by Jean Merrill
Once more I have to laugh, and this time everyone hears me. So I explain, “Come on—how much room do a few pushcarts take?” Because I personally do not mind the pushcarts.
When I am stuck in traffic like today (like almost any day, for that matter), a pushcart will come along and sell me a sausage roll, which passes the time. You get the best sausage rolls around Thompson Street. Sixty-ninth, where I am now, is not too good for sausage rolls.
It looks like something is moving up ahead, so I will put this away until another time.
9th Avenue and 75th Street. 4:05 p.m.
Now there is a trailer-truck backed up to the curb at 76th. It is sticking halfway out into the street. The taxi driver ahead of me says that they are unloading permanent wave machines, and that it will be a half-hour tie-up, at least. So I may as well finish writing about the secret meeting while it is still fresh in my mind. I left off with how I was speaking up for the pushcarts.
“Come on,” I say, “how much room do a few pushcarts take?” I address my question to a driver named Mack.
“You could line up two dozen pushcarts along the curb before those carts would take up one-half the space of a truck like a Mighty Mammoth,” I point out to Mack. Mack drives a Mighty Mammoth.
“Or, a Ten-Ton Tiger,” I say, putting myself in the same spot. When I mention a Ten-Ton Tiger, Big Moe looks at my boss. My boss is Mr. Walter Sweet, who is sitting right beside Big Moe, as he is one of The Three.
Big Moe asks Walter Sweet, “Does this boy drive for Tiger Trucking?”—a silly question, as I have as much as said I drive a Ten-Ton Tiger. And the boss has to admit I do.
I am sorry if I have embarrassed the boss. Mr. Walter Sweet has a kind heart for the most part.
“Do you have anything more to say, Mr. Kafflis?” Big Moe asks me. And he asks me in such a tone of voice that I know he is telling me he could be helpful in helping me to lose my job with Tiger Trucking.
However, I am not afraid of Big Moe. It occurred to me a long time ago that there are so many reasons you could lose a job that if you started to worry about them all, you would be afraid to say anything. And for anyone who has a lot to say, as I do, this would be a hardship.
However, I shut up for the simple reason that I do not have anything else to say at the moment. It is such a nutty argument about the pushcarts.
The next speaker at the meeting is Louie Livergreen. Louie owns all those Leaping Lemas on the Lower East Side and has pretty well cut everybody else out of business down there.
Now Louie speaks in a very smooth way. He is not a pleasant-looking man, but he speaks in a smooth voice. I have noticed that each of The Three speaks in a different way.
Big Moe speaks in a loud voice—“a voice like a truck driver,” my sister once said, which I felt was an insulting remark. But many people think of truck drivers in this way.
The Tiger, on the other hand, has a low voice. And Louie Livergreen, on the third hand, speaks—as I mentioned—in a smooth voice.
Of The Three, it is Louie Livergreen that I would be afraid of, and I think that is because his voice is as smooth as a good grade of motor oil, whether he is saying something perfectly pleasant or something terrible. If somebody says something terrible in a pleasant tone of voice, I get very nervous. I would feel better if they yelled.
Well, as I said, Louie Livergreen starts to talk to the drivers in that smooth voice. “Our boys are telling us that the pushcarts are ruining the city,” Louie says.
“And believe me, I am glad that you have been so frank about the trouble. Mr. Mammoth and Mr. Sweet and myself are not out in the trucks so much ourselves, and we have to rely on our boys to give us the facts.
“And now that we have got the facts,” says Louie, “it is very clear what we have got to do.”
Louie explains that what we have got to do is to educate the public. “When people complain about the traffic,” he says, “we have got to tell the people who is to blame. Otherwise, they will be blaming the trucks.”
From the tone of his voice and the respectful way the truck drivers are listening to him, Louie could be delivering a sermon in a church, which is not exactly the case.
“I know what you boys are up against,” Louie goes on to say. “I operate on the East Side where most of the pushcarts also operate. And I know these people. They are behind the times and a danger to the rest of us, and they have got to go.”
