Twelve

Whereas Mostel and Klein’s garment factory had been in a loft, up several flights of narrow stairs, Lowenstein’s was in a basement just off Houston Street, at the northern boundary of the Jewish quarter. From the heights to the depths, I thought as I stood outside the building on a cold, damp morning and peered down into a narrow well area. The first chill of winter was in the air and the horse that pulled a wagonload of barrels past me was snorting with a dragon’s breath. I felt frozen to the bone and wished I had worn Paddy’s lovely long wool cape. But sweatshop girls couldn’t afford capes. They wore shirtwaists and skirts and wrapped themselves with whatever might pass as a shawl.

I picked my way down a flight of broken steps and ducked in through a low doorway. I found myself in a long dark room with a low ceiling, lit only by two high windows up at street level, through which some railings and the base of a lamp were visible. The ceiling was strung with pipes and festooned with cobwebs. There were gas mantles hissing away, but they did little to dispel the gloom. The clatter of fifty sewing machines echoed back from the brick walls. I had arrived just after seven and it looked as if everyone here had been working away for hours. Not a good sign. I had thought that Mostel’s had crammed in as many machines as possible into that one room, now I saw I was wrong. The girls here were working, crammed so closely together that they could barely move their arms without hitting each other, and there was hardly any space between the tables. It suddenly occurred to me that there might not be a vacancy for me after all, in spite of Mostel’s insistence that I’d get a job here with no problem.

I stood in the doorway and looked around for the boss. Not one of the girls looked up from her work to notice me, but a little child—a thin little scrap who couldn’t have been more than ten, who was squeezing her way down the table, cutting off threads from finished piles with an enormous pair of scissors—looked up, saw me, and reacted with a start, jogging the elbow of the nearest girl.

The machinist yelled something in Yiddish, and slapped the child around the head. The child started to cry and pointed at me. Heads turned in my direction.

“Hello,” I said brightly. “I’m here about a job—whom would I see?”

It turned out I didn’t have to ask. At this outburst of noise a man had come out of a room at the far end. “What is it now? Can’t I leave you lazy creatures to work for five minutes while I get the books done?” he shouted. He had a heavy European accent but he spoke in English.

“It’s a new girl, Mr. Katz,” someone at my end of the room said.

The man forced his way toward me. He was younger than Seedy Sam, thin, angular, good looking almost in a depraved sort of way, with heavy-lidded dark eyes, a neat little black beard, and a sort of half smile on full lips. He was wearing a formal black suit and white celluloid collar, although the black suit was now well decorated with pieces of lint and thread.

“So this young lady thinks she can disrupt the work of a whole room, does she?” He stared at me. “And for why should I hire you?”

“The child was startled when she looked up and saw me, that’s all. And I’m here because I’m a good worker and I was told you are about to hire more workers for the busy season.”

He was still gazing at me with a hostile sneer. “What accent you speak with? Irish? And for why should I want to hire an Irish girl when most of my workers speak Yiddish?”

“Since we’re not allowed to talk when we’re working, what difference would it make?” I demanded, looking him straight in the eye. “And if you’re not hiring, just say so, and I’ll take myself elsewhere.” I turned to go.

“Wait,” he shouted. “I didn’t say we weren’t hiring. I can always use a good worker. Where have you worked before?”

I had decided it would be wise not to mention Mostel and Klein. “I’m just arrived from Ireland, sir. I worked for my auntie who ran a dressmaking business. We did everything—bride’s dresses, latest fashion, and always in a hurry. I’m used to hard work, sir.”

It was hard for me to address this obnoxious fellow as sir, but it obviously worked, because he nodded. “I’ll give you a trial. You’ll get five dollars a week if you do your quota. You bring your own needles and thread.”

I nodded. “I have them with me.”

He looked annoyed that he hadn’t had a chance to catch me out. “You pay us ten cents a week for the use of power.”

Power? I thought. Those pathetic gas brackets counted as power? I certainly couldn’t feel any form of heating.

