My pay-envelope for the first week contained thirty-two dollars and some cents. I knew the union price, of course, and I had figured out the sum before I received it, yet when I beheld the two figures on the envelope the blood surged to my head. Thirty-two dollars! Why, that meant sixty-four rubles! I was tempted to write Naphtali about it
The next week brought me an even fatter envelope. I worked sixteen hours a day. Reading and studying had to be suspended till October. I lived on five dollars a week. My savings, and with them my sense of my own importance in the world, grew apace. As there was no time to go to the savings-bank, I had to carry what I deemed a great sum on my person (in a money-belt that I had improvised for the purpose). This was a constant source of anxiety as well as of joy. No matter how absorbed I might have been in my work or in thought, the consciousness of having that wad of paper money with me was never wholly absent from my mind. It loomed as a badge of omnipotence. I felt in the presence of Luck, which was a living spirit, a goddess. I was mostly grave. The frivolities of the other men in the factory seemed so fatuous, so revolting. A great sense of security and self-confidence swelled my heart. When I walked through the American streets I would feel at home in them, far more so than I had ever felt before. At the same time danger was constantly hovering about me-the danger of the street crowds seizing that magic wad from me.
The image of the college building loomed as a bride-elect of mine. But that, somehow, did not seem to have anything to do with my money-belt, as though I expected to go to college without encroaching upon my savings—a case of eating the cake and having it
The cloak-makers were so busy they had no time to attend meetings, and being little accustomed to method and discipline, they suffered their organization to melt away. By the time the "season" came to a close the union was scarcely stronger than it had been before the strike. As there was no work now, and no prices to fix, one did not miss its protection
The number of men employed in the trade in those years did not exceed seven thousand. The industry was still in its infancy
I resumed my studies with a passion amounting to a frenzy. I would lay in a supply of coarse rye bread, cheese, and salmon to last me two or even three days, and never leave my lair during that length of time. I dined at the Delancey Street restaurant every third or fourth day, and did not go to the theater unless Jake was particularly insistent. But then I religiously attended Felix Adler's ethical-culture lectures, at Chickering Hall, on Sunday mornings. I valued them for their English rather than for anything else, but their spirit, reinforced by the effect of organ music and the general atmosphere of the place, would send my soul soaring. These gatherings and my prospective alma mater appealed to me as being of the same order of things, of the same world of refined ways, new thoughts, noble interests
If I came across a street faker and he spoke with a foreign accent I would pass on; if, however, his English struck me as that of a "real American," I would pause and listen to his "lecture," sometimes for more than an hour.
People who were born to speak English were superior beings.
Even among fallen women I would seek those who were real
Americans
CHAPTER VIII
I WAS reading Pendennis. The prospect of returning to work was a hideous vision. The high wages in store for me had lost their magnetism. I often wondered whether I might not be able to secure some pupils in English or Hebrew, and drop cloak-making at once. I dreamed of enlisting the interest of a certain Maecenas, a German-American Jew who financed many a struggling college student of the Ghetto. Thoughts of a "college match" would flash through my mind—that is, of becoming engaged to some girl who earned good wages and was willing to support me through college. This form of matrimonial arrangement, which has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, is not uncommon among our immigrants. Alliances of this sort naturally tend to widen the intellectual chasm between the two parties to the contract, and often result in some of the tragedies or comedies that fill the swift-flowing life of American Ghettos. But the ambition to be the wife of a doctor, lawyer, or dentist is too strong in some of our working-girls to be quenched by the dangers involved