Document text
Forms to _be Filled qut fqr R!tch Intprview
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
FORMA
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER gmanuel Versehleiser
ADDRESS 1419 Jesup Ave., Bronx
DATE December 8, 1938.
SUBJECT 7Folksay", Mr. Steingart
1. Date and time c!' interview Decelber 6, 1968
2. Place of interview Crusader Cafeteria, 14th Street, ITC
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any, vino put you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NANiE OF WORKER Emanuel Verschleiser
ADDRESS 1419 Jesup Avenue, Bronx
DATE December 8, 1938
SUBJECT "FOLKSAY" Mr. Stsingart
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
A MILLINERY OPERATOR TALKS ABOUT THE CONDITION OF TEE TRADE
(translated from Yiddish)
The trade is shot to pieces now... Before you sat down to
work from March till Christmas... But now ths season sometimes doesn't
last six weeks... With all the changes in style and competition they're
afraid to work for stock... They get an order, they make it... They
work for orders They wouldn't even work for big orders, they're
afraid it'll be cancelled... My shop wouldn't take an order from
Macy even... There wouldn't be anything in it... They'd be afraid
he'll cancel it in the middle... I don't like to work in the big
shop, nobody knows you... You are not a man... You are a number. 421.
You are not Mr. Steingart... You are 421. It's good I am not married...
I would have to be on relief long ago... Today I waited all day in the
shop, got an hour and a half work... It's bad...
2
ANECDOTES (heard in "Crusader" Cafeteria, 14th Street)
Of course you heard about Dr. Natanson, the philosopher.
His wife asks him one time at a late hour why doesn't he go to bed.
4 And who will think of God and free will?
Once he was asked by an organization to lecture. "Please,"
they asked, "give us this time a lecture about some light subject."
*well, he answers., "how about Hants' categorical imperative/
No, too hard." He thinks and thinks. "A11 right. How is this: The
Substratum of the Nirvana in relation to Life?"
Trotsky was sitting at a rivershore in Mexico, fishing. A
peasant approached him: "Say, are you a Russian?" he asks. "You look
like a Russian."
"Yes," says Trotsky.
"Well," says the peasant, "I heard that Stalin died..."
"Go away, you fool," Trotsky answered. "If Stalin had died
I wouldn't be sitting here."
Then the peasant says, "But it's true that Lenin died."
"Yes," Trotsky answered, !if he wouldn't be dead he would
be here with me..."