Part 5

It was a new thing, that word "reorganized." It was something worth while finding out about. "We must reorganize or our organization goes to pieces," he wrote to them. That Wednesday evening was a gala evening. The financial secretary had never taken in so much money at once; twenty-six dollars in one evening! They all paid up to the minute; because it was explained in the letter that only members with paid-up dues had a vote in the reorganization of the mighty Pretzel-Painters' Union.

The Pretzel-Painters' Union was not without its inner dissensions. There was a group of Galician Jews and a group of Russian Jews always fighting one another; and both groups fought whatever the group of Roumanian Jews proposed. There were also two old Portuguese Jews; and whatever they wanted carried through was sure to be defeated by the above-mentioned three groups.

But the Russian group was always the deciding factor. By themselves alone they were the majority of the organization.

After the secretary had announced that everybody was present and paid up to the minute, the chairman, Mr. Bindzel, opened the meeting and asked the organizer to explain the cry of distress.

"Mr. Chairman and brothers," the organizer began, "we must reorganize or we go to pieces. Already the Hinshel Company employs two non-union pretzel painters. If we don't reorganize they will break our Union. We must uphold the rights of labor or the heel of capitalism will crush us----"

He spoke well into the night and urged them with tears in his eyes and a proper catch in the voice to stand by the flag of their class.

The silence was very impressive when the organizer finished and sat down to wipe his perspiring face. No one spoke a word. The chairman did not want to break the silence. He felt the greatness of the moment.

Finally brother Kessler said:

"Mr. Chairman!"

"Brother Kessler has the floor."

Brother Kessler, of the Galician group, seldom took the floor. So everybody was astonished that he of all others should want to speak.

"Mr. Chairman and Brothers.... Mr. Chairman. Of course, we want to reorganize, but we don't know how to do it."

"Well said! Go ahead Brother Kessler!" several voices were heard at once.

Kessler took heart.

"We are Pretzel Painters. We are proud of our Union, are strong for our Union, and we want to protect it. Let Brother Kirshen, our organizer, tell us how."

"Sure, Kessler is right. Let Brother Kirshen tell us how," came voices from everywhere.

"Order, please!" the chairman called. "This is an important meeting. On it depends the battle between Labor and Capital. Order, please. Brother Kirshen has the floor."

Brother Kirshen, aglow from his recent triumph, took the centre of the platform.

"The first thing to do to reorganize our Union is to elect new officers. I make therefore a motion that we elect new officers."

"Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman," several called out.

"That's a political trick," called out the Roumanian group in one voice.

"Order, please!" yelled the chairman. The heavy gavel came down upon the table.

Everybody was soon seated.

"I make an amendment to the motion," Kessler said.

"Sit down, Brother Kessler, we must proceed regularly. The Pretzel-Painters' Union has a constitution. We will proceed according to its constitution. The constitution of the Pretzel-Painters' Union says that when a motion is put before the house, it is first voted upon before any amendments are discussed. Does anybody want to speak on the motion?"

"Then, I propose that the motion be voted upon without debates because it is late and they will soon put out the lights in the house," said Kessler.

"Politics, politics," the Portuguese group cried. "Traitor, traitor," came from another group. But when Kessler's proposal was voted upon he had a majority. The Russian group voted with him. And so it happened that the nineteen officers of the Pretzel-Painters' Union were shifted around.

The chairman became the treasurer and so forth. But when it came to vote upon the secretaryship, Kessler, who had hitherto been the twentieth of the Union, the only member who had been without an office, was elected Secretary of the Pretzel-Painters' Union, because he was backed by the Russian group.

The following evening Kessler was the first to appear at the local of the Union. A little later the dethroned official appeared. They did not even greet one another. Kirshen, the organizer, was the third man to come.

"Brother Grumberg," he said to the former secretary, "would you please give over the books to brother Kessler and show him what he has to do?"

Grumberg took out from a drawer the two books of the Union and was ready to explain the work.

