Page 130 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text
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Immigration and sweatshops
speaking in English, that I no longer looked like a greenhorn. That
meant that I had to go to work and earn my livelihood.
On the third day after the landing operation I felt like a patient
who hurts on the third day after an operation by a doctor, when it is
the crisis. Itzshe, who was a presser, took me to the shop where he
worked. It was a clothing factory on Bleeker Street, where Benjamin
Perlman was foreman. Fifty machines with men bent over them were
making a terrific noise. Piles of material were laying in heaps next to
the chairs of the men at the machines, some of it flying up to the
machine on the table and some of it going back down in a hurry. If a
man was older, with whiskers, he was sent to the pressing table, given
an iron—which, in most of those places, was heated on a narrow gas
burner—and began by pressing under the seams of coats and
trousers, working for this manufacturer’s subcontractor for the first
two weeks without pay.
The younger fellows had to work on sewing machines, either
treadle or power machines in the larger places, also without pay for
two weeks—and pay the foreman five or ten dollars. I was put to
work on a power sewing machine, but since I knew the foreman I
was privileged and did not pay him. He led me to a machine and sat
down first, showing me how to do the work and how to handle the
machine, which was powered by a gas engine. The loft where the
shop was located was a hall with the designers, cutters, and operators
on the same floor, and, as it is the nature of all working people, they
looked with discrimination on a newcomer joining their trade. Those
hundreds of eyes looking at me with serious glances, together with
the noise and my timidness, made me feel on the verge of fainting.
The foreman put his hand on my shoulder as a signal to sit down on
the chair and start to work.
It was not hard for me to learn sewing, as I used to help my sister
Chaia sew and repair her machine at home in Pelcovizna. I always
liked to tinker with my hands more than think with my head. My first
job was making linings for the sleeves of boys’ coats that the place
was manufacturing. I did not grasp it right away, but nearby were
sitting several young men also making the same kind of sleeve linings,
and they began telling me in my own language how to handle the
material and the machine. I soon found out, after making their
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