Between buildings that loomed like mountains, we struggled with our
bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage. Up Broadway,
under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the ghetto, we
followed Gedalyeh Mindel.
I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses,
ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and
garbage-cans cluttering the side-walks. A vague sadness pressed down my
heart--the first doubt of America.
"Where are the green fields and open spaces in America?" cried my
heart. "Where is the golden country of my dreams?"
A loneliness for the fragrant silence of the woods that lay beyond our
mud hut welled up in my heart, a longing for the soft, responsive earth
of our village streets. All about me was the hardness of brick and
stone, the stinking smells of crowded poverty.
"Here's your house with separate rooms like in a palace."
Gedalyeh Mindel flung open the door of a dingy, airless flat.
"Oi weh!" my mother cried in dismay. "Where's the sunshine in
America?"
She went to the window and looked out at the blank wall of the next
house. "Gottuniu! Like in a grave so dark ..."
"It ain't so dark, it's only a little shady." Gedalyeh Mindel
lighted the gas. "Look only"--he pointed with pride to the dim
gaslight. "No candles, no kerosene lamps in America, you turn on a
screw and put to it a match and you got it light like with sunshine."
Again the shadow fell over me, again the doubt of America!
In America were rooms without sunlight, rooms to sleep in, to eat in,
to cook in, but without sunshine. And Gedalyeh Mindel was happy. Could
I be satisfied with just a place to sleep and eat in, and a door to
shut people out--to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need
the sunlight to be happy?
And where was there a place in America for me to play? I looked out
into the alley below and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the
gutter. "Where is America?" cried my heart.
* * * * *
My eyes were shutting themselves with sleep. Blindly, I felt for the
buttons on my dress, and buttoning I sank back in sleep again--the
deadweight sleep of utter exhaustion.
"Heart of mine!" my mother's voice moaned above me. "Father is
already gone an hour. You know how they'll squeeze from you a nickel
for every minute you're late. Quick only!"
I seized my bread and herring and tumbled down the stairs and out
into the street. I ate running, blindly pressing through the hurrying
throngs of workers--my haste and fear choking each mouthful.
I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweatshop prison;
all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day's
torture.
For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated window of the old
dilapidated building--dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling
brick.
In the maw of the shop, raging around me the roar and the clatter,
the clatter and the roar, the merciless grind of the pounding
machines. Half maddened, half deadened, I struggled to think, to feel,
to remember--what am I--who am I--why was I here?
I struggled in vain--bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise.
"America--America--where was America?" it cried in my heart.
The factory whistle--the slowing-down of the machines--the shout of
release hailing the noon hour.
I woke as from a tense nightmare--a weary waking to pain.
In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled
heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to
throb and ache. My childhood choked with drudgery--must my youth too
die--unlived?
The odor of herring and garlic--the ravenous munching of food--laughter
and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked
at those around me. Were they happy or only insensible to their
slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with
rebellion against this galling grind--the crushing, deadening movements
of the body, where only hands live and hearts and brains must die?
A touch on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Yetta Solomon from the
machine next to mine.
"Here's your tea."
I stared at her, half hearing.
"Ain't you going to eat nothing?"
"Oi weh! Yetta! I can't stand it!" The cry broke from me. "I
didn't come to America to turn into a machine. I came to America to
make from myself a person. Does America want only my hands--only the
strength of my body--not my heart--not my feelings--my thoughts?"
"Our heads ain't smart enough," said Yetta, practically. "We
ain't been to school like the American-born."
"What for did I come to America but to go to school--to learn--to
think--to make something beautiful from my life ..."
"Sh-sh! Sh-sh! The boss--the boss!" came the warning whisper.
A sudden hush fell over the shop as the boss entered. He raised his
hand.
Breathless silence.
The hard, red face with pig's eyes held us under its sickening
spell. Again I saw the Cossack and heard him thunder the ukaz.
Prepared for disaster, the girls paled as they cast at each other
sidelong, frightened glances.