Louie gets a big hand at this point, but he is not finished. “I will tell you something else,” he says. “And it is not something I am proud of. My own father was a pushcart peddler, and if I had not had the guts to get out and fight for myself, no matter who was in my way, I might be pushing a pushcart myself.
“Instead,” Louie points out, “I have built up the firm of LEMA and put one hundred Leaping Lemas on the streets every day of the year, rain or shine. And that I am proud of!”
Louie gets a big hand again. Not from me, though. While I agree that one hundred trucks is something to be proud of, I do not see why a man wants to talk as Louie is talking about his father—who maybe did not have such an easy time, and rain or shine, is out in the streets with a pushcart. Whereas Louie—if it rains—can send out one hundred drivers.
Louie has a few other remarks. Mainly this one: “I think you boys know that the Lower Eastside Moving Association has been working on a Master Plan for the streets of New York, a plan that will greatly improve the situation for truck drivers. I have discussed this plan with Mr. Moe Mammoth and Mr. Walter Sweet, and the plan is moving forward nicely. But before it can go into effect, we have got to solve the pushcart problem.”
I have not heard about this Master Plan of Louie Livergreen’s before, but all around me drivers are nodding as if it is a fine idea.
I ask several of the boys about it, and they say it is probably the usual thing—to make things better for the truckers in the streets and maybe more money for the drivers.
I don’t know about the Master Plan, but it seems to me that the idea of the meeting is that The Three are declaring war on the pushcarts.
Well, I must sign off now, as the taxi driver ahead is signaling that they have got those permanent wave machines off the trailer. Unfortunately, I see that it is 5:30, so I will have to take the pipe organs back to the warehouse and try to get to 86th Street tomorrow.[2] Really, traffic is lousy.”
1. “The Three” were originally known as “The Big Three,” but this caused some confusion as the leaders of three important nations of the time were also called The Big Three, and after a city newspaper ran a headline announcing BIG THREE CARVE UP CHINA (over a story about Mammoth, LEMA, and Tiger Trucking buying out the China Carting & Storage Co.), there was some international trouble in the course of which Moscow was bombed by an Indo-Chinese pilot. After that the city papers referred to the three big trucking firms simply as The Three.
2. Joey Kafflis never did get to deliver the pipe organs that he was transporting on February 15. The following day he was fired, and the rest of his diary is concerned with a potato farm on eastern Long Island that he acquired shortly thereafter.
CHAPTER IX
The Secret Campaign Against the Pushcarts
The Pushcart War is generally divided into two major campaigns. The first of these is referred to as the Secret Campaign. For although we now have the evidence of the Kafflis diary that The Three had declared war on the push-carts at the secret meeting, this declaration was not at the time made public. This gave the trucks an enormous advantage in the beginning.
The pushcart peddlers themselves did not know for over a month that the truckers had declared war on them. All they knew was that suddenly the truck drivers were nudging their pushcarts out of the way more and more often, and that they were nudging harder and harder.
In one week alone, more than one hundred carts were brought into Maxie Hammerman’s for repairs. Maxie repaired broken slatting, broken spokes, broken handles, and bent axles. Many of the pushcarts had to be entire
ly rebuilt, and Maxie did not have time to build any new carts. Also, the number of serious accidents involving pushcarts increased, and several peddlers needed hospital treatment for broken legs or crushed ribs.
At first, the pushcart peddlers thought that all these troubles were simply a case of the already terrible traffic conditions getting rapidly worse. Then they began to hear puzzling remarks from people standing on street corners. Whenever someone complained about the traffic, there was always someone else on hand to say, “I hear it is the pushcarts that are to blame.”
People always said, “I hear.” Where they had heard, nobody was sure.
A great many of the rumors probably came from readers of a weekly newspaper called The Ears & Eyes of the Lower East Side. This paper was published as a community service by LEMA (Lower Eastside Moving Association). The Ears & Eyes was given away free to grocery stores to pass on to their customers. It was also sent free to members of the City Council and other important people.
