened to be a relation to my partner, and Louis Nizer sent one of these amicus something, friend to the court. GE: Amicus brief or something, SM: And there were some other prominent attorneys that were hired and that was. GE: Was that fought by your firm, or by a consortium? SM: Well sort of a consortium. GE: Of all the ones affected... SM: Mostly the bigger ones but, we were all involved, we went to Washington D.C. and, I was really pleasantly surprised how accessible, I don't mean by graft, but how accessible a lot of the representatives and congressmen were in dealing with this thing, because they knew it was a fiasco, and they all wanted to, and tried to do something. And ultimately a bill was passed in Congress so that those affected could get a loan to help get back on your feet. And-in that little article I gave you- once you made a claim of X number of dollars they had to come and audit your books, to make sure that the claim was kosher. And we had the FBI -the FBI came in! With their guns, they had to go through all the records to see whether we qualified. And then the tough part was- of course, we had no money, but if they would grant you a loan, you had to pay income tax on it. Hah, and we had no money to pay income tax for it, it was a horrible situation, we couldn't take the money, because we'd have to pay back too much money, which we didn't have. We'd have to borrow money to pay back-to pay the income tax. It was -there would be nothing left. It was really freaky, the loan that we did end up getting was from the SBA, where you really had to dance and sing and do everything else for them before you would get the loan they say this. SC: I'm sorry, what year was this about? SM: That was about, in the later seventies. GE: And about how many years did it take your company to recoup from all of this? SM: I would say about 3 or 4 or 5 years. But we never really got out of the mess because we were always, we never had enough working capital- it was always difficult, so that if we wanted to expand again, we couldn't we just had enough working capital to operate, we wanted to buy new machines, something fancy with computers and what not back then, oh that was a big thing, we couldn't do it. So we were at a certain level that we just couldn't get out of. SC: And may I- I just wanted to comment that in the early 70's when you first started, when it was hard to get money, of course that was moving into the time of stack inflation when prices were high and - GE: And growth was low. SC: Yeah, and then interest rates were high and then in the late 70's and you would be moving into the recession of the early 81' recession. SM: Yeah we ended up going through all the cycles. GE: Right. SC: It makes so much sense, history works. GE: Right, although the cycles I would think because it pajamas, you probably don't feel the cycles as much as, you just have to do a little bit cheaper maybe, items: SM: Yes, there were ways to make things fit into a price range. GE: Right, but I think in general. SM: You make the garment a little smaller. There were really no standards. SC: Yes, I always thought that. SM: You thought there were standards? SC: Those garments were getting a little smaller. At times and they were-- SM: You thought you were gaining weight, or you were getting tall right? SC: No, I never thought I was getting tall SM: There were really no standards, some of the buyers, some of the bigger companies would say that this is -make the garment according to this, that the inseam has to be this long, and the out seam has to be this long and you had to make it to their specs, well that's fine but otherwise you could make the bathrobe an inch shorter and when you start adding up all these inches, all of a sudden the piece doesn't cost ten dollars a dozen it only cost nine dollars a dozen. Or make it a little bit- the pants leg, not quite as full, make it a little bit narrower, make the pants a little bit shorter, the sleeves a little bit shorter. The chest measurement is a little bit less- and nobody knows the difference. They'll put it on and oh, this is a size 4 it doesn't fit my child, well oh, I've got a big child. They don't blame it on the garment, they don't. Whoa, my child is growing so big, so tall, that was done all the time. There was nothing that was really standard unless a customer insisted. But to a place like Hess's or any other department store chains they bought what you gave them, not so with Montgomery Ward, I remember they had very stringent standards. GE: Right, interesting. SC: Yeah. SM: Fellow named Max Charcov. Max Charcov's daughter married Roland Sigal. Sigal had a building by Sacred Heart Hospital where he had dress shops. I don't remember the names of the dress shops but he was very successful. And he was very philanthropic. And Max, Max was a real old slovenly Jewish fella, and he would pedal machines. He would buy anybody's machine, sewing machine, for 50 bucks and would um,- he would fix them up, like a used car's fixed up. How would he fix them up, he'd take a rag, he dusted it off, had no idea whether the machine worked. But it's like new, he said. And he would then sell the machine for $100 or whatever. If you needed a used machine, Max had it. He never had a building, he had various garages around town where he would store the machines. He had a driver, because he couldn't