Flesh and Blood So Cheap

by Albert Marrin

  The Bowery attracted those with less wholesome tastes. Bowery is a Dutch word for a country lane lined with farms and orchards. When George Washington led his victorious army into the city in 1783, Bowery farmers cheered and waved. A century later, the only thing that remained of the old Bowery was the name. Now it was New York’s center of sin. Every street had its gangster hangouts, drug dealers, prostitutes, pool halls, flophouses, and gambling dens. Music blared from sleazy dance halls. Drunken men stumbled out of saloons; they lay on the sidewalk until they awoke on their own or the police took them to jail for the night. A song told of an out-of-towner who got more than he expected on the Bowery:

  I was out to enjoy the sights,

  There was the Bow’ry ablaze with lights;

  I had one of the devil’s own nights! …

  The Bow’ry, the Bow’ry!

  They say such things,

  And they do such things

  On the Bow’ry! The Bow’ry!

  I’ll never go there anymore!19

  A view of the Bowery. Note the “el”—elevated railroad—on each side of the street. (picture credit 2.23)

  Tenement children flocked to their neighborhood streets. Unable to afford store-bought games and toys, they used their imagination to invent their own. Boys played stoopball with a rubber ball thrown against the edges, or “points,” of the outer steps of a tenement and stickball, the street version of baseball, with a broomstick bat. They also liked prisoner’s base, a form of tag, tug-of-war, and blindman’s bluff. Girls went in for jacks, potsy (hopscotch), beanbag, and jump rope. Those who lived near stables had other “games.” Blanche Levy, of Cherry Street, recalled: “I used to play on the dead horses. They’d just leave ’em layin’ on the street, and then we’d play king of the hill on there. After a while, the smell didn’t bother us.”20

  The streets taught life lessons. Immigrant children got “street smarts,” wisdom about people and city ways and how to survive there. These youngsters, public school teachers said, had “old heads,” common sense beyond their years.

  Public schools were public—open to all. No fees. No entrance exams. No religious quotas. Having faced discrimination, in Russia, Jews took advantage of the public schools more than any other immigrant group. Learning, they believed, was their passport to a better life. Jewish parents brought their children to the first day of school “as if it were an act of consecration,” a blessing. Mothers who could not speak English would take their children to the local public library and hold up their fingers to indicate the number of cards they wanted. “Go, learn, read,” they told the youngsters.21

  Boys playing stickball in an alley, circa 1910. (picture credit 2.24)

  Children playing near a dead horse. (picture credit 2.25)

  Italians did much the same. A newspaper article urged: “Let us do as the Jews … invade the schools, teach ourselves, have our children taught, open to them the school paths by means of the hatchet of knowledge and genius.”22

  That “hatchet” cut deeply. Like those who had come before and would come after, the new immigrants found that America’s genius lay in its ability to change millions of greenhorns into productive citizens. Yet this did not happen by waving a magic wand. It demanded willpower, sacrifice, work—and time.

  III

  Oh, God! That bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

  —Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)

  Work

  Immigrants understood that unless they found work, and quickly, they could not survive, let alone prosper. Early-twentieth-century America had nothing like the social “safety net” we take for granted today. No unemployment benefits. No old-age pensions. No Social Security. No health insurance or Medicare. Apart from help from a few private charities, the rule was the same as in 1607 for settlers at Jamestown, Virginia: “He that doth not work shall not eat.”

  Since immigrant groups had different backgrounds, when they first arrived, they favored different occupations. Most men from the land time forgot had been country folk, peasants. This limited Italians to unskilled jobs in the cities. Chiefly manual laborers, they took, bigots snarled, “work no white man could stand.” Yet such bitter resentment ignores a key fact: they did work that had to be done if America was to grow and prosper.

