The Rise of David Levinsky Part 32

Poor thing! I felt that marrying her was out of the question

Nevertheless, the next evening I went to see her as arranged. I found her out. Her landlady handed me a letter. It was in Yiddish:

Mr. Levinsky [it read], I do not write this myself, for I cannot write, and I do not want you to think that I want to make believe that I can. A man is writing it for me for ten cents. I am telling him the words and he is writing just as I tell him. It was all a mistake. You know what I mean. I don't care to marry you. You are too smart for me and too young, too. I am afraid of you. I am a simple girl and you are educated. I must look for my equal. If I married you, both of us would be sorry for it.

Excuse me, and I wish you well. Please don't come to see me any more

GUSSIE

The message left me with a feeling of shame, sadness, and commiseration.

During that evening and the forenoon of the following day I was badly out of spirits

There was nothing to do at the shop, yet I went there just to see Chaikin, so as to keep up his interest in my scheme. He was glad to see me. He had a message from his wife, who wanted me to call in the evening. Gussie's letter was blotted out of my memory.

I was once more absorbed in my project

I spent the evening at the designer's house. Mrs. Chaikin made new attempts at worming out the size of my fortune and, in addition, something concerning its origin

"Is it an inheritance?" she queried.

"An inheritance? Why, would you like me to get one?" I said, playfully, as though talking to a child

She could not help laughing. "Well, then, is it from a rich brother or a sister, or is it your own money?" she pursued, falling in with the facetious tone that I was affecting

"Any kind of money you wish, Mrs. Chaikin. But, seriously, there will be no trouble about cash. The main point is that I want to go into manufacturing and that I should prefer to have Mr. Chaikin for my partner. There is plenty of money in cloaks, and I am bent upon making heaps, great heaps, of it--for Mr. Chaikin and myself. Really, isn't it maddening to think that he should be making other people rich, while all he gets is a miserable few dollars a week? It's simply outrageous."

So speaking, I worked Mrs. Chaikin up to a high sense of the absurdity of the thing. I was rapidly gaining ground with her

And so, pending that mysterious something to which I was often alluding as the source of my prospective fortune, I became a frequent visitor at her house. Sometimes she would invite me to supper; once or twice we spent Sunday together. As for little Maxie, he invariably hailed me with joy. I was actually fond of him, and I was glad of it.

CHAPTER IV

THE time I speak of, the late '80's and the early '90's, is connected with an important and interesting chapter in the history of the American cloak business. Hitherto in the control of German Jews, it was now beginning to pa.s.s into the hands of their Russian co-religionists, the change being effected under peculiar conditions that were destined to lead to a stupendous development of the industry. If the average American woman is to-day dressed infinitely better than she was a quarter of a century ago, and if she is now easily the best-dressed average woman in the world, the fact is due, in a large measure, to the change I refer to

The transition was inevitable. While the manufacturers were German Jews, their contractors, tailors, and machine operators were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia or Austrian Galicia. Although the former were of a superior commercial civilization, it was, after all, a case of Greek meeting Greek, and the circ.u.mstances were such that just because they represented a superior commercial civilization they were doomed to be beaten

The German manufacturers were the pioneers of the industry in America. It was a new industry, in fact, scarcely twenty years old.

Formerly, and as late as the '70's, women's cloaks and jackets were little known in the United States. Shawls were worn by the ma.s.ses. What few cloaks were seen on women of means and fas.h.i.+on were imported from Germany. But the demand grew.

So, gradually, some German-American merchants and an American shawl firm bethought themselves of manufacturing these garments at home. The industry progressed, the new-born great Russian immigration--a child of the ma.s.sacres of 1881 and 1882--bringing the needed army of tailors for it. There was big money in the cloak business, and it would have been unnatural if some of these tailors had not, sooner or later, begun to think of going into business on their own hook. At first it was a hard struggle. The American business world was slow to appreciate the commercial possibilities which these new-comers represented, but it learned them in course of time

It was at the beginning of this transition period that my scheme was born in my mind. Schemes of that kind were in the air

Meyer Nodelman, the son of my landlady, had not the remotest inkling of my plans, yet I had consulted him about them more than once. Of course, it was all done in a purely abstract way. Like the majority of our people, he was a talkative man so I would try to keep him talking shop. By a system of seemingly casual questioning I would pump him on sundry details of the clothing business, on the differences and similarities between it and the cloak trade, and, more especially, on how one started on a very small capital

He bragged and bl.u.s.tered, but oftentimes he would be carried away by the sentimental side of his past struggles. Then he would unburden himself of a great deal of unvarnished history. On such occasions I would obtain from him a veritable treasure of information and suggestions.