drive anymore. He would run, he had the machines, and he had nothing on paper. He knew every machine that he had ; he had hundreds of machines. And they were all used and when it was time, you needed a machine, you call Charcov if you want to get a used machine. And sometimes he would buy our machines, and I remember he would come in and we would sell him 2 or 3 machines, and he would owe us three or four hundred dollars, and he would take his checkbook and he would give it to me. He says write out a check. He has no remittance- no um, check stubs, no check register, so I write out a check to August Nielsen for three hundred dollars. I give it to Max to sign, and I take the check and that's good. I don't know who kept his books. I don't know if he ever paid income tax but he was a guy that- he was a fixture in the business. SC: Ha-ha oh, I have a-this is tape number 2- on June 17 2014 and we're interviewing Stan Miller, but I have a question- there was another question I had, how did you choose the name of Nielsen? SM: We didn't. SC: Oh it was. SM: That was the gentleman that my father went to work for in the early 1890s or early 1900s. His name was August F Nielsen. And they ultimately made the company incorporated, and I don't remember the terms. But I know that my father took over the business either because his wife was sick, and he was going to die, and they would support the wife until she died, or some kind of arrangement like that. They would pay him off or pay him in some way. I don't remember [details] but it was an interesting setup. But that name was there and no point in changing it ; it was unique. SC: And I remember Louie Nizer's name and I don't know why. SM: You do? SC: Yes I do. I don't know why, whether I read it in the history book. SM: My Life in Court--he wrote some books. SC: Yeah, he wrote some books, that's what It was. SM: He wrote some books. He was very big, really a big-shot in law in New York. GE: Can you share with us a little bit, let's say the last ten years as it was beginning to a little ·bit unwind and slowdown for you SM: Well during that time we knew the handwriting was on the wall because we were having trouble competing with folks, the other big manufacturers who then they ended up switching and manufacturing their stuff not in their plants down south, but in the Caribbean. There was this plan 807-- it was some kind of bill or something where goods can be made in the Caribbean, that made Guatemala and Haiti and Dominican Republic come into the United States with no duty as long as a certain percentage of the cost of the garment was done in the United States. I don't know what the percentage was, but it was pretty small. So, goods were sent uncut down to the Caribbean, it was cut, it was sewn, everything was done to it and it was sent back to the United States, and maybe we put a plastic bag over the garment and put a hang tag on which amounted to the proper percentage of labor. Something ridiculous and their costs were -- I may have said this before--their costs were five dollars a day. They were paying five dollars a day and this was in the 90's and the late 80's where we were paying five dollars an hour. And that was good, plus vacations and blue cross and blue shield, and holidays and all this other garbage and taxes and unemployment. They were paying just five dollars a day and there's no way you can compete with that. Plus these-- our competitors-- had the better licenses, so we were making an inferior garment for lack of a better term, or a less desirable garment. GE: Right, less desired. SM: At a higher price! Doesn't work. So gradually, our sales decreased, and we were shopping around trying to sell, and then we were still manufacturing a little bit, and we were trying to do some contracting work. We did some contracting work, um, and it gradually wound down to the point where as years went on, and we kept paying our people, I remember Walter and I, we kept taking our salary was maybe about 15,000 a year or something. And it was ridiculous, we just kept cutting our salaries. Well you had to pay your secretaries and we would give up my secretary because-um, it gradually wound down and we knew it was happening. We just held on as long as we could and tried to at the end pay off everybody, as many people as we could. We still had the building that we ultimately sold to well, it was some person who made candles, and we went through the building one time after that, and I saw a lot of my people there and they were making candles in the building. GE: Well, that's good at least SM: Yeah. GE: Where was your building? SM: South Allentown on South Albert Street. We had the, there was a fire company there, Fairview Fire Company I think, it's about a block or so away and it was a lovely building. It was great for us, it was about 40,000 square feet or 50,000 something like that. GE: At its peak, how many employees did you have there? SM: At its peak we had maybe about 120 there. We had another factory in Allentown with another 40 or 50. So we had two. GE: Two hundred. Okay, and how about the other employees, like in the New York area I realize that's small. SM: Well we had my partner and a sales manager so to speak, they had no need for office help and they took care of the sales and managed the salesmen on the road, we had no real employees. GE: Other than