  Those who knew the score appreciated the newcomers. “We need these strong and willing Italian laborers who are doing the hard work of the nation,” said a journal for engineers. “They have strong arms and willing hearts, and they give the country their strength and their health in return for a living.” Italian dockworkers loaded and unloaded ships. Italian construction workers dug tunnels and sewers, put in water mains, and built skyscrapers.1

  A group of Italian street-construction workers beneath the Sixth Avenue elevated railway, 1910. (picture credit 3.1)

  New York City owes its subways mainly to former peasants who earned a dollar a day for dangerous, backbreaking work. Although some sections needed special machines to bore through solid rock, wherever possible engineers favored the quicker “cut-and-cover” method. With picks, shovels, and jackhammers—power drills that use a hammering action—workers dug a deep trench in a street. Then they covered the trench with wooden planks to support traffic. After completing the steel-and-concrete tunnel and laying the tracks, they removed the planks and repaved the street above. Building subways was dangerous. Cave-ins buried men alive. Accidents with dynamite blew men apart. Moving trains were always a menace. “The slaughter of Italians … yesterday was simply awful,” a newspaper reported after a train hit a group of track workers. “The men were torn and mangled and their blood was scattered all over the tracks.”2

  Ambitious workers tried to save a few pennies from their weekly wages. Eventually, they invested in a fruit stand, a small bakery or grocery store, perhaps even imported favorite foods like olive oil and cheeses from Italy. Others, like shoemakers, followed trades learned in their villages, opening shoe repair shops; their boys might earn a little money by shining shoes and selling newspapers at subway entrances.

  Russian Jews came from a different background than southern Italians. Many were already skilled artisans and small-time merchants when they left the shtetl. Fired by ambition to succeed in their new country, they might start as peddlers, carrying their wares in a sack or basket. Day in and day out, they climbed rickety tenement stairs and knocked on doors. In Yiddish or broken English they pleaded, “Suspenders, collah buttons, matches, hankeches—please, lady, buy.”3

  One might also rent or buy a pushcart. This carryover from the shtetl was a two-wheeled cart pushed from street to street or, more likely, parked in a marketplace. In New York, that was the Chazir-mark, Yiddish for “Pig-market,” located on Hester Street in the heart of the Lower East Side. Shoppers could find anything in the Pig-market but pork. (Pigs are not kosher—that is, ritually pure, according to Jewish law.) The term may have come from the street being crowded as a pigpen.

  Mulberry Street in Little Italy, 1900. (picture credit 3.2)

  Pushcarts stretched far as the eye could see. Jacob Riis reported:

  The Pig-market is in Hester Street … and up and down the side streets two or three blocks, as the state of trade demands.… There is scarcely anything that can be hawked from a wagon that is not to be found, and at ridiculously low prices. Bandannas and tin cups at two cents, peaches at a cent a quart, “damaged” eggs for a song, hats for a quarter.… Frowsy-looking chickens and half-plucked geese, hung by the neck and protesting with wildly strutting feet even in death against the outrage, are the great staple of the market.… Here is a woman churning horse-raddish on a machine.… Beside her is a butcher’s stand with cuts and prices [uptowners] never dreamed of. Old coats are hawked for fifty cents, “as good as new,” and “pants” … at anything that can be got.4

  Beside these items, Pig-market vendors offered dried codfish and salt herrings and pastrami—slabs of smoked beef seasoned with herbs and spices. Tall barrels st
ood brimful with pickled cucumbers, at two for a penny, in salty brine. Pick your pickle; roll up your sleeve and reach into the barrel as far as you can! Thirsty? Spend a few cents for a bottle of seltzer, or belchwasser (belch water), or an egg cream, a mixture of seltzer, milk, and chocolate syrup. Pushcarts featured mounds of sour Polish bread, made from coarse, whole rye and black as tar. Also heaps of bagels, hard rolls made of dough shaped into a ring, and bialys, rolls with a depressed center that are covered with onion flakes, just as in Bialystok, Poland. During times of unemployment, families often had little more than potatoes to fill their bellies. As the song put it:

  Sunday, potatoes

  Monday, potatoes

  Tuesday and Wednesday, potatoes

  Thursday and Friday, potatoes

  Saturday, for a change, a potato pudding,

  And Sunday again we have potatoes.

