Part Two

Seven

Transcription of Esther Gottesfeld interview #2, conducted by Ruth Zion, West Village Jewish Home, New York City, September 25, 1999. Ruth Zion transcription, October 10, 1999

[question] What do you think an ordinary day at the Triangle was like? We were all together, working hard, but in a way, it was a joy, I know today you wouldn’t think so, but from where we all came, even if we worked and worked, there was never enough of anything to get along, and life was hard. In America, even though we worked so hard all the time, it felt like freedom to us. And we were all together, the working girls, and even though you couldn’t talk so much, you felt like you were all together. It was the feeling of the union, even without the union. That’s what we had.

[question] The noise was very big, all the time. But you know, I felt safe inside all that noise, it was like a big machine, and to be one of the workers, well, let me tell you, we were all little parts of that big machine. At the end of the day, when the motors were turned off, it was so strange, the quiet. I didn’t like it so much. There was something I loved about the noise. It kept me company and made the work go by fast. I could always make songs in my head to go with the noise.

[question] At the Triangle, there was no singing allowed, except sometimes just at the end of the day when maybe it didn’t matter so much to the bosses. A lot of the bosses wouldn’t let you talk. Not a word, unless you had to ask about the work or say to someone give me your scissors. Some of the factories were extra strict like that. I heard at Bloom and Millman there was this one boss who watched you like a hawk every minute and you couldn’t even put your eyes across the room, always your eyes had to stay just on your own work. I couldn’t accept that, so my sister and I never went there even when it could be good work for us there, before the Triangle.

[question] Some places there was a lot of singing, sometimes in the little sweatshops everybody sings, even if they don’t know the language, I remember one time my sister taught this Italian girl we worked with, when we were sewing the linings in men’s overcoats, this was a little sweatshop on Orchard Street.

[question] It was August of 1909, that first summer was so hot. That was such a hot work we had to do, with these heavy coats on our laps, there was no air to breathe, but we would sing, you would just sweat so much your whole dress would be wet on your back, it really was a sweatshop! To pass the time, we would sing sometimes, and this Italian girl who was there, she was a little doll, such a tiny little thing, Rosa, from Sicily, she learned all the Yiddish songs from when we were little girls that my sister taught to her, even though she didn’t know what any of the words meant. We thought it was so funny when she would sing along with us in her sweet voice about the thief who fell in the well and drowned and nobody cared, even the rabbi didn’t care.