Clara and Mr. Tiffany (44 page)

A
FTER LUNCH THE NEXT DAY, I HANDED THE NOTE TO CARRIE
. She read it, gave me a serious glance, and passed it to Nellie. Nellie’s hand clamped over her mouth. She looked at me in agony and passed it to Mary. After Mary read it, she gave Nellie a steady, understanding look. When Minnie passed it to Julia Zevesky, Julia stared at it a long time. She took it to Olga, who read it in Polish, and they had a long, heated conversation. I saw that I might have a rugged time ahead of me. Olga passed it to Beatrix, who didn’t seem surprised in the least. Note in hand, she knocked on Agnes’s door. I hadn’t intended to involve Agnes, and I didn’t expect her participation, but I would certainly welcome it.

When the note had made the rounds, Miss Stoney handed it to me. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

I put it in my pocketbook, the safest place.

At the end of the day, I made Nellie leave with me through the main entrance on Fourth Avenue to avoid the workers’ door on Twenty-fifth Street. I insisted that she walk around the showroom to see the lamps lit.

“You’ve had something to do with many of these.”

Her eyes sparkled as she looked. “Ain’t nothing in life so sweet as seeing those flowers all lit up in glass. You can see them bloom summer or winter.”

“Just remember that.”

She scowled at the laburnum lamp. “Mighty hard, that one. All those tiny yellow pieces with hardly a difference between ’em, and all those ins and outs of the shade.” She stepped over to another table. “Trumpet vine was my favorite for a while, but now I like the iris lantern better. Sort of Japanese, I’m guessing.”

She lingered longest at the landscape lamp.

“Does that one mean something to you?” I asked.

“The landscape week. Patrick all akilter, proud and pissed.”

Outside, Nellie said, “Whatever you have in mind, I can’t do it. Patrick would be fightin’ mad. This time, it would last. He might even throw me over.”

“So mad that he would hit you?”

She tipped her head to one side, squinting with her whole face. “I don’t know if he has that in him. Maybe. Irishmen are quick with the fist.”

“If he does, he’s not worth your love.” I shook her arm. “Tell me you agree.”

“I can’t.” It came out as a high squeak.

“Are you sorry you told me about the strike?”

“Nay.”

At Madison Square Park I positioned myself facing the magnolia tree, so the girls in front of me would see the Flatiron Building behind me as a mere façade without stability. Julia and Olga had never seen it. Their astonishment unleashed a salvo of high-speed Polish. The building provided the right atmosphere that something monumental was about to take place.

I picked up a fallen magnolia petal and felt its cushiony surface. We had no cushion to fall back on if we weren’t unanimous. It was crucial to time the vote exactly at the peak of commitment.

Carrie counted heads. “Twenty-seven, including you.”

“This building started as an idea before it took form in steel and stone,” I said, loud enough so all could hear. “An idea of beauty and service and stability. There were some who said it couldn’t be built. Others said it would topple in a strong wind. It only looks frail from one perspective, which is deceiving. This building grew just as our department has grown and built its strength, and you as individuals have grown, building your skills and your characters. A strong wind is gathering to blow down our little department, but it cannot, since our department was founded on beauty and service too. We have only to prove its stability.

“I’ll start with a question. Since the men came into our studio and took our windows, how many new window commissions have we had from the management, not counting Miss Northrop’s?”

They looked around at one another, trying to think of any.

“Nary a one,” said Mary.

“Right. Not a single one. How many new window commissions do you think we’ll get from Mr. Thomas next month?”

“Nary a one,” said Mary.

“Or the month after?”

“None,” Anna said.

Good. By their serious looks, the hard truth was dawning, at least on some.

“I’m sure we’re all grateful to Miss Northrop for supplying us with noncommissioned window designs. How long can we expect that The Powers will let us keep making windows that may or may not sell in the showroom? If there is any lag in sales, one by one you will be let go. Would any of you like to be the one to choose who will be the first to go? The second? The third?”

More sideways glances.

“Today I’m asking you to make a decision, and in order to do that, you need to know one thing. It was at the direction of the Glaziers and Glass Cutters’ Union that those ten men came into our studio and took the windows that were rightfully ours. Don’t be mistaken. We don’t just have those ten men against us. Nor do we only have Tiffany’s two hundred male glass artisans against us. We have two hundred plus a strong union of more than a thousand members throughout the city, if it comes to that.”

Murmurs all around. Scowls. Eyes narrowed. Mouths agape.

“Why did they start this?” I asked. “Jealousy and fear, but it’s a false fear, because there’s enough work to go around. So it must be something else too.”

“It’s because we’re women,” Theresa said, scowling.

“I’ve been informed that while their immediate objective was to gain back all window work because they feel threatened by us, they have a long-range plan—to take our lampshades from us too.”

Now the murmurs turned to shock and angry protests.

“If that happens, what would we do?” asked Theresa. “Just mosaics?”

“A few of you might be held on to do mosaics. Only two teams do
mosaics at the moment. But this is not a case of mosaicists against leaded-glass workers within our department. It’s a case of—”

“Men against women,” Theresa blurted.

Her audacity was just what I needed.

I raised my voice again. “The union that directed that action does not recognize our existence as capable artisans of the craft. They refuse us membership. If the union won’t let us in, we’ll have to act with the strength of a union of our own. We have to have a unity of spirits, and we have to have it overnight. A unified front, strong enough not to buckle under the intimidation of men. We are not frail creatures easily toppled any more than this building is.” I gave it a backhanded wave. “We only have to prove our worth. You have proved yourselves in the studio by doing six beautiful landscape windows in one week, an astonishing feat. The men hated our competence then, and that hate has festered. Now you have to prove your worth on the street, for all of New York to see.”

