Mr. Gerhardt’s Den
Opposite the library on Forty-second Street, high up in a medium sized sky-scraper, is Mr. Gerhardt’s den. Christian Gerhardt is a specialist in out-of-the-way books by out-of-the-way authors. He issues catalogues every month, and these catalogues are indexes of curiosities of literature. Pamphlets by well known authors, perhaps their first literary products, books by fanatics, and by poets whose songs were never known by the world. Individualistic magazines of whose existence you have never heard, fill long rows of his book shelves. But whenever I think of Mr. Gerhardt I remember that unhappy singer of our East Side, of Zoe Anderson, who called herself the “Queen of Bohemia,” who founded the Ragged Edge Club, and presided for years at its unique sessions in the “old Maria.” Miss Anderson struggled for years with printers, paper dealers, and news companies in order to give us her little magazine. The East Side, a fearless free-lance sheet, in which she attacked everyone and everything. The champion of the outcasts and sweatshop workers of the East Side, living among them, writing about them with greater understanding than any contemporary writer, poor Zoe ended her own life as cheerfully as she had lived after telling all about it in the then current and last issue of her magazine. Zoe Anderson had been a well known newspaper woman on the staffs of many metropolitan papers, including the New York Times.
Gerhardt was her lieutenant, the moving spirit of her Ragged Edge Club, master of ceremonies of the jolly dinners she used to give, and master of ceremonies at her funeral, where they carried out her last wishes: The same band that had played merry dances for her while alive, played the same merry dances during the burial ceremonies. “The East Side is mournful enough. I have always tried to make them happy. Let them be merry to the tune of gay music while they are burying me,” were her own directions.
Gerhardt became her literary executor and her few books, together with bound copies of her magazine always occupy a place of honor in his den.
III.
FORTY-SECOND Street loses its brilliance on Seventh Avenue and shows all the way down to the West Side ferries the sad degeneration of a New York street that was once a fashionable residence section. Glaring electric signs from Fifth to Seventh Avenues. High life after dusk. Eighteen theaters. Cabarets galore. The amusement center of the metropolis around Broadway. The seat of learning in one whole block on Fifth Avenue. The moment you cross Seventh Avenue, cheap rooming houses, tenement dwellings, sweat shops. Wealth and poverty rub elbows. Puritanical decency on the borders of the city’s mire. Lunch rooms, garages, plumber shops, dirty Jewish and Italian groceries, loan brokers’ offices, everywhere signs “Rooms to Let,” gaudily dressed women emerge from dark house entrances on whose stoops laborers read their evening papers. Children everywhere, ragged, uncared for children.
In the midst of this typically American panorama, pinched in between a repair shop and a restaurant, is Mr. Lawson’s book store. He sells books, too, but I would rather call his place of business an “intellectual exchange.”
“How can you sell books in this neighborhood?” I asked of Mr. Lawson on my first visit to his shop. I knew him a dozen of years ago in Chicago. He’s a book man of the old school. He knows books, is well read, well known among the members of his guild. Americana had been his specialty and many a scarce and rare item had he discovered in days gone by.
“What a strange place you have selected here in New York.”
“Stick around for a couple of hours and you will see yourself that book stores of my brand are actually needed in this sort of neighborhood in New York,” was his off-hand answer, while he continued counting green and yellow tickets, assorting them by their colors.
“Coupons,” was the answer. “All these people in my neighborhood insist on getting coupons with all their purchases. So-called profit-sharing coupons. They get them with their cigars, with their soap, with their butter, with most of their victuals. Each of these coupons represents a certain cash value. Here in this catalogue,” and he showed me a voluminous book with many pictures, “you can see what they can exchange for their coupons if they choose to save enough of them. Here lies the point. They never save enough of these coupons. Most of my customers live from hand to mouth, often they are in actual need of ten or fifteen cents. I buy their coupons. At other times, again they come down here to buy coupons in order to complete the needed number of the slips and to exchange them for some household article, but mostly for ‘gifts.’ You would be surprised how they like cheap bric-a-brac, phony jewelry and most of all, cut-glass—imitation cut-glass, of course. Most of my business is done after 6 o’clock in the evening.
“See the music rolls over there? A player-piano concern established some time ago a branch in this section and got rid of hundreds of instruments. And whenever the people need money they bring me their music rolls. I pay a few cents for them. But that’s just what they need. They sell them on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, after they receive their pay checks, they buy new ones. It is a part of their life’s routine.”
An old woman came in with a bunch of magazines, Mr. Lawson bought them for a few cents.
“She keeps a rooming house,” he explained. “Her roomers are cheap comedians, who never stay longer than a couple of days or so, and always leave magazines when they move. She sells them. She also sends her roomers down to me to buy magazines if they get lonely in the evening and inquire for something to read.
“You see that man?” and he pointed to an old fellow who was examining carefully a big heap of magazines. “He’s the news dealer from the corner. He runs in several times a day and buys lots of magazines. The American News Company grants him the return privilege on certain magazines for 30 days and others for 60 days. He buys any standard magazine of the current week here for a nickel, some even cheaper, and then he returns them to the news company at full value. For instance, he buys a 20-cent magazine for a nickel and the American News Company credits him with 15 cents upon its return.
“There is nothing on earth that you can not sell in this neighborhood, and on the other hand, you would be constantly surprised what people will offer you for sale.”
The store was crowded. Boys wanted detective stories, women dream books, foreigners dictionaries, somebody was trying records on an old phonograph in the back of the store. A woman who still showed traces of great beauty wanted to get rid of hundreds of photographs of herself, showing her in exotic stage costume.
“But how about these oil paintings?” There were some magnificent pictures in one corner and really good books right next to trashy novels. “That’s the other side of my book business,” answered Lawson. “Dealers come in from all parts of the country and I have the whole day to myself to attend auctions, to visit collectors. A good many gems have drifted in here. Doesn’t it look like a junk shop? And I dare to say that very few dealers in New York have such valuable books, autographs, prints, paintings and etchings as I have at times right here among all this junk.”
A procession of strange people continued to pour in. Everybody bought something, sold or exchanged something, half a dozen languages were talked simultaneously and the cash register rang merrily through the noise and constant chatter.
“There must be lots of money in this novel game of yours?” I asked of Lawson. “Of course there is,” he answered cheerfully. “The individual purchases are small, but judge for yourself how many people are coming in and then don’t forget that every one of them is a steady customer, coming down here almost every other day. Buying or selling, but I am always the winner. And I dare say that these people would miss me. I provide for them amusement, pleasure, and even education, and do they not come to me in their need?”