[14]

IMAGE: untitled (tailor with jacket)

MAX: When they [the peasants] had to use a tailor, they used to come to Jewish tailors, or shoemakers, or carpenters, and they'd do it! It was a life like this! My father was a tailor... in the same house as we lived! He didn't have to pay rent... He used to make clothing – for the ladies, for the peasants. In other words, a ladies' tailor, what we call a real ladies' tailor. So his customers used to be from the dorfa, you know what a dorfa is, it's the village. My father used to sit in the house and work! Tailoring, tailoring, tailoring. He did it in the house; we had a big room, we used it for the shop, in there six days a week. We used it for Saturday, for holiday, as a parlor, and for all the necessary functions, in the house.

My father taught me to be a tailor, period. And as a matter of fact, he sent me to learn, to a tailor who made men's work. My father used to be a ladies' tailor, and I was taught to sew period.

NARRATOR: Although the peasants and Jews were culturally and physically isolated from one another, there was little or no reason to be actively hostile. They had a mutually beneficial relationship, and so tolerated the existence of the other. By the middle of the nineteenth century, most of the merchants in the Pale were Jews, and while most were living at a /14/ subsistence level, it was still a better life than that of the Russian peasant. But by the end of the century, after the institution of the notorious "May Laws" of 1881 and subsequent pogroms, fully 40% of the Jews within the Pale were dependent upon charity. /16/ These edicts, passed under the reign of Tsar Alexander III, prevented the Jews from settling in new rural areas, severely limited opportunities for higher education, and narrowed the legitimate professions they could enter. This resulted in the growth of slums, the implanting of revolutionary ideas in students, and in severe economic problems for the empire as a whole.

The reasons for this renewed oppression are vast and complex. But still, within the little towns of the Pale, fathers taught their sons a trade, and went on with their business as usual. But it was not enough that Max should learn his father's skill; he was sent away to learn the complete art of tailoring. In response to the pervasive lack of certainty about the future, Max's father took the incentive in making sure that his son would be as well-prepared as possible.

IMAGE: untitled (tailor with jacket)

LISA: Were these rich Jews in the small towns or the cities?

MAX: It makes no difference. The bigger the town was, the more opportunities were there for able young men, able businessmen who could develop a business. In the bigger cities were more chances for like... did you hear of a city Bialystock?... Did you hear of a city Brest Litewskie, and if you didn't hear of them, you saw on the map, or did you hear of city Warsaw, the capital of...

LISA: Poland!

MAX: Naturally! In the big cities there were more chances for able men...

LISA: But there were still some prosperous Jews in the smaller towns...

MAX: Very small, very little. There were a few who had a little land...

LISA: Were they farmers?

MAX: Farmers? Maybe they didn't grow the fruit, but they used to sell them. Buy them from the peasants before they grew up and then sell them in the market, on the open market. Some people were able businessmen... They used to go and come to a peasant and make with them a deal: "These apple trees, all that's gonna grow on the apple trees, I take it off. For this I pay you that much. It's not yours no more. It's mine, as soon as it comes"... Do you get it?... When it gets ripe then he has the right to come there with a wagon, a horse and wagon, and take them all off, and sort themthe better ones, the smaller ones – and that was his property!

/16/ Sachar. p. 246

/17/ Ibid. p 191

"The typical breadwinner, driven fanatic [frantic?] in his efforts to provide for a family, undertook any kind of exhausting and degrading work; he bore, if necessary, the insults and browbeatings of the peasant or local magnate as long as his work led at least to a minimal degree of independence." /17/

Even with ongoing political and religious oppression, many Jews consciously sought after financial independence. The economic relationship between Jew and gentile was not, as the above statement suggests, necessarily a self-deprecating or humiliating one. The writer is referring specifically to the Jews of the mid-nineteenth century – in fact, conditions of poverty and persecution had worsened considerably by the time of Max's generation. In Max's objective description of a typical business transaction between Jews and gentiles, much pride and confidence is displayed. The fact that the success of such a venture was more dependent upon the turns of fate rather than the intelligence of man was merely an acknowledgment of the unremitting realities of existence.

MAX: It happened so that when I came to Boston, [when] I had to do some tailoring, I did ladies' tailoring. It so happens that Shack [Max's uncle] was a ladies' tailor, but he devoted himself more for alterations, for men's suits. He didn't make no new suits, cause the tendency in Massachusetts, in all the small towns... was to buy ready-made stuff. Factories. The only thing they needed tailors [for] is to do alterations. Make it shorter, make it smaller, make it bigger. That's already a product of the United States, where they have the big factories in the big cities. Custom-made, it used to be alright, but it was expensive. The custom-made tailoring was only for richer people, that can afford to make custom tailoring. Otherwise, the market was flooded of the ready-made stuff, that you buy it, you make it in a factory and then they sell it in the stores...

[15]

IMAGE: Washington Street Whitman, Massachusetts

/???/ Ibid. p. 191

LISA: So you couldn't make a lot of money from your cleaning store?

