I Can Get It for You Wholesale (3 page)

He perked up a little at that. My theory is that a shot in the arm every once in a while keeps the patient interested. I guess I should have studied medicine. I had the right bedside manner.

“Now, I know what you’re going to ask,” I said. “You’re going to ask ‘How?’ And that’s just what I’m going to tell you.”

I lit another cigarette and leaned across the table toward him. As I talked, his own cigarette went dead, and his mouth opened. Once or twice he started to say something, but I shut him up quick. Finally he couldn’t hold it any longer. It popped right out of him.

“But Bogen, where do
I
come in?”

Did you ever walk along the street, thinking of nothing in particular and feeling pretty good, when smacko, you stub your toe or you bunk into somebody, and it brings you up cold, right out of that pleasant state of mind? That’s how I felt right then. Here I’d been talking away, sailing through the thing like a dose of salts, with him sitting across the table from me, smoking and nodding his head and looking intelligent. Then, when I hit the climax, he comes out with that crack. Maybe I’d given him credit for more brains than he had. I guess being a radical does things to a person. It had certainly done things to Tootsie Maltz. He was a lot quicker on the uptake when I first knew him.

“What do you mean, where do you come in?”

“Just that,” he said, looking like he’d just come out of a table. “
This
is where you come in.”

“Right here, you dumb baloney,” I said, smacking the table. “
This
is where you come in.”

He looked at me and scratched his head. Well, I guess there was nothing for me to do but roll up my sleeves and sail in.

“Listen, Tootsie,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and low. “Did you ever take a good look at yourself in the mirror?”

“What the hell is that got to do with it?”

“Nothing,” I said, “except that if you ever did, and you saw what a homely puss you had, you’d realize that your chances of winning beauty contests were pretty slim.”

“So what? I still don’t get it.”

“Then listen for a change, and you will,” I said. “If you could only see what you look like, you’d realize that I didn’t need you for a front. Unless I was going into the circus business and was trying to get a menagerie together,” I added. If anybody would’ve talked to me like that, I’d’ve rapped him in the puss. But he just sat and listened. “But I’m not getting together a menagerie. I’m trying to make some dough, and if I come to you, you can be pretty sure I need you for a special reason. Understand?”

He shook his head.

“I
still
don’t get it,” he said.

Can you imagine anybody as dumb as all that?

I hitched my chair a little closer to the table and leaned forward on it with my elbows, putting my face as close to him as I could get it.

“Listen, dope,” I said.

T
HE THING WAS SET
for eight-thirty. Which meant that it probably wouldn’t start before nine. But I was there at eight. I wanted to give everything a last once-over. Not that I was worried about there being a hitch or anything like that. It was just that I had nothing else to do. For the time being my end was clear. And anyway, I got a kick out of it. My brains had thought the thing out. My dough was paying for it. It gave me a feeling of power to stand there and watch and see the whole thing take shape under my nose.

Across the front of the building, right over the doorway and under the sign that spelled out Pythian Temple in electric lights, was the big sheet of oilcloth lettered in red and black:

8:30! MASS MEETING TO-NIGHT! 8:30!

SHIPPING CLERKS

OF THE GARMENT DISTRICT

MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE TO YOU

WILL BE DISCUSSED

ADMISSION FREE

8:30 TO-NIGHT

That sign had set me back five bucks. At first I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was necessary. The circulars that Tootsie had been distributing for over a week had been clear enough. They had Pythian Temple spread all over them. It would take an awfully dumb guy not to be able to find it if he wanted to get there. But you don’t know how dumb shipping clerks can be. With those rummies you couldn’t be too careful. So it would cost me an extra five bucks, so what? After all the dough I’d spent already, it would be stupid to take a chance on spoiling the whole thing because of a little thing like that. So I ordered the sign. It looked good, anyway. It gave the thing a final, business-like touch. Let those mockies see that this thing was being run by people who meant business.

