The Family

by David Laskin

  —

  Sarah, a canny businesswoman in Russia, had become in America a timid, invisible wife who rarely left the tight circuit of house, market, and shul. Hyman was surprised, then, when his mother showed up unannounced at the Broadway showroom of A. Cohen & Sons one day. She had taken the trolley and subway down from the Bronx by herself; she had braved the transfers and the beggars, the apple carts and shoe-shine stands manned by former business executives and factory workers, the lines snaking outside soup kitchens. Sarah made her way through the arched granite portal at 584 Broadway, slipped into the A. Cohen & Sons office, murmured a few words in her halting, accented English to the receptionist, and found her son. She told Hyman that she wanted to have a word with him—without his secretary present. Sarah summoned up negotiating skills she had not used in two decades. She reminded her son of what terrible shape the city was in—unemployed men everywhere, no jobs to be had, no sign that this horrible depression had run its course. Hyman knew full well that his wife Anna’s brother Harry Raskin had lost his job. Where on earth was he going to find another one? “Hyman, you are in a fortunate economic position,” said Sarah, “but you cannot live for yourself alone. I want you to make room for Harry.” There—she had said her piece. She knew she had no business meddling in her son’s affairs, but she could not in good conscience remain silent.

  “Stop worrying,” Hyman replied without hesitation. “Go home; be happy. Harry can start working just as soon as he can get here.”

  It was not written into the bylaws, but A. Cohen had an unofficial policy of hiring any family member in need of work—in-laws too. Never had this policy been more welcome than during the Depression. They were not all promoted or highly compensated; some spent their entire careers wrapping parcels in the mail room or punching numbers into an adding machine at a bookkeeper’s desk; occasionally, though rarely, one had to be fired. But no family member was turned away, even when the business was struggling to stay alive.

  And the business was indeed struggling. At the end of 1930, Isidor Boguslav, a Brooklyn public accountant, did the A. Cohen & Sons audit and revealed that the company had earned a pretty skimpy profit that year. Though sales had netted $1,091,974.05, the brothers had to write off $32,332.77 in bad debts. After subtracting salaries, rent, office expenses, insurance, taxes, the cost of the merchandise, and all the other odds and ends of running a business, they ended up netting $7,778.36. In other words, they were in the black—but just barely. Somewhere hidden in those columns of numbers was the loss that Sam had taken on his Consolidated Gas stock.

  Nobody got rich off A. Cohen & Sons that year, but everyone in the family who wanted a job had one, including Harry Raskin.

  —

  Itel had always been more hard-nosed than her brothers when it came to the bottom line. If a relative showed promise, she’d find a place, but she had zero tolerance for deadwood, no matter where it grew on the family tree. Though Maiden Form had a raft of Rosenthals and eventually a couple of Cohen cousins and nephews on the payroll, the company never adopted A. Cohen’s open-door policy for family.

  Once the Depression hit, relatives had an even tougher time getting hired at Maiden Form, because they had to compete with huge numbers of unemployed strangers. William’s brother Moe, the manager of the Bayonne factory, could barely get through supper without someone knocking on his door “crying that they needed a job to feed their children.” Their sister Masha was besieged by job seekers whenever she went outside. “They used to push presents into my hands,” Masha said, “I should give them a job. I never took the presents but would ask them to please come to the factory. Sometimes we would have hundreds of people, sitting and waiting for jobs at Eighteenth Street. Moe used to pick out some people, and I would pick out some of them, and we would interview them and hire them.”

  The family firms were fortunate. The year 1930 was bad but 1931 was worse. Nationwide, unemployment nearly doubled again from 4.3 million in 1930 to 8 million in 1931, more than five times what it had been just two years earlier. Stocks continued to sink, with sharp drops from the late winter into spring and again in September and December. That summer, drought decimated grain crops in the Plains states, killing the livelihood of tens of thousands of farmers, while European bank failures led to the collapse of the German and Austrian economies. By year’s end, New York City soup kitchens were serving some eighty-five thousand free meals every day. In October 1931, about 40 percent of Chicago’s workers were unemployed; in Boston the figure hovered around 30 percent; in Detroit it reached 50 percent. There was no relief and no end in sight.