"But by God! In God's name! What do you want me to do with these books?" Kessler cried.

"Record the meetings, brother Kessler, write down what takes place," Grumberg said.

"What?" the new Secretary called out horror-stricken. "I--write? How should I write? I don't write--I don't know how to write--never did. What do you want with my life--what?"

"For God's sake, Kessler! If you cannot read and write why did you accept the nomination for the secretaryship?" the organizer asked angrily. But Kessler was defiant.

"Well, how and from where did you want me to know that a secretary must know to read and write?"

Kessler's resignation and the election of a new secretary brought the organization on the brink of ruin. And if it would not have been for the superior generalship of organizer Kirshen the Pretzel-Painters' Union would have been crushed under the heel of capitalism.

THE GYPSY BLOOD THAT TELLS

One does not expect to meet anything out of the ordinary at West Farms to break the monotony where the big city fringes out. The old wooden shacks lean on the brick tenements, and one does not know whether the city invades the peaceful country or the country tries to catch up with the city. The outskirts of New York always brings to me the memory of a certain gentleman in silk hat and dress suit, but with the ends of his trousers in fringes and his shoes down at the heel. But--as a wise man once said--if one stands in one place long enough he sees the whole world pass before him as in a kaleidoscope. Thus also my frequent visits to West Farms were repaid when I saw one morning a gypsy tribe camped there.

Six wagons back of the road, a dozen horses neighing as they rubbed their noses on the shafts; a few tents with the flaps undulating windward; a few patches of color on the dress of the women. What a change it made in the dreary place, how stolid old West Farms was transformed when the curling smoke rose from the stovepipes of the camp wagons!

I expected to hear the usual noise attending camping; song and laughter, as only gypsies can sing and laugh.

It was a Roumanian gypsy tribe; one of many that have come over to this country in the last decade. But the people went about in the quietest possible way, which I knew was not at all their custom.

"Have they taken on manners?" I wondered.

Children of the neighborhood, and even grown-ups, began to assemble around the wagons. They stood at a distance. A mother warned her over-curious little boy:

"Don't go too near, dearie! Gypsies steal children."

As the woman spoke two little boys of the tribe climbed out from one of the camp wagons.

"Look at these white children!" exclaimed several people.

"Surely, stolen children."

The features of the children were distinctly of a Roumanian cast. A young gypsy woman followed the little ones to a tent.

* * * * *

From inside the wagon broke out a loud cry that was drowned in the wails and groanings of the people in every wagon and tent. The curious throng assembled about the camp now widened the circle. The gypsy litany of the dead was officiated.

In funeral rhythm the dead one's virtues were enumerated one by one, while others made incantations to chase the evil spirit.

"Leave us! If thou hast come through the chimney, leave through the chimney; and if through the door, evil one, leave the same way!"

"That thou be fed burning stones from now until eternity. That thy thirst be quenched only with the blood of thy own kin."

The same incantations were repeated for more than a half hour. They ceased abruptly, at the sound of a gong. The evil one had departed. Slowly, in single file, the gypsies descended the steps of the wagon and bowed very low westward, to the setting sun of an early autumn day, before going each one to his own tent.

* * * * *

The circle of the curious neighbors had widened very much when I approached an old gypsy and asked him who had died. He turned full face as he said:

"Our Chief, Yorga, our Chief. We would want to bury him under a tree near a river--but can we do as we please in this country? Tell me, stranger."

Like the drippings from a burning candle the tears fell from the man's eyes as he spoke to me.

On the wooden cross over Yorga's grave I have carved with my pen-knife the name of the dead one. In the fall of every year his tribe comes to the burial grounds, and each one cuts out a piece of cloth from his best garment and leaves it there as an offering to the dead Chief.

And the old gypsy told me: "A great man was Yorga. A king among men. His mother was killed by her father when Yorga was born, because she was the daughter of a great Roumanian boyar, and the child, fruit of a secret love, was the son of a gypsy. But the child was allowed to live, so beautiful was he.

