Page 132 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Immigration and sweatshops

we had to wait a few days until he delivered the finished garments to
the wholesale manufacturer and obtained the money to make our pay
envelopes. He had a family of seven children, and being a member of
a synagogue and a landsmanshaft society, his expenses were larger than
his income. One day when he gave me the envelope with my
earnings, he also gave me a sideways look, sizing me up from my
shoes to my head. Then he lifted his hand and gave me a pinch on
my right cheek, and said, while looking down at a garment I was
working on as if examining the shoulder, “I gave you more money
today, but you are not worth it.”
Being used from the old country to respecting an older man
before myself, and to taking their words as wise and prudent, I did
not even open the envelope until I arrived at my lodging. Yankele
Gutterman and his wife were surprised and happy to see me making
more money: now they were assured of their rent. I went that
Saturday with the first five dollars I had saved and deposited it in the
state bank on Grand Avenue; I still have the machsor for New Year’s,
which the bank gave away to anyone who opened an account. It was
that extra dollar that my benefactor Mr. Gutterman graciously
handed me without being asked that helped me save money. I was
meticulous in my spending, and much was due to my being particular
in making friends, male or female. And when one is mostly working
and passing the time reading a book or going to a free lecture—
which were plentiful in New York at that time—in a club room or on
the streets, listening to socialists and dozens of other theorists, one
has no chance to spend his money.
I got along very cheaply. I had worked for several months before I
could earn six dollars a week. Yet I saved money, penny by penny,
living on rations, working and sweating on those hot humid days in
New York in that dust-filled shop, never buying a bottle of pop—
which sold at that time for two cents. I did everything possible not to
waste a cent. When I bought two rolls and five cents of wurst in a
delicatessen on Delancey Street in the morning on the way to the
shop, I split it up and made breakfast and lunch.
By the middle of the summer of that first year I had saved up fifty
dollars, which I sent home to my father. He did not need the money
for himself; he was an old man and could live on that in Pelcovizna
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