“They’ll call us scabs,” Nellie wailed.

“Then they’ll be making a mistake. Scabs are hired to break a strike by taking the strikers’ jobs so the company can keep functioning. We’re just walking to our
own
jobs like every other morning, only we’re doing it together. What we have here is the possibility of our whole department being shut down, and all of us on the streets anyway, looking for work.

“I have it on good authority that tomorrow there will be a picket line on Fourth Avenue and on Twenty-fifth Street. In order for you to get to work, you will have to cross that line, wedging your way between them. Don’t deceive yourselves. They will not be polite. You will be jeered. You may even be touched. Think of how they treated Miss Judd and Mary in the studio.”

“And Nellie and me,” Theresa added.

A new wave of shock ripped through the group in whispers and worried looks.

“Their intention is to frighten you so you’ll turn back when you see them and not come to work at all. Ever. They think they can usurp our positions by bullying us, the male action of last resort, but nothing except our own fear of action can remove us from our rightful position.”

I gave them a few moments to talk among themselves.

“How many of you have fathers who are in a union?”

Half a dozen hands went up, unfortunately not Nellie’s.

“Talk to them tonight. They’ll tell you about the power of group action. I propose that we meet at the south side of Gramercy Park at nine o’clock.”

“We’ll be late for work,” wailed Miss Precise-and-Punctual Judd.

“That’s intentional. We want everyone else there before us. We want the men on the picket line and The Powers That Be to notice that we’re not there, and wonder. We want Mr. Thomas and Mr. Platt and Mr. Tiffany to get nervous. Then we will walk there together, not strolling along the sidewalk as if we’re going on a shopping trip. We’ll walk abreast up Fourth Avenue, the street of art and commerce. We’ll walk out in the street and through the picket line, to our
legitimate
jobs. Walk together to preserve what you’ve established here, what skills you have developed.”

I felt my breath come fast and strong. “What do you say?”

Mary raised the cry. “Yes. We’ll walk together.”

“Above all, I want there to be no division in the department. We need all of you in order to make a big showing and to stretch across Fourth Avenue.” I gave Nellie a hard look. She shrank into the hunch-shouldered posture she had when she came to ask for a job. “We must be unified, whatever the cost to our emotions.”

“You have me,” said Theresa, lifting her chin high above her lace collar threaded through with pink ribbon.

“Me too,” said Carrie.

“What about you, Marion?”

“I’m with you.”

“Anna?”

Anna answered in Yiddish.

“Mind telling us what you just said, missy?” Mary asked.

“It’s an oath my papa says at his garment workers’ union. ‘If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise.’ I just felt like saying it.”

“That’s a fine pledge, Anna. Thank you.”

“Miss Byrne?”

The wrinkles in her face tightened and deepened. “It’s not dignified.”

“How dignified is it to be out of work and turned away because we happen to wear skirts?”

“When you take off that skirt tonight, look for the union label,” Anna said. “There’s nothing undignified in that.”

“I’ll come back to you, Miss Byrne. Miss Judd?”

“How many days will we have to do this?”

“As long as there is a picket line. Do you want to go through it alone?”

“It’s just walking to work together, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then all right. I will.”

Miss Stoney gaped at her with eyes as big as pigeon’s eggs. “Mildred!”

I’d never known anyone to use Miss Judd’s first name.

“Miss Stoney?”

“I can’t. I can’t embarrass Mr. Tiffany that way, parading in the street like suffragettes.”

“How else are you going to get to work?” I asked.

“Couldn’t we stay home just one day?”

“It won’t be just one day. If you stay home tomorrow it will be harder to come the next day. That’s just what they want, to break us out of timidity. I realize some of you think it’s inappropriate to associate art with labor unions.”

“Or women with labor unions,” said Miss Byrne.

“Think of the word
union
in its pure sense, and think of the raw feelings afterward if our department were divided.”

I waited, giving her plenty of opportunity to come around.

“I’ll come back to you too. Bertie, you raised your hand. What union is your father in?”

“The Gas Stokers’ Union.”

“He works hard. Shoveling coal?” She nodded. “Do you think of him when you turn up your gas radiator? Are you proud of him? Do you want him to be proud of you?”

“I’m in. He’d strap my backside if I didn’t side with you.”

Nellie’s face contorted into a thousand tight shapes as I went through the list.

“Minnie?”

Her thin English lips were pursed with the effort of deciding. “Indeed.”

“Olga?”

A raised hand.

“Beatrix, I recognize that your family history does not include union members. Do you stand with us?”

“Most certainly I do.”

“Thank you. Julia, you’ve had and still have a difficult time at home, but you are an amazingly strong and capable young woman. As strong as another woman from Poland, Miss Rose Schneiderman, who like you, cared for her younger brothers and cooked for the family when she was only a child so her mother could work in a fur coat factory in this city. Eventually Rose worked in a cap-making factory, organized the women there into a union, and raised their wages by two dollars a week. So you see, everyone, Polish women aren’t afraid to take on mighty responsibilities. We have built up this department by hard work so there would be a place for you, Julia. Are you with us?”

“I guess so.”

I kept looking at her.

“Yes, I am.”

“Now, Nellie?” I asked in a firm voice. No answer.

“Some of you may know that Nellie’s sweetheart works in the Men’s Window Department. She has something immeasurable at stake.”

Sympathetic words surrounded her. Nellie’s hand curled around a small gold locket at her throat.

“You don’t want to be the only one not with us,” Theresa said.

Nellie looked around sheepishly at everyone waiting for her answer. Mary squeezed her arm roughly, and Nellie let go of the locket, raised her hand to her shoulder, and uttered a faltering yes.