I Have a Story to Tell You

Ben Abrams

257 Ben Abrams’s father came to the United States in 1906 as a tinsmith. At some point the family moved to Canada, where his father and brothers carried on working in tin. Ben, however, worked in the needle trades for about six years, left, and then returned to it in 1949, at which time he opened his own shop. The interview with Ben took place in 1974 in the dining room of a cultural organization where pots and pans and plates were being banged and stacked. This noise was further exacerbated by the shouting and shushing of volunteer workers. Someone kept saying that she had the money! I WENT INTO THE NEEDLE TRADES around 1928 as a pleater working for other people. It was not a union shop. There were about twelve employees: pleaters, button makers. My job was calling on the trade—the dress trade and cloak trade. About 1928, I started working for eight dollars a week, as a delivery boy. Then I progressed to pattern making and about 1930, I was making approximately eighteen dollars a week. Patternmaking was designing the pleats that they used on dresses at that time. I didn’t open my own shop until way after. In between, I got out of the trade.I left the needle trade about 1935.I went back into it in 1949,when I had my own shop,and I went into manufacturing children’s wear.We had approximately 120 people working for us—50 percent of them were Jewish and 50 percent were from all religions. It was not a union shop at that time until 1949, when, without our knowledge, they had been organized and, without even coming to us to ask for demands, they just walked out on strike. Ben Abrams  We came in one morning and they were picketing the place. Then the union organizers contacted us and we had a meeting with them. The demands that they made were no greater than what they were getting at the time. So, consequently, we signed a union contract and they all went back to work after being out about three weeks. And they found, at least our employees found, that they were making less money under the union than they were making prior to joining the union. Unbeknown to us, a movement began amongst the employees after several months and they all decided to withdraw from the union, which they did.And we continued in business after that for about—well I did—for about two years without it being a union shop. In those days, it was go to work, and work, and go home. That was it. We worked a normal day.We worked till five o’clock. Until, it must have been about 1930, when flared skirts came into style—and they were making them by the thousands. And for about one year, we worked about fifteen hours a day steadily for an entire season, on flared skirts. I’ll never forget that. Some days we worked right up to midnight from eight o’clock in the morning because of the volume. It was no union shop that I worked for, but we got well paid. I worked for Jewish bosses and most of the employees were Jewish. Strike? No, I never did go out on strike.And the shop where I worked they never tried … the union never even tried to organize the pleating industry and we were never approached to organize. From the time I got in to the time I left, we were never organized. Although the garment industry was being organized, we were a separate entity from the garment industry itself. My father came from Russia, originally to the United States. He was a tinsmith and the stories he tells me—he worked for two and three dollars a week—and that was pretty good. He came over, I believe, about 1906. My grandfather, my father, and the entire family were all tinsmiths back in Russia. They had their own shop there. Consequently, when my Dad came here, well, he worked for a while and then opened up his own shop. His upbringing was tin: tinsmithing and that’s what he did. They manufactured in those days: baby baths, washtubs, boilers, ash sifters—which are unheard of today. They are all antiques today. There was, in my day, at that time, everything was quiet. Strikes were almost unheard of then. The needle trades was getting organized...