“And five cents for the use of mirror and towel in the washroom.”

It struck me that I had heard that one before. Someone at Mostel’s had told me about it. I wondered if it was common practice in the garment sweatshops.

“The rules are simple,” he said. “Do your work on time and you get paid what you’re due. You don’t leave your seat without permission. You don’t talk. Obey the rules and you get your full paypacket. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” I looked suitably humble.

“All right. Get to work then. What are you working on, Lanie?”

“Sleeves,” a voice from the middle of the room said.

“Start her on sleeves too then. What’s your name, girl?”

“Molly, sir.”

“Go and sit next to Lanie. She’ll show you how we do things around here. And the rest of you, get on with it. Mr. Lowenstein is not going to be happy if he comes in and finds you’re behind with this order. If those dresses aren’t ready to be shipped by Friday, I’m docking everyone a dollar’s pay. Understand me?” For the sake of those who didn’t, he repeated the whole thing in Yiddish. I then heard someone passing it along in Italian, then maybe Russian or Polish, with a gasp each time.

I squeezed my way between the rows of girls until I came to a plump girl with a magnificent head of dark hair, coiled around her face. She looked at me with big, sad eyes and a rather vacant expression.

“I’m Lanie,” she said. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”

I squeezed myself onto the vacant chair beside her. The chair had a broken back and rickety legs. I hadn’t been told to remove my shawl and now I was glad to notice that most of the other girls wore theirs too. Some of them wore gloves with the fingers cut out. The atmosphere was decidedly damp and chill. From the depths of the room came the sound of coughing.

“You’ve worked a machine like this before?” Lanie asked over the noise of the treadles.

Luckily I had. It was identical to the ones at Mostel’s. I nodded.

“We’re doing sleeves,” she said, pointing at the huge stack of dark blue bombazine. “All you have to do is the side seam, then pass them on to Rose. She’s setting them in the bodice.”

I turned to the girl on my other side. She was petite with red curly hair and she gave me a bright smile. “Another redhead. Now I won’t feel so much like a freak.”

I smiled back. “We redheads must stick together.”

I started sewing. By the time the clock on the wall rolled around to lunch, my fingers were stiff and cold and my back was aching from sitting on the uneven chair with no support. A bell rang and chairs scraped as we got to our feet.

“Did you bring your lunch with you, Molly?” Rose asked as we joined the throng of girls making their way to the exit.

“Not today. I wanted to see what the other girls do.”

“As you can see, we all leave,” Rose said. “Nobody wants to be down here, breathing this rotten air, for a second longer than necessary. When it’s nice we eat our sandwiches in a churchyard—only don’t tell my father. He’s a rabbi. He’d die of shock to hear that his good Jewish daughter was hanging around a church.”

I laughed. “And when it’s not nice, like today?”

“Then we go to Samuel’s Deli on the corner over there. You can get a bowl of soup with matzoballs or liver dumplings for a nickel. It’s good and filling.”

We joined the line waiting to be served, then carried bowls of clear soup with what looked like three small dumplings in it to the counter that ran around the wall. It was already lined with girls standing and eating.

“Can you make room for two hungry people, Golda Weiss?” Rose said, shoving another girl in the back.

“There’s no room, Rose. We can hardly breathe here.”

“Then hold your breath, we’re hungry and there’s nowhere else to go.” Rose elbowed her way in to a few inches of counter, then grinned at me.

“So how do you like it so far?” she asked. “Isn’t it fun? Like being on holiday, huh?” She rolled her eyes.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said.

“Ain’t that the truth. I tell you, Molly, if I could find something else to do, I’d be out of here like a shot.”

“What else is there for poor girls?” I asked.

“Only walking the streets, which makes more money, so I hear, and I understand it may even be more pleasant.”

“Rose Levy—if your father could hear you talking like that!” The girl Rose had elbowed aside spun around to look at Rose in horror. “You ask for trouble, you know. You and your mouth.”