MAX: I made a living! What can you make a lot of money in the cleaning store; there the circumstances were against me, because it was a small town. Maybe I think it was 11,000 population. It had about a dozen Jewish families. So then when the draft came, a lot of boys went away to the army. The customers for the cleaning store was still smaller. The young boys left, and the old ones don't care for cleaning... So the store was not good for me, especially when I got married and had to go out in life to make a living... I saw that there's no future for me to stay in little Whitman, and wait for a customer to bring me to make it shorter, or longer. I felt that the trend of the moment was the big city for poor people, beginners like what you call... So the best thing we could do is to leave a small town and go to New York.

NARRATOR: Whitman, Massachusets, is a lovely little town that grew out of the American Revolution, replete with eighteenth century dated buildings and clapboard farmhouses. Not much is different in Whitman today from seventy years ago. The population and ethnography is about the same; it is only in its genesis from being a self-contained leader in the shoe industry to a more amorphic suburb of Boston that its status has changed. Yet history lives in Whitman; it is memorialized and practically deified. A case in point of this historical preoccupation is the issue of the name Leavitt. Max felt that the name Lien was too problematic in the New World, so he went through Whitman in search of a name "which would be nice and easy forthe tongue and easy for the pen to write." He found the name Leavitt in an optometrist's window on the main street of town, liked the sound of it, and proceeded to call himself thus. It became legalized once he was drafted into the army and received his citizenship. Mordecai Yitzhak Lien then became Max Isadore Leavitt.

IMAGE: untitled (Geo D. Leavitt  OPTOMETRIST)

/???/ In 1910, Whitman actually had a population of 7,000. (Whitman Public Library)

NARRATOR: Sixty-one years later, the son and grandson of the first Dr. George Leavitt practice optometry together not far from the original location. Upon sharing with them the evolvement of the family name, I learned that their family had descended from Revolutionary War times. Sure enough, the name Leavitt was found among the lists of war heroes.

NARRATOR: But this memorial library/museum where the proud geneologies and war triumphs of Whitman's finest are displayed was not the place to find a record of Max's cleaning and tailoring store. Instead it was here that the similarities between Whitman and Wysokie Litewskie became apparent. There were the few Jews –exact number indiscernible– in the service of gentiles, New England WASPS replacing the loyal Russian peasants. It is fitting that this austere monument to Whitman's glory would be as silent and old as those whose lives are traced within; the town records there exist only for the continuous registration of its descendants. Nevertheless, it suddenly became very important to locate Max in Whitman; to show him as a viable and contributing member of the community. But of course the efforts to identify him thus were fruitless.

NARRATOR: Max had arrived in Whitman with a legitimate skill; ostensibly there would be a place for him to grow. But the industrial revolution arrived much earlier in Whitman than it did in Wysokie Litewskie. And so Max's talent as a custom tailor never had the opportunity to flourish; it instead was squeezed and specialized within the mechanized processes that were changing the garment industry. Max could have chosen to remain in Whitman, to eke out a living cleaning and fixing clothes. But it is doubtful that he could have supported a wife and five sons. At least by going to New York he had opportunities for success. Adapting once again to the changing times, Max and his wife joined the masses of people pouring into the cities.

MAX: [I went into the dress business with the] Wallach brothers, and Cooperman... and Epstein. Epstein was a landsman from the old country. So there were five partners. So we stayed in business, and those were the days, where the immigrants from Eastern Europe started to crystallize and each found their own way, according to luck or ability. Everybody wanted to rise up, up, up and a lot of firms were born there which many succeeded with manufacturers, and others made a nice try – and we were mixed up with the majority of the workers. The unions became stronger and workers started

making better money, that resulted in fact that people started to find out that [if] one went into business and didn't make it good, so he went out! He went back to the shop to work. Little by little it became evident that not everybody can become rich, that not everybody is able to conduct a factory, and sell by themselves. So they bent down their head and took what they could! That happened with me – I was in business, I was a contracter with three other people... So we made an agreement and they called it a corporation. We worked for one manufacturer. He was the manufacturer, we were the contracters. I worked at a machine and one was a designer and a cutter. Two brothers, they were designers and cutters, and the others worked at the machine, and some other help so they can render.

NARRATOR: Max worked in the garment district of New York for forty years. In the early years, even before the International Ladies Garments Workers Union was firmly established, the burgeoning industry provided ample and consistent opportunities for employment, especially if one was skilled. Max was a machine operator, one component of an assembly line for the mass production of women's clothing. But although a man's skill was just one part of the entire process, eliminating perhaps the possibilities of "rising in the ranks," with a little initiative and money he could very

IMAGE: Max (seated at left) and his fellow workers

[16]

NARRATOR: initiative and money he could very easily try his hand at private enterprise. If it did not succeed, as was the case for Max, then he would just go back to work in the factories. Max was not particularly success-oriented in terms of becoming wealthy; his continuous ambition was to earn a decent livlihood, enabling, like thousands of other Jews in his position, his children to have ample opportunities for their own success.

LISA: When you moved to New York, and you were working in the garment district, were you very involved in the union? What union did you belong to?

MAX: The International Ladies Garments Worker's Union.

LISA: Do you remember what local?

