In 1902, butcher shops on New York’s Lower East Side raised the price of a popular cut of beef from 12 cents per pound to 18, due to a price hike by the cartel of businesses that at the time controlled most of the U.S. meat market. In response, a group of Jewish housewives organized boycotts and demonstrations, which are the subject of Scott Seligman’s book The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902. The author discusses the events that followed in an interview by Andrew Silow-Carrol:

There were [in 1902] some 600 kosher butchers on the Lower East Side—a lot of storefronts—and most of the women went to butchers in the immediate neighborhood. It was an interesting relationship, because there had to be trust on both sides. The women had to be assured they were getting kosher meat, and the butchers had to offer credit. Families couldn’t afford meat until the paycheck came home.

[The organizers] decided they were going to do a boycott, and overnight must have recruited 3,000 women, just going door to door, because squads of five took up positions across the Lower East Side. It wasn’t supposed to be violent. They were supposed to approach customers, remonstrate with anybody who wanted to buy meat and ask them not to do it. But when people crossed the lines, that’s when all hell broke loose. They grabbed the meat, threw it in the gutter and threw kerosene on it so it was inedible.

Although there was violence, this was a very well-disciplined event. Nobody ate the meat. Absolutely no one was supposed to eat meat and there was no looting. Only butcher shops and some restaurants were targeted. It wasn’t like street riots today, with people smashing windows up and down the street, and it stopped for Shabbat.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.