“Just joking, Golda. For God’s sake we need to joke sometimes, don’t we?” Rose rolled her eyes again and looked back at me. “They all take life too seriously. Most of them just try to keep going until their parents make a match for them—hopefully with a guy who can afford for them not to work.”

“Their parents make a match for them? They don’t choose their own husbands?”

“That’s how it’s done in the old country.”

“So will you marry someone your parents choose for you?” I shuddered as I thought of the great, clodhopping louts that my parents would have chosen for me.

“Not me,” Rose said with a look of bravado, “only don’t tell my father. I aim to be a lady writer and support myself.”

“You do? Then you must—” I had been about to say that she must come and meet my friends in Greenwich Village, before I remembered that nobody must know I wasn’t a poor Irish girl just off the boat.

“I must what?” she asked with interest.

“You must keep going until you succeed,” I said lamely. “Have you written anything yet?”

“Lots of things, but mostly just for me. But I’m hoping to get a weekly column in the Forward someday soon. I’d like to write articles exposing the injustices in this city.”

“Like the treatment of girls in sweatshops?”

She looked at me curiously. “You’ve only been here one morning and already you notice that we’re not justly treated?”

“Paying for the company’s power and the use of the company’s mirror?” I said. “And that cold, damp room. Do they bring heaters in when it gets really cold?”

“They brought in two oil stoves last winter, but what good were two stoves for a room that size? The W.C. froze. That’s how cold it was. I tried complaining to Mr. Lowenstein himself, but it didn’t do any good. He told me if it was too cold, he’d shut down the place until the weather warmed up again. None of us can afford not to work.” She chopped off a big piece of matzoball and chewed it with satisfaction. “I’m the only breadwinner in my family.”

“Is your father sick?”

“No, just religious.” Again that wicked smile. “I told you, he’s a rabbi. In the old country he was well respected. He ran a big shul and we lived well. Here there are too many rabbis and no one earning enough money to make donations.”

“So he won’t try and get a real job, just until you’re settled here?”

“You haven’t met my father. God will provide, like Moses in the desert. I tell you, Molly—if I didn’t work, we’d all starve and God wouldn’t care.”

I looked at her with admiration. She was clearly younger than I, probably still not even twenty and yet she had taken the responsibility for her family on her young shoulders.

“I’m just not good at keeping my mouth shut,” she went on. “This is the third shop I’ve worked in. I can’t seem to shut up when the foreman is being mean to a girl or they are cheating us again.”

I found that I was staring at her in amazement. It was like looking at myself.

“What?” she demanded. “Have I spilled soup down my chin?”

I laughed. “I think you and I are going to get along just famously.”

On the way back from lunch, our stomachs satisfied and our bodies warm, I had to remind myself that I must not become too intimate with any of the girls, even Rose. Least of all Rose. Because one of them could be a link in the chain that smuggled designs out of Mostel’s and into Lowenstein’s and I ultimately would have to expose her.

As we made our way down the slick, crumbling steps and ducked into the workroom the foreman was waiting for us, hands on hips and an indignant expression on his face. “Late again! Won’t you girls ever learn?” He pointed at the clock on the wall behind him. It showed twelve thirty-three. “That will cost you ten cents. At this rate you’ll end up paying me by the end of the week.”

“We can’t be late,” I blurted out. “I looked at the clock at the deli and we had five whole minutes to cross the street.”

I felt Rose dig me in the ribs.

“Late on your first day and argumentative too? Dear me, that’s not a good sign, Miss Murphy. I’ll have to dock you twenty cents so that you learn to keep your trap shut. Now get to your machines, all of you!”

As Rose and I made our way down the line of machines she whispered to me, “I should have warned you—if you oppose him, he fines you, so it’s not worth it.”

“But I’m sure we weren’t late. How can we have taken eight minutes to cross one street?”

