Comrade Yetta

Harry promised to go to a jeweller in the morning and buy her an engagement ring. And when they had finished talking over this important detail, Yetta remembered about her ticket to the Woman's Trade Union League ball. Harry tried to laugh the idea away. He knew nothing about trade-unions except that high-class "crooks" did not belong to them. But the Lyceum Hall, where it was to be held, was a very modest place.

"It's sure to be stupid in that hall," he said. "They never have good balls there. I'm going to take you up to The Palace. There's a swell affair there every night – the real thing. And fifty cents! What fun can you have at a fifty-cent ball? Sometimes the tickets cost five dollars at The Palace."

But Yetta had set her heart on using her own ticket, and it seemed an unimportant detail to Harry. They compromised; they would go to both, first to hers and then to his. She would see that he knew what he was talking about.

He proposed a bottle of champagne. For a moment Yetta was frightened.

"I never drank no wine," she protested.

"Oh, come," he said, "they always drink wine over a marriage contract. I wouldn't ask you to if it would hurt you."

Yetta looked at him out of her big, deep eyes. He had the peculiar kind of nerve which made it possible for him to look straight into them. He reached his hand across the table and put it caressingly on hers. And so she believed him.

"If you says fer me to," she said, "I'll do anything you wants me to, Harry – always." And then Yetta remembered her father and the vow he had taught her. It made her suddenly bold. She took firm hold of the hand Harry had reached to her across the table, and in a singsong but throbbing voice began to recite the wonderful old Hebrew words. The pimp was bewildered. His religious instruction had been neglected; he knew no Hebrew.

"Wot's this yer giving me?" he asked.

And Yetta translated into the vernacular.

"It means: 'Wherever you go, I'll go too, where you sleep, I'll sleep wid you, your folks will be my folks and I'll pray to your God; when you die, I'll die too and be buried beside you. And God can do more to me, if I leave you before I die.' My father taught it to me. Ain't it a swell thing to say when you're engaged?"

When at last the significance of Yetta's avowal had penetrated Harry's thick skull, he moved uneasily on his chair. The business side of him said he was wasting time. It had been a foolish precaution to bring her to this respectable restaurant. He might have taken her straight to the Second Avenue "hang-out" – with its complaisant proprietor and the rooms upstairs. But there was a sweetness – even to him – in such innocent, confiding love. He had acted the part with her so long that it seemed something more than bald pretence. There was a residue of "original decency" left under the hard shell, which living in this world of ours had given him. And this part of him – God knows it was small and weak – wished that it was true. It was strong enough to make him prolong the make-believe. He ordered only a half bottle of champagne – as a really, truly lover would have done. It was nine o'clock when they left.

They walked along Grand Street towards the Bowery. A sudden wave of tenderness flooded Harry.

"Yetta," he said, "you've never kissed me."

Her feet on the roseate clouds, she was quite unconscious of the passers-by; she turned her face up to him unquestioningly. But Harry never lost consciousness of such things. He did not dare to risk the jibes of onlookers. He tightened his grip on her arm and led her into a dark doorway. The late March wind was cold, and no loiterers sat on the steps nor stood about in the hall. Yetta – a bit surprised at his prudence – gave herself freely into his arms. When he kissed her, the last faint shadow of a doubt disappeared. She was sure he really loved her. The blood pounding in her head under his caresses dizzied her – but she was not afraid. Only somehow, the flush in his face and the husky tone of his voice seemed unfamiliar.

"Yetta," he said in a hot whisper. "Did you mean what you said – that stuff your father taught you? Will you come with me to-night – to my room and – never go away?"

This was a new idea to Yetta; she had not thought out the literal meaning of the ancient vow. For a moment she looked into his face, then turned her head aside. After all, that was what her father had told her to do.

"I'll marry you," he said, "as soon as they take me into the firm. It won't be long."

But this aspect of it had not worried Yetta. She did not question his good intentions. She was trying to picture to herself what such a change in her life would mean. There had been so little joy for her that now it was hard to accept it.

Suddenly a familiar figure crossed her range of vision. Her eyes, which had been straining to pierce the future, focussed on the other side of the street.

