A Moment of Reflection

Daniel, my five year old son, sat down and at his oatmeal, his usual breakfast. I ate half of a piece of bread and drank water, my usual breakfast. I stared at the wall, letting the sounds of our chewing fill the room. I wasn’t even sure if we’d have food for tomorrow. I’ll have to work later tomorrow, the rent’s coming up too. We finished up the final bites of our food and got ready to leave.

I sat by Daniel and tied his shoelaces. I was taking him a bit uptown from our tenement to my sister’s tenement. It was Monday, so I was to work today. My hours today are fewer than usual, around twelve hours as opposed to the usual fourteen. My husband works at a textile factory down the street. He makes all types of clothes: shirts, pants, sweaters, scarves. I work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory at Washington Place, in what the call now Greenwich Village.

“Mom, can we go toy shopping?”

“Not this week baby, maybe in a couple of weeks.”

I refused to make it clear to my son that we didn’t have the money for it. We barely had enough to eat, my husband and I. But this was the life that many of us here led. It was difficult for us as Polish immigrants. When we came here, it was just my husband, my then-four-year-old son, my parents, and my sister. I remember arriving here at Ellis Island. It was a magnificent sight. We saw America, the land of opportunity. Poland was growing hostile to us Jews because of political and social tensions between our communities and Christians. We felt unsafe. America was the only place we saw fit to progress and make a better and safer life for our children.

We never understood the anti-Semitism tearing through Europe. No one could understand it. Historically, there always had been a level of hatred against the Jewish people, but for a while it was lessened. Recently, it began creeping up again. I distinctly remember my sister and I sitting in our village in Krakow discussing this. We feared less for ourselves. Our children were whom we feared for. If the tensions were rising at that time, then imagine how they would be in a few decades. Looking back now, it was the right decision to make for my kids. We would’ve all been in concentration camps if we hadn’t left our village. We believed in democracy, and America’s name as the face of democracy was imminent in its future. There was no question that that’s where we would be buried.

I looked at the clock. I was going to be late for work if I didn’t speed us up. I put a jacket on my son, I put on my sweater, and we left the tenements. The walk past all the other neighbors was always a mix of animosity and indifference. We haven’t been here in New York City for as long as our German and Polish Christian neighbors. We feel a certain animosity here too, but far less than we felt in Krakow. The divide between Christians and Jews always existed, but at least here there wasn’t as big of a threat of violence against us.

“Good morning Isabel!” my neighbor said.

Broken from staring at the sidewalk and my son’s little legs, I looked up and saw a Russian Jewish neighbor of ours, Alexandra.

“Oh hello Alexandra!”

We spoke to each other in a mix of Polish and Russian. Because of our schooling and Russia’s influence on Poland, I knew Russian from school. Much like in America where they often teach the kids Spanish.

I couldn’t speak to her for long. It was 8:30. I had to get to the factory by 9:00. I started speeding up, just enough so we’d make it to my sister’s by 8:40.

I dropped my son off, and speed walked to the factory. My coworkers had already arrived there. I quickly got to work.

The conditions of the factory were incredibly bad. The light was dim and the windows were all closed. There was no ventilation. There was smoke everywhere, it felt as though I was sitting on my father’s lap as a child as he lit a cigarette, or his “best friend,” as he’d call it. To him, he was “giving his best friend some warmth from the cold.” That’s what he’d quip when he’d light his cigarettes. Back then, of course, we would all laugh and not pay it any mind. If we knew what they know today, we wouldn’t be showing our teeth much at quips like that. In any case, it was common for people to be affected by the smoke in the factory. My friend, Agnieska,  actually had asthma. She stopped working at the factory after she had an asthma attack and nearly died.

