Page 126 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Immigration and sweatshops

I heard on the ship, from a man going to America for the second
time, that a presser made good money there. As I was timid and
ashamed to ask what they press in America, I pictured to myself that
they press shirts in America. Everybody was rich there and wore
boiled shirts like the rich people in Warsaw. Of course, those shirts
had to be washed often and pressed, and I could see myself standing
in a store near a big plate glass window pressing shirts and making
money to send back home to my family so they would have plenty of
food. Big plate glass windows were the symbol of rich stores and
wealth to me, because of Mottel the glazier, who used to replace the
broken panes in our window. He was an old man and blind in one
eye. Wincing with his good left eye, he would turn his head around as
if trying to shift his brain around to the right and balance his head,
and tell us that someday he was going to marry a woman with money
and go to America, where he would put in big plate glass windows
and get rich.
But my contemplation of a future existence in an unknown land
among strangers created an emptiness in my head and left me drifting
on the ocean without imagination or hope. I did not strike up any
close acquaintanceship with any of the Jews among the two thousand
passengers. The nearer the ship came to the shores of the new land
the more my mind became depressed, and the thought of being sent
back to the old country made my heart palpitate. Not knowing
anything about the new country I was fleeing to and not having a
passport or any identification papers gave me great worry and fear. In
Poland, the first question a policeman asked if he did not like your
looks was, “where is your passport?” Everyone had to carry a
passport, and I couldn’t leave my village to go the city without it. The
Statue of Liberty has an effect on those who have entered America
and are free, but when one is first in the wire stalls in Ellis Island,
where one is graded and marked like a stockyard animal to be sold
for fattening or butchering or breeding, then one has no time to
ponder or venerate that great symbol of this great country.
It was by a miracle that I was able to enter this free land—not a
heavenly performance, but the miracle of the United States Post
Office. I had escaped in a hurry without forming a plan or consulting
people who had friends in America. When I reached Holland, four
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