"Look! look! Harry," she cried. "There's Rachel. Run and call her. Quick."

"No," he said firmly. "That ain't Ray."

"Yes, it is," Yetta insisted. "I guess I knows my cousin when I sees her. Run after her. I'd like to tell her."

But Harry's hand, which before had caressed her, tightened over her arm in a brutal grip. He jerked her along in the other direction to the Bowery.

"I tell you it ain't her. Come on. Get into this car."

The evil look in his eyes terrified her. The sound of his voice hurt even more than his cruel grip. She got into the car without a word. But she knew he had lied. She realized suddenly and with terror that she did not know the man beside her. She had caught a lightning gleam on a new side of his character. She had seen something dark and sinister. And all the joy which had been in her heart shrivelled up and cowered.

For a moment they sat side by side in startled silence. Harry was surprised and angry with himself for having lost his temper. He tried to cover his blunder, to get back to the old intimacy. But Yetta heard the forced note in his suave voice. The sight of Rachel had recalled her warnings about the dangers which life holds for unprotected girls. She did not answer him nor speak till the car passed Fifth Street.

"The Lyceum's on Sixth Street."

And when they reached the sidewalk, she asked him flatly why he had lied.

"Can't you understand, Yetta," he asked, bending his head close to hers, "that I didn't want anybody butting in to-night?"

But she was not reassured. Once a doubt had entered, the whole fabric of her dreams had begun to totter. And while he told her over again the threadbare story of his glowing prospects, she was remembering that she had never seen the "Silk-house" on Broadway. When he spoke of how happy they would be, she felt the sting of his rough grip on her arm. She was a very frightened young person as they reached the door of the Lyceum Hall.

Harry felt the change in her and was raging. All the quasi-tenderness he had felt for her earlier in the evening had gone. He wanted to break her. He cursed himself for the time he had wasted that evening. She would have gone anywhere with him a half hour before. His distorted brain was torn by strange emotions. Yetta had caught hold of the inner fabric of his imagination as no other girl had ever done. And, as is just as true of cadets as of other men, when they begin to care, they lose their sang-froid. He was suddenly afraid of losing her. He felt himself awkward.

His lack of ease was intensified by his strange surroundings. He had never been to a ball like this. He only knew two kinds: the flashy, vicious dances, organized by his own class, the kind he was planning to take Yetta to, and "Greenhorn balls" – sordid but equally vicious – in the back rooms of low-class saloons, patronized by ignorant, newly arrived immigrants.

The entry to the Lyceum Hall was packed with poorly dressed people, but they were not greenhorns. The women were the strangest of all to him. Their kind did not come to the balls he frequented. More than half of them wore shawls; they were of all ages, from fifteen to seventy. They were serious-eyed working women, and many of them looked hungry. He felt that his foppish clothes were conspicuous. He felt hostility in the stares of the men. He would have given anything to be among his own kind, on familiar ground.

Indeed he was conspicuous among that roomful of poorly dressed men. He attracted the attention of a couple who stood near the door, Mabel Train and Walter Longman. In a way they were as conspicuous as he, but the curious glances which turned in their direction were not hostile. Miss Train was secretary of the Woman's Trade Union League. Many of the women and girls, as they entered the room, rushed up to greet her. She was about twenty-seven, tall and slender. In reality her body was an almost perfect instrument. She was never sick, and rarely unpleasantly tired, but in looking at her one was more impressed with nervous than physical energy. She was more graceful than beautiful. Her face was too small, a fault which was emphasized by her great mass of brown hair. But her diminutive mouth was strong in line. Her eyes were keenly alive and unafraid.

Longman was over thirty, big of bone and limb. Although he strongly resembled a tame bear, he was a likable-looking man. And just as it surprised people to find that Miss Train was a hardy horsewoman, and could tire most men at skiing or swimming, so every one wanted to laugh when they were told that this lumbering giant, Longman, was an Instructor of Assyriology at Columbia.

"Look," she said as her eyes fell on Harry and Yetta, "he's a cadet."