  Pushcart peddlers on Hester Street. (picture credit 3.3)

  Eyeglasses sold briskly, at thirty-five cents a pair. Jewish men prized eyeglasses because, apart from helping them see better, they “said something” about the wearer; sidewalk photographers kept them on hand so that clients might pose as learned, book-reading gentlemen. Whatever the item, buyers tried to get sellers to lower their prices. Bargaining was part of the game of buying and selling. A good bargainer gained respect. A poor bargainer was a schlemiel, Yiddish for “pushover,” a bumbling fool of a creature.

  Peddling and selling from pushcarts were important occupations; however, Jewish immigrants’ chief work lay in “rags,” slang for the clothing industry.

  Rags

  Humans have three basic needs: food, shelter, clothing. Until modern times, most people made their clothes in their own homes. Each garment was unique, its various parts cut with shears, fitted to the individual wearer, and then sewn together by hand. Wealthy men had their clothes “tailor-made” by traveling or town-based tailors; seamstresses made women’s dresses. In cities, the poor usually wore clothes discarded by their social “betters.” Dealers visited affluent neighborhoods, ringing a bell and calling, “I buy old clothes for cash.” Later, they sold these to shopkeepers or pushcart vendors, who then sold them to the poor.

  Ready-made, or ready-to-wear, clothing had existed since the 1700s. By the end of sea voyages, often lasting a year or more, sailors had worn their canvas work clothes to shreds. Returning to port, they needed replacements before shipping out again. Some tailors’ families worked together, making “slops,” sailor slang for cheap, loose-fitting smocks and baggy trousers sold in “slop shops.” Slops came in one size. If he was handy with needle and thread, the sailor took them in or let them out to suit himself. Families also specialized in making clothing for slaves. Southern plantation owners found it cheaper to buy ready-made clothing rather than have slaves spend time away from the fields being fitted.

  The Civil War (1861–65) ended slavery in the United States, its most important contribution to American life. Yet it also made a contribution that is often overlooked: it changed the way people dressed.

  When the Civil War began, the U.S. government paid to have soldiers’ uniforms custom-made in workers’ homes. But as armies expanded, so did the demand for mass-produced uniforms. Measurements taken of thousands of soldiers allowed tailors to make uniforms in various sizes. After the war, these measurements became standard for men’s civilian clothing. Manufacturers adopted standard sizes for women’s clothing, too. Thus, for the first time, consumers could buy “off-the-rack” clothes in standard sizes; chemical dyes developed in laboratories by scientists made it possible to produce clothes in a wider variety of colors than ever before. Off-the-rack, in turn, led to specialized stores that sold men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing. For farmers and others who lived in the countryside, firms like Sears, Roebuck and Company sold all kinds of goods—tools, toys, false teeth, patent medicines, clothing—by mail-order catalog.

  Two inventions turned ready-made clothing into a big business. First, in the 1850s, Isaac Merritt Singer and other inventors began to sell their version of the sewing machine. Powered by a treadle, a pedal worked by foot, these sewing machines enabled an operator to sew up to four hundred stitches a minute; a skilled person could sew only thirty-five stitches a minute by hand. While the sewing machine made it easier to make clothes for oneself at home, it had the greatest impact on production for the mass market. The second invention came in the 1870s, when the cutter’s knife replaced shears. This razor-sharp blade cut up to sixteen layers of cloth at a time, each piece exactly like the other. These inventions did more than lower clothing prices. They helped change the way people saw themselves.5

  An advertisement for ready-to-wear clothing for men of different heights and sizes, circa 1890. (picture credit 3.4)