"When Yorga was six years old, his grandfather, the old boyar, who had no other children, took the boy from the servant quarters into the house and called a special teacher to show him the letters. Later on Yorga was sent to school, and grew to be a learned man. All this time he did not know who his father was, and did not know that the hand he kissed good-night was the one that had murdered his mother.

"But there was a restless spirit in the boy; a spirit that made him roam from city to city whenever he had an opportunity. And thus he wandered all over the world. In search of learning, it was thought. Because no one realized the yearning of the gypsy in this stately youth.

"When Yorga was twenty-five his grandfather married him to another boyar's daughter. The following year the old man died, leaving his land and fortune to his grandson.

"Yorga was not happy in his marriage, not because the 'Conitza' was not a beautiful and good wife, not because she did not love him. Neither did his great fortune bring him happiness. It only tied him down to one place. Yorga began to go to the city once a month, and usually came home drunk. Then once every week. Later on he was seldom seen at home.

"The usurers first took away part of his land, then some of his oxen. His wife cried. One and then another child was born to them. Yorga made resolutions to better himself--cried and beat his heart and asked for forgiveness. A few days, a few weeks, or a few months of strenuous work, and then again back to the riotous life, to dissipation--and again home a repentant sinner. The land he owned shrunk daily. And the cattle he owned were either taken away or died in neglect--because 'the eye of the master fattens the cows.' And Yorga was careless. He had no ambition in life. He wanted nothing, he desired nothing. Even his carouses no longer had any distraction for him.

"Then one day our tribe camped near his grounds. At once he left wife, children, land and home, and came to live with us. For twenty years he guided our ways. There was no day that he thought not and labored not for us. He no longer thought of carouses and drinks. He bade us dress cleanly and live healthful lives, and we were respected wherever we came. It was he who guided us here over strange lands and great seas, and his wisdom is still guiding us."

"But," asked I, "what about the white children I saw in your tents?"

"They are of Yorga and his gypsy wife--and with them we have great trouble, for our ways are not their ways. Their souls are like the soul of Yorga's mother, the boyar's daughter. Some day they will run away and settle in some village--stolid, stale peasants."

"And what about Yorga's first children?" I asked again.

"They roam the world; are celebrated musicians. And the sun never finds them where the moon put them to sleep. They have the father's blood," the old man answered as he took with his bare fingers a piece of burning charcoal to light his freshly stuffed pipe.

"What's born of a cat runs after mice."

WHEN STARK'S CAFÉ WAS CLOSED

"Impossible, impossible, impossible," said everybody when the news passed around that Stark's Café was closed and that the house was being demolished.

Stark's Café on Houston Street was a celebrated landmark of New York. It was there that the playwrights, from the most pretentious to the humblest, closed contracts with managers. A special table at the upper end of the place was reserved for this purpose, and when a manager was sitting at that table with a playwright it meant business. "Charlie" the lawyer, would then loom up from somewhere and draw up the "funeral papers." Stark's Café! Why, Jewish actors in Alexandria, Egypt, made appointments with their London acquaintances to "meet at Stark's." It was not necessary to add "in New York."

Stark's was the stage mart of the world. The first tables near the door, just ordinary wooden tables, were apportioned for the ushers, ticket speculators and supers. Next to these tables were a few better ones, marble topped, at which were seated the provincial actors on visit in the metropolis. After those, there were a few which belonged to musicians and the writers of vaudeville jingles. But the round centre tables and those near the windows toward Houston Street were reserved for stars of both sexes, managers and successful playwrights. Stark's head waiter put it very clearly: "These tables are reserved for gentlemen who at least occasionally put on a silk hat."

And now, this place, this rendezvous of the two hemispheres was closed and being torn down.

* * * * *

Old Samuels, one of the oldest Jewish actors, complained bitterly about it.

"You understand," he said, "it's now twenty years that I never missed a day from Stark's. In the morning, after breakfast, I'd shave, dress and go to Stark's. Maybe, who knows! and after lunch I'd return there. To save carfare we moved not far from the place. After supper I was again there, and after the show--maybe--maybe."

