Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1888 — The Manufacture of Sauerkraut. [ARTICLE]

The Manufacture of Sauerkraut.

The busiest persons in Reading, Pa., at present are those of a calling which probably is unknown in any other place in this country. That calling is the professional cutting of cabbage for sauerkraut making. The cutter travels about the city from house to house from the latter part of October until the middle * of November, by which time the sauerkraut making season is over. The father of the business is Michael Bruckman, who has cut cabbage for Reading’s best families for many years. There are few families in that city, from the highest to the lowest, that fail to put down a supply of sauerkraut every fall. Bruckman alone cuts up 200, heads of cabbage a during the putting-down season. His cabbage cutter he imported from Germany, and he says there is not another like it in this country. ' It is the well-to-do families and sa-loon-keepers who hire their cabbage cut, although the charge is only one cent a head. The saloon-keepers are the best of the cabbage-cutters, for they order hundreds of heads at a time. Sauerkraut for lunch is one of the delicacies of Reading all the year round. During the last half of * October and the first half of November, Cutter Bruck man estimates, there are not less than 2,000 heads of cabbage cut every day for the season. Those who do not hire their kraut stock cut have cutters of their own, or wait their turn to borrow of a neighbor who has. No Reading household is exactly complete without a cabbage-cutter. The preson who cgts cabbage for kraut professionally has nothing to do with the making of the kraut. That is done by the family, and the faqaily in Berks County that does not know all the mysteries of sauerkraut making had better keep its ignorance to itself. No family puts down less than ten heads of cabbage in pickle to “ripen” into kraut, while the' cutter frequently has a job of a hundred heads or more to cat at a single house. * a musical prodigy. He plays the piano exceedingly well, and the violin, too. His favorite method with the latter is to sit on his father’s knee and finger the strings while his father draws the bow. ,