The remark, and the matter of fact, decisive way she said it, was typical of Mabel Train. She knew the life of the East Side well enough to recognize Harry's unsavory profession at a glance, and she did not waste time beating about the bush of euphemisms. She never declared a heart or a club when she meant a spade.

Longman's eyebrows went up affirmatively, but he at once opposed the natural deduction from her observation.

"Now, don't you go butting in, Mabel, until you're asked."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"The girl's a stranger. I guess I've got a right to welcome her."

And with Longman lumbering behind her she crossed the hall.

"Good evening," she said to Yetta, elaborately ignoring Harry's existence. "I'm Miss Train, secretary of the League. What's your trade?"

But Yetta replied with a question.

"Didn't you talk to the girls at the Neighborhood House?"

"Yes. I gave them a talk on Trade Unions. Were you there? I don't remember your face."

Yetta started to explain how she had watched the meeting from her window. But suddenly she began to stutter; she saw Miss Train look at Harry, saw the scorn and contempt in her eyes. Yetta could not remember what she was trying to say. Some newcomers rushed up and interrupted them. Mabel Train felt that the short conversation had been a decided failure.

But to Yetta it had had immense significance. In the preceding months the Settlement had come to typify all the good things of life, for which she hungered. Like her cousin Rachel she "wanted to be good." The women whom she watched in the house across the street had seemed to her good, and also they seemed happy. Miss Train was of that world, she bore its stamp. And she did not trust Harry. Down crashed the dream into greater ruin. Yetta was afraid with Harry. Beside such women she would be safe. How could she escape?

A man on the platform clapped his hands for attention and asked the people to take seats close to the stage.

"Aw! Come on," Harry said; "let's beat it. This place is stupid."

"No," Yetta said with the determination of fear; "I want to stay."

BOOK II

CHAPTER VII

THE SKIRT-FINISHERS' BALL

Harry was right. It was a stupid ball. It was more of a strike-meeting than a dance. To most of the people the speeches were of more importance than the two-steps. As he followed Yetta, grumblingly, up towards the platform he realized that the crowd of workers, packing in about them, cut off all possibility of escape. He had not set out that evening with the intention of sitting on a hard bench and listening to "a lot of rag-chewing."

"Is this what you call fun?" he growled at Yetta.

But the crowd – so foreign to his manner of life – intimidated him. He sank into surly silence.

The first speaker was a nervous, overstrained Irish woman. With high-strung Celtic eloquence she told the story of the sweated. Her manner was almost lyrical, as if she were chanting a new "Song of the Shirt." Most of the garment workers in the audience were Jews, but although her manner of appeal was strange to them, the subject matter of her speech was their very life, and they were deeply moved.

The president of the "Skirt-Finishers' Union," who spoke in Yiddish, followed her. She told of the intolerable conditions of the trade: how the prices had been shaved until no one but girls who lived at home and had no rent to pay could earn a living at it; how at last the strike had started and how desperate the struggle was. The treasury was empty, so they could pay "benefits" no longer. Unless money could be raised they would be starved back to the machines – defeated.

Then a young Jewish lawyer, Isadore Braun, spoke. It was the ringing message of Socialism he gave them. All the working people of the world were victims of the same vicious industrial system. In one branch of industry – like "skirt-finishing," which they had just heard about – it might momentarily be worse. But the same principle was back of all labor. The coal-miner, the lace-maker, the farm-laborer, the clerk – every one who worked for wages – was in the same manner being cheated out of some of the product of his labor. Individually the workingman is powerless. When men or women get together in a union, they are stronger and can sometimes win improvements in the conditions of their trade. But if they would all get together in one immense organization, if they would also vote together, they would be an overwhelming force in politics. They would rule society. They could install a new civilization based on Justice and Brotherhood.

"Workingmen of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain!"

Dr. Liebovitz rose when Braun sat down. He was a smooth-shaven, amiable-looking man, but he spoke with a bitterness in striking contrast to his appearance.