  On the last day of the terrible year of 1931, Abraham and Sarah gathered their family, friends, neighbors, and business associates—some 175 guests in all—to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary in the Bronx. The Cohens rented out the ballroom of Burnside Manor, a big fancy function hall with crystal chandeliers and brocaded drapes. Women arrived in full-length gowns and a few had furs wrapped around their shoulders against the winter chill; the men were clean shaven and sleek in their tuxedoes and slicked-back hair—except for Abraham and half a dozen frum (observant) fellows from the shul who covered their heads and left their beards untrimmed as the law prescribed. On the dais, Abraham and Sarah held the place of honor at the center of the table, with their offspring arrayed by age around them: Itel in a low-cut black dress sat beside her father; Ethel pinned to a huge trailing corsage sat beside her mother; then Harry and Sallie; Sam and Gladys; Hyman and Anna; Lillie and her husband Joe. They dined on gefilte fish and consommé, sweetbreads, roast chicken, and candied sweet potatoes. At midnight they cheered and toasted the patriarch and matriarch—not with champagne (Prohibition would not be repealed for two more years) but with celery tonic and Appolinaris sparkling water. The photographer hired to commemorate the event must have told the guests to look dignified because in the official photo nearly every face is wary and mirthless. William frowns fixedly at the tablecloth: Itel, sporting a long strand of pearls, seems about to cry; Sarah, standing behind her white tiered cake, gazes off anxiously to the side, as if scanning the doors for gate-crashers.

  A week earlier a little boy had approached Abraham in the street, tugged at his sleeve, and asked for a present. “Can I have a new toy gun, please?” The same thing happened every December: because of the long white beard, they took him for Santa Claus or pretended they did. Abraham smiled and shook his finger at the child. “Vuz you good?” he asked, playing along. Maybe kids in the Bronx thought Santa had a Yiddish accent. Abraham laughed it off but Sarah worried. Who knows what the goyim said to their children about the rich Jew with the beard and the business named after him? The scribe and his family had done well for themselves in their two decades in America—maybe too well. Back in Russia a Jew with money either left or lost it or had it taken by the government. Times were hard—if things got worse, the same thing could happen here.

  The party broke up after midnight and the guests returned to their apartments and row houses. The next morning they all awoke to a new year—1932—the year that 12 million Americans, nearly a quarter of the labor pool, would be out of work. It was the year that the Great Depression hit its nadir. Even Maiden Form sales declined.

  —

  That summer in New York, the Dow Jones industrial average bottomed out at forty-one points, nearly 90 percent below its high of three years earlier. Some 34 million Americans had no source of income—over a quarter of the nation’s population subsisted on handouts, or starved. Never had the extended family been so grateful to Itel, Harry, Sam, and Hyman for having the foresight and stamina to operate two successful, or at least solvent, businesses. Mrs. Bissett had retired from Maiden Form due to poor health and Joe had been more or less squeezed to the sidelines. The company was Itel and William’s to run as they pleased. Itel kept her eye on the bottom line and dealt with the bankers; William cranked out one new patent after another—nursing bra, maternity bra, full-fa
shion bra “made with a knitted cup shaped on a form without a single seam,” scooped out demi-bra to wear with low-cut dresses, formal bra contoured around low-backed evening gowns. To keep growing they pushed into overseas markets—Europe, Latin America, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, Egypt, India. Women all over the globe had breasts, and Itel made sure they found out how much better their breasts felt with a little uplift. Back when she first started selling bras, Itel had offered her customers a money-back guarantee: go home, slip it on, and ask your husband what he thinks. If he turned up his nose, you could bring the bra back and collect your refund. Itel, of course, won that bet. There was no need for gimmicks or money-back guarantees anymore. Sales were a bit off in 1932, but Itel wasn’t worried. She had become a shrewd businesswoman—one of the first and one of the best. She knew that this depression wouldn’t last forever. Instead of hunkering down, she concentrated on expanding markets and maintaining quality.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about as long as we have back orders,” Moe kept telling the operators on the Bayonne factory floor. As a sign of their financial solidity, Itel and William moved the corporate showroom uptown to 200 Madison Avenue and added a second factory in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Maiden Form was in it for the long haul.

