East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

  I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

  A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d

  One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud

  Make me thy lyre, ev’n as the forest is:

  What if my leaves are falling like its own!

  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

  Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

  Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

  My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

  Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

  And, by the incantation of this verse,

  Scatter as from an unextinguish’d hearth

  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

  Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

  The trumpet of prophecy! O Wind,

  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

  In that I seemed to receive some kind of nourishment, escape from the vast machine. But I felt, too, about literature . . . here, too, is specialization, of the worst kind. I saw how literature muddles away from life, and without life what is literature? Just as without touching all the affairs and problems of human existence, what is education? But because of my pleasure in that, I came back to literature, and I sought my specialization in that field. I studied the presentation of literature as made by the lecturer in the classroom. I took courses in pedagogy and in comparative literatures, courses in the dissection of literature. And still the thought remained in the back of my head of Kim’s advice. But I had done little on that, as yet.

  All that summer after Charles Evans had married and gone, I hung on in Boston, like the man without money in a restaurant who must keep eating until somebody he knows turns up to pay for him. I had college debts, and I could find no job. Already more than satiated, I was saved from the intellectual banquet by Mr. Wu, a Chinese acquaintance. He was a very short, very frail man whose bones looked eggshell-thin. And he was all a bundle of intellect. A true scholar. He was a government student, taking now his doctor’s degree in philosophy. Everything was so easy for him, that while taking it, he wrote a book on the side. This was his third. The others were on sociology and economics respectively. Naturally, he considered the average American undergraduate just like straw. Mr. Wu was a great admirer of Sun Yat Sen and was thoroughly saturated with the spirit of the first revolution. Like Hsu Tsimou, he was full of hope for the future, and he urged me to come back with him to China. He was the dean of a well-known government college in Shanghai and he promised me a teaching position. But I could not make up my mind to that, still feeling like Kim that I could watch world forces better in the West. By the time Mr. Wu got back, there had been another revolution and he himself was out of a job.

  One day Mr. Wu introduced me casually to some Chinese in charge of the Chinese section of the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia. I was much interested in that. They needed another man in their department and after a few interviews took me in at a good salary. In Philadelphia I got along well in this work, which consisted in much talking and some polite selling, and in meeting many people. Among those whom I met were executives of Boshnack Brothers. I even met Mr. Boshnack, in charge of one of the biggest department store businesses in the world. Mr. Boshnack talked with me, and invited me to a private conference. He asked me how I would like to work in his store in Philadelphia. How would I like to equip myself to become a buyer for Oriental goods? I thought to myself, here is the opening in the actual world which I have waited for. Indeed, I had known all along that I could not put the world of business efficiency and Mr. Lively behind me. I had only escaped for a time during college education. So I agreed to come and work for Mr. Boshnack, at first as a clerk, until I could find out more about the business, but with the ultimate hope of being made a buyer.

  Boshnack Brothers had two stores in New York, one in Chicago, a whole block of stores in Philadelphia, and a branch in Paris and one in Tokyo. I now had the opportunity to see something of how a department store ran. At the head of course, with luxurious offices high in the building, were the reigning members of the Boshnack firm—two fabulously wealthy brothers. Then came the buyers, thousands of them, drawing from $10,000 to $15,000 a year, every one. A tidy salary. (So it was a bright hope that was held out to me.) To be a buyer is the dream of every clerk in every department store in America. And I was in almost the biggest one of all. Boshnack’s sold the littlest thing as well as the biggest. There were buyers for needles, for rugs, for books, for china, for airplanes. Each buyer was given so many inches of space in the big store. This was his kingdom. Just like a small proprietor, he paid for all that went into his space, and kept track through his clerks of all that went out . . . except that he made no profits. In his department he was looked up to almost as much as Mr. Boshnack himself. When he passed, the underlings said in a hushed voice, “The Buyer!”

  Below the buyer—and that means far below—was the assistant buyer. He was somewhat in the position of vice-president but without any opportunity ever to become president. When a buyer died, the assistant buyer was never promoted to his place. For the buyer occupies a very important, high and mysterious position. Like prophets and like college presidents, buyers always come from the outside, and sooner a salesman will go from an obscure place to be buyer in a totally new store, than those immediately under the buyer rise to his station in life. Once an assistant buyer, always an assistant buyer.

  Below the assistant buyer came the aisle man, a still greater drop in fame and in fortune: The aisle man was a $25-a-week man, and not much above a common salesman, but he got dressed very cleanly, and tried to point out the faults of all those below him. His work was in O.K.-ing checks, C.O.D.’s, exchanges, returned goods, and in verifying complaints against his department. But besides these complaints from outside, he must be very active making his own complaints. He watched if any man or girl came in late, and bawled these out. He had to go and peep in the women’s washrooms from time to time, to see that no girl clerks were lingering there. Some girls he accused of keeping change from customers. Some he accused of making off with stockings. Poor devil! he worked hard! But there was not much chance for him. Great as the gulf between the buyer and the assistant buyer, even greater was the gulf between them and him. I wonder how he could ever hope to be a buyer. But he did. Men must dream.

