Immigrant family in their

New York tenement doing

piece work for a garment factory

New York is a large and frightening city, especially for a young Jewish girl fresh from Russia. You decide that it would be safer for you to stay with your cousin for awhile, even if conditions in her apartment are crowded.

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Even though your cousin's family barely has anything to spare, she insists on celebrating your arrival in New York with some traditional dishes from Russia. No meal since you had left home has tasted so good, with borscht- a soup made of cabbage, and Lokshenkugel- a noodle pudding.

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You quickly get used to life with your cousin in her small three bedroom, windowless, tenement apartment. Your days are spent helping roll cigars for a factory nearby. The work is long and tedious. For 16 hours a day you are spent hunched over a bench rolling cigars. The children stay at home rather than go to school to help their parents meet their quota.

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The factory pays $3.75 for every 1,000 cigars completed. In a good week, the 7 of you can produce 3,000 cigars for a total of $11.25 per week. The older children help too. The youngest, ages 5 and 7, collect the scraps, which seem to continually fill the room. Seven days a week even on Saturday- the Jewish Sabbath- you spend bent over the table helping your cousin roll cigars. For your part you are paid $3.50 a week and half of your pay goes to help pay the rent of $12.00 a month to the tenement landlord.

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Back home in Russia, you used to observe the Jewish traditions such as attending synagogue on the Sabbath and saying your prayers each day. You'd also like to go to night school to learn English and perhaps become a teacher. Now you scarcely have time for anything else but sewing.

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That night, and every night you drop into your pull out cot, exhausted. The next day will bring much of the same. Making so little money your only hope of escaping poverty is to work even harder and longer hours. Your dream of going to school, like millions of poor immigrants is never realized. Perhaps one day things for your future children won't be so hard.