Finally I wearied of it all, and one afternoon, as we were seated in the restaurant, I picked a quarrel with him
"I don"t want your dinners," I burst out, "and I don"t want to be watched by you as if I were a recruit in the Russian army and you were my "little uncle." I"ll pay you what I owe you and leave me alone."
"As if I were uneasy about those few dollars!" he said, ingratiatingly
"I know you are not. That"s just it."
He took fire. "What am I after, then? You think I get rich on your work, don"t you?"
Our altercation waxed violent. At one point he was about to lapse into a conciliatory tone again, but his dignity prevailed
"I would not keep you if you begged me," he declared. "I hate to deal with an ingrate. But I want my money at once." "I shall pay it to you when work begins."
"No, sirrah. I want it at once." An ugly scene followed. He seized me by my coat lapels and threatened to have me arrested.
Finally the restaurant-keeper and Gussie, the homely finisher girl whom we all respected, made peace between us, and things were arranged more or less amicably
I obtained employment in an "inside" place, a factory owned by twin brothers named Manheimer
I was in high feather. My sense of advancement and independence reminded me of the days when I had just been graduated from the Talmudic Academy and went on studying as an "independent scholar." I had not, however, begun to work in my new place when a general strike of the trade was declared
CHAPTER VII
THE Cloak-makers" Union had been a weak, insignificant organization, but at the call for a general strike it suddenly burst into life. There was a great rush for membership cards. Everybody seemed to be enthusiastic, full of fight. To me, however, the strike was a sheer calamity. I laid it all to my own hard luck. It seemed as though the trouble had been devised for the express purpose of preventing me from being promoted to full pay; for the express purpose of upsetting my financial calculations in connection with my college plans. Everybody was saying that prices were outrageously low, that the manufacturers were taking advantage of the weakness of the union, and that they must be brought to terms. All this was lost upon me. The question of prices did not interest me, because the wages I was going to receive were by far the highest I had ever been paid. But the main thing was that I looked upon the whole business of making cloaks as a temporary occupation.
My mind was full of my books and my college dreams. All I wanted was to start the "season" as soon as possible, to save up the expected sum, and to reach the next period of freedom from physical toil, when I should be able to spend day and night on my studies again. But going to work as a strike-breaker was out of the question. A new kind of Public Opinion had suddenly sprung up among the cloak-makers: a man who did not belong to the union was a traitor, worse than an apostate, worse than the worst of criminals
And so, feeling like a school-boy in Antomir when he is made to furnish the very rod with which he is to be chastised, I went to the headquarters of the union, paid my initiation fee, and became a member. It was on a Friday afternoon. The secretaries of the organization were seated at a long table in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a meeting-room building on Rivington Street. The bas.e.m.e.nt and the street outside were swarming with cloak-makers. A number of ma.s.s meetings had been arranged to take place in several halls, with well-known Socialists for speakers, but I had not even the curiosity to attend them.
When some of my shopmates reproached me for my indifference I said, sullenly: "I"ve joined the union. What more do you want?"
One of them, a Talmudist like myself, spoke of capital and labor, of the injustice of the existing economic order. He had recently, through the strike, been converted to Socialism. He made a fiery appeal to me. He spoke with the exaltation of a new proselyte. But his words fell on deaf ears. I had no mind for anything but my college studies
"Do you think it right that millions of people should toil and live in misery so that a number of idlers might roll in luxury?" he pleaded
"I haven"t made the world, nor can I mend it," was my retort
The manufacturers yielded almost every point. The "season"
began with a rush
My pay-envelope for the first week contained thirty-two dollars and some cents. I knew the union price, of course, and I had figured out the sum before I received it, yet when I beheld the two figures on the envelope the blood surged to my head. Thirty-two dollars! Why, that meant sixty-four rubles! I was tempted to write Naphtali about it
The next week brought me an even fatter envelope. I worked sixteen hours a day. Reading and studying had to be suspended till October. I lived on five dollars a week. My savings, and with them my sense of my own importance in the world, grew apace. As there was no time to go to the savings-bank, I had to carry what I deemed a great sum on my person (in a money-belt that I had improvised for the purpose). This was a constant source of anxiety as well as of joy. No matter how absorbed I might have been in my work or in thought, the consciousness of having that wad of paper money with me was never wholly absent from my mind. It loomed as a badge of omnipotence. I felt in the presence of Luck, which was a living spirit, a G.o.ddess. I was mostly grave. The frivolities of the other men in the factory seemed so fatuous, so revolting. A great sense of security and self-confidence swelled my heart. When I walked through the American streets I would feel at home in them, far more so than I had ever felt before. At the same time danger was constantly hovering about me-the danger of the street crowds seizing that magic wad from me.