  You could have as many aisle men and clerks as you wanted. After that came so many experienced saleswomen at $20 a week—and so many girls at $12 or $13 a week. Twenty dollars a week was considered quite good pay. One of two even got $25, but you had to have been in the same store seven or eight years for that. The men in the store liked to say how the girls on $12 a week made a side-living by prostitution, since it was impossible to live on that in a big city. I don’t know if this was true or not. But then everybody there—except the fortunate, princely and snobbish buyers—worried about how to live, and among so many poorly paid employees, many got caught in tricks and were fired.

  Of course, in this system only the owners made any profits. Still, the pretense was kept up of profit-sharing in the earnings of the store. Every clerk got one half per cent of all he sold. That meant one penny on every two-dollar purchase. By the end of the week, he hardly totaled more than fifty cents or one dollar, and this couldn’t be bettered even in the shoe department or department of women’s clothes. (The saleswomen and salesmen were put on a lower wage there.) Still, like tips, even fifty cents or one dollar a week was something to work for, and everybody tallied up eagerly at the end of the day to see how the day had gone for him. It was enough to make him side with the store in doing business, and have the true salesman spirit.

  The store was full of psychologists, psychiatrists, and other trainers in salesmanship, and the ambitious were allowed
an hour off every day in order to attend this school; most newcomers were ambitious enough to take that hour off. In the school a saucy young bachelor lady of thirty-five would give lessons on how to sell . . . lessons which were all theoretical, making me doubt if she ever sold anything in her life. I was reminded of Miss Fulton and Mr. Lively’s training corps, but that was amateur work compared to this. One of the lessons featured suggestiveness. For instance, if the customer came into a house-furnishing department, you should approach her like this, “What a beautiful day!” Waiting a while, you added casually, “A beautiful day to be out in a country house.” When that had got in its work, you continued, “No country house is complete without . . . blankety blank” . . . you could fill in with anything Boshnack Brothers had to sell.

  The point of another lesson was human interest. Scene, the toy department. When the mother and baby came in together, if they left the store without having bought something, it is because the clerks have been lacking in human interest. What more legitimate object for human interest than a baby? No harm in displaying that. All the world loves a baby. Make for that baby then. If possible, get hold of Baby’s hand, win Baby’s confidence. Nobody—not even a mother—could possibly blame you for being interested in babies. If you aren’t, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Make that baby happy to be in Boshnack Brothers’. Show it things. Let it play with things. Don’t be afraid it will hurt them. Mother will see that it doesn’t, or if it does, she can pay for them. Wind up the mechanical toys for it. Down on your knees. Get it absorbed. Yes, put it in the little auto, clear the way. Let it ride as far as it wants to go. It’s good for Baby, for you, for Boshnack Brothers, for everybody, And this is the one time in salesmanship you don’t need to say anything. A baby of four or five can talk for itself.

  As can be seen, a good deal was made out of human psychology. For instance, when husband and wife come in together to buy. The instinct of the woman clerk may be to address the husband. This is wrong. Do not ignore the husband, but concentrate your eyes on the eyes of the wife. If the wife’s eyes tell you “yes,” it doesn’t much matter whether the husband’s eyes or mouth say “yes” or “no.” There is just one other thing to remember. If the wife’s eyes say “no,” don’t try to sell to the husband. It won’t work. The goods will come back, and you will lose your pains.

  There were some very special lessons for those selling in the woman’s dress department. The buyers there had to be very well up indeed. Always there must be more beautiful rugs on the floor here than anywhere else, everywhere an atmosphere of luxury. The reason is that women are very susceptible to the luxurious suggestion, especially when it comes to clothes, and if they see themselves in a mirror standing on soft velvety rugs in a setting of opulence, the effect is irresistible. Another thing, the buyers must look after the mirrors. Special mirrors are provided, although they cost more than ordinary mirrors. These special mirrors are not the faithful kind at all. No matter how bad-looking you are, you’ll find a better-looking person in them than when you looked elsewhere. The customer cannot fail to be pleased, and will generally attribute it to the Boshnack Brothers’ dresses. Sunlight and shadow and false lights must also be arranged as artfully as in a sculptor’s studio, and all of this the buyers, and even the saleswomen in the woman’s dress department, must thoroughly understand. An artist’s course in complementary colors was also given to any one interested.

  A few of these points could be applied to the men’s clothing department, but not so much, for men were harder to fool and not so luxurious. In fact, some American men were so economical that when buying dress suits, they returned them after a night or two, to have the money refunded. Aisle men were especially educated to be shrewd here, and to argue that they had found a piece of paper or a match.