In The Ears & Eyes, there was a regular column by a man who signed himself “The Community Reporter.” The Community Reporter wrote a great many columns just before the war about what he called “The Pushcart Menace.”
The Community Reporter reported that “people” wanted to get rid of the pushcarts in order to make the streets of the city safer and more attractive. He said that “people” said that the pushcarts were “unsound and unsanitary.”
The Community Reporter was always telling people about what “people” wanted. Before he began writing about The Pushcart Menace, he wrote about trees. He said that “people” also wanted to get rid of the trees planted along the sidewalks of the city so that the streets could be wider and more attractive. He said that trees were unsanitary, too, because leaves were always falling on the sidewalk.
The Community Reporter said that people thought the streets should be wider and more attractive, even if it meant getting rid of the sidewalks and some of the houses and schools and churches and small candy stores. Many of these were unsound and unsanitary anyway, he said.
However, in the spring before the war, it was mainly the pushcarts that the Community Reporter wrote about. He made it sound as if pushcarts were even more unsound and unsanitary than trees, houses, schools, churches, and candy stores.
It is uncertain how many people read The Ears & Eyes. (Some grocers said that they had trouble giving it away, as most of their customers did not mind a few leaves falling off trees.) But enough people did see the Community Reporter’s column for one of the more respectable daily papers to announce a series entitled: “Pushcarts—Are They a Menace to Our Streets?”
As part of this series, a reporter interviewed Moe Mammoth. This was the day after a Mama Mammoth had upset three vegetable carts on Avenue C.
“That poor Mama,” said Big Moe. “Tomatoes all over the street, and twenty pushcart peddlers yelling at the truck driver, and picking up broken tomatoes and throwing them at him. What kind of working conditions are those?”
“Are you saying the pushcarts are a menace?” asked the reporter.
“The facts speak for themselves,” said Big Moe. “As a public service, Mr. Louie Livergreen, of the Lower Eastside Moving Association—which has one hundred trucks out on the streets every day—has made a count of the number of accidents involving pushcarts in the last month.
“In the last month alone,” Big Moe said, “Mr. Livergreen tells me there have been one hundred and forty-one more pushcart accidents than in the month before.
“My own drivers,” Big Moe added, “have orders to report every pushcart accident they see, and they say that they are held up by pushcarts several times a day.”
“And you think that these accidents are tying up the traffic?” asked the reporter.
“That is what my drivers say,” said Big Moe. “Of course, we all know the pushcarts are not designed for modern traffic conditions.”
When Maxie Hammerman read that last remark, he was so angry that he threw a hammer through his own shop window. “Not designed!” he roared at Frank the Flower, who had stopped by Maxie’s shop to have a few bolts tightened on his cart.
“Someone is saying that a pushcart is not designed? A push-cart is perfectly designed,” Maxie said, glowering at his broken window.
“Look now,” he said, slapping the side of Frank the Flower’s cart. “Look how compact. So it shouldn’t take up too much space in a crowded street.”
“I am not complaining,” said Frank the Flower.
“Designed,” growled Maxie Hammerman, normally a pleasant-tempered man. He was really very insulted.
“Designed,” Maxie went on, “—what I would like to get my hands on designing is Mr. Moe Mammoth. I give you my word, when I’m finished, he will be designed very much smaller.”
Maxie Hammerman was not the only one to take offense at Big Moe’s remarks. All the pushcart peddlers were angry at Big Moe’s blaming the accidents on them.
“Because the pushcarts are in the accidents, does it mean we caused them?” asked Eddie Moroney, whose cart was not only well-designed, but beautifully lettered—“Coal & Ice—Home Delivered.” (Eddie Moroney had lettered circus carts and posters before he went into business for himself.)
“Since when did a pushcart hit a truck?” Eddie demanded.
“Believe me, it would give me pleasure,” said Frank the Flower.
“What I don’t like is ‘unsanitary,’” said Old Anna, who sold apples and pears of the best quality outside hospitals and museums.
