Israel (18 page)

Stefano grinned and moved on to the next man.

Abe glumly returned to his pressing machine, aware that his moment had come and gone; his vote had been cast. Once again, as in his years in the army, his money and
fate were caught up in a struggle too vast to comprehend. He thought briefly of the aristocratic quartermaster who rescued him from the Manchurian front and who lost his life in a brave but stupid attempt to quell a street riot. Abe wondered if he was being just as foolhardy.

His dismal reveries did not keep him from doing his work. He needed to earn as much as possible before the strike began.

Throughout the city votes were taken and tallied. Men and women voted over their machines in the various sweatshops. At night many gathered in cellars, apartments and cafes to talk it out over cups of espresso, over glasses of Chianti or tea. Afterward they toasted their decision in schnapps or good Polish vodka.

They voted to strike and then went home where they tried their best to hide their uncertainty and worry from their anxious families. It was hard for these new immigrants to stand up against the American establishment.

The final vote was nearly nineteen thousand in favor of striking and just over six hundred opposed. The date chosen was Thursday, July seventh at two in the afternoon.

The strike leaders had no idea what to expect. Would the workers lose their courage at the last minute and stay on the job? They needn't have worried.

By half past two on that Thursday, the lower part of Manhattan had to close the streets to traffic as thousands of people streamed from their workplaces. Singing and laughing like children at the start of a school holiday, the workers congregated at their local halls, where the dole from the union coffers was announced.

Those who needed it would get two dollars a week if single, four dollars if married. The initial euphoria faded quickly at that announcement. Abe was one of the many who scratched their heads in disbelief and felt sick with worry. Just his rent—and he was sharing his boarder's
room with two others—was three dollars a week. How was he to live?

There was constant negotiation as soon as the strike began. Rumors abounded. Things were going well; things were terrible. We've won; we've lost—it was better not to listen. No news at all was easier to bear than the unending, inaccurate whispered reports.

Roll calls were held during the day to discourage scabbing. Roving bands of picketers made the rounds to bolster morale. Impromptu concerts were staged on street corners throughout the Lower East Side to take people's minds off their troubles.

It was not only the sweatshop workers who were suffering. When the unionists' pockets were empty, so were the cash registers of the merchants who served them. So it was that idle shopkeepers were able to stand in their doorways and listen to music along with the workers.

The strike lasted through the summer. The leadership negotiated with the manufacturers, who meanwhile took out newspaper advertisements to carry their side of the argument to the public.

Abe read those advertisements in the antistrike
New York Times
as well as the prostrike editorials and news in the
Forward
. Like the great majority of the rank and file, he got his progress reports from the dailies. Since he no longer went to Allen Street every day, he no longer saw Stefano and he didn't know who else to ask about union business. The others who loitered about his local's hall on East Broadway seemed to be as much in the dark as he was. The strike committee was headquartered at the Victoria Hotel at Twenty-third and Fifth Avenue. Abe ventured up there only once. He felt out of place in the hotel's carpeted corridors. Besides, all the important union officers were far too busy to pay attention to him.

By the beginning of August more than three hundred of the smaller manufacturers had settled with the union,
recognizing most of its demands, including a forty-eight hour week and employment of a shop steward. It still remained to settle with the giants of the industry and to decide the overriding question of the closed shop.

The strike dragged on. Abe read the papers and walked the streets. The family he was boarding with was allowing him to pay a dollar a week toward his rent. Since Abe was drawing a two-dollar dole, he had some pocket money, but he was slipping into debt.

Others told him not to worry. How much could he owe—eight dollars, twelve dollars? When the new salaries began, he could repay that sum in just one week and still have almost as much in his pocket as he used to have—and that was after one week.

Abe nodded, smiled and did his best to be a loyal unionist. It was hard, though. He didn't know what to do with himself all day long. He wanted to spend as little time as possible in his room. It was August, the tenement was sweltering, his two fellow boarders were invariably there, stinking up the place with putrid herring and chattering so Abe couldn't concentrate to read. He began to while away the hours at the public library. At least there he was somewhat sheltered from the weather and could read books on retailing as well as the newspapers.

The big department stores soon entered the act as they found themselves without stock to sell. Filene's of Boston brought in the jurist Louis Brandeis, who along with lawyers for both sides tried to define “closed-shop,” while the manufacturers asked for and got an injunction against the strike from New York's Supreme Court.

There was violence. Goons attacked the pickets. Some of the strikers fought back, but the majority depended on their fellow members to prevail by sheer numbers.

The police were not sympathetic to the union. The strikers, many of whom could not speak English, were from countries where a uniform was the symbol of absolute power.
They gripped their signs, closed their eyes, said their prayers and stood their ground. Abe was one of those who was asked to interpret for these greenhorn picketers. He did not carry a sign and thus avoided being arrested. It was Abe's job to explain to the arrested picketers that they were not headed for execution or deportation but would be released in a few hours.

Abe was pleased for the chance to help, relieved to have something to do and profoundly thankful that his job prevented him from picketing. He did not want to risk jail.

The strike lasted nine weeks. On September second, amid much fanfare, the settlement was announced. Band-wagons rolled through lower Manhattan informing the workers, and once again the streets filled with joyous people celebrating what amounted to a qualified victory.

There would be no closed shops, but union members would be “preferred” for all jobs. There would be legal holidays and holy days off with full pay, but the work week would be fifty hours. The raises amounted to an average of three dollars per week.

Abe could have told them that in a negotiation you get maybe two thirds of what you ask for in the first place, and that's if you're very lucky and your opposite is a dummy. Along with everyone else Abe cheered, and when someone offered, he lifted up a drink of schnapps, but he thought, the sweatshops are no paradise, but they are a little better. The strike is over, thank God. Now let's all get back to work, and let the union pay me what it owes.

