Manly Labby

Fain: Uncle Manly, shall we begin with where your family came from, where you were born and a little of what your childhood was like before coming to this country?
LABBY: My memory is not too good of what either the political or commercial situation was in our country as I was then too young. I was I think, about four or four and a half years old when we decided to migrate to the United States, so it will be a little difficult for me to get back into the ethnic origin of my grandparents. I don’t remember them too well although my mother’s name was Greenberg, so obviously she must have come from the Greenberg family. But we didn’t know too much about the background there. My dad, I think he ran a distillery. It was not given to us children to know too much about the commercial side of our family. How we made our living and so on. Because we were too young. I think that my dad ran a distillery and made alcohol, which later was processed in the way you process alcohol, whiskeys, and so on. Apparently he had a good going business because we had a fairly good life. There was never a necessity to worry about what was going to be on the table so far as provisions were concerned and so far as thriving physically. We seem to have had a sufficiency and abundance to eat, although there were six of us children. 

Harry, who was the oldest son. Then there was Bess, who was next in line, a daughter, and there was my brother Bob. Then there was my younger bother Barney. At that time this constituted our family and Mother and Dad. There was another daughter, Miriam, she was born later. She was born in the United States. We had a fairly good life as far as enjoying our life as children was concerned. We did the things that kids do. We played in a restricted sort of a way. I knew that we didn’t have the joy and freedom that other children had who were not of our ethnic group. There were a certain amount of restrictions. We lived in a small town called Golta. It was a town close to the Ural Mountains, not far from St. Petersburg. There was no schooling for us for we were too young. Harry had some schooling, my oldest brother. As is well-known, Jews had a limited amount of liberty there. We were not permitted to go to what is known as gymnasium, the high school, which was restricted to other groups of the ethnic origin. So we did have a certain amount of schools for children from six years on until up to possibly sixteen. That is what is known as elementary. Our basic education was purely elementary insofar as my childhood was concerned but there was one thing which was not neglected. That was my religious background. We were all the same. Dad was very religious, deep in the Orthodox ways of the Jewish community. He was very observant. He was very God-fearing. And he insisted that we have (for lack of further education) that we have a religious education. At least to this end he had a tutor come to us twice a week and we studied the Hebrew origins. We studied the Talmud in a way that we could absorb it because we were just young children.

Fain: Did you live near a synagogue? Did you attend a synagogue at all?
LABBY: No. My father was not insistent because it was a little too early for me to understand how I could possibly learn the ritual of what is necessary to go to daven, to pray and to read. I had to first develop a basic education on how to read the Hebrew and how to understand what I was reading. In order to do that we had a private tutor come to our house. Bob and I were his students. We were two students and he gave us private lessons. He taught us the ways of the Jew and how to comply with the traditions and to observe all the amenities that children are supposed to in those tender years. We got this as a basic education for lack of being able to go to school because we were even too young to go to an elementary school.

Fain: Was there a synagogue near by? Did your parents attend a synagogue? Were Jews allowed to attend a synagogue at that time?
LABBY: Oh yes. At that time there was actually no persecution. There was no great restriction put on the religious life of the Jewish community. The leaders of our community that we had to look up to were our religious leaders. They were supposed to be the people we looked up to for guidance in all matters. Whether they were religious, whether they were commercial or whether they were domestic, because we had no way of turning to any authority or to any administrators of the state. We could not get any sort of satisfaction out of them anyhow because of the state of religious persecutions and antisemitism, which seemed to be paramount and rife in all our walks of life, no matter where we were. We couldn’t depend too much on the state to give us what we needed insofar as an education so our leaders were the rabbis. They were the guides in any questions that came up in the family that had to be settled. If they were diverse questions or they were religious questions, questions of business, questions of life, we had to turn to our rabbis. They were our spiritual leaders. They were also our advisors. They told us what we should do, what we could do, how far we could go with our life, and so on. We had to turn to them. We considered that they were the basis and foundation and the fountainhead of all knowledge. We had to turn to them.

Fain: Do you remember what the population might have been in the Golta? Was it just a small village?
LABBY: It was a small community. This is simply a guess now, nothing is going to be very specific as far as figures is concerned because of my tender years. I am trying to recall because I was so young. Some of the things will just have to be more or less approximate rather than specific. Now I would say approximately there were about 3000 to 4000 people in our community. In various ways we were mixed. There were Jewish people and then of course there were the Russians, who were gentiles. So we were not a large community but we were closer to large cities. We had access to the advantages of large cities if we needed to have anything done for us in the way, just like they are in the communities of the United States.