Samuels's nickname was "Samuel Maybe," because it's now more than twenty years since he came from London, where he was a success, to play here, and it's still "Maybe." But he has never been faithless to his art. Oh, no! This was chiefly due to the fact that his wife and daughter were excellent dressmakers.

"You see for yourself what a calamity the tearing down of Stark's place is," old Samuels continued, as he wiped a tear from his eye. "All my hopes are blasted. There can be no 'maybe' any longer--I am doomed. What will I do every morning, every afternoon, every evening? Where will they come to look for me when they will need me?"

I must tell here that this conversation took place in a new café on 10th Street; whereupon some kind-hearted companion suggested to the weather-beaten veteran of the Jewish stage that he should make this place his steady abode. But the old man straightened his bent back, his eyes flashed fire and his thin hands shot out from his white cuffs in a dramatic sweep. "Here, in this place? I, Samuels, the man who created 'Kean' Shylock? No, never! Even if I starve to death. In a place without atmosphere, without traditions--never! never!"

One minute later he looked up at the clock on the wall and began to make hasty excuses: His wife was waiting for him with supper.

Samuels's past contained one of the greatest dramas. It ruined his life. It wiped the floor with him, so to say. Here is what had happened to him twenty-odd years ago:

There were only two Jewish theatres worthy of the name in the whole world. One was in London, and the other on the Bowery, New York--the old Thalia Theatre. The theatre in the Bowery had the greater reputation because of the genius of the lamented playwright, Jacob Gordin, presiding there, and the host of actors he had developed. It was the ambition of every London actor to play in New York. One of Samuels's confreres had already achieved fame on the Bowery when Samuels, who like all actors knew in his heart of hearts that he was better than any other living actor, decided to try his luck over here. In London he was already famous in certain classic rôles.

Ten days after his decision was taken, he and his grip landed at Stark's Café.

"From London? How is London? What's the new play there?"

Samuels had his best clothes on, and was admitted to the centre tables. It brought him in contact with stars and managers. His confrere, who had preceded him here, sat enviously at one of the minor tables. He only had a small part in a play, for which he received pay in "pasteboards" (tickets), which he himself peddled or sold to the brood of speculators. In those days Jewish actors did not own ten-thousand-dollar automobiles. Samuels's initial success, the ready admittance to the centre tables, made his former friend, Kashin, green with envy.

* * * * *

It so happened that Gordin, the dramatic manager, saw Samuels, liked his face, and engaged him immediately for a new play they were then rehearsing.

That same evening a cable was flashed to London to the actor's wife: "Pack up and come with baby." It brought Esther here two weeks later--just in time for the opening night of the new show.

Samuels's rôle was the one next to the star. Kashin had but a very minor rôle--as a body servant to Samuels, who was stalking about in flowing Oriental robes back stage from one end to the other.

Samuels waited in the wings for his cue. He had to come in with majestic steps and utter his decision to leave his faithless spouse to her lover. Oh how he chafed, waiting for his cue! It was to take the house by storm. He was to outshine even the star.

And--the cue was given, Kashin near him--everything in order. But just as he opened the door, Kashin gently but firmly stepped on poor Samuels's corn--on the little toe.

The pain was so terrible that the actor stumbled and limped on the stage with one foot in his hands. Mechanically he said his lines. Instead of using a stentorian voice with face to the gallery, he drawled them out in a plaintive tone, like a whimpering dog, looking at the stage door, with his back to the audience.

It was so funny that the audience roared with laughter and could not be brought to its senses. The heroine cried and pleaded, but it did not help. The gallery continued to laugh. When the curtain went down Kashin had disappeared from the theatre. The actors almost mobbed poor Samuels. The playwright, Gordin, could have killed him. "Even if they should have cut your head off you should still have been acting your rôle properly," he said. As soon as the poor actor appeared again in the next act, the people shook with laughter. It could not be suppressed.