that. SM: Of note, in New York, except the sales. force. You know, one guy can sell enough to keep 200 people working in someplace else. GE: Right. SM: Sales it's just a different ballgame. They can make a sale and they can provide us with enough work for three months. GE: When, as you said, you saw the handwriting on the wall. Is there any consideration to either also trying to use labor in the Caribbean or to make that move, or- SM: Oh yeah, we were approached quite often, I remember one was in Guatemala. They would provide the land, they'd build the building, they'd help finance the machines, the labor was cheap, there would be no taxes for I don't know, and I just, as for me, I just couldn't see myself leaving my wife and three kids and going there or taking them there, or being there for three months out of the year. It wasn't for me. In retrospect, I suppose there could have been a way to do that and then you could compete, and we might still be in business for all I know but doing that wasn't for me. GE: Right. SM: It scared me, I just couldn't do it. And my brother-in-law felt the same way. So, whereas a lot of the people from down in the south it was a little closer for them, they went for it. We couldn't do that. So we ended up, for a while, we did some contracting and just, that was an unhappy situation, when we were manufacturing, we were our own bosses, when you're contacting, somebody else is telling you what to do. And we were very unhappy about that. But it happened, it evolved, as many things do ; businesses don't stay in business forever. And we had a good run. It was 70 some odd years that we were. GE: Continuous in two generations? SM: Yeah, yeah. GE: Right, and so you closed the doors in around 1994, like you said. SM: Yeah and we started renting the building and um, but we couldn't keep the building. We had to unload it so we had it up for sale. I don't remember when it was sold, maybe a year or two later. And as for me, I filed for social security. I think I was 62, and I started working for the bank. And I knew a lot of the people there, and I knew some of the people who were hiring, and I started working for them. And I became, I guess, the oldest male bearded Jewish bank teller east of the Mississippi River. They had none like that. They had no men. SC: Ha-ha. SM: Think back! Who were the bank tellers? The girls who then became pregnant. They were all women, they never had a man, never had anybody my age, with a beard, so - and I worked part time, and it was good because it kept me a little busy, GE: Sure. SM: It gave me some pocket money, I was having fun with the people. I wasn't a normal bank teller. I would kid with them and ask them about their children. You joke with them about giving them change in 17 and 23 dollar bills, and I enjoyed it. GE: Good. SM: I really had fun. GE: Right. That's great. And how long did you do that? SM: And I spent 7 years there. GE: Right. SM: I had time to play golf and play tennis and so it was wonderful for me. I was there from seven years 94' to 2001. GE: And then you retired? SM: Then I retired, and I became a professional tennis player and golf player, and I was an actor. I did that and I had a good life ; it was the best job I had. Retirement, it was wonderful. GE: Right, you speak very highly of it. SM: Oh yeah, it was really, really, really, good. GE: Good. SC: Well I have a couple of other questions, and, first of all there was a question I had about where was your other factory, SM: Originally it was on Hamilton Street, 930 Hamilton Street. Do you remember Miller Furniture? SC: Ah you know what, the name is familiar. SM: It was on the south side, not Hess's side. It was a half a block away from Hess's. And Krupers Appliances was there. It was between 9th and l0th Streets, and we had an upstairs there, and we were operating that plant for a while, and then we lost the lease and then we found a place. You would know this building, it's on 7th and Tilghman Street. It was a bank on the comer, there was a bank there and then one place up was another building. I don't know what was there, um, it was an automobile showroom or whatever. Anyway we took the second floor and had to put in a fireproof stairway, and they had a ramp that we used when we moved in. I rented a golf cart because we had so much stuff to bring up and there was no elevator to get to the second floor but there was a ramp because it used to be a car dealer. And they would have the cars up on the second floor, and go down the ramp. In fact that was the place where many years ago I went to see my very first Edsel. It was a dealer that had the Edsels and I went with my cousins to look at it. I remember seeing the Edsel there so we had that place for a while and then as time went on we had to condense our operation. We had to close that, I don't remember when we closed it, it was sometime in the nineties where it just wasn't feasible anymore. So we were running two, and running night shifts sometimes. When the situation demanded it. That was our- SC: By the time you closed, how many workers, how many employees did you have at the end? SM: Oh well it started going down. GE: Right. SM: We must have had about 40 or 50 or 60 when we used to have over 100 because certain operations we didn't need. After a while we didn't need the cutting room, we were just getting the stuff in