New York - The Novel

The tenement only had gaslight to work by. Even with a kerosene lamp to help them, Salvatore would see the two women peering anxiously at their work, and sometimes his mother would shake her head and say to Anna: “Your eyes are younger. Tell me if this is straight.”
    He knew that all over the Lower East Side, Jewish and Italian women were huddled in small rooms, in the same way. Some families set up little sweatshops in their lodgings, hiring girls even poorer than they were to work in shifts round the clock. That was the way the garment industry worked. Anna would arrive from a garment-maker carrying a great pile of unfinished items piled on her head. When the pieces were finished, Salvatore would sometimes offer to take them back for her.
    He was on this errand one evening in June when he happened to pass a building from which a crowd of young women were emerging. Most of the girls were Jewish, but they didn’t seem to mind when the curious Italian boy asked them what sort of work they did. They answered his questions cheerfully before going on their way. All the way home, Salvatore thought about what he had learned. At the evening meal, he told his family.
    “There’s a factory where they make garments. There are lots of girls there of Anna’s age. They work in a big room with high ceilings and electric light, and rows of sewing machines. The pay isn’t too bad, and they have fixed hours. Maybe Anna could work there too.”
    Any such decision would have to be made by his father. And Giovanni Caruso shook his head at the idea of Anna being out of the house; his wife, though, was prepared to consider it.
    “Anna is ruining her eyes at home,” she said. “She’ll be blind before she finds a husband. Let me look at this place, Giovanni, just to see what it is like.”
    She and Anna went there the next day. A week later, Anna Caruso began work at the Triangle Factory.

    Salvatore’s day now took on a new routine. He would shine boots with Paolo until early evening, when he would take Angelo to meet Anna.
    The Triangle Factory was in a cobbled street just east of Washington Square Park, at the foot of Fifth Avenue. In the park, standing on a granite plinth, there was a fine statue of Garibaldi. A north Italian, admittedly, but at least an Italian. The great hero had even lived on Staten Island briefly during his years of exile, and it made Salvatore proud that Garibaldi should be so honored in the middle of the city now. Every evening, he and Angelo would wait beside the statue for Anna to appear. Sometimes she’d be told she had to work late; and if she didn’t appear, he’d take Angelo back. But usually she arrived, and then they would all walk home together, once in a while stopping for an ice or a cookie on the way.
    Anna was happy. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, as it was called, occupied the top three of the ten floors of the big square building. The factory mostly made the ankle-length skirts and the white, narrow-waisted, Gibson Girl blouses, called “shirtwaists,” that were fashionable for working girls and women. Most of the work was arranged at long tables where rows of sewing machines were driven by a single electric engine. It was a lot more efficient than the pedal machine their mother used at home. Many of the employees were men, some of them employed in teams under a subcontractor, though there were plenty of girls too. Most of the workers were Jews, maybe a third related in some way or other to the owners, Mr. Blanck and Mr. Harris, but there were some Italian girls too. Everyone complained about the pay and the hours.
    “But at least there’s plenty of air and light,” Anna would say, “and the girls are friendly.” Salvatore guessed that she was glad to get out of the house, too.
    Another effect of the new regime was to bring Salvatore closer to his little brother.
    Angelo was still a dreamer. At school, he learned his lessons erratically, but the one thing he loved was to draw. He would carry a little pencil in his pocket, and use any piece of paper he could get his hands on. When he and Salvatore were on their way to meet Anna, they would often pick different routes. Nearly every time he’d find something that interested him, and he’d start to sketch it, until Salvatore had to drag him away. Often he would notice some fine bit of carved stonework over a doorway, or high up on the entablatures and cornices of the tall office buildings. No one in the family thought much