"Hands," he addressed us, fingering the gold watch-chain that
spread across his fat belly, "it's slack in the other trades and I
can get plenty girls begging themselves to work for half what you're
getting--only I ain't a skinner. I always give my hands a show to
earn their bread. From now on, I'll give you fifty cents a dozen
shirts instead of seventy-five, but I'll give you night-work, so you
needn't lose nothing." And he was gone.
The stillness of death filled the shop. Each one felt the heart of the
other bleed with her own helplessness.
A sudden sound broke the silence. A woman sobbed chokingly. It was
Balah Rifkin, a widow with three children.
"Oi weh!" She tore at her scrawny neck. "The blood-sucker--the
thief! How will I give them to eat--my babies--my babies--my hungry
little lambs!"
"Why do we let him choke us?"
"Twenty-five cents less on a dozen--how will we be able to live?"
"He tears the last skin from our bones!"
"Why didn't nobody speak up to him?"
"Tell him he couldn't crush us down to worse than we had in
Russia?"
"Can we help ourselves? Our life lies in his hands."
Something in me forced me forward. Rage at the bitter greed tore
me. Our desperate helplessness drove me to strength.
"I'll go to the boss!" I cried, my nerves quivering with fierce
excitement. "I'll tell him Balah Rifkin has three hungry mouths
to feed."
Pale, hungry faces thrust themselves toward me, thin, knotted hands
reached out, starved bodies pressed close about me.
"Long years on you!" cried Balah Rifkin, drying her eyes with a
corner of her shawl.
"Tell him about my old father and me, his only bread-giver," came
from Bessie Sopolsky, a gaunt-faced girl with a hacking cough.
"And I got no father or mother and four of them younger than me
hanging on my neck." Jennie Feist's beautiful young face was
already scarred with the gray worries of age.
America, as the oppressed of all lands have dreamed America to be, and
America _as it is_, flashed before me--a banner of fire! Behind me I
felt masses pressing--thousands of immigrants--thousands upon thousands
crushed by injustice, lifted me as on wings.
I entered the boss's office without a shadow of fear. I was not
I--the wrongs of my people burned through me till I felt the very flesh
of my body a living flame of rebellion.
I faced the boss.
"We can't stand it!" I cried. "Even as it is we're hungry.
Fifty cents a dozen would starve us. Can you, a Jew, tear the
bread from another Jew's mouth?"
"You, fresh mouth, you! Who are you to learn me my business?"
"Weren't you yourself once a machine slave--your life in the hands
of your boss?"
"You--loaferin--money for nothing you want! The minute they begin
to talk English they get flies in their nose.... A black year on
you--trouble-maker! I'll have no smart heads in my shop! Such
freshness! Out you get ... out from my shop!"
Stunned and hopeless, the wings of my courage broken, I groped my way
back to them--back to the eager, waiting faces--back to the crushed
hearts aching with mine.
As I opened the door they read our defeat in my face.
"Girls!" I held out my hands. "He's fired me."
My voice died in the silence. Not a girl stirred. Their heads only bent
closer over their machines.
"Here, you! Get yourself out of here!" The boss thundered at
me. "Bessie Sopolsky and you, Balah Rifkin, take out her machine into
the hall.... I want no big-mouthed Americanerins in my shop."
Bessie Sopolsky and Balah Rifkin, their eyes black with tragedy,
carried out my machine.
Not a hand was held out to me, not a face met mine. I felt them shrink
from me as I passed them on my way out.
In the street I found I was crying. The new hope that had flowed
in me so strong bled out of my veins. A moment before, our
togetherness had made me believe us so strong--and now I saw each
alone--crushed--broken. What were they all but crawling worms, servile
grubbers for bread?
I wept not so much because the girls had deserted me, but because I saw
for the first time how mean, how vile, were the creatures with whom I
had to work. How the fear for bread had dehumanized their last shred
of humanity! I felt I had not been working among human beings, but in a
jungle of savages who had to eat one another alive in order to survive.
And then, in the very bitterness of my resentment, the hardness broke
in me. I saw the girls through their own eyes as if I were inside of
them. What else could they have done? Was not an immediate crust of
bread for Balah Rifkin's children more urgent than truth--more vital
than honor?
