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June 28, 2002
Immigrants and the needle trade
Many of the Jews who came to Canada at the turn of last century
went into the garment making industry.
SEEMAH CATHY BERSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
In a special two-part feature, the Bulletin looks at Jewish
immigrants and the needle trade in Canada at the turn of last century.
Not everyone was a tailor in eastern Europe and not everyone who
came to North America around the turn of last century went into
the needle trade. However, approximately 60 per cent of Jewish immigrants
who came to Canada at that time subsequently went into the garment
manufacturing trade, many because they could not find employment
in another field.
The needle trade, or garment manufacturing, comprises the making
of men's, women's and children's clothing; not the manufacturing
of furnishings, bed sheets, table cloths, etc. It began in the 1880s
with coats and cloaks and was soon followed by the making of ladies'
suits and then skirts.
Even though the trade did not develop as an industry until the l9th
century, the tailor goes back to the Talmud, where the Hebrew word
for tailor, hayyat, is found. A Jewish community had to have a tailor
because of ritual commandments such as those concerning sha'atnez,
a material made from wool and linen.
According to Jewish law, it is forbidden to mix diverse materials.
(Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:10) Wool comes from sheep, which
is animal, and linen comes from flax, which is plant. The two cannot
be woven together to form one, even as a man cannot lie with beast
to form something else.
In order that the Jew should not break this sacred law, the Jewish
tailor was depended upon to have knowledge of this law, to recognize
such a material and to not use it in the making of a garment. (Sha'atnez
was used for interfacing and interlining clothes. When ready-made
clothes became available, the very religious Jew would carry a pocket
knife to make a small slit in the lining of the garment to ascertain
that sha'atnez was not used to interline or interface it.)
For the immigrants who came to North America at the turn of last
century, their arrival meant the shattering of what Barbara Myerhoff
refers to in Number Our Days as the "sense of unity
of being a simple person." An example of this would be a young
girl in Poland learning how to embroider fancy clothes for the rich
– she spends her training time sitting among other young girls
in the home of the teacher - versus the same girl transported to
a factory setting on Spadina Avenue in Toronto. Or an apprentice
tailor in Russia running errands and looking after his teacher's
children when not learning the trade; the same tailor in Montreal
bends over a sewing machine 10 or 12 hours a day, surrounded by
similar workers and not earning anything for the six to eight weeks
that he is supposedly "apprenticing."
Workers of the old country left behind their simple lives. For the
majority, it was an awakening to discover that they could fight
for better working conditions. But life as a factory worker was
far more complicated in North America than it was in eastern Europe.
Workers had to learn a new language; they had to take public transportation;
they bought milk in bottles; they had to take lunch to work instead
of either having their wives bring them lunch or going home to eat.
Women left the home for the first time to travel and work with other
women and men.
The set pattern that evolved for immigrants was as follows: they
arrived, were met by a lantsman and accommodation was found. Once
they were settled, the first priority was finding a job - any job.
Who did one turn to? The friend or relative who met you or your
new neighbors. It seldom went past this primary group. Once you
found a job, your next priority was to become somewhat independent.
You worked hard, saved a little. Maybe you had someone still in
the old country to bring over, so you saved for a ticket or two.
Soon you had enough saved for a better apartment, a few pieces of
furniture, a little privacy and you moved.
Even though immigrants did not become rich overnight, or even in
a decade, social and geographic mobility was available through hard
work. It was this mobility that contrasted so much with the stable
rhythms of the old country.
In Canada, three major centres of the needle trade developed; in
Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. By the 1920s, Montreal and Toronto
began to assume some of the characteristics of New York, which was
the garment manufacturing capital of the world at the turn of the
19th century - the slightest tremor in that mecca caused rumbles
to be felt in every clothing manufacturing town and city in North
America. It was in New York that the garment union came into being.
It was in New York where young men and women died in the tragic
fire of the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory because working conditions
were so bad that simple electric wiring was not fixed. It was to
New York that young people went when they could not find jobs in
Montreal and Toronto.
Seemah Cathy Berson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
Her MA (anthropology) thesis was on Jewish immigrants who worked
in the garment industry 1900-1930.
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