I looked at my watch. A quarter after eight. And nobody in sight. I was beginning to feel nervous. Suppose nobody showed up? Or suppose only a few of them came? Which would be just as bad. What then? I shook off the feeling of worry and lit a cigarette. What was I getting excited about? It was still early. And anyway, only small-time heels worried before anything happened.

I crossed the gutter and leaned against the doorway of a building that faced the entrance of the Temple. It certainly was a swell sight. It ought to be. It had cost me plenty. How much? Well, let’s see. First there was the rent for the hall. Fifty bucks. Then five for the sign made it fifty-five. And ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three for mimeographing circulars made it—fifty-five plus twenty-three—made it seventy-eight. Then add all the extras, feeding Tootsie and a couple of other things, and it came pretty close to a hundred. Whew!

That was a lot of money in any man’s country, especially when you’re drawing on your capital. At that rate I wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long.

All right, then, I’d just have to make it short and sweet. The faster you work, the better chance you have of succeeding. It doesn’t give those that might have a brain or two a chance to start figuring things out.

Two or three fellows turned the corner and began to drift up the block. I noticed them immediately. You can tell a shipping clerk a mile away. Three days after pay day every one of them quits eating lunches and borrows carfare. But that doesn’t stop them from trying to dress like the Meadowbrook polo crowd. Every nickel they can beg or borrow is on their backs.

The ones coming up the block toward me had one other distinguishing characteristic, besides the regulation shipping clerk’s uniform of suede shoes, peg-top pants in a loud check, and Tyrol hat. They walked slowly, as though they were ashamed of what they were doing.

When they came near the Temple they stopped. One of them pointed to the oilcloth sign.

“This must be it,” he said. “Look at the sign there.”

I guess that sign wasn’t such a bad investment after all.

“Yeah, I guess so,” another one said.

Just a couple of bright boys.

“Let’s go in.”

They went inside and I breathed easier. I knew it would work. It had to. I had planned everything too carefully. At first I wanted to rent a hall up in the Bronx, because that’s where most of them live anyway. But then I figured I’d be losing out both ways. First of all, I’d be losing all those that lived in Brooklyn and down on the East Side or any other place but the Bronx. And then the next thing was that if I called the meeting in the Bronx, they’d have a chance to go home and eat first. Once they had a chance to eat and wash up and get comfortable, maybe they wouldn’t feel so hot about the idea of getting dressed and going to a meeting. But like this, by hiring a hall right here in Manhattan, not far from the garment district, those that wanted to come would have to stay downtown.

And judging from the way they began to arrive now, it looked like there were plenty of those that wanted to come.

Those circulars Tootsie had been distributing all over Seventh Avenue were honeys. I’d written them myself. Me and Lenin. Shipping clerks attention! Step-children of the garment industry! Come out and fight for your rights! Organize against your exploiters! No more seventy-hour weeks for fifteen dollars! Demand higher wages and fewer hours! And get it, too! Come to the mass meeting at Pythian Temple and learn how!

And a lot more of the same. But that’s enough to give you the general idea. I could rattle it off for you by the hour, but how do I know you’ve got a strong stomach? My insides aren’t exactly what you’d call delicate, but two and a half minutes of that baloney is enough to make me puke.

By now they were coming down the block in droves. I hadn’t realized myself that they might be as interested as all this. Maybe conditions were even worse for them than I’d thought? After all, I’d been away from the Avenue for nearly a year. Watching them pour into the Temple, I got a feeling of the power that was there, if they only knew how to use it. Well, here was one guy who knew what that power was, and who knew how to use it, too.

My watch said twenty to nine. Time to start. As I looked up I saw Tootsie climbing the steps into the Temple with a dame on either side of him. I couldn’t see their faces, but I recognized the one on his right immediately. Or rather, I recognized her can. My bet was that there were only half a dozen like it in captivity. It was big enough to play a game of two-handed pinochle on. Once you see something with those dimensions, you don’t forget it. It began to look like this Tootsie wasn’t such a dope after all. Near the top of my list of things to do, I jotted down a note to look into the situation as soon as I had a little time.