“We weren’t late. He puts the hands forward on the clock. He does it all the time. And he turns the hands back when we aren’t looking so that we work later at night.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That’s disgusting. Does the owner know?”

“Oh, I’m sure the owner knows all about it,” Rose said. “He turns a blind eye, if he didn’t order it in the first place.”

“It’s terrible. We should do something. They can’t treat us like that. It’s just not fair.”

Rose smiled and shook her head. “You’re new,” she said. “You’ll learn that a lot of things aren’t fair.” She leaned closer to me. “Oh, and another word of warning—don’t let Katz get you into the backroom alone. He’ll claim there is something wrong with your work, or pretend he needs to give you a talking-to. All he wants to do is to force himself on you. He’s tried it with a lot of girls.”

“I still hear talking!” Katz’s voice shouted. “Someone want no pay this week?”

We got down to work. I watched the clock carefully all evening to make sure that Mr. Katz didn’t try to move the hands backward. I was dying to catch him at it. But he didn’t go near it.

It was raining and a cold wind was blowing as we staggered up into the fresh air at seven o’clock.

“I’ll see you bright and early then,” Rose said. “He likes us in our seats at six thirty, although our day officially starts at seven.”

“If that was one day, I don’t know how I’ll manage a whole week,” I said. “My back is so stiff from that broken chair. I pointed it out to Katz and he told me I could bring my own if I wanted.”

Rose waited for a group of girls to go past, then pulled me closer to her, under an awning out of the rain. “If you really want to help change things, some of us are trying to get a union going. There’s a meeting on Wednesday night.”

I had promised myself I wouldn’t get involved. I shook my head. “I’d really like to, but . . .”

She nodded. “I understand. It’s a big risk. If someone snitches on us and the bosses find out, nobody would hire us again, but I’m willing to take the risk. I’m educated. I can think for myself. If someone doesn’t speak out for these girls, nothing will ever change.”

“You’re very brave.”

She laughed. “Maybe I’m just stupid. Me and my big mouth, huh? But I feel it’s up to me—most of these girls are peasants, they can’t even read and write. They don’t speak English well, and their families are desperate for money. So they shut up and put up with all of this. We won’t get nothing unless we unionize. My brother was with the Bund in Poland.”

“The Bund?”

“It’s a radical socialist group, working to change the old order—justice, freedom, equality for all people. Many Jewish boys were involved, even though it meant possible prison or even death. My brother had to keep his work secret from my father—my father would never have approved.”

“What does your brother do now?”

“He lies in an unmarked grave. He was executed when one of their group betrayed them to the secret police.”

I touched her arm. “I’m so sorry. So many tragedies in the world.”

“That’s why I’m doing this work with the union. Someone has to make sure my Motl didn’t die for nothing. Someone has to make sure this country is better than the last one.” She draped her shawl over her head. “Think about it and let me know if you change your mind. You’d be a real help, because you speak good English.”

“So do you.”

“Ya, but I sound like a foreigner—a newnik. Nobody’s going to take me seriously. The union loves English-speaking girls. There was this English girl who came a few times. You should have heard her talk—oy, but she talked real pretty. Just like the queen of England. ‘We’re going to make these petty tyrants sit up and listen to us,’ she said.” Rose did a fair imitation of upper-class English speech. Then she laughed. “Real hoity-toity, she was. I got a kick out of her.”

“She’s not there anymore?”

Rose shook her head. “Nah. She only came for a few weeks, then she didn’t show up no more. I expect she’d found something better—a girl like her from good family. I don’t know what she was doing working in no lousy sweatshop to start with.”

I was getting a chill up my spine and it wasn’t from the drips that were falling on us from the awning.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Kathy,” Rose said. “I remember it because none of us from Europe can say that ‘th’ sound proper. We called her Katti and she kept correcting us.”

“And when did she stop showing up?”

Rose put her hand to her mouth, thinking. “Must have been about three, four weeks ago.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I think I will come to this union meeting with you after all.”