All the Neighborhood Thugs Are Gathering
“How was it, shaking hands with Anne Morgan?”
I asked Mother the moment we got home.
“How was what?”
“Did she say anything about grabbing a meal sometime? Or meeting up separately…?”
“As if a woman like her would have any reason to see me alone. She said exactly one thing.”
“You’re working hard.”
That was the end of it, of course.
What could the youngest daughter of J.P. Morgan—the man who held American finance in the palm of his hand—possibly have to say to a poor laborer? It never rose above a few words of encouragement for the strikers.
“Then we’ll just have to invent a reason to meet.”
I didn’t need an investor solely to launder the source of my money. The wages for the workers and the rent on a workshop would bleed me dry in a matter of months on what I had. On top of that, the rubber bands and hooks needed for the brassieres had to be custom-ordered, and that expense was nothing to sneeze at either.
“Anne Morgan is supposed to support women workers like us, but actual business investment? I doubt it.”
“It doesn’t have to be Morgan. Someone out there will recognize the value.”
Mother hadn’t spent the entire time picketing. Working from the sketches we had drawn together, she had finished several prototypes on the sewing machine in her room. Fortunately, rubber bands for clothing had been developed before the European war, and the tiny amount of iron needed for the hooks was still permitted.
“Before we show this to anyone, we should file for a patent first.”
I had money, so before the strike even began I took Mother and the brassiere designs to a patent attorney. I was still a minor; there were legal limits to what I could do alone.
Broadway Street sat just far enough from the dense tenement blocks of the Lower East Side. Instead of narrow, shadowed alleys we walked a broad paved road lined with tall buildings on either side.
Reich & Wellman Patent Attorneys
Specializing in Patent Registration
A faint smell of tobacco hung in the office air. Mahogany desks and furniture packed the room.
“Welcome.”
A middle-aged man in spectacles rose from behind his desk. His eyes flicked over us in a quick, assessing sweep. He smoothed back hair that had been oiled and combed, then guided us to a sofa.
“Marvin Wellman.”
“Nora Graves. This is my son.”
Marvin gave me an interested look, then nodded.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Graves?”
“We want to apply for a patent.”
“Of course you do. Did you bring the relevant papers?”
Mother handed over two sheets. One was the full brassiere design with detailed renderings; the other was densely written with an explanation of its specific uses.
Marvin skimmed the pages, stroking his chin and tilting his head this way and that.
“The hook itself was already patented by Mark Twain. And the method of joining two pieces of fabric—there’s a patent on that from about four years ago, if memory serves. They’re already selling it on the market.”
Mark Twain really had invented the hook after watching his wife struggle to put on her corset alone. He had dreamed of getting rich off the patent, but in an age when corsets ruled the market and the very idea of a brassiere barely existed, the invention was thoroughly ignored. The great man of letters who was ahead of his time. That this “business klutz” had also written the autobiography of another famous klutz, President Ulysses S. Grant, felt almost fated.
Anyway, Mother looked at me. I took over.
“The hook isn’t the core of the patent. And this is completely different from simply tying two handkerchiefs together with string, which is what that earlier patent covers. The straps connecting the shoulders and back are rubber bands, and we’ve adapted and applied the hook in a new way.”
“……I see. It does seem different, doesn’t it.”
Marvin smiled and walked us through the application process and the fees.
“Twenty dollars. It’ll take at least six months.”
“Can the documents for filing be finished today?”
My question earned a sour look.
“We have other work to handle, you know.”
“If I make it thirty dollars, can you have it done by this afternoon?”
“……That can be arranged.”
I had come prepared for a hundred. Thirty dollars to accelerate the glacial pace of paperwork was money well spent.
The moment we stepped outside, Mother’s brow furrowed.
“Maybe we should have shopped around before deciding.”
“It would be suspicious anywhere we went. And showing the designs all over town is even more dangerous.”
“Still, paying an extra ten dollars just to get it done today feels a little wasteful.”
“That was so I could check on him today myself.”
We had come because of a newspaper ad, but the attorney’s reaction bothered me. More than anything, the way he listed reasons it couldn’t work without even studying the patent carefully left a bad taste.
“If he were just worried we were throwing our money away, I could understand. But he doesn’t look like that kind of man.”