The crowd in the street had thinned out. I crossed the gutter and entered with the stragglers. The large auditorium was just off a small foyer. I went in and took a seat in the rear. It was the only place where you could get a seat. The rest of the room was jammed. At the front, on a small raised platform, sat Tootsie and the two dames, their heads bent together, reading something spread on the table in front of them. I looked around the room.

The manager had told me there were six hundred seats in the place. But there were more than six hundred shipping clerks there already and the door kept opening and closing as new ones arrived. They were doubling up on the chairs, and plenty of them were standing. I tried to count them, but it was too much of a job. I made a rough estimate. Close to a thousand. Not bad.

The air was heavy with smoke and there was a steady hum of low voices. But there was no shouting or pushing or laughing. And it wasn’t only that they were quiet because they seemed to be afraid of something. It was just that they’d never before been brought together in a mob where they could take a good look at themselves. Alone, in their shipping rooms, wearing their fancy clothes, they knew they were heels, but they could still feel superior. But here, jammed up together in a crowd, they could look at themselves multiplied by a thousand. It was a little too much shipping clerk. Even for me. I felt slightly embarrassed myself.

Suddenly Tootsie stood up and rapped on the table with a ruler. The noise stopped immediately, as though it had been coming from another room and a heavy door had been closed suddenly to shut it out.

“Fellows,” he said, looking around the room with a quiet smile, “before we go into the serious business of the evening, I want to congratulate you on your showing. I don’t mind admitting that we didn’t expect such a big turnout. If we had, we would have arranged for a larger place.” The hell we would! “But we’ll come to the point without wasting time and settle our business quickly. So please bear with us.”

He was better than I expected. There was something about his fat face and long hair and serious-sounding voice that made him look the part. I couldn’t have done better myself.

“I guess it’s no secret to you,” he said, “why we’ve assembled here to-night. Every one of you has, at some time during the last week, read one of the circulars that we have been distributing. Or, if you haven’t read it, you’ve been told about it. And what we have said on those circulars has interested you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

One of the pots that sat at the table on the platform was writing away with a pencil, her head bent down over her work. The other one was just sitting there, listening. That was a good idea of Tootsie’s, having the dames along. It made the thing seem real. I’d noticed that a long time ago. A secretary adds importance to whatever you’re doing, no matter how stupid it may be.

“I don’t think I’m overstating the case,” Tootsie said, “when I say that the shipping clerks of Seventh Avenue are probably the hardest-worked and poorest-paid class of workers in the country. I know, because I was a shipping clerk myself once.” Oh yes, he was! “And when the season rushes come along, I’d say they were the poorest-paid workers in the whole world. Now, there’s no reason for that. There’s nothing about the dress business that makes it impossible for shipping clerks to make a decent living wage. The operators and finishers and pressers have succeeded in getting minimum-wage and maximum-hour concessions from the employers’ groups. When that five-o’clock bell rings, those factory workers are on their way home. And when their envelopes come around on Wednesday, there’s something more in it than just plain cigarette money. But when the five-o’clock bell rings, where are the shipping clerks? They’re still chasing all over the damn city with bundles, or sweating blood wrapping packages, or doing the thousand and one jobs the shipping clerk is called on to do. And what does he get for it? I’ll bet if I called for a show of hands of all those here who were making over fifteen dollars a week, there wouldn’t be an even dozen. But I’ll bet, too, that if I called for all those who averaged more than sixty or seventy hours a week, there isn’t a man here who wouldn’t put up his hand.”

From the quiet way they sat and took it in, you’d think they were listening to a choice bawling out from the boss. It was a good speech. I’ve never written a bad one yet.

“Why should there be such a great difference between a shipping clerk and an operator? Why should the shipping clerks be the step-children of the garment industry?” He paused. “There’s only one answer.” He leaned far across the table and pointed at the middle of the crowd. “Because the shipping clerks aren’t organized!”