"The bosses do more than cheat you. They're not only thieves – they're murderers! I'm a doctor. Day and night I go about through this district with a bag of medicine and surgical instruments trying to save the lives of people – men and women and newborn babies – who would never be sick if it was not for the crimes of capitalism!

"Tuberculosis! How many of you are there in this audience who haven't lost a relative from lungs? As I sat here a moment ago I heard at least a dozen tubercular coughs. It's preventable – it's curable. There's no reason why any one should have it – less still that any one of you should die of it – if Capitalistic Greed didn't force you to live in rotten tenements, to work long hours in worse shops.

"Unless you people who are here this evening – and all the working people – make up your mind to make it impossible for some people to get fat off your misery, unless you get together to overthrow Capitalism, to establish Socialism, some of your babies are going to die of impure milk, others of adulterated food, more of T. B. Unless we can put these murderers out of business there will never be an end to this horrible, needless, inexcusable slaughter."

Miss Train spoke when he had finished. She made no pretence of oratory, did not seek to move them either to tears or anger. She tried to utilize the emotions stirred by the other speakers, for the immediate object of the meeting – raising funds for the "skirt-finishers." A collection would now be taken up. Mr. Casey, the secretary of the Central Federated Union, had promised to address them. He had not yet come. She hoped he would arrive while the girls were passing the hat.

"For Gawd's sake," Harry said, "come on. This is fierce."

"No," Yetta replied, jerked down from the heights by his gruff voice. "I want to hear it all."

She had listened spellbound to the speakers. Never having been to a meeting, she had never heard the life of the working class discussed before. Almost everything they said about the "skirt-finishers" applied equally to her own trade. Jake Goldfogle was grinding up women at his machines to satisfy his greed. Before, he had seemed to her an unpleasant necessity. Now he took on an aspect of personal villainy. He was not only harsh and foul-mouthed and brutal, he was robbing them. Cheated at home by her relatives, at the shop by her boss, what wonder her life was poverty stricken!

A strange thing was happening to Yetta. The champagne which Harry had urged on her was mounting to her brain. She had not taken enough to befuddle her, but sufficient – in that hot, close hall – to free her from her natural self-consciousness, to open all her senses to impressions, to render her susceptible to "suggestion." This, although Harry did not understand psychology, was why he had urged it on her. But his plan had "gang aglee." The alcohol was working, not amid the seductions of a brightly lighted, gay ball-room, but in this sombre, serious assembly. The "suggestions" which were flowing in upon her receptive consciousness were not the caresses of a waltz. She was being hypnotized by the pack of humanity about her. She was becoming one with that crowd of struggling toilers, one with the vast multitude of workers outside the hall; she was feeling the throb of a broader Brotherhood, in a way she never could have felt without the stimulation of the wine.

One of the speakers had alluded to the evil part in the sweating system which is played by the highly paid "speeders." Yetta was a "speeder." Why? What good did it do her? Her uncle swallowed her wages. Jake Goldfogle – the slave-driver – profited most. How did it come about that she – her father's daughter – was engaged in so shameful a rôle? She wanted passionately to talk it over with some one who understood.

Open-eyed she watched the group of speakers on the platform. She felt the kinship between their idealism and her father's dreams. He would have loved and trusted Miss Train. It must be wonderful to be a woman like that. With the inspiration of the wine in her veins, she felt that she might find courage to talk to her.

The young woman whom Yetta was so ardently admiring was holding in her hand a note from Mr. Casey which announced that he could not get to the meeting, and she was asking Longman – ordering him, in fact – to fill the gap in the programme. He was protesting. He was not an orator. The sight of a crowd always made him mad. He was sure to say something which would anger them. It would be much better to begin the dance. But Miss Train was used to having her way. His protest only half uttered, Longman found himself out on the platform.

"Mr. Casey can't come. And Miss Train has asked me to take his place. Now, I'm no good as a speaker, and you won't like what I say, but I'm going to tell you what I believe. Braun and Dr. Liebovitz told you about the rotten injustice of our social system, and what they said was true. But they did not tell you whose fault it is. You may think the bosses are to blame. It's your own fault. You're only getting what's coming to you.