Could it be that they ever had dreamed of America as I had dreamed? Had
their faith in America wholly died in them? Could my faith be killed as
theirs had been?
Gasping from running, Yetta Solomon flung her arms around me.
"You golden heart! I sneaked myself out from the shop--only to tell
you I'll come to see you to-night. I'd give the blood from under
my nails for you--only I got to run back--I got to hold my job--my
mother--"
I hardly saw or heard her--my senses stunned with my defeat. I walked
on in a blind daze--feeling that any moment I would drop in the middle
of the street from sheer exhaustion.
Every hope I had clung to--every human stay--every reality was torn
from under me. I sank in bottomless blackness. I had only one wish
left--to die.
Was it then only a dream--a mirage of the hungry-hearted people in the
desert lands of oppression--this age-old faith in America--the beloved,
the prayed-for "golden country"?
Had the starved villagers of Sukovoly lifted above their sorrows a mere
rainbow vision that led them--where--where? To the stifling submission
of the sweatshop or the desperation of the streets!
"O God! What is there beyond this hell?" my soul cried in
me. "Why can't I make a quick end to myself?"
A thousand voices within me and about me answered:
"My faith is dead, but in my blood their faith still clamors and
aches for fulfillment--_dead generations whose faith though beaten back
still presses on--a resistless, deathless force!_
"In this America that crushes and kills me, their spirit drives me
on--to struggle--to suffer--but never to submit."
In my desperate darkness their lost lives loomed--a living flame of
light. Again I saw the mob of dusty villagers crowding around my father
as he read the letter from America--their eager faces thrust out--their
eyes blazing with the same hope, the same age-old faith that drove
me on--
A sudden crash against my back. Dizzy with pain I fell--then all was
darkness and quiet.
* * * * *
I opened my eyes. A white-clad figure bent over me. Had I died? Was I
in the heaven of the new world--in America?
My eyes closed again. A misty happiness filled my being.
"Learning flows free like milk and honey," it dreamed itself in me.
I was in my heaven--in the schools of America--in open, sunny fields--a
child with other children. Our lesson-books were singing birds and
whispering trees--chanting brooks and beckoning skies. We breathed in
learning and wisdom as naturally as flowers breathe in sunlight.
After our lessons were over, we all joined hands skipping about like a
picture of dancing fairies I had once seen in a shop-window.
I was so full of the joy of togetherness--the great wonder of the new
world; it pressed on my heart like sorrow. Slowly, I stole away from
the other children into silent solitude, wrestling and praying to give
out what surged in me into some form of beauty. And out of my struggle
to shape my thoughts beautifully, a great song filled the world.
"Soon she's all right to come back to the shop--yes, nurse?" The
voice of Yetta Solomon broke into my dreaming.
Wearily I opened my eyes. I saw I was still on earth.
Yetta's broad, generous face smiled anxiously at me. "Lucky yet the
car that run you over didn't break your hands or your feet. So long
you got yet good hands you'll soon be back by the machine."
"Machine?" I shuddered. "I can't go back to the shop again. I
got so used to sunlight and quiet in the hospital I'll not be able to
stand the hell again."
"Shah!--Shah!" soothed Yetta. "Why don't you learn yourself
to take life like it is? What's got to be, got to be. In Russia, you
could hope to run away from your troubles to America. But from America
where can you go?"
"Yes," I sighed. "In the blackest days of Russia, there was
always the hope from America. In Russia we had only a mud hut; not
enough to eat and always the fear from the Cossack, but still we
managed to look up to the sky, to dream, to think of the new world
where we'll have a chance to be people, not slaves."
"What's the use to think so much? It only eats up the flesh from
your bones. Better rest ..."
"How can I rest when my choked-in thoughts tear me to pieces? I need
school more than a starving man needs bread."
Yetta's eyes brooded over me. Suddenly a light broke. "I got an
idea. There's a new school for greenhorns where they learn them
anything they want ..."