Fain: What made your parents decide to leave Russia?
LABBY: I guess we were no different from any others. My parents were smart enough. They had intelligence enough to know that while they could probably withstand the rigors of living in the community in a country like Russia because of the antisemitism … They had learned to live with it and to adjust themselves to that way of life. But they were farther seeing than that. In bringing up children I am pretty sure that my dad had in mind not to bring up a family of five or six children and to have them subjected to the various indignities that were visited upon the Jewish people from time to time. There was such a thing in Russia known as pogroms. This was simply a wave of persecution that happened periodically, maybe two or three times a year. The Cossacks would sweep down from the mountains. There were, you might say, the elite guard of the Czars in the Czar’s regime. It wasn’t so much the army or the soldiers, because everybody had to serve in the army. When you became 21 years old you automatically had to go into the army. It was an involuntary servitude. But you had to put in some years in the army. Whether they were Jewish or whether they were gentile was not important. The important thing is that they had to serve in the army for three years or even four years in some cases and this was demanded. It was like an automatic draft. I think the same thing exists today in Israel. When you reach a certain age you automatically have to go in the army for a period of time in order to become a soldier in the defense of the country. This was not simply something that the Russian people who were not Jewish had to do – all had to serve in the Army. It wasn’t so much the army that caused these waves of persecution. It was the Cossacks that came stumbling out of the mountains in their outlandish regalia and with their swords. They were wonderful horsemen. They came storming into towns and they had permission from the powers above at the time, which no doubt were the Czar and the royal family, that they could kill and destroy and pillage and murder and rape and rob. This was their way of having their fun, I guess. To that extent my dad began to realize that one pogrom and another happened periodically, two or three times a year. And when left, they left such a wake of devastation that it was almost impossible to continue to live without having to reconstruct what they had destroyed. Through the years this became unbearable. My father knew that there must be a way of life that was better and more suitable to bringing up the family than we had to live under at that time. We began to think in terms of migrating out of Russia, taking the family away from there because there did not seem to be any future for the family at all. Family life was very close. The closeness of this family life was disrupted by these pogroms where they murdered and destroyed. They broke up whole families. They tore asunder all the commercial properties that the Jewish people had. And to that end dad began to look for further horizons in order to achieve a better way of life for the family. So, he decided the best place to go was to America, which seemed to be the stronghold of freedom. He had enough knowledge of America that he thought he could provide a better way of life there without having to suffer through the persecution of the Jewish people that the Jewish people had to suffer from time to time in Russia.

Fain: Do you remember anything about your trip across to America?
LABBY: Yes. I have some recollections of it. Childhood recollections. But I think it would be more important to say under what circumstances we left Russia at the time when we did leave it. At the time we left Russia I distinctly remember; these are memories that I can very well rely on because they were so vividly embellished in my mind at the time when they happened. Mother seemed to be all ready and prepared at all times that if she had to leave, [she could] leave at a moment’s notice; when the aggression became so intolerable that it was a question of life or death that we would survive the night when these pogroms began to take place. Whole towns were on fire. Businesses were destroyed. The Cossacks were running rampant through the streets with their swords, killing and destroying and murdering. Setting things on fire. There was a question of getting out of there safely as fast and as quickly as we possibly could. To that end, Mother was always prepared. She had clothing put aside. She had a bag of gold pieces set aside because no matter where you went you had to buy your way. Jews were not welcome wherever they went. In order to see that we would get out of there safely and start our journey, we had a couple of bags of gold all prepared to pay our way from place to place in order to get to the place where we could embark on the ship to go to America. 

