Gabby Chilton
Professor Jo Ann Rawley
MGT-100-3121
Principles of Management
10 March 2017
One Big Change, One Small Town: Postville
Every day changes occur in our daily lives. From the evolution of man to the creation of
technology, change is a natural thing. Whether it’s a good or bad thing depends on your point of
view. In the small suburban town in Iowa, called Postville, a change had occurred in a surprising
way. Eventually, people had to learn a new term assimilation and had to decide whether it helped
or not when a new Jewish Hasidic slaughterhouse was built and many Jewish and Hispanic
immigrants fled to work at this plant and work hard to live up to their idea of the American
Dream.
In Postville, there are some degrees of assimilation, or rather understanding the thoughts,
beliefs, and ideas from one another. There are also forces that had either helped or hinder this
new systematic of an idea. The degrees of assimilation that had taken place in Postville were
when the townsfolk eventually understood how the immigrants, which consisted of the Jews and
the Hispanics, lived their lives, understood their culture, and even their types of meals. These
forces also had to hinder this new systematic of an idea. Such as the surface-level diversity
where the townsfolk of Postville saw many differences between the first group of movers to the
community, which were the Jews who moved there to work at the newly established Jewish
kosher slaughterhouse. Then came the Hispanic community, and the melting pot grew larger.
Since the Jewish people had their own form of worshiping; however, the townsfolk didn’t like
the fact that the new Hispanic people were using the townsfolk church, which some of the
townsfolk did not like. Such as the translation from English spoken during communion days to
knowing that an outsider had sat in their spot. Change can be hard for most people, and having
immigrants coming into a Lutheran religious town would be considered unfair to not only for the
newcomers but also to the townsfolk themselves. There was a degree was assimilation place in
Postville, the forces showed that it didn’t help ease the townsfolks minds. If I were townsfolk, I
would definitely place my opinion on deciding whether or not this was a positive experience.
In the town of Postville, IA, the idea of assimilation was a lost concept to both the new
Jewish community and those who already live in that small town. This experience to this
community was a con because most people can be stubborn and set in their old ways. Such as the
Jews that had moved from an unfriendly environment of New York to Postville, IA, where most