The image of the college building loomed as a bride-elect of mine.
But that, somehow, did not seem to have anything to do with my money-belt, as though I expected to go to college without encroaching upon my savings--a case of eating the cake and having it
The cloak-makers were so busy they had no time to attend meetings, and being little accustomed to method and discipline, they suffered their organization to melt away. By the time the "season" came to a close the union was scarcely stronger than it had been before the strike. As there was no work now, and no prices to fix, one did not miss its protection
The number of men employed in the trade in those years did not exceed seven thousand. The industry was still in its infancy
I resumed my studies with a pa.s.sion amounting to a frenzy. I would lay in a supply of coa.r.s.e rye bread, cheese, and salmon to last me two or even three days, and never leave my lair during that length of time. I dined at the Delancey Street restaurant every third or fourth day, and did not go to the theater unless Jake was particularly insistent. But then I religiously attended Felix Adler"s ethical-culture lectures, at Chickering Hall, on Sunday mornings. I valued them for their English rather than for anything else, but their spirit, reinforced by the effect of organ music and the general atmosphere of the place, would send my soul soaring. These gatherings and my prospective alma mater appealed to me as being of the same order of things, of the same world of refined ways, new thoughts, n.o.ble interests
If I came across a street faker and he spoke with a foreign accent I would pa.s.s on; if, however, his English struck me as that of a "real American," I would pause and listen to his "lecture,"
sometimes for more than an hour.
People who were born to speak English were superior beings.
Even among fallen women I would seek those who were real Americans
CHAPTER VIII
I WAS reading Pendennis. The prospect of returning to work was a hideous vision. The high wages in store for me had lost their magnetism. I often wondered whether I might not be able to secure some pupils in English or Hebrew, and drop cloak-making at once. I dreamed of enlisting the interest of a certain Maecenas, a German-American Jew who financed many a struggling college student of the Ghetto. Thoughts of a "college match" would flash through my mind--that is, of becoming engaged to some girl who earned good wages and was willing to support me through college. This form of matrimonial arrangement, which has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, is not uncommon among our immigrants. Alliances of this sort naturally tend to widen the intellectual chasm between the two parties to the contract, and often result in some of the tragedies or comedies that fill the swift-flowing life of American Ghettos. But the ambition to be the wife of a doctor, lawyer, or dentist is too strong in some of our working-girls to be quenched by the dangers involved
One of the young women I had in mind was Gussie, the cloak-finisher mentioned above, who saved for a marriage portion too energetically to make a marriage. She was a good girl, and no fool, either, and I thought to myself that she would make me a good wife, even if she was plain and had a washed-out appearance and was none too young. I was too pa.s.sionately in love with my prospective alma mater to care whether I could love my fiancee or not
"I have a fellow for you," I said to Gussie, under the guise of pleasantry, meeting her in the street one day. "Something fine."
"Who is it--yourself?" she asked, quickly
"You have guessed it right."
"Have I? Then tell your fellow to go to all the black devils."
"Why?"
"Because."
"If I could go to college--"
"You want me to pay your bills, do you?"
"Wouldn"t you like to be the wife of a doctor? You would take rides in my carriage--"
"You mean the other way around: you would ride in my carriage and I should have to start a breach-of-promise case against "Dr.
Levinsky." You"ll have to look for a bigger fool than I," she concluded, with a smile
It was an attractive smile, full of good nature and common sense.
A smile of this kind often makes a homely face pretty. Gussie"s did not. The light it shed only served to publish her ugliness. But I did not care. The infatuation I had brought with me from Antomir had not yet completely faded out, anyhow. And so I harbored vague thoughts that some day, when I saw fit to press my suit, Gussie might yield
I was getting impatient. The idea of having to go back to work became more hateful to me every day. I was in despair. Finally I decided to consider my career as a cloak-maker closed; to cut my expenses to the veriest minimum, to live on my savings, look for some source of income that would not interfere with my studies, take the college examination as soon as I was ready for it, and let the future take care of itself
In the heart of the Jewish neighborhood I found an attic for half of what I was paying the Irish family. Moreover, it was a neighborhood where everything was cheaper than in any other part of New York, the only one in which it was possible for a man to have a "room" to himself and live on four dollars a week. So I moved to that attic, a step for which, as I now think of it, I cannot but be thankful to fate, for it brought me in touch with a quaint, simple man who is my warm friend to this day, perhaps the dearest friend I have had in America
The house was a rickety, two-story frame structure, the smallest and oldest-looking on the block. Its ground floor was used as a tailoring shop by the landlord himself, a white-headed giant of a man whom I cannot recall otherwise than as smiling wistfully and sighing. His name was Esrah Nodelman. His wife, who was a dwarf beside him, ruled him with an iron hand