Potash & Perlmutter Part 39

"You speak to 'em, Abe," Morris retorted, indicating the working force by a wave of his hand.

"What have I got to do with it?" Abe asked. "You're the inside man, Mawruss."

"To my sorrow, Abe," said Morris, "and if you was the inside man you would know it that if I told 'em they was working on a rush order they'd strike for more money already."

"And yet, Mawruss, you ain't in favor of giving out our work by contractors," Abe cried as he walked away.

The next morning Sam Slotkin was waiting in the show-room before Abe or Morris arrived. When they entered he advanced to meet them with a confident smile.

"I got it the very thing what you want, Mr. Perlmutter," he said. "A fine loft on Nineteenth Street."

"A loft!" Abe exclaimed.

"A fine loft," Slotkin corrected.

"How big a loft?" Morris asked.

"Well, it is maybe twicet as big as this here," Slotkin replied. "You could get into it all your machines and have a cutting-room and show-room and office besides."

"That sounds pretty good, Abe," Morris commented. "Don't you think so, Abe?"

Abe pulled off his coat with such force that he ripped the sleeve-lining.

"What are you doing," he demanded, "making jokes with me?"

"And it's only twenty dollars more a month as you're paying here,"

Slotkin concluded.

"Twenty dollars a month won't make us or break us, Abe," Morris said.

"It won't, hey?" Abe roared. "Well, that don't make no difference, Mawruss. You said you wanted it two lofts, and we got to have it two lofts. How do you think we're going to sell goods and keep our books, Mawruss, if we have all them machines kicking up a racket on the same floor?"

"Well, Abe, might we could send our work out by contractors, maybe,"

Morris answered with all the vivacity of a man suggesting a new and brilliant idea.

Abe stared at his partner for a minute.

"What's the matter with you, Morris, anyway?" he asked at length. "First you say it we must have two lofts and keep our work in our own shop, and now you turn right around again."

"I got to talking it over with Minnie last night," Morris replied, "and she thinks maybe if we give our work out by contractors we wouldn't need it to stay down so late, and then I wouldn't keep the dinner waiting an hour or so every other night. We lose it two good girls already by it in six months."

"Who is running this business, Mawruss?" Abe roared. "Minnie or us?"

Sam Slotkin listened with a slightly bored air.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he said, "what's the use of it you make all this disturbance? The loft is light on all four sides, with two elevators.

Also, it is already big enough for----"

"What are you b.u.t.ting in for?" Abe shouted. "What business is it of yours, anyhow?"

"I am the broker," Sam Slotkin replied with simple dignity. "And also you're going to take that loft. Otherwise I lose it three hundred dollars' commission, and besides----"

"My partner is right," Morris interrupted. "You ain't got no business to say what we will or will not do. If we want to take it we will take it, otherwise not."

"Don't worry," Sam Slotkin cried, "you will take it all right and I'll be back this afternoon for an answer."

He put on his hat and left without another word, while Abe and Morris looked at each other in blank amazement.

"That's a real-estater for you," Abe said. "Henochstein's got it pretty good nerve, Mawruss, but this feller acts so independent like a doctor or a lawyer."

Morris nodded and started to hang up his hat and coat, but even as his hand was poised half-way to the hook it became paralyzed. Simultaneously Abe looked up from the column of the Daily Cloak and Suit Record and Miss Cohen, the bookkeeper, stopped writing; for the hum of sewing machines, which was as much a part of their weekday lives as the beating of their own hearts, had suddenly ceased.

Abe and Morris took the stairs leading to the upper floor three at a jump, and arrived breathlessly in the workroom just as fifty-odd employees were putting on their coats preparatory to leaving.

"What's the matter?" Abe gasped.

"Strike," Goldman, the foreman, replied.

"A strike!" Morris cried. "What for a strike?"

Goldman shrugged his shoulders.

"Comes a walking delegate by the opposite side of the street and makes with his hands motions," he explained. "So they goes out on strike."

Few of the striking operators could speak English, but those that did nodded their corroboration.

"For what you strike?" Morris asked them.

"Moost strike," one of them replied. "Ven varking delegate say moost strike, ve moost strike."

Sadly Abe and Morris watched their employees leave the building, and then they repaired to the show-room.

"There goes two thousand dollars, Mawruss," Abe said. "For so sure as you live, Mawruss, if we don't make that delivery to the Fas.h.i.+on Store inside of a week we get a cancelation by the next day's mail; ain't it?"

Morris nodded gloomily, and they both remained silent for a few minutes.

"Mawruss," Abe said at last, "where is that loft what Slotkin gives us?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"I'm going right up to have a look at it," Abe replied. "I'm sick and tired of this here strike business."

Morris heaved a great sigh.

"I believe you, Abe," he said. "The way I feel it now we will sell for junk every machine what we got."

Forthwith Abe boarded a car for uptown, and when he returned two hours later he found Goldman discussing ways and means with Morris in the show-room.

"Well, Abe," Morris cried, "what for a loft you seen it?"