  —

  In the mad rush of legislation with which he kicked off his first one hundred days in office, FDR pushed through the National Industrial Recovery Act—a bill that significantly bolstered the heft of labor unions by granting them the right to collective bargaining. Plutocrats howled that the newly empowered unions would put them out of business, but the act was popular with workers, including workers at the Maiden Form factory in Bayonne.

  On October 14, 1933, the city of Bayonne turned out for the biggest parade in its history—the National Recovery Act parade mounted in support of the new National Recovery Agency. Sixty marching bands led twenty-five thousand working people up Bayonne’s main artery and into the City Park Stadium. Every major Bayonne business from the A&P to Sears Roebuck did their bit with a flag or a poster or a special sale ($3.60 tires at Sears; 99-cent hats at W. T. Grant), and Maiden Form was no exception. The operators had whipped up an enormous brassiere and mounted it on poles like a banner; the prettiest girls in the company were enlisted to carry it up Broadway in the parade. It was a mild sunny Saturday afternoon, and the crowd cheered wildly when the breeze came up and the giant brassiere filled like a sail. Men standing on the sidewalks tossed coins into the swelling fluttering cups.

  Itel and William would have plenty of labor trouble at the Bayonne plant in the years ahead. But not that day. Labor and management were all smiles for the National Recovery Act parade as the giant Maiden Form bra sailed up Broadway jingling with change.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “WE WILL BE GLAD TO TAKE YOU BACK”

  Shalom Tvi’s youngest daughter, Sonia, was eighteen years old when she introduced herself to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the fiery right-wing Zionist leader who advocated aggressive, maximal Zionist expansion in Palestine. Jabotinsky was speaking at a conference in Warsaw, and, after much badgering, Sonia persuaded her parents to let her attend. Though she was still a girl, black haired, slender waisted, moody, she was a girl who had made up her mind. Jabotinsky was her man. Betar, the militant youth movement that rallied round Jabotinsky, was her party. “You can’t buy a country—you have to pay in blood!” Jabotinsky declaimed when he toured Poland to drum up support for his Revisionist Party. Sonia believed it was the truth. She didn’t care that Jabotinsky was known as the Jewish Mussolini because he favored solemn parades and armed, uniformed foot soldiers. Sonia liked the swagger. She wore the brown shirt, she learned the drills, she supported the fastest possible expansion of Jewish territory, with violence if need be. In Warsaw, when she saw the great man in the crowd at the convention, Sonia went up and introduced herself. She stood before the comrade of Joseph Trumpeldor and proudly informed him that she was a Kohen from Rakov, a Zionist and a loyal member of Betar. One day soon she would make aliyah and fight the good fight in Eretz Israel.

  Sonia never said what Jabotinsky replied to her—but he must have been impressed. Strong willed and beautiful, warm, confident, single-minded, Sonia was the female soul of Zionism. Who wouldn’t want her marching in their army? Though she was the baby of the family—seven years younger than her married sister, Doba, forever quarreling with the skinny, brittle middle sister Etl—Sonia was no baby. She knew exactly what she wanted. Like her cousin Chaim, she had attended the Tarbut school in Vilna. She had no desire, however, for Doba’s comfortable life in Vilna with a husband and baby. If she stayed in Rakov she knew she would get sucked into the never-ending fuss over finding a match for Etl and the never-ending worry over the leather business. She had no stomach for such things. Sonia was a good daughter to Beyle and Shalom Tvi. She tried to be an observant Jew like her parents, but it would kill her to spend her days selling belts and harnesses to Belarusian peasants and her Shabbats gossiping in the women’s section at shul. She endured life in exile only because she knew it would end. The economic crash of 1929 blew past her—Rakov was hit especially hard since the Soviets had sealed the border to Minsk and put an end to the lucrative smuggling operations. Sonia, however, was not thinking about the economy. The only news that mattered to her was about the unrest in the Land. Lots of other pretty young girls in Rakov called themselves Zionists—they sang “Hatikva” and danced the hora in the parlor of the haberdasher’s house on Zaslavi Street and flirted with the Zionist boys. Sonia was not flirting. She spoke perfect Hebrew. She had met Jabotinsky and gotten his blessing. She devoured the letters that Chaim sent the family from Herzliya. Where one cousin led, the other would follow.