Probably the worst sight, though, was the sight of the children working there. Girls, no older than thirteen, would come into work along side me. Their once-soft, infantile hands would be calloused and wrapped in cloth because of cuts and gashes they would get from the equipment. It wasn’t uncommon for those cuts to become infected, and the next thing you know, the girl couldn’t work anymore because she got gangrene and needed an amputation. In Krakow, we were used to seeing young boys and girls work, however the conditions in the factory were the troubling part. I had some hope that the owners would improve the conditions here because they invested in an elevator for the various floors of the factory. We couldn’t complain. No matter what, there was no protest for the conditions. The owners and bosses were giving us an income, be it unsteady, be it little. It was something. There is absolutely no way any of us could lose our jobs. It was easy to get fired, so no one argued about the conditions. I always thought that one day, these conditions would cause someone to die. The conditions were so bad, photographers would come photograph us for the progressive movement brewing in society. One of them was some big shot guy who asked me to stand in front of one of our dangerous machines, that is, any machine, and stare into the camera.

“Good evening Miss, I’m Paul Strand. May I take a picture of you? It’s for an album I’m making on the working conditions here.”

He was good looking, so I figured why not. Let him have his fun. Maybe the world will see what we go through here. He took a picture, looked satisfied, thanked me, and went on to ask someone else to pose.

Looking back at it now, it’s great he did that because I honestly believe his exposing the conditions to the outside caused the major reforms I noticed in the twenties and thirties.

I usually handled packaging of the shirtwaists at the factory, so I just stood there sometimes while waiting for a shirtwaist to come my way. I looked at the clock, there were still five hours left in my twelve-hour day. I saw the dim light out the window, I looked back at my station as soon as the boss came downstairs to my floor. He threw his cigarette out in the trash and walked down the aisles. “Quality control” he’d call it. He did a couple of rounds, his stomach hanging over his belt as he walked around. I despised him. He was rich. He could pay us more if he wanted, but of course that would mean less money for him. As if he and his fat ass needed more than what he already had. Selfishness is what we all called it. He entered the elevator and went to his office upstairs. I never understood people like that. They have the power to improve the lives of their workers and make a difference. But they still prefer to keep the wealth with themselves.

I smelled something funny. I was used to the scent of hot textiles, but this smelled like carbon. Something was burning. It was the trash can! It was on fire from the cigarette that fatass threw into it! All of the clothes near it went up in flames.

Agnieska grabbed me and pulled me with her to run. The elevator to downstairs was broken. We went back to the area of the fire, only to see people scorched alive, women breaking windows and jumping out of them in the hopes of surviving, only to jump to their demise.

We ran towards the fire escape. There were five women trying to get down it, but it was too narrow to fit all of us quickly. We sent the children down the fire escape because they were small enough to fit, and we pushed down on the shoulders of the women trying to get down. It wasn’t working. Tears began flowing down our eyes, our faces getting red and burning from the hot air from the factory which was ablaze. Screams filled the air, they could be heard coming from outside as bodies jumped from floors above us.

Agnieska and I ran towards a stairwell which had a door at the bottom. Maybe we could escape through there. We got to the door and pulled as hard as we could. The damn thing was locked. The bosses always locked the doors so we couldn’t leave until they let us out. The flames grew, and I thought of my son. I had only seen him this morning, but little did I know that that was the last time I would see him in person. Agnieska collapsed in my arms, she was alive but the carbon monoxide made her faint. The flames reached the door we used to get to the stairwell. This was our end.

We came to America for a better life, and I don’t regret that. Maybe if I stayed in Poland, I would have lived past the age of twenty five, but at least progyny will have better futures. I look down from above and see them everyday, my son died in the 1980s, but my grandchildren are successful. They live in New York City, in Greenwich Village, ironically. I wonder if they know who their grandmother was and where she died. I wonder if they know the struggles immigrants encountered in order to make a better life for the following generations of their progyny.

The struggle of the immigrants is one that hopefully my grandchildren and their children never have to see, but it was a harsh reality for all of us who wanted to make a better life for ourselves. In the process of this pursuit, many lost their lives, but at the end of the day, it was worth the bright futures given to the following generations.

The one good thing now is, there is no work in heaven. So, I can rest easy knowing I did the best I could as a mother, as a wife, and as a daughter.