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1902 · Johnson's Business Directory, Mishawaka section
The trade before the car: The last full business directory of Mishawaka before the automobile arrived in force lists no car seller, because there was effectively none to list. What it lists instead is the trade the car would displace and then absorb: the blacksmiths John Becker at 217 North Main and George Becker at 111 Front, and the harness men Lorenz Eberhardt at 218 North Main and William Fisher at 112 East Main. The blacksmith's shop and the harness shop were the service stations of the horse economy — the places a Mishawaka driver took a broken vehicle and a worn team — and the pattern the next two decades follow, in this city as everywhere, is the pattern of those trades converting: the garage keeper, the battery man and the tire man of the 1921 canvass are the blacksmith's and harness maker's successors, working the same streets, the two Beckers' Main Street ground among them, on a new kind of machine.
Sources:
- Johnson's South Bend business directory, 1902–03 (Internet Archive, read first-hand) — the Mishawaka Business Directory section: Becker Jno, blacksmith, 217 N. Main; Becker Geo, blacksmith, 111 Front; Eberhardt Lorenz, harness, 218 N. Main; Fisher Wm, harness, 112 E. Main; and the absence of any automobile listing in the section.