Dad had already left Russia at the time. He and my oldest brother Harry came ahead of us. I think that they settled in a little town called Woodvine, New Jersey. They were already there for about at year. He had a job and he had a place to move the family to. It was simply a question of Mother using her judgment when, and under what circumstances, and how we could possibly leave. There was no point in leaving as long as things were peaceful and quiet. We could sustain ourselves without having to worry if we would be able to last through the night. But when things began to happen and the Cossacks came out of the mountains and they started tearing the neighborhood apart, destroying, robbing, breaking windows, coming into homes, driving into homes right with their horses and so on, that was the night that we left. And when we realized that the town was set afire, Mother immediately went to the back room, got my brother Bob and myself out of bed, Barney was still just a babe in arms and we packed up the few bundles of clothing we could, wrapped them in sheets and dragged them through the muck. All during this conflagration and all during the time when the Cossacks were pillaging the town, she had already arranged with somebody who had a horse and wagon to take us to another town. We got another home in another town. I can’t remember the name of that town. We had what they call a summer home, a small little place were we could retire in the summertime and enjoy life a little bit by the Black Sea. We came to that and it was the same situation there. But we nevertheless had this wagon she had set aside and had arranged with this gentile to take us there. It cost us quite a bit of money but we did that. That is the way we left and those were the circumstances under which we left Russia. From then on it was a question of trying to arrange transportation to a port of embarkation where we could get a ship and travel to America.

Fain: How old were you then?
LABBY: I was about four and a half years old. Bob, I think, was five and a half or six. He is a year and half older than I. And Bess was of course ‘Mother’s Helper.’ She was a year and a half older than Bob. She was about seven.

Fain: Do you remember anything of your adventures on the boat coming across? Did you come directly to New Jersey also?
LABBY: No. We came to New York. It was quite an interesting trip. I don’t exactly remember but we were a long time at sea. The name of the ship was Friesland. It was a coal-burning ship; very, very slow. And I believe there must have been forty or fifty families with us at the time when we crossed over from the dock onto the gangplank of the ship. We were herded into a place they called steerage, which was the bottom hold of the ship. There were little bunks arranged in there along the side of the vessel on each side. And each one had a little bunk to sleep in. Actually the place where we were quartered on the ship was the place for cattle. They used to transport cattle from town to town. You can see what kind of quarters we had to stay in. As far as food was concerned, there was food brought along. Mother had brought along food to sustain us for a while, but after that we had to do some buying of food on the ship. But we were not allowed on deck. There were forty or fifty families and we were not allowed on deck. We had to stay in the hold for the entire crossing with the exception of once a week we were allowed to go up on deck for about fifteen minutes to enjoy what there was of the outdoors and to get some fresh air and [we got to] breathe a little salt air, which was very refreshing to us. This all took place during the daytime. At the time that we were allowed to go up to the deck from the hold I remember distinctly there was a seaman on either side of the place wherever we came up from the ladders. Each one had an orange he gave us. And this was our treat for the week. We each got an orange to eat.

Fain: How long did the trip take you?
LABBY: I believe the trip took three months. Now this is an approximate figure again. It might have been shorter or it might have been longer. And it seemed that we were forever at sea. It was a terrible experience that we had. Of course Bob and I managed to do the best. And of course Barney was only a baby. It wasn’t too hard for us. We were children. We were inured to hardship to a certain extent and this was kind of an adventure for us. To that extent at least we didn’t get seasick. The older people did. It was a terrible thing to find so many people who were nauseated and sick and there was no place where you could dispose of that stuff. You can imagine what a stench there was in that hold where there was no ventilation of any kind with the exception of a few air vents that came down from the deck. This helped a little, but it wasn’t much help.

Fain: When you came into New York, then you came as quickly as you could to New Jersey to meet your father and your older brother?
LABBY: No, not right away. We came to New York the same as all immigrants come. We were already told about New York and the United States as the land of freedom. Possibly they built up a little fairyland background, that while it was more desirable to live in America rather than to live under the conditions that we lived in in Russia, it was still the land of opportunities and we were going to a country where there was going to be a lot more freedoms than we were allowed when we were in Russia. To that end we looked forward to at least a better way of life, a more fruitful way of life. We were told about the Statue of Liberty, what a wonderful thing it was, and how many people were migrating, and they wept when they went by the Statue of Liberty because it held its hand out to us. We were entering another entirely new phase of existence which would be more conducive to a better way of life. We were told about that. So basically this is what we had to look forward to. What we were going to find in America, who we were going to see. What kind of a community we were going to live in and what our environment was going to be. That was not gone into at all. Our main concern at the time we were crossing was to get away from Russia. To get away from that horrendous way of life that seemed to stifle the initiative. That seemed to stifle everything. In order to get out from the blackness and into the light we were told that America was a way of life that we would enjoy. We would love it there. We would be allowed to do things and go places and meet people we were never allowed to converse or to communicate with or to integrate ourselves with. This as a basic thought was our most important mission, to get there and to get there safely. After that we would take our chance on what we could find, knowing that what we were going into would be a whole lot better than what we had left.