"What--where?" I raised myself quickly, hot with eagerness. "How
do you know from it--tell me only--quick--since when--"
"The girl next door by my house--she used to work by cigars--and now
she learns there."
"What does she learn?"
"Don't get yourself so excited. Your eyes are jumping out from your
head."
I fell back weakly: "Oi weh! Tell me!" I begged.
"All I know is that she likes what she learns better than rolling
cigars. And it's called 'School for Immigrant Girls.'"
"Your time is up. Another visitor is waiting to come in," said the
nurse.
As Yetta walked out, my mother, with the shawl over her head, rushed in
and fell on my bed kissing me.
"Oi weh! Oi weh! Half my life is out from me from fright. How did all
happen?"
"Don't worry yourself so. I'm nearly well already and will go
back to work soon."
"Talk not work. Get only a little flesh on your bones. They say they
send from the hospital people to the country. Maybe they'll send
you."
"But how will you live without my wages?"
"Davy is already peddling with papers and Bessie is selling
lolly-pops after school in the park. Yesterday she brought home already
twenty-eight cents."
For all her efforts to be cheerful, I looked at her pinched face and
wondered if she had eaten that day.
Released from the hospital, I started home. As I neared Allen Street,
the terror of the dark rooms swept over me. "No--no--I can't
yet go back to the darkness and the stinking smells," I said to
myself. "So long they're getting along without my wages, let
them think I went to the country and let me try out that school for
immigrants that Yetta told me about."
So I went to the Immigrant School.
A tall, gracious woman received me, not an employee, but a
benefactress.
The love that had rushed from my heart toward the Statue in the
Bay, rushed out to Mrs. Olney. She seemed to me the living spirit of
America. All that I had ever dreamed America to be shone to me out of
the kindness of her brown eyes. She would save me from the sordidness
that was crushing me I felt the moment I looked at her. Sympathy and
understanding seemed to breathe from her serene presence.
I longed to open my heart to her, but I was so excited I didn't know
where to begin.
"I'm crazy to learn!" I gasped breathlessly, and then the very
pressure of the things I had to say choked me.
An encouraging smile warmed the fine features.
"What trade would you like to learn--sewing-machine operating?"
"Sewing-machine operating?" I cried. "Oi weh!" I shuddered.
"Only the thought 'machine' kills me. Even when I only look
on clothes, it weeps in me when I think how the seams from
everything people wear is sweated in the shop."
"Well, then"--putting a kind hand on my shoulder--"how would you
like to learn to cook? There's a great need for trained servants and
you'd get good wages and a pleasant home."
"Me--a servant?" I flung back her hand. "Did I come to America to
make from myself a cook?"
Mrs. Olney stood abashed a moment. "Well, my dear," she said
deliberately, "what would you like to take up?"
"I got ideas how to make America better, only I don't know how to
say it out. Ain't there a place I can learn?"
A startled woman stared at me. For a moment not a word came. Then she
proceeded with the same kind smile. "It's nice of you to want to
help America, but I think the best way would be for you to learn a
trade. That's what this school is for, to help girls find themselves,
and the best way to do is to learn something useful."
"Ain't thoughts useful? Does America want only the work from my
body, my hands? Ain't it thoughts that turn over the world?"
"Ah! But we don't want to turn over the world." Her voice cooled.
"But there's got to be a change in America!" I cried. "Us
immigrants want to be people--not 'hands'--not slaves of the
belly! And it's the chance to think out thoughts that makes
people."
"My child, thought requires leisure. The time will come for
that. First you must learn to earn a good living."
"Did I come to America for a living?"
"What did you come for?"
"I came to give out all the fine things that was choked in me in
Russia. I came to help America make the new world.... They said, in
America I could open up my heart and fly free in the air--to sing--to
dance--to live--to love.... Here I got all those grand things in me,
and America won't let me give nothing."
"Perhaps you made a mistake in coming to this country. Your own land
might appreciate you more." A quick glance took me in from head to
foot. "I'm afraid that you have come to the wrong place. We only
teach trades here."
She turned to her papers and spoke over her shoulder. "I think you
will have to go elsewhere if you want to set the world on fire."