  Well, it was a sparrow-jabbering sound, this sales-training talk, much like the sound of Ma Jong pieces falling on the table, and I thought I had never listened to anything more boring in my life. But no love of God entered here. Only warm human interest. And I had left Boston for good. And of course I ought to believe in selling Oriental works of art. . . .

  In spite of the warm human interest, in Boshnack’s I saw the blindest, deafest, dumbest collection of human beings I had yet seen, though many were college graduates. Miss Stein, manager in the chinaware department, was a Vassar girl who had been there about ten years. She was, I suppose, “educated.” Certainly she was capable enough. But she had no interest outside her own store space. Success in her line absorbed her every thought. Others I saw weren’t so fortunate as to have any success to care for. An old woman with trembling hands wrapped dishes in excelsior all day, drawing for that $14 a week. All her life from 8 o’clock until 5:30 she had been doing that. The young girls were probably just working until they could get married, and without much ambition for a career, but some married women were here for an indefinite period—mostly elderly and hardworking, either widows or divorced or with invalid husbands. Poor Mrs. McGee I remember especially, very big, very fat—who couldn’t see except through glasses and who sometimes lost them . . . always running fast, for the assistant buyer who treated all like dogs or little kids. But for everybody it was very rushing. Much of the action of moving on and on was futile besides. Aisle managers, floormen and buyers were always watching. When life wasn’t a scramble, you had to scramble it a bit purposely.

  It did not take me long to form an opinion that life in a department store was a horrible life for all people. What appalled me was the regimentation. You could never go out to eat when you felt like it, but must be assigned a regular lunch hour. Some went at eleven, others at twelve, still others at one and at two. And of course you were obliged to drop into some place just around the store. There were lunchrooms for employees in the store indeed, but these were very bad, and served only the leftovers from the regular customers’ restaurant, so most employees preferred to eat outside, even if they paid a little more for it. Horn and Hardart was a popular place, for it was quick. You dropped a nickel in the automat, pulled a lever, and down dropped a cup of coffee for you, or for ten cents you took out a ham sandwich. Every morning the employees trouped in through an awful basement door. You couldn’t take anything in or out with you, but had to be examined each time as if you were suspected of being a thief. Each employee had a ticket or voucher for admission, so that no unemployed pickpocket could squeeze in at the same time, and if you forgot the voucher you were not admitted without a lot of red tape. Every employee had not a name but a number. His number was on his card on the wall, lined up with many other numbered cards. The first thing he did before taking off hat or coat was to punch that card by the automatic clock, showing the hour and minute when he reported to work. After punching, he wasn’t so eager. He lingered around in the washroom as long as possible, keeping out of the way until 8:30 or 8:45. But everybody had to dust and order his goods before the store opened. Even afterwards, in order to show up well, you had to keep dusting and ordering and keeping busy when there was no customer in sight. You never could look as if you were taking life easy, as in an Oriental store. And four times a day you had to punch that clock, as a number coming in and going out.

  I was placed first in the chinaware department, where the capable Miss Stein was my section manager. Everywhere were aisles, a whole floor’s length, tables piled high with dishes and glassware. The cards above gave advertisement as well as cost. . . . “Tea set complete with 23 pieces, now $3.75” . . . and some additional caption like, WHILE THEY LAST! These same tea sets filled up the stock rooms, but only one or two of a kind were displayed at a time, to make them seem rare. Later I was put into the adjoining department for antiques, which included Oriental objects, where the “Ming” vases sold for $50, $70, $100, and where there were many cases of real jades bought directly from China. I got into trouble over teakwood stands. They could not have been teakwood stands because they warped. They must have been cherrywood stands. Real teakwood I knew never loo
ked like that. But I mustn’t call them anything but teakwood stands, for nothing but teakwood stands would sell in that department. Mostly Boshnack Brothers were honest, when it was a matter of dollars and cents or living up to the label price. Having an eye out for big business makes a man honest in small things. That is the trouble with small shopkeepers in Italy . . . they have not yet learned about big business, so they try to cheat the customer in small things instead of concentrating on big deals. Boshnack Brothers never did that. When sets of dishes were bought, no one could be more careful in packing, and in not leaving anything out. And they were generous in making exchanges, or in otherwise satisfying complaints through the complaint department. But Oriental art, they seemed to think, would be despoiled by taking away the word teakwood even from the cheaper grade of stands. I protested and Miss Stein tried to do something about it with the head buyer, but nothing was gained. Teakwood the stands were advertised, teakwood they must stay, even if hewn in Connecticut. But I could have no faith in any of these stands. Even the better grade, where the wood really came from China, were all broken up into small pieces when imported, in order to escape heavy customs duty, though joining is one of the most important features in a teakwood stand, and one for which Chinese craftsmen were ever famed. Once in America, they were fitted together any old way.