CHAPTER V
THAT journey to Boston is fixed in my memory by an incident which is one of my landmarks in the history of my financial evolution and, indeed, in the history of the American cloak industry. It occurred in the afternoon of the Monday which I spent in that city, less than two days after that birthday party at the Nodelmans'. I was lounging in an easy-chair in the lobby of my hotel, when I beheld Loeb, the "star" salesman of what had been the "star" firm in the cloak-and-suit business. I had not seen him for some time, but I knew that his employers were on their last legs and that he had a hard struggle trying to make a living. Nor was that firm the only one of the old-established cloak-and-suit concerns that found itself in this state at the period in question—that is, at the time of the economic crisis and the burst of good times that had succeeded it. Far from filling their coffers from the golden flood of those few years, they were drowned in it almost to a man. The trade was now in the hands of men from the ranks of their former employees, tailors or cloak operators of Russian or Galician origin, some of whom were Talmudic scholars like myself. It was the passing of the German Jew from the American cloak industry
We did profit by the abundance of the period. Moreover, there were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had proved a blessing. To begin with, some of our tailors, being unable to obtain employment in that year, had been driven to make up a garment or two and to offer it for sale in the street, huckster fashion—a venture which in many instances formed a stepping-stone to a cloak-factory. Others of our workmen had achieved the same evolution by employing their days of enforced idleness in taking lessons in cloak-designing, and then setting up a small shop of their own
Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now springing up like mushrooms.
Joe, my old-time instructor in cloak-making, was one of the latest additions to their number. They worked—often assisted by their wives and children—in all sorts of capacities and at all hours. They lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a nominal margin of profit. There were instances when the clippings from the cutting-table constituted all the profit the business yielded them. Pitted against "manufacturers" of this class or against a fellow like myself were the old-established firms, with their dignified office methods and high profit-rates, firms whose fortunes had been sorely tried, to boot, by their bitter struggle with the union
Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as usual. But the smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity. I could see at once that he felt nothing but hate for me
"Hello, Get-Rich-Quick Levinsky!" he greeted me. "Haven't seen you for an age."
"How are you, Loeb?" I asked, genially, my heart full of mixed triumph and compassion
We had not been talking five minutes before he grew sardonic and venomous.
As Division Street—a few blocks on the lower East Side—was the center of the new type of cloak-manufacturing, he referred to us by the name of that street. My business was on Broadway, yet I was included in the term, "Division Street manufacturer."
"What is Division Street going to do next?" he asked. "Sell a fifteen-dollar suit for fifteen cents?"
I smiled
"That's a great place, that is. There are two big business streets in New York—Wall Street and Division." He broke into a laugh at his own joke and I charitably joined in. I endeavored to take his thrusts good-naturedly and for many minutes I succeeded, but at one point when he referred to us as "manufacturers," with a sneering implication of quotation marks over the word, I flared up
"You don't seem to like the Division Street manufacturers, do you?" I said.
"I suppose you have a reason for it." "I have a reason? Of course I have," he retorted. "So has every other decent man in the business."
"It depends on what you call decent. Every misfit claims to be more decent than the fellow who gets the business."
He grew pale. It almost looked as though we were coming to blows. After a pause he said, with an effect of holding himself in leash: "Business! Do you call that business? I call it peanuts."
"Well, the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the oranges and the apples are shrinking and rotting. The fittest survives." ("A lot he knows about the theory of the survival of the fittest!" I jeered in my heart. "He hasn't even heard the name of Herbert Spencer.") "Peanuts are peanuts, that's all there's to it," he returned
"Then why are you excited? How can we hurt you if we are only peanuts?"
He made no answer
"We don't steal the trade we're getting, do we? If the American people prefer to buy our product they probably like it."
"Oh, chuck your big words, Levinsky. You fellows are killing the trade, and you know it."
He laughed, but what I said was true. The old cloak-manufacturers, the German Jews, were merely merchant. Our people, on the other hand, were mostly tailors or cloak operators who had learned the mechanical part of the industry, and they were introducing a thousand innovations into it, perfecting, revolutionizing it. We brought to our work a knowledge, a taste, and an ardor which the men of the old firms did not possess. And we were shedding our uncouthness, too. In proportion as we grew we adapted American business ways
Speaking in a semi-amicable vein, Loeb went on citing cases of what he termed cutthroat competition on our part, till he worked himself into a passion and became abusive again. The drift of his harangue was that "smashing" prices was something distasteful to the American spirit, that we were only foreigners, products of an inferior civilization, and that we ought to know our place.
"This way of doing business may be all right in Russia, but it won't do in this country," he said. "I tell you, it won't do."
"But it does do. So it seems."
As he continued to fume and rail at us, and I sat listening with a bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, acting upon it on the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid a friendly hand on his arm
"Look here, Loeb," I said. "What's the use being excited? I have a scheme.
What's the matter with you selling goods for me?"
He was taken aback, but I could see that he was going to accept it
"What do you mean?" he asked, flushing
"I mean what I say. I want you to come with me. You will make more money than you have ever made before. You're a first-rate salesman, Loeb, and—well, it will pay you to make the change. What do you say?"
He contemplated the floor for a minute or two, and then, looking up awkwardly, he said: "I'll think it over. But you're a smart fellow, Levinsky. I can tell you that."
We proceeded to discuss details, and I received his answer—a favorable one—before we left our seats
To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that evening, our pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized by a toast which we drank in the costliest champagne the hotel restaurant could furnish
It was not a year and a half after this episode that Chaikin entered my employ as designer