Fain: How long did you stay in New Jersey?
LABBY: We came to Castle Garden, which was the port of disembarkation for all immigrants. You can imagine what a rag-tag and bobtail [bunch] we looked like after we came off the ship, after living for as many weeks in the hold as we did. I imagine that the crossing was the most dismal thing for people who are not used to a thing like that. After getting off the ship we were herded into a huge auditorium where there seemed to be literally thousands of people walking around, just like us, in rags, so to speak; in old country clothing. And all had little tags hanging on them. They were called upon by the various authorities there that were in charge of immigration to come up and identify themselves, to be examined by a doctor to see that there were no rampant diseases; to see that we were able to integrate into a country without bringing in diseases. If it was suspected that there was something wrong physically with us, we were set aside. This did not happen to our family. So we were taken into Castle Garden and we stayed there for a while. Then we were allowed to leave. We had an address to go to and this was in New York in the Bronx. We went there and there we found the rest of our family. Dad and my brother were there. This was the reunion that took place at the time we got off the ship. This took some time. I think it took at least twenty-four hours before we were able to join my dad and my brother because we had to go through certain tests there, physical and mental tests in order to see that we would not be a detriment to the country that we ere coming into. Not necessarily something that we had to add to the country, but that we were not going to be detrimental. That we had people to go to and that we were not bringing in any diseases. This was very important and also to see that we had money enough to sustain ourselves until we were able to take our place in our social sphere.

Fain: Then where did you move to as a family?
LABBY: We stayed a very short time in New York, a very short time, because my dad had already arranged for a house in a little town called Woodvine, New Jersey, which was strictly a Jewish settlement. Mind you, we were only in contact with Jewish people like us who were leaving the old world to enter the new. We were herded from pillar to post by administrators who had charge of immigration; they told us where we could go and how long we could stay there and what we could do and who we could see. All of this was overseen. But in the background there was always a satisfactory feeling that we were going to join up with a haven of refuge, a place of safety, that we had someplace to go to where we could start our life. 

And we came to this little town of Woodvine, New Jersey, which was strictly a Jewish community that was originally started by a man known as Baron Hirsch, who himself immigrated from Germany. He was a very wealthy man, who started this community as a place where Jews could come to in order to have a place where they could settle when they came to America. After that they could do whatever they pleased and disperse themselves all over the country. But in the first instance they had a place where they could safely arrive at. Later they could make their plans where they wanted to go at a more leisurely and more relaxed way of doing it. My dad, at the time that we came there was working in a hat factory. There were two large factories there that made hats. He had a job there and also my brother Harry, who was still a young boy then; but he also worked there. We came there and we had a house to move into. That is where we stayed for about three years, during the time that Dad was learning the trade. Remember that he came from the old country; he new nothing of the ways here. He didn’t know the language; the customs were strange to him. People that he met when he got here were all strangers to him. He had to find his way around in his own way. 

True, the Jewish language was a language we could communicate with. Many of the Jews not only came from Russia, they came from Germany, Poland, and any of the countries where there was antisemitism. These were the people coming to the New World, looking for a new way of life. So, because the customs were strange to him, he couldn’t pursue the way of life that he had in Russia. He couldn’t do the work that he had done there because when you have a little distillery, it was based upon the knowhow to run it. But getting into America he couldn’t possibly do that again because he didn’t know the customs of the country. He didn’t know the language. He didn’t know how to get around to start an industry like that. So he took a job in this town and he became a hat maker. He worked 18 hours a day and I think he got $1.75 for those 18 hours. Well, this was the best he could do because he was not permitted to do anything else. It was what most of the Jews who came to that community did. Actually it was an agricultural community. It had an agricultural college there for people who wanted to become farmers. But knowing the Jews are not great when it comes to agriculture, they are not great farmers. They more or less run toward professional trades: doctors, merchants, lawyers and so on. This was their way of life. So it wasn’t a very huge success as far as farming is concerned. What it was, was a refuge for them to stay there and become integrated into the ways of America, to learn a little about the language, go to school, study nights, finally get their citizenship, and do whatever they wanted to and pursue a better way of life before just traveling into America at large. But at least we had a place to go and this was all right for a couple of three years until we decided that we wanted to migrate west.