I had recently learned that a wealthy woman named Mary Phelps Jacob had filed a patent in 1912 for a brassiere made by reinforcing handkerchiefs. Two years ago the Warner Brothers Corset Company had bought that patent for fifteen hundred dollars and was now pulling in over a million dollars a year in related products alone.
If the attorney knew any of that, the patent was more than worth coveting. That was why I intended to check this afternoon—whether he truly thought it wouldn’t work, or whether he had some other scheme. Locking him to a deadline with the extra ten dollars was the point.
When we reached the tenement, the picketers were already gathering at the entrance. The Marginals sluggers were there too.
“Gavin, you’re already better?”
“Pfft. This is nothing.”
Bandaged and with his hat pulled low, Gavin swung his club for no good reason, burning off energy.
So once again we escorted the sluggers and the strikers at a careful distance all the way to the demonstration site.
The Garment District.
Just like yesterday, two organizations backed the strike: the militant ILGWU and the wealthy supporters of the WTUL. With both at their backs, the picketers pressed the garment bosses hard. Today the WTUL made a pointed announcement—they would cover the costs of the lawsuit over sewing-machine ownership.
I wondered whether the swindler’s bereaved family could really afford to match the WTUL’s bottomless legal fund. With the WTUL’s entry, the newspapers—after carefully weighing the capitalists—finally began running balanced articles. The mood had shifted.
That afternoon, once the demonstration ended, I led the sluggers back to the patent office.
“Gavin, you might want to take the hat off.”
“Yeah?”
The five of us thundered up the stairs and into the second-floor office.
Click.
Two men on the sofa looked up in alarm. One was Marvin Wellman from the morning. Their eyes went from the bloodstained bandage around Gavin’s head straight to me.
“W-what brings you here?”
“The documents for the Patent Office are finished, right?”
As I spoke I walked to the table in the middle of the sofa. My papers still lay there.
“Ah—something unexpected came up today, you see—”
“I see. So, what exactly were the two of you discussing while looking at my documents?”
Planning to steal it for themselves? It wasn’t common, but there were cases of patent attorneys and legal agents pilfering patents. The victims were always the socially weak—poor immigrants, women inventors.
“So, fuck, you haven’t even touched the papers yet?”
Gavin pulled out his club and looked around the office like a madman deciding what to smash first, bandages flapping. The others looked ready to demolish something too. This was not their first time.
“Do you boys even know where you are? Using violence in a patent attorney’s office is legally—”
“Law, what. What’re you gonna do about it? Oh—want us to come back at night and smash the place then?”
They realized these were not men who could be reasoned with.
“……I-I’ll have it written up by tomorrow without fail. This friend here is a clothing specialist; we needed to consult.”
Flustered, Marvin offered a lame excuse. He claimed they had been discussing whether the application was realistically possible with a partner.
“And the conclusion?”
“We’re looking at it positively. No—you’ll almost certainly get the patent.”
Whether he meant it or not.
“Glad to hear it. In any case, you broke the promise, so refund five dollars.”
“Of course, of course. Sorry about that—things have been piled up lately…… But, five dollars?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”
“…….”
I took the five dollars and we left the office. Then I paid each of the others a dollar.
“We’re coming back tomorrow, right?”
“I almost hope those bastards don’t do the work.”
“Not a chance.”
The next day the attorneys had the patent application documents ready as promised.
“Then show me the filing receipt from the Patent Office tomorrow.”
“Y-you’re coming again tomorrow?”
Over three full days we finished everything from the patent documents to the actual filing. The result would take months, but the processing had been faster than any other attorney’s office.
“I look forward to working with you again.”
“Y-you plan to file more patents?”
“Would that be all? Deal with me and good things will come your way later.”
Of course neither of them looked the least bit hopeful. They opened the door and practically shoved us out, eager to be rid of the headache.
Violence and threats are not universal solutions, but sometimes they are necessary. Like this time.
Outside, Gavin asked, “So what kind of patent is it, anyway?”
“You certainly asked fast.”
When I said women’s undergarments, they all snorted. What kind of idiot files a patent for something like that, they said, full of ignorant noise.
“Anyway, I won’t be able to come here tomorrow.”
“Just when I was getting fond of those patent bastards.”
“It’s that day anyway. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.”
Right. Tomorrow was that day.
The day after the patent application was finished—June 5, 1917—draft registration began simultaneously across the entire United States. Holding a strike on a day like that would only create a backlash. We decided to rest for once.