September second was a Friday. On the following Monday Abe returned to Allen Street to report for work. The day started out jolly enough, but by midmorning all the workers were stripped down to their undershirts, sipping away at their tin cans of drinking water and sweating over their machines as if the strike had never happened.

At lunchtime Abe approached Stefano and asked for a word
in private. The organizer led him to the dingy hallway with its peeling walls.

“They could have painted this place while we were out,” Stefano joked, winking at Abe. “What can I do for you, my friend?”

Abe found himself respectfully lowering his eyes. He hated himself for it, but such deference seemed called for. The first order of business on Allen Street that morning was to elect Stefano shop steward. For one instant during the voting Abe had imagined that the workers would turn to him to do the job, saying, You are our hero, Abe. You lent us the money to hold out against the manufacturers. But of course they unanimously elected Stefano.

Now he presented his tattered receipt. “Can I be paid back, since everything's over?”

De Fazio reluctantly took back the paper. “The money . . . Abe, it's not like I got the money on me, you know.”

“Of course not.”

“I gave it to the treasurer at the local hall.”

“I go there for it?”

“Nah. They turned it in to the committee at the Victoria Hotel.”

“What committee?” Abe asked. A queasy feeling was beginning to form in the pit of his stomach.

“The welfare committee.” Stefano gave back the receipt. “That's where you got to go with this.”

Abe tried to control his anger. “I didn't go to Twenty-third Street to hand the money in. Why I got to go all the way up there to get it back?”

“That's where all that kind of money went, my friend.”

“What do you mean?” Abe demanded, confused, alarmed and suspicious. “I gave you American money.”

Stefano heaved a great, patient sigh. He'd learned many things during these last nine weeks. He liked union business and he had a talent for it. He saw a place for himself in the organization, an important place. The big
shots now in control were good men who meant well, but they were more like professors than fellow-workers. For now such men were needed, but shrewd working-class champions would eventually rise from the ranks to guide their brothers to prosperity. If he wanted to be one of those champions, he would have to maintain his reputation as a regular guy.

“I meant that the money was used for different sorts of things,” he explained. “There was dole money, like you gave—”

“I lent it.”

“I mean lent. Anyway, there was dole money, lawyer money, advertising money—like that.”

“Okay. But they'll honor this?” Abe demanded, waving the receipt. “They won't give me trouble?”

Stefano shook his head. “You'll get your money. If you don't, come back to me.” He decided to reveal his secret to Abe. After all, it was the Jew's two hundred dollars that had impressed the big shots with his ability to organize his men. “Because we're friends, I tell you this. I am making a career in the union.”

“For a job, you mean?”

“Sure.”

“They got a job for you?” Abe shrugged. “I mean, there's something to do for pay now that the strike's over?”

“The job is just beginning.” Stefano realized that for all Abe's intelligence his mind was inflexible, closed to many things. He began to fear for his friend's future. America was not for the meek of heart or the staid.

“So they'll give me my money if I go to the hotel to claim it?” Abe repeated.

Stefano frowned. “I promise you, they'll give back the money. Go tomorrow before work, about eight o'clock, and see someone at the relief committee. All right?” When Abe nodded, he said. “Now I gotta eat lunch. I'm starving.”

Abe followed him back into the loft. It occurred to him that it had been a long while since his friend invited him to share his roast chicken.

The next morning Abe took the trolley up to Twenty-third Street. His palms were wet as he walked into the hotel. As he crossed the bustling lobby toward the elevators, he kept patting the receipt in his breast pocket. The crackle of the paper was reassuring.

The smirking elevator attendant made him repeat the floor three times. Eventually Abe shuffled down the corridor toward the pebbled-glass door and went inside. His heart was pounding. How he hated confronting authority. He thought fleetingly of Haim; a bit of his brashness would come in handy now.

A man in a suit and tie stood guarding the entrance to the inner offices. Abe asked him if he might see somebody on the relief committee.

The guard sized Abe up, asking if he might know the nature of his business. Abe nodded, tried to speak and found that his throat was too dry. The guard was big. Abe caught a glimpse of a pistol on the man's belt beneath his jacket. Trying his best not to look at it, he began to explain about the loan.

The guard interrupted to suggest that Abe talk to his shop steward; the union was in no position to make a loan. Indignation gave Abe courage. He pointed out that he'd come to be paid, not to borrow.

At that point the guard gave up trying to make sense of this funny-looking little man. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, telling Abe, “See Miss Grissome, down the hall on your right.”

Miss Grissome
, Abe mourned as he wandered into the warren of offices. So much for seeing a Jew. This person was clearly a Christian as well as a woman.

That a woman should work was nothing new to Abe. In Russia wives slaved alongside their husbands, and in
New York plenty of women were in the garment workers' union. There were even sweatshops where men and women labored together, although Abe had never been in such a place. What astounded him was that some women had authoritative positions. All over New York women were getting jobs as secretaries and sales clerks. They were even telephone operators. Obviously a socialistic progressive place like union headquarters would employ women, but for a man like Abe, who found it nearly impossible to talk to women in any situation, to have to come before one in a business matter was hell on earth.

Which was where Abe found himself as he approached Miss Grissome's desk. She had dark brown hair pinned up, a weak chin and wire-framed spectacles with thick lenses. She was wearing a brown skirt and a high-necked white blouse with ink smears on its frilly cuffs.

“Hello,” Abe began. “I—” She was ignoring him, seemingly engrossed in the papers before her. He colored, chiding himself for his ignorance. A bureaucrat was a bureaucrat in any country—except that in Russia one was spared the additional indignity of standing in supplication before a woman.