Fain: Uncle Manly, how did you happen to come to Portland, Oregon?
LABBY: Well, it is a little difficult for me to answer that question for I had no choice. My dad told us we were going to go. Being of young and tender years and a very obedient son, I did not question anything my father decided to do. I only realized this: that whatever he decided to do for the family was all in our best interest anyhow. So the confidence was there. Wherever we decided to go and wherever we decided to settle was in our best interest. I later learned that actually there was no great desire to go to Oregon for the sake of going to Oregon, because my dad was still looking. He thought there might even be better places to go to than living in New York. What small experiences we had in the east were not palatable to my father. Dad being what he was, was the guiding spirit of the family. We lived by his decisions, and we obeyed in all respects whatever he decided to do. Knowing that what he decided to do for the family was in its interest anyhow. 

Later I learned that the reason we came to Oregon was purely by chance. Why we picked Oregon, I don’t know. My dad was not that well versed in the geography of the United States to know one community would be better than another. But one thing he did realize was that New York was no community to live. There were just altogether too many people. While we lived in a small town in Russia, we had a select group that we associated with. We saw a community of Jewish people. We had our synagogue. We had our ways in which we traveled which was fairly restricted. But the overwhelming population in New York, everything was so massive there, that he saw that it was no place for a family who had simply come to a country that was still strange to them; to integrate themselves into the way of life because it was altogether too much. It was too overwhelming. So he decided there must be better ways, better places, either in America or even some other place where we could raise our family under more private circumstances, rather than be overwhelmed by so much of everything. The immensity of all just overawed him. So it was a question then of finally coming to a decision as to whether we would go to Portland, Oregon, which was clear across the country, or go to South America, to Argentina. Why he picked Argentina, I never knew, but it was a toss of a coin. What represented heads and what represented tails I never knew but evidently one side of the coin would decide Argentina and the other side of the coin would decide Oregon. It came to Oregon so we migrated to Oregon. We migrated to Portland.  

We were still left there and as before, Dad and my brother Harry went on ahead to find out just exactly what Oregon was, what kind of country it was. Dad didn’t read any history of what Oregon was. For all he knew it might be just like New York again, the United States being what it is. So far all we saw of the United States was a lot of people and a lot of commotion and you had no way of knowing whether the same thing did not exist in the far west! But anyway we did come. He came ahead of us and he was here another year or so. During that time while he was here he did what most immigrants do. He still had only a very sparse way of communicating with people he was in contact with from day to day. Although Jews will gravitate to where Jews are, nevertheless that does not mean that that is the way they are going to make a living. They have to branch out. And he did what a lot of other Jews do when they first come here. He got himself a horse and he got himself a wagon and he went out. 

He had native intelligence enough to know that when he bought something for ten cents and he sold it for fifteen cents he made five cents. Some of the Jewish people, fathers of the families, had already arrived here. They also had horses and wagons. Some of them sold fruit, some of them opened up little tiny stands in the street. And possibly even a market. They bought some vegetables or poultry from the wholesale houses, commission houses, which were then located on First Avenue. And they bought something for a price and they sold something for a price and that way made a profit. Dad had bought a wagon and a horse and he went out and sold fruit. He bought fruit at the wholesale market and took it out to communities in the neighborhoods. He went from door to door selling fruit. This was the way he was able to sustain himself until he finally sent for us. 

During that time I enrolled in school in Woodvine, New Jersey. Barney was still too young. Bess and Bob and I went to elementary school. It was strictly a small community, all Jewish people. The only gentile in the whole town (and I believe there must have been at least 3000 people in that town), the only gentile was the principal of the public schools. He was the only gentile there. We had very good schooling there. We also went to Hebrew school. This is the way we spent our time during the time that Dad was in Oregon making a place for us to move to. I first started my schooling in Woodvine, New Jersey. It later turned out to be very unsuccessful venture as far as Baron Hirsch was concerned since being an agricultural community, Jews didn’t catch on much to the fact that they were going to become farmers. This was not their way of trying to better their lives. And they were not good farmers anyhow. So most of them, after they stayed there for a while and became used to the United States and learned a little more about the language and ways of getting around, they left there and spread out to wherever they were going to. Some came west; some settled in Chicago. But this was the fountainhead of most of the immigration and from there they spread out all over the United States. During that time we made some friends in Woodvine, New Jersey that eventually migrated with us to Portