It was about this time that I found myself
confronted with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business
affairs. There were several circumstances that made it possible for
a financial midget like myself to outbid the lions of the
cloak-and-suit industry. Now, however, a new circumstance arose
which threatened to rob me of my chief advantage and to
undermine the very foundation of my future
The rent of my loft, which was in the slums, was, comparatively
speaking, a mere trifle, while my overhead expense amounted to
scarcely anything at all.
I did my own bookkeeping, and a thirteen-year-old girl,
American-born, school-bred, and bright, whose bewigged mother
was one of my finishers, took care of the shop while I was out,
helped me with my mail, and sewed on buttons
between-whiles--all for four dollars a week. Another finisher, a
young widow, saved me the expense of a figure woman. To which
should be added that I did business on a profit margin far beneath
the consideration of the well-known firms. All this, however, does
not include the most important of all the items that gave me an
advantage over the princes of the trade. That was cheap labor
Three of my men were excellent tailors. They could have easily
procured employment in some of the largest factories, where they
would have been paid at least twice as much as I paid them. They
were bewhiskered, elderly people, strictly orthodox and extremely
old-fashioned as to dress and habits. They felt perfectly at home in
my shop, and would rather work for me and be underpaid than be
employed in an up-to-date factory where a tailor was expected to
wear a starched collar and necktie and was made the butt of
ridicule if he covered his head every time he took a drink of water.
These, however, were minor advantages. The important thing, the
insurmountable obstacle which kept these three skilled tailors
away from the big cloak-shops, was the fact that one had to work
on Saturdays there, while in my place one could work on Sunday
instead of Saturday
My pressers were of the same class as my tailors. As for my
operators, who were younger fellows and had adopted American
ways, my shop had other attractions for them. For example, my
operations were limited to a very small number of styles, and, as
theirs was piece-work, it meant greater earnings. While the
employee of a Broadway firm (or of one of its contractors) was
engaged on a large variety of garments, being continually shifted
from one kind of work to another, a man working for me would be
taken up with the same style for many days in succession, thus
developing a much higher rate of speed and a fatter pay-envelope
Altogether, I always contrived to procure the cheapest labor
obtainable, although this, as we have seen, by no means implied
that my "hands" were inferior mechanics. The sum and substance
of it all was that I could afford to sell a garment for less than what
was its cost of production in the best-known cloak-houses
My business was making headway when the Cloak and Suit
Makers' Union sprang into life again, with the usual rush and
commotion, but with unusual portents of strength and stability. It
seemed as if this time it had come to stay. My budding little
establishment was too small, in fact, to be in immediate danger. It
was one of a scattered number of insignificant places which the
union found it difficult to control. Still, cheap labor being my
chief excuse for being, the organization caused me no end of worry
"Just when a fellow is beginning to make a living all sorts of black
dreams will come along and trip him up," I complained to Meyer
Nodelman, bitterly.
"A bunch of good-for-nothings, too lazy to work, will stir up
trouble, and there you are."
"Oh, it won't last long," Meyer Nodelman consoled me. "Don't be
excited, anyhow. Business does not always go like grease, you
know. You must be ready for trouble too."
He told me of his own experiences with unions and he drifted into
a philosophic view of the matter. "You and I want to make as
much money as possible, don't we?" he said. "Well, the
working-men want the same. Can you blame them? We are
fighting them and they are fighting us. The world is not a
wedding-feast, Levinsky. It is a big barn-yard full of chickens and
they are scratching one another, and scrambling over one another.
Why? Because there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each
chicken wants to get as much of it as possible. So let us try our
best. But why be mad at the other chickens? Scratch away,
Levinsky, but what's the use being excited?"
He gave a chuckle, and I could not help smiling, but at heart I was
bored and wretched.
The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages, yet they
were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could not afford to
pay high wages.
If I had to, I should have to get out of business.
Officially mine had become a union shop, yet my men continued
to work on non-union terms. They made considerably more
money by working for non-union wages than they would in the
places that were under stringent union supervision. They could
work any number of hours in my shop, and that was what my
piece-workers wanted. To toil from sunrise till long after sunset
was what every tailor was accustomed to in Antomir, for instance.
Only over there one received a paltry few shillings at the end of
the week. while I paid my men many dollars
So far, then, I had been successful in eluding the vigilance of the
walking delegates and my shop was in full blast from 5 in the
morning to midnight, whereas in the genuine union shops the
regular workday was restricted to ten hours, and overtime to three,
which, coupled with the especial advantage accruing from a
limited number of styles handled, made my shop a desirable place
to my "hands."
A storm broke. All cloak-manufacturers formed a coalition and
locked out their union men. A bitter struggle ensued. As it was
rich in quaint "human-nature" material, the newspapers bestowed
a good deal of space upon it
I made a pretense of joining in the lockout, my men clandestinely
continuing to work for me. More than that, my working force was
trebled, for, besides filling my own orders, I did some of the work
of a well-known firm which found it much more difficult to
procure non-union labor than I did. What was a great calamity to
the trade in general seemed to be a source of overwhelming
prosperity to me. But the golden windfall did not last long.
The agitation and the picketing activities of the union, aided by the
Arbeiter Zeitung, a Yiddish socialist weekly, were spreading a
spell of enthusiasm (or fear) to which my men gradually
succumbed. My best operator, a young fellow who exercised
much influence over his shopmates and who had hitherto been
genuinely devoted to me, became an ardent convert to union
principles and led all my operatives out of the shop. I organized a
shop elsewhere, but it was soon discovered
Somebody must have reported to the editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung
that at one time I had been a member of the union myself, for that
weekly published a scurrilous paragraph, branding me as a traitor
I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain, and yet the sight of
my name in print flattered my vanity, and when the heat of my
fury subsided I became conscious of a sneaking feeling of
gratitude to the socialist editor for printing the attack on me. For,
behold! the same organ assailed the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the
Rothschilds, and by calling me "a fleecer of labor" it placed me in
their class. I felt in good company. I felt, too, that while there
were people by whom "fleecers" were cursed, there were many
others who held them in high esteem, and that even those who
cursed them had a secret envy for them, hoping some day to be
fleecers of labor like them
The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the appellation
of "cockroach manufacturer" by which it referred to me. I was
going to parade the "quip" before Max and Dora, but thought
better of it. The notion of Dora hearing me called "cockroach"
made me squirm
But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph, and one evening as I
came home for supper he said, good-naturedly: "You got a
spanking, didn't you? I have seen what they say in the Arbeiter
Zeitung about you."
"Oh, to the eighty black years with them!" I answered, blushing,
and hastened to switch the conversation to the lockout and strike
in general.
"Oh, we'll get all the men we want," I said. "It's only a matter of
time.
We'll teach these scoundrels a lesson they'll never forget."
"If only you manufacturers stick together."
"You bet we will. We can wait. We are in no hurry. We can wait
till those tramps come begging for a job," I said. For the benefit of
Dora I added a little disquisition on the opportunities America
offered to every man who had brains and industry, and on the
grudge which men like myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows.
"Those union leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work.
That's why they can't work themselves up," I said. "Yes, and that's
why they begrudge those who can. All those scoundrels are able to
do is to hatch trouble."
I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes and of
long standing. That some of the big cloak firms had promised to
back me with funds to keep me from yielding to the union I never
mentioned.