The custom trades counted, not evoked — the 1921 Polk classified sections, what can and cannot be printed

1921 · POLK'S SOUTH BEND AND MISHAWAKA CITY DIRECTORY

The checklist's pattern is a dated directory count: milliners, dressmakers and tailors numbered from one year's classified sections, the way the floor instance prints 1921. This pass worked the 1921 Polk volume in the open transcription that survives of it (the LDS Genealogy / Archive.org part-files, 1,048 pages), and it reports exactly how far that transcription lets an honest count go. The volume exists whole in print and in the Archive.org scan; the machine-readable transcription is part-indexed and OCR-degraded, so a classified-section census taken from it would undercount silently — the one failure this section is forbidden to commit. What the transcription does print, at street-directory strength, is the trade at work in 1921: on Mishawaka's Lincoln Way, Adler Bros, clothing, at 108; Livingston's, clothing, at 110–12; Charles L. Perkey, clothing, at 120; Renfranz Jr Inc, tailors, at 123; John Parker, tailor, at 216; Max Slutsky, tailor, at 220; Israel Slavin, clothing, at 222; Harry Lapides, ladies tailor, at 1012; Louis D. Croom, tailor, at 1234; and Mary O'Dea, dressmaker, at 710. In Mishawaka's classified tail the Tailors heading itself survives with two names — Herzog W. C., 105½ Lincoln Way East, and Huys Arthur, basement 101 North Main — with Swyga Clothiers at 107 North Main under its own heading. In South Bend's street record the same year prints Fischer & Son, clothing; Samuel Spiro & Co., clothing, at 119–21 Michigan; Raab Bros, tailors; Harry O. Crisman, tailor; and Robertson Bros. Co. advertising “Quality First” dry goods and ladies' ready-to-wear. These are exhibits, not a count, and they are labelled so. For Clay and Harris townships the same volume's rural and Granger-station listings name no milliner, dressmaker, tailor or clothier — consistent with every other record in this section — but the township share of a classified count cannot be certified from a degraded transcription either. NAMED GAP: the 1921 count itself — milliners, dressmakers and tailors numbered separately for South Bend, for Mishawaka, and for the Granger rural route — stands exactly where the checklist's settling source said it stands: in the classified sections of Polk's 1921 South Bend / Mishawaka directory as held at the St. Joseph County Public Library and in the Ancestry directory collection, to be counted by hand from the printed headings. This pass prints the search, the exhibits the open transcription honestly yields, and the gap's name, rather than a number it cannot stand behind.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend, Indiana, city directory, 1921 (1,048 pp.), part-transcription at ldsgenealogy.com and full scan on the Internet Archive: street-directory and Mishawaka classified entries as quoted, consulted November 2026; transcription quality as stated in the article.
2. Polk South Bend city directory, 1883 (Archive.org full text), consulted for method: its alphabetical list already carries the trade by name — “Banning, Miss Julia, dressmaker” and “Denniston, Samuel, tailor” — the form the 1921 classified count takes at full strength.