Some of the generalizations of this homespun and quaint thinker, too, were interesting. Talking of credit, for example, he once said: "When a fellow is a beginner it's a good thing if he has a credit face."

I thought it was some sort of commercial term he was using, and when I asked him what it meant he said: "Why, some people are just born with the kind of face that makes the woolen merchant or the bank president trust them. They are not more honest than some other fellows. Indeed, some of them are plain pickpockets, but they have a credit face, so you have got to trust them. You just can't help it."

"And if they don't pay?"

"But they do. They get credit from somebody else and pay the jobber or the banker. Then they get more credit from these people and pay the other fellows. People of this kind can do a big business without a cent of capital. In Russia a fellow who pays his bills is called an honest man, but America is miles ahead of Russia. Here you can be the best pay in the world and yet be a crook. You wouldn't say that every man who breathes G.o.d's air is honest, would you? Well, paying your bills in America is like breathing.

If you don't, you are dead."

Chaikin, too, often let fall, in his hesitating, monosyllabic way, some observation which I considered of value. Of the purely commercial side of the industry he knew next to nothing, but then he could tell me a thing or two concerning the psychology of popular taste, the forces operating behind the scenes of fas.h.i.+on, the methods employed by small firms in stealing styles from larger ones, and other tricks of the trade.

At last I resolved to act. It was the height of the season for winter orders, and I decided to take time by the forelock

One day when I called at the designer's, and Mrs. Chaikin asked me for news (alluding to the thousands I was supposed to be expecting), I said: "Well, I have rented a shop."

"Rented a shop?"

"That's what I did. It's no use missing the season. If a fellow wants to do something, there is nothing for it but to go to work and do it, else he is doomed to be a slave all his life."

When I added that the shop was on Division Street her face fell

"But what difference does it make where it is?" I argued, with studied vehemence. "It's only a place to make samples in--for a start."

"Mr. Chaikin is not going into a wee bit of a business like that. No, sir."

In the course of our many discussions it had often happened that after overruling me with great finality she would end by yielding to my point of view. I hoped this would be the case in the present instance

"Don't be so hasty, Mrs. Chaikin," I said, with a smile. "Wait till you know a little more about the arrangement."

And dropping into the Talmudic singsong, which usually comes back to me when my words a.s.sume an argumentative character, I proceeded "In the first place, I don't want Mr. Chaikin to leave the Manheimers--not yet. All I want him to do is to attend to our shop evenings. Don't be uneasy: the Manheimers won't get wind of it.

Leave that to me. Well, all I want is some samples to go around the stores with. The rest will come easy.

We'll make things hum. See if we don't. When we have orders and get really started we'll move out of Division Street. Of course we will. But would it not be foolish to open up on a large scale and have Mr. Chaikin give up his job before we have accomplished anything? I think it would. Indeed, it's my money that's going to be invested. Do you blame me for being careful, at the beginning at least? I neither want Mr. Chaikin to risk his job nor myself to risk big money."

"But you haven't even told me how much you can put in," she blurted out, excitedly.

"As much as will be necessary. But what's the use dumping a big lot at once? Many a big business has failed, while firms who start in a modest way have worked themselves up. Why should Mr.

Chaikin begin by risking his position? Why? Why?"

The long and short of it was that Mrs. Chaikin became enthusiastic for my Division Street shop, and the next day her husband took two hours off to accompany me to a nondescript woolen-store on Hester Street, where we bought fifty dollars' worth of material

The rent for the shop was thirty dollars a month. One month's rent for two sewing-machines was two dollars. A large second-hand table for designing and cutting and some old chairs cost me twelve dollars more, leaving me a balance of over two hundred dollars

Before I went to rent the premises for our prospective shop I had withdrawn my money from the savings-bank and deposited it in a small bank where I opened a check account

"Once I am to play the part of a manufacturer it would not do to pay bills in cash," I reflected. "I must pay in checks, and do so like one to the manner born."

At this the magic word "credit" loomed in letters of gold before me. I was aware of the fascination of check-books, so, being armed with one, I expected to be able to buy things, in some cases, at least, without having to pay for them at once. Besides, my bank might be induced to grant me a loan. Then, too, one might issue a check before one had the amount and thereby gain a day's time. There seemed to be a world of possibilities in the long, narrow book in my breast pocket. I was ever conscious of its presence. I have a vivid recollection of the elation with which I drew and issued my first check (in payment of thirty dollars, the first month's rent for our prospective cloak-factory). Humanity seemed to have become divided into two distinct cla.s.ses--those who paid their obligations in cash and those who paid them in checks. I still have that first check-book of mine