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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