  An English proverb went, “Clothes make the man,” and the woman, too. Traditionally, clothing did more than cover the body. Well-made, elegant clothing was an advertisement, revealing at a glance the wearer’s social rank and thus the respect due from the “lower orders.” For example, in 1853 W. E. Baxter, a wealthy English merchant, noted that “it is no mark of gentility to wear a dress unsuitable to one’s means and employment.” In other words, people should know their “place.” Workers should not dress “above their station,” while “gentlefolk” must dress according to their rank in society. All this changed with the rise of ready-made clothing.6

  An 1892 advertisement for Singer sewing machines. (picture credit 3.5)

  Sweatshop

  Steps in Making a Cotton Garment

  Cotton crop planted and harvested

  Raw cotton spun into thread

  Thread dyed and woven into cloth

  Manufacturer buys cloth from textile mill

  Designer makes a model garment

  Model used to make paper patterns for cutters

  Cutting contractors make various parts of garment

  Shleppers carry parts from shop to shop

  Each shop does its own special task or tasks

  Basting

  Sewing

  Finishing

  Pressing

  Shleppers carry garment to shops at each stage of production

  Manufacturer inspects garment and has his label sewn into it

  Garment shipped to retail stores

  Customer buys garment

  Ready-made was not only cheaper than tailor-made; it was an expression of democracy. For if people looked alike because they dressed alike, it followed that they were equal and should enjoy the same rights. Producers easily copied styles originally designed for the elite. Although they did not use the finest, most expensive fabrics—silk, satin, velvet, linen—wool and cotton were good enough for the mass market. Upperclass Europeans, however, thought it outrageous that ordinary American workers were so “overdressed” when not on the job. They complained of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of distinguishing an office clerk from a banker, a housemaid from a gentlelady, by their clothes. Most Americans ignored these complaints. As a clothing manufacturer explained, ready-made had given Americans “that style and character in dress that is essential to the self-respect of a free democratic people.” In short, it made them look and feel like “fine” people.7

  New York was the nation’s capital of ready-made. By the 1890s, more than 70 percent of American women’s and 40 percent of men’s “rags” came from Manhattan. Nearly all garment manufacturers were Jewish men who had learned their trade in the Pale of Settlement.

  Rise of the Sweatshop

  A clothing manufacturer’s production line began on plantations in the southern states. It rested on the backs of abused workers, including young children. Miserably paid whites and blacks, descendants of freed slaves, grew and harvested cotton, the chief clothing fiber, also used for socks and underwear. Railroads brought the raw cotton mostly to mills in the New England states, chiefly Massachusetts, to be spun into thread and colored in steaming vats of chemical dyes. Textile workers, often nine- and ten-year-olds
, tended the looms that wove the thread into cloth. Textile machines lacked safety devices like guardrails and automatic shutoff switches. A machine might pull in a child, grown drowsy and careless with overwork, crushing limbs or worse. From the mill, the cloth went to the clothing manufacturer.

  A young cotton picker in the fields of Oklahoma, 1916. (picture credit 3.6)

  Children working at a Georgia cotton mill, 1909. (picture credit 3.7)

  A manufacturer employed several types of contractors, people who agree to do a task for a fixed price, to make the finished product. He began by buying bolts of fabric, which he sent to a cutting contractor. These were garment-industry princes, because they made the difference between profit and loss. The chief cutter and his helpers began by stretching layers of fabric, one on top of another, on a long table. Next, they placed paper patterns on the top layer. Each pattern outlined part of a garment, as drawn by the garment’s designer. Let’s say they had to cut men’s trousers, size 38. Cutters moved the pattern papers—right leg, left leg, waistband, lining, pockets—like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The idea was to fit each paper as close to its neighbor on the fabric as possible, thus reducing the amount of waste; it was impossible not to have some waste material. However, any scrap, multiplied by the number of layers, translated into lost profits. Thus, manufacturers said, good cutters were worth their weight in gold. Nowadays, the “gold” comes less from men’s keen eyes than from computer-made patterns that waste the absolutely smallest amount of fabric.