“What is this unsanitary I am hearing about?” Old Anna demanded. “My cart is as clean as a teacup I would drink from. How can I be unsanitary in front of hospitals? What do they mean ‘unsanitary’?”
“Plastic bags, maybe,” said Frank the Flower. “In the supermarkets, they put the apples and pears in plastic bags.”
“Plastic!” said Old Anna. “So you can’t examine the fruit. That is why they have plastic bags.”
“But people think it is more sanitary,” said Frank the Flower.
“Sanitary!” said Old Anna. “Who sees whether the man who puts the fruit in the plastic bags has washed his hands?”
“Every customer can see for himself that my hands are clean,” said Old Anna. “You put apples in a plastic bag in the back room of a store—and who knows?
“Also,” said Old Anna, “I have noticed that apples in a plastic bag are two pounds for twenty-nine cents. In a paper bag, such as I use, they are three pounds for twenty-nine.
“You ask me what is the menace,” said Old Anna. “And I will tell you. It is plastic bags!”
CHAPTER X
The Meeting at Maxie Hammerman’s: The Pushcarts Decide to Fight
Looking back on the Pushcart War, it seems possible that the trucks might have gone on slowly breaking up the pushcarts in what looked like accidents, if it had not been for Mack’s brutal attack on Morris the Florist. But the day after Mack hit Morris, the pushcart peddlers held a meeting at Maxie Hammerman’s shop. It was at this meeting that the peddlers decided to fight back.
The meeting had been called to take up a collection to buy Morris the Florist a new cart. Peddlers from all over the city were there.
Every kind of pushcart business was represented—hot dogs and sauerkraut, roast chestnuts, old clothes, ice and coal, ices and ice cream sticks, fruit and vegetables, used cartons, shoe laces and combs, pretzels, dancing dolls, and nylon stockings, to mention only a few. Most of the peddlers who became well-known to the public during the Pushcart War were present at this meeting.
Old Anna (“Apples and Pears”) was there. So was Mr. Jerusalem (“All Kinds Junk—Bought & Sold”). Harry the Hot Dog (“Harry’s Hots & Homemade Sauerkraut”) was there. Carlos (“Cartons Flattened and Removed”) was there. Eddie Moroney (“Coal & Ice—Home Delivered”—lettered in three colors) was there. Papa Peretz (“Pretzels—6 for 25¢”) was there.
Frank the Flower, of course, was there. He was the first to speak. It was Fra
nk the Flower’s idea to take up a collection to buy Morris a new cart.
“As you can see from the bandage on his head, my friend Morris has had a terrible experience,” said Frank the Flower. “Worse yet, his cart is ruined.”
“It is a fact,” said Maxie Hammerman. “I could not put that cart together in one hundred years.”
“What I wish to point out,” said Frank the Flower, “is this: Today it is Morris they are putting out of business. Tomorrow it may be you or me. I think we should every one of us give ten cents—maybe fifteen—so that Morris can buy a new cart. If it happened to us, Morris would do the same.”
“Believe me, I would,” said Morris. “But I pray it shouldn’t happen to anyone else.”
Mr. Jerusalem (“All Kinds Junk—Bought & Sold”) stood up. “The ten cents we will give,” he said. “Or fifteen. No question. What I want to know is why they are breaking us up. All of a sudden—accidents.”
“Accidents!” said Old Anna. “Is it an accident that Morris the Florist has had? Accidents on purpose, that is what is happening.”
“All right—on purpose,” Mr. Jerusalem agreed. “But why?” he demanded.
“They are telling everybody we are in the way,” said Papa Peretz (“Pretzels—6 for 25¢”). “I hear it on 14th Street. I hear it on 23rd. Even on Delancey Street I hear it. Everywhere, they are saying that we are in the way.”
“Way!” said Old Anna. “Whose way am I in? I am quiet about my business. I don’t take up much space. For forty-five years I sell my apples in front of hospitals, museums, and the best downtown offices. My customers ask about my health—my family. It is the first time I hear that I am in the way. Whose way?”