cut, and we just had to sew it. We gradually knocked it down. Even to the point when we were contracting we really didn't need our girl in the office to do the payroll anymore. We found it cheaper that we would send it out to I don't know... GE: ADP? SM: Yeah, one of those places. And they'd send the check. It would cost us less than paying the girl her salary and her Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and holidays. I mean we gave the girls, they had a salary and her Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and holidays. I mean we gave the girls, they had up to 14 holidays we were giving them ; they even got Yom Kippur off. Then they got their Easter, and their Good Friday and um, they had plenty of holidays, um what else could I tell you, not much else. SC: Okay, so my other question is what do you value most in life? SM: What do I value most in life? I suppose good health and the health of my family. I can't think of much else that's important and ultimately you die with a good name. Because they never caught me. GE: Right and as you say you checked it out on the internet. SM: Yeah there was nothing bad, although the NSA has been checking my computers. I never... GE: They're checking everybody's SC: That's the new democracy, we all get checked. SM: Well, you've got these crazies in the world. SC: Yeah I know, SM: You wonder, right now everybody says oh don't check me you're invading my privacy. As soon as we have another 9/11- why didn't you know about these people!? So there's no happy medium there. SC: And what makes you feel the most creative, artistic, I mean in the broadest sense of creative or maybe a sense of completion in your life? SM: In my life, other than being very proud of your three kids, me, I like to sing. So I was in the Temple choir for about forty years. We ended up, my family ended up somehow getting involved in theater, so besides my daughter, my wife became a manager and I was a theater um. I did shows at Cedar Crest, Muhlenberg, at Civic, and Pennsylvania Playhouse ; I did them all over in the [area]. SC: You acted? SM: Yeah, so I did that. I found we all agreed, this group that we-- this last group that we were with-- that one of the greatest joys in life, the biggest kick that we would get is to be in a room full of people and make them laugh. And that's what we were doing, we were doing murder mysteries. Believe me they were funny, and we were good, because we handled- it's a different procedure than being on a proscenium stage because on a proscenium stage there's an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. There's no ad-libbing to speak of, you do your thing, when you do dinner theater or murder mysteries. You are this close to them, and some of the people shoot off their mouths. You know they interrupt, and you have to know what to do, you can end up forgetting your lines, and you answer them back, sometimes you have to shut up, shut them up. One time we had somebody who wouldn't shut up, and one of the people in the show yelled over to a waiter do you have any tape? And he says, yeah, and she says give me the tape. And she went over and put duct tape on the guy's mouth. Of course he took it off, but he got the hint. Another time, when we were starting act 3, I was out there with one guy, and we had a little dialogue and he was supposed to answer but before he could somebody in the audience shouted something out. It was funny. It was really funny, everybody laughed. Well, you can't let him get away with it, so you hit him with something, and then he comes back with something, and before you know it well, everything's stopped, and I said to the guy with me, where did we stop? But, you can do these things in the dinner theater. He says I don't know, well let's start all over again. Excuse me. And my wife was involved, my daughter was involved, my other two daughters were involved. We all played the piano, they sang, they played the violin, this is what we did. That was our life. As a matter of fact, when we had this Tris fiasco where we really had no income at all, we couldn't take any income, we dropped out of Locust Valley and stopped doing things, going out for dinners. We ended up doing theater, that was our entertainment--theater. When we started Percy Brown's dinner theater in the 70's, we would have a show Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we'd be rehearsing for the next show. GE: Wow. SM: And this was the whole family doing it. One daughter was dancing, another one was doing this, another one was playing the drums. Lois was assistant director, and doing the props and the makeup, and I was in the show. I think the first show I did myself and three other guys who were the male chorus and the reviewer called us led-footed hoofers with terminal melancholy. And he was right by the way, we were really bad. But I got to like it, I did pretty good, and that was my fun. Plus I did photography ; I've taken a lot of photographs, and that was my thing, that made me happy. SC: Thank you. Copyright for this interview is held by Muhlenberg College. video This oral history is made available with a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The public can access and share the interview for educational, research, and other noncommercial purposes as long as they identify the original source. 0 /render.php?cachefile=