KONOFF--Alexander. June 23, 2019 marks 110 years since Alexander Konoff arrived in New York. He was born in Ukraine and left home at age 16 to work in Berlin. The only formal education he ever had was a few years in Hebrew school. On May 29, 1909, he was deported from Germany as an "undesirable alien." He immediately went to Antwerp to board a ship bound for New York. It carried immigrants from Europe to New York and returned to Europe packed with cattle. The trip from Antwerp to New York took three weeks. The steerage passengers were fed herring. He arrived in New York with a few kopecks in his pocket and spent his first night at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society shelter. He was a penniless immigrant. His first job was at the Singer Sewing Machine factory in Elizabethport, New Jersey. His second job was at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. By 1919, he was a partner in a business making dolls with moving eyes. By 1925, there was a Margon Corporation which made dolls' eyes and voices. For more than 50 years, Margon eyes were sold all over the world and they were considered to be the very best in the world. In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, in an effort to build a business that was not seasonal, he decided to manufacture zippers. In a very short time, Conmar became the second largest producer of zippers in the world. Margon and Conmar were family owned and employed thousands of workers in Brooklyn, New York, Bayonne and Newark, New Jersey, and Greenwood, Mississippi. Conmar was known in Newark for its huge factory building where the factory space was air-conditioned. The cafeteria was subsidized. There was an industrial nurse on duty during daytime. A doctor had regular office hours several days during the week. All workers, skilled and unskilled, were represented by unions.