  But first she had to convince her parents to let her go.

  For all the fine Zionist rhetoric about absolute equality between men and women, a daughter was still a daughter. Chaim had departed for Palestine to a chorus of Hebrew folk songs and a flourish of handkerchiefs. When Sonia’s time came there would be tears.

  —

  Sonia turned twenty-two the spring of 1932—old enough to decide her own fate. Maybe too old to be a fresh wife, the yentas whispered behind her back—though in truth she had never been more beautiful. Her step was light, her body supple, her skin clear and glowing, her smile, on the rare occasions she allowed herself to smile, warm and inviting. She was a graduate of the Tarbut Gymnasium in Vilna. She spoke Hebrew with her Zionist friends, Yiddish at home, Polish in the shops. She read Tolstoy, Chekov, and Turgenev in Russian. But now she was through with Yiddish and Russian. She was through with Poland. She was through with servants, coffeehouses, forests, rivers, mushrooms, snow, cemeteries shrouded in pine shadow, forbidden churches with their icons and stained glass. Sonia had made up her mind to go to Palestine. But she couldn’t leave without her family’s blessing.

  Shalom Tvi and Beyle had no problem with their daughter’s Zionist views, at least in theory. Shalom Tvi shared her enthusiasm for Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Party and often spoke of making aliyah himself one day. But it was one thing to let her go to meetings, sing the folk songs, dance the hora, wear the shirt—and another to let her risk her life alone and unprotected in the wilds of Palestine. They were a family of worriers. How could they take this calmly? Shalom Tvi worried about how a girl with no skills or experience could support herself over there. Etl, competitive and envious, worried that she’d end up an old maid in dreary Rakov while her younger sister played under the palm trees. Soft-hearted teary Doba worried that she’d never see her again. Her mother worried about everything else—what she would wear, what she would eat, whether she would be happy so far from home, how she would survive the malaria, the cholera, the heat, the Arabs. Their life was comfortable in Rakov. Did Sonia have any idea how much she would suffer in Palestine?

  Sonia knew the path she had chosen was the right one; she had perfect faith in herself; there was nothing else she wanted out of
life. Wasn’t that enough? When a son made aliyah, he packed his bags, promised to write, and set off. For a daughter it was a never-ending opera of hand-wringing and second-guessing.

  Toward the end there were raised voices and slammed doors. A terrible row blew up between Etl and Sonia that would haunt them both forever. The parents withdrew into sighs and tears. There was endless bureaucratic delay and confusion about securing a visa. In the wake of the 1929 riots, the British had begun to backpedal on their liberal policy toward Jewish immigration to Palestine and by 1932 the visa process had become a nightmare. But the family was worse than any bureaucrat. Every time Sonia raised the subject, they came up with another reason to delay—or cancel. Guilt flowed in a torrent. How could she leave her aging mother? How would Etl find a husband when she had to spend all her time looking after the house and tending to the business? And what about Doba? Had Sonia forgotten that her sister was pregnant with her second child? Why not put off the trip until the next year so she could attend the bris of her new nephew? Her mother would die of grief. Her father would bankrupt himself sending her money. She’d have to turn right around and run home. She was being irrational. She’d regret it forever. She had no idea what she was letting herself in for.

  “I was twenty one and a half when I left home in Rakov,” Sonia told her children many years later (in fact, she was a year older). “I behaved like a grown-up and did not take a cent from my parents. I did not want to, saying that I would work hard, that I would do laundry for money. I did many loads of laundry in Herzliya as well as Kfar Vitkin—I did not mind.”