When the manager came out before the curtain and explained to the people what had happened, it became even worse. It was impossible to go on. It killed the show--a good play which was revived ten years later with great success--and it killed Samuels.

* * * * *

Esther, a practical wife, opened a dressmaking shop. Samuels spent the next year or so explaining what had happened.

The first few weeks after the occurrence Samuels receded from the centre tables at Stark's to the side tables, and actors in good humor coaxed him into telling his story over and over again. It became a tradition to coax Samuels--and Samuels was easily coaxed into telling the story.

But he could get no place on the stage. From a character player he became a character. It became a habit with every manager to promise him a part in the next play. Some pretended it brought good luck to do so. When a play went to smash it was, they said, "Because Samuels did not believe you."

Thus the Jewish stage grew under his eyes with the doors closed to him, because some one had stepped on his corn. He became "Maybe"--"maybe" in the next play.

"Don't refuse Samuels," the manager would whisper to the playwright when the contract was drawn at the big table. "Don't refuse him; it brings bad luck."

Samuels would certainly have his eye on the proceedings, and come up to shake hands and bid good luck.

"And will I have a part?"

"I hope so, Samuels."

"Esther, I have a part in Ash's new play."

Esther had heard that same phrase twenty years thrice a day. Like all actors Samuels had but a poor vocabulary of his own. Relying on other men to supply them the tools of expression, actors are poor word finders.

Then, the night of the first performance, Samuels would warm up near some one, and as the "rôle" appeared he would sadly say, "My rôle, look what he is making with my rôle."

Twenty years of daily hopes and daily disappointments. A whole world grew up before him. He knew nothing of it at all. Stark's Café was New York, America. The whole world was comprised between his home and this place. His hair turned gray, the corners of his mouth drooped, his eyes dimmed, his shoulders stooped. His wife grew old, his daughter bloomed into youth and withered from overwork. There came the Boer War, several earthquakes, the Balkan War, and now this Great War. All this left Samuels cold and indifferent. All those years he was waiting at Stark's Café for an engagement.

"Maybe to-day."

And this haven of hope has disappeared.

BECAUSE OF BOOKKEEPING

"Nominations for treasurer are now in order. Nominations!"

"Moishe Goldberg"--"Moishe Goldberg"--"Moishe Goldberg," called out every one present at the yearly election of the Roumanian Sick Benefit Society.

"Any other nominations?" the Secretary asked.

"No, no, go ahead; it's Moishe Goldberg again, Mr. Secretary."

"He's good enough, good enough, Mr. Secretary."

And so Moishe Goldberg was elected Treasurer of the Society by acclamation. It was a yearly performance--since the last twenty years.

And this was not the only society for which Moishe Goldberg was Treasurer--there were a dozen. Every Jewish-Roumanian Society of New York wanted to have him act as Treasurer. Once he promised to accept the nomination, no other man would care to run against him, and the yearly election was merely a formality turned into flattery as far as he was concerned. His probity and financial responsibility were above par. His charity was proverbial.

* * * * *

At thirty he came from Roumania with his wife and two little girls. With the few dollars he had brought with him he opened a little grocery store on Clinton Street which prospered and developed into a bigger store on Rivington Street. Of a religious, old-fashioned turn of mind, he followed old Jewish traditions. His store closed Friday night, it remained so over Saturday; he also kept closed every Jewish holiday. He let his beard grow, and went regularly to the synagogue near Forsythe Street.

When he heard that some one chided him about his religious punctiliousness, he said: "I came here because I wanted religious freedom--what I have I want to use."

"Moishe Goldberg, money is needed for a new scroll."

"Put me down for a third of what it costs to get one."

When a woman bought less food than usual, Goldberg would ask, "What's the matter?"

"Husband is out of work."

"Well, do you want to starve him he should have no strength to look for work? Foolish woman! Take what you need; when he will work you will pay me up." And he would accept no thanks, Moishe Goldberg.

* * * * *