MAX: Twenty-two. How could I forget?

LISA: Were you politically active at all in the union?

MAX: No, no I didn't have no time to be political, I worked. I had to make a living for six people.

LISA: Did you ever go out on strike?

MAX: No, when I became a member, the strike element was out of style. Every three or four years we had to make a new agreement... and the trade was organized so well, so tight, that we never expected a strike. The only thing that was expected before the strike – before the agreement expired – was to get together with both sides, sit down and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, till you get an agreement. Just like you see in front of your eyes with the paper strike. Everybody knows that we need a union, and everybody knows that the union is made for both sides, to curb the hunger strike, the bosses would like to have everything for themselves, and on the other hand, the labor leaders, they want to have for themselves. So there was never a real threat about union, because they knew that before the strike, before the agreement expired, the both

IMAGE: Sweatshop in garment district, New York City  Image is blank

/19/ Sachar, p. 330

MAX: sides made an appointment, met in a certain hotel, sat down and they talked, and talked, and talked until they reached an agreement. That was the golden years, already! That wasn't 1914, or 1918, it was later in the years, in your times already. That's why we have a union, and we get certain benefits from the union, and... we are what we are!

NARRATOR: The conditions of the cities were deplorable, brought on by a combination of the speed of industrialization and lack of careful planning. The development of unions was a direct result of poverty and exploitation of the immigrants pouring into the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe. It was an inevitable solution for both manufacturers and workers, and enabled them to set standards of working conditions and wages that would keep both sides happy. In 1910, the year of Max's arrival in America, the garment workers of New York and Chicago struck and won the right to collective bargaining.

NARRATOR: By 1924 the ILGWU was fairly established. The Jewish workers, most of whom had arrived with a skill, constituted 64% of the ILGWU membership. As late as the 1940's they made up 75% of Dressmakers Local #22, Max's local. /19/  They were all from the same area of Europe, spoke the same language, and all had similar dreams and aspirations. It was not difficult then to establish a unified front; it was more a matter of making yearly decisions about wages. The workers felt relatively secure that they would always have a job within the industry, which, by virtue of the union, had to remain benevolent towards its workers.

LISA: Were you aware at all of Henry Ford, and the paper he put out in the 1920's? Henry Ford, the guy who made all the cars?

MAX: What happened, no...

LISA: He was an extreme anti-Semite, and he put out a paper that talked about a Jewish conspiracy to overthrow the country.

MAX: See, I don't remember that! Henry Ford, labeled, Henry Ford an anti-Semite? Well, if you read it somewheres, it must be somewheres.

LISA: See, I'm finding all this out in terms of history books, where historians write in retrospect... they can see it, but when you're living it, you're not aware of it.

MAX: Yeah, it passes by without noticing it. Especially, right after that, when Henry Ford became known, for another thing, because Henry Ford was the first one that gave benefits to his workers, and instead of the manufacture of automobiles or other devices, he knew only one thing, that he's gotta make a profit. In order to sell his products, he's gotta make profits, but Henry Ford brought in the idea that the manufacturer, meaning Henry Ford himself, is responsible for the well-being of his workers. And he has to see that the... membership should have benefits, like unemployment, but he did it in a different way. He didn't do it like afterwards, when there came unemployment insurance, he did it privately, only for his industry, for the automobiles. So he developed a system whereby his workers were protected... so much, so much, I don't remember, in other words Henry Ford brought in the idea of the manufacturer's responsibility to his workers. It's a big thing, yeah?

NARRATOR: Henry Ford bought the Dearborn Independent, a small mid-western publication in 1919. It was basically a forum for Ford to express his conservatism to a cirulation of no more than 700,000 readers. Calling itself the Chronicle of the Neglected Truth, it railed against all that it felt was responsible for the corruption of American society /20/  It was sensationalistic and used distortion and exaggeration to turn various segments against one another.

NARRATOR: The Protocols of Zion was a forged publication that was written in 1905 by a Tsarist agent. It claimed that there was a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Without checking the document's validity, one of Ford's editors updated and polished the material, and used it as a basis for Ford's subsequent diatribes against the Jews. The International Jew: The World's Problem was the title of the serial that was to run in the following ninety-one issues of the Dearborn. It is somewhat surprising that such anti-Semitic sentiment from a man as distinguished as Ford would have escaped Max's attention. Although Ford was brought up on charges of libel against a prominent Jewish lawyer, which ultimately forced him to abandon his anti-Semitic crusade, the issue wasn't important enough in the decade of the Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition to warrant big coverage. Muckraking wasn't particularly in style in the 1920's; exposés were fewer and tamer than those during the 1890's. It makes sense that Max, experientially if not academically educated, recalled the constructive parts of Ford. Those were the aspects that were getting the headlines – and that were closest to Max's world. It is only in retrospect that the general public had the opportunity to see the extent of Ford's anti-Semitism. But for Max, Ford was a responsible industrialist, interested mainly in the welfare of his workers.

/20/ Allan Nevins: Ernest Hill Ford: Expansion and Challenge 1915-1933 (New York Scribner's Sons. 1957) p. 314-315