"You're slaves because you haven't the nerve to be free. You came here to hear the bosses called names. I don't like the bosses any more than you do. But it makes me tired to hear everybody cursing them and not looking at their own faults. You are getting cheated. What are you going to do about it? Are you cowards? Haven't you got the guts to stand up and fight for your rights?

"Fourscore and several years ago, our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation dedicated to the ideals of Democracy, of Liberty, Justice, and Brotherhood. And look at this nation now! Plutocracy has swallowed up Democracy. I don't have to tell you garment workers how little there is of Justice and Brotherhood. What's wrong? Were the Fathers off on their ideals? No! But they neglected to people this continent with a race of men! The country is full of weak-kneed cringers, who read the Declaration of Independence once a year, but would rather be slaves than go hungry. People whose rights are 'for sale.' People who prefer 'getting on in the world' to liberty. The trouble with this country is that we've got too few patriots.

"I'm an American. What I've been saying to you Jews applies equally to my own people. But at least I can say this for myself. It isn't much, but it's more than you can say. My ancestors fought for Liberty. Back in 1776 some of my forebears thought enough of independence to risk not only their jobs – but their lives. My father valued human freedom enough in the sixties to fight for it.

"Do you want some one to give you Liberty? – to hand it to you on a platter? You come here, hundreds of thousands every year, from the oppression of mediæval Europe, because here in America men of a different race and creed have bought some measure of freedom with their blood. Not perfect Liberty – far from it. But we had to fight for the little we have.

"You're disappointed in America. You curse the bosses who enslave you. But think a moment. Why should you be free? There's nothing in life worth having, which doesn't have to be striven for. One of the American Revolutionists said, 'Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.' Have you been vigilant?

"To-day the age-old fight for Liberty is being fought out in Industry – between Capital and Labor. What part in it are the Jews of America going to take? Are you going to submit servilely to injustice, in the vain hope that some one else will win Justice for you? Or are you going to follow the footsteps of the glorious fighters of your race, like Heine and Marx? Are you going to beg for Liberty or join the Army of Liberation, pay your share of the price and have the proud right to claim your share of the Victory?

"I know your history. I know how the ages of oppression have bent your backs. I know your poverty. But did you come to America to transplant here these old traditions of servitude? No. You came in search of a broader life, a larger measure of Freedom. Well. Just like every one else you'll have to fight for it. You've got to sacrifice for it. You've got to be ready to die for it.

"What are the most servile, down-trodden, abject trades in the city? The sweated garment trades. Who works in them? Jews. Where are the rottenest, vilest tenements? On the East Side. Who lives in them? Jews. You are the worst-paid, hardest-driven, least-considered people in New York. You are willing to work in sweat-shops. You consent to live in dumbbell tenements. You submit to injustice.

"You haven't joined the fight, although the Jew can fight when he wants to. I've no quarrel with these 'skirt-finishers.' But the fact remains that – with a few glorious exceptions – the great mass of your people have preferred a new serfdom to the trouble of earning Liberty. The Chosen People are watching the combat from a safe distance.

"This may sound as if I was a Jew-hater. I'm not. But I love Liberty. The fight is world-wide, international, interracial. It's bigger than Jew or Gentile. It's for the Freedom of Humanity. And the people who are willing to be slaves are more dangerous enemies than those who want to be tyrants. It's rather good fun fighting oppressors. But it's Hell trying to free ourselves from slaves."

His words inflamed Yetta's imagination. How often she had heard her father explain the misery of their people by the lack of training in the habits of freedom! He had felt – and it had been his keenest sorrow – that the Chosen People were falling far short of their high calling. She remembered his solemn talks with her, his explanation of why he had wished her to study. He wanted her to be an American – a free woman.

Longman stopped. Instead of applause there were angry murmurings. But his words had sounded like the Ultimate Truth to Yetta. Why did they not greet his message with a cheer. The wine accomplished its miracle. Without its burning stimulation she would have been a cowering bundle of timidity before that sullen audience. But many good things can the kindly Fates conjure out of vile beginnings. The champagne which was to have been her utter undoing gave her courage. She got up as one inspired.