With the patent filed, Mother and I sat down after breakfast to prepare the brassiere business in earnest.
“Pretend I’m Anne Morgan and try the pitch.”
Mother’s explanation of the product was painfully awkward and completely disorganized.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Go look for investment somewhere else.”
“That’s harsh.”
“That’s exactly what you’ll hear if you go out there, Mother.”
How to open a conversation and actually draw investment was not something to take lightly.
Roa joined in.
“Roa can’t hear Mama’s voice very well either! You have to be confident!”
“Y-yes, is that so?”
Roa played the investor and pointed out every flaw. As for Liam—
“Hey. Stop working out and get over here.”
“You’ll figure it out. I’m busy.”
I was going to have to do something before he turned into a full-blown gym rat. He was far too deep into exercise.
Then Roa offered a brilliant idea.
“Mama, just put it on and go show them yourself. The peddlers who come around sometimes demonstrate right there. Especially the knife-sharpening uncles—they cut wood and everything like they’re ready to slice steel.”
“Big brother did that once and it worked.”
“……That was temporary.”
“If it worked, you would have kept doing it, right?”
Roa could be irritating at times. She could also flash genuine cleverness.
She was right—nothing was more convincing than putting the finished product on and showing it in person.
While Mother was being pulled into the bedroom by Roa’s hand, someone knocked on the door.
“It’s Leo!”
I put my ear close to the door and asked, “Prove you’re Leo.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Confirmed.”
Click.
Leo stood there without his toolbox.
“What are you doing here so early?”
“Let’s go watch. We might end up doing it ourselves later.”
For the next year, even after the Great War ended, the Second World War was still twenty-one years away. We wouldn’t be draft material, but it wouldn’t hurt to take the temperature of the city.
Leo tried to drag Liam along too.
“I’m busy right now.”
“What are you even doing in the house?”
“Working out.”
Liam was mid-squat, destroying his lower body.
“That’s exercise? Why the hell are you doing that?”
“It changes a lot of things.”
“Bullshit of the year.”
I snorted at Liam and stepped outside with Leo.
Under the Selective Service Act that had just passed, every man between twenty-one and thirty had to register, regardless of marriage, finances, or occupation. Registration stations were set up at city halls, schools, and public buildings in every district, managed by thousands of officials and volunteers.
The public school on Hester Street—P.S. 42, the Benjamin Altman School—served as the registration station for men living in the Lower East Side.
On the way there, moving among the gloomy, heavy-faced men, I spotted familiar faces: Gavin and Corey of the Marginals. Both were exactly twenty-one.
“Couldn’t your father have waited one more year? What was the big rush?”
“Maybe it was Mother who was in a hurry. Anyway, lucky you, Rookie. Keep the neighborhood safe while we’re gone.”
“Someone listening would think you’re shipping out today.”
Who among the registrants would actually be sent to the front would be decided on July 20 by lottery, drawn in a building near the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
While I talked freely with Gavin and Corey, Leo kept his mouth shut and followed quietly behind.
Gavin glanced around and clicked his tongue.
“Look at that. Every thug in the neighborhood is gathering. Not every day you see this.”
A group came swaggering down the street in a line, deliberately blocking pedestrians.
“Those are the Pearl Buttons gang. We get along with them. We’ve even allied a few times because of those Hudson Dusters bastards.”
Besides them there were the Potashes, the Boodles, the Fashion Plates, and more. Through Gavin and Corey I was freshly reminded just how many gangs there were.
When another group appeared, both men’s voices carried a mix of love and hate.
“Five Points boys.”
Five men approached from across the street. The one in front locked eyes with me. It was Salvatore—the same man who had once taken ten cents from Meyer as protection money.
Gavin noticed the stare and asked, “Rookie, you ever take a beating from that guy? The way he’s looking at you ain’t ordinary.”
“Just ran into him on the street once.”
“That all? He didn’t rob you or anything?”
“You think I’d let him rob me?”
“……Right. You probably robbed him. Anyway, those Italian bastards make my appetite disappear. Stick a spaghetti noodle in their ear—”
Gavin stopped mid-sentence, frowning hard at something in another direction.
“Over there. Even worse bastards.”
Yet another pack was pouring in from a different street—the Hudson Dusters, the gang that had been wrecked before they could even start a real war with the Marginals.
Benjamin Altman School.
Different races and rival factions were all gathering at the draft registration office.