Most of the Jews in the town either engaged in various crafts of were small businessmen, while a minority were in industry and wholesale merchandising. The main craftsmen were shoemakers and various types of tailors, stitchers (who cut and sewed the uppers and were known as zagatovtschiks), masons and builders, hatmakers and furriers, tinsmiths and blacksmiths, wagon makers, carpenters, painters, barbers, butchers, and bakers.

The bakers worked mostly the nights before market days and fairs, selling to the villagers, as during the rest of the week Jews baked their own challas and bread. The wagon-drivers had a semi-skilled profession, both those who had well-cared-for horses and handsome buggies or nice wagons for carrying passengers and packages to the train and to neighboring towns, and the drikers, who carried lighter freight within town in their rickety wagons hitched to a single, lame, undernourished horse. . . .

Industry was very limited in those days and played a minor role in the economy of the town. Its beginnings harken back to a textile factory on Golden Street which burned down and was not rebuilt. . . . There also were the beginnings of a beer industry. . . There were two brickworks, a furnace for burning bones, a mill for carding wool, a number of windmills, and three oil presses actually operated by horse-power. . . . With time the motorized engine arrived in our town; in 1905, the first machine was brought in for the oil press by the Grimatlicht family. After a few years they put in a larger engine to operate the flour mill, which they had built right beside the oil press. . . .

Making a living was not easy, and for some in the town it was even hard. The energy of most people (including youth) was devoted to efforts to support themselves.

During the week, everyone worked from early morning until late at night, like a busy colony of ants, this one in a workshop or factory, someone else in a store or at a trade. Many families helped themselves with a bit of farming they undertook close to home: a milk cow, a few laying hens, and a vegetable garden. . . .

On fair days, the marketplace was so crowded that passage was almost impossible, even for pedestrians. It was filled with the villagers' wagons and with animals they brought for sale, which were tied to the wagons. . . .

The noise was deafening; voices of vendors and buyers, mooing of cows, whinnying of horses, snorting of pigs -- all these filled the area of the marketplace, which bustled and hummed without let-up until the late afternoon.

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