I Have a Story to Tell You

Max Povitz

220 I spoke to Max Povitz in 1974, in Montreal, when he was seventy-seven years old. He was born in a shtetl called Dwinske, in Latvia, in 1897. Max has repeatedly said how bad things were in the Old Country when he lived there from 1897 to 1925. I REMEMBER A LOT of things. When I was nine years old, my father gave me away for to be a tailor. It was a military tailor in the Old Country and this was in Latvia. At that time my father was not so rich. I had three brothers and one sister. They worked in a match factory. My father was a tailor. In winter he was a tailor and in summer he was a peddler. He bought chickens and sometimes apples, and this and that in the market, and this he would peddle. He made a poor living. My mother helped him a little bit but she passed away when I was very young. She was about fifty or fifty-one years old. I was very young,just a schoolboy at the time,and I had to help my father. My brothers were working in the factory and so they decided I should be a worker,I should be a tailor.It was a big thing in the Old Country.So I was given for a tailor for three years.I worked for three years for forty rubles.It was a small factory, about four people, not like factories in America. In the Old Country we didn’t have factories like that. I am now seventy-seven years old. I’m not a youngster. I am now retired seven years, but I want to say, so they decided to give me away for a tailor. So I had a very, very hard living, you know. They give me away for a tailor to learn the trade. It was that time very bad. I helped my father a little bit—whatever I could help him—he was a tailor —in the winter—and if he maybe made a dollar a week, then it was a good week. It was very good. So what could I do? I work in the shop and the boss—it was very bad at that time, very bad. The boss I work for didn’t even give me a piece of bread. Max Povitz  They didn’t want to. But they give me an old pair of shoes. I haven’t got good shoes—with torn shoes I went to work. Until I was ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen years I am working there, and I learned to make a pair of pants. A pair of pants to learn, it took three years. The boss didn’t want I should learn at that time. The times was very bad. The boss’s wife hollered at me as if I am a maid in that home. She had four children , four small girls. I have to look after them. I went with them in the park, and I had to do this and that.And they scream at me what I should do to learn. That was my life. And for forty rubles that they give me for three years. You see, the boss himself was a poor man. He was Jewish. He was in the army. It was a poor life. Anyway, I was ten or eleven when my mother passed away. My two brothers went away to America, to New York. One brother, the older one, was still in the Old Country, and also my sister. So I am left with my father, my brother, and my sister. My brothers decided when they come to America they will be better off. But they were poor at that time, in 1906. Maybe they make a few dollars more. And they send home five dollars, ten dollars. So father was better off. We paid, at the time, a ruble a month for rent. Can you imagine what kind of life there it was at that time? I remember just like now! I work for the three years and I don’t think he give me all the forty rubles even. I went away from that boss and I went to another because I wanted to learn the trade and how to make a pair of pants. I was thirteen or fourteen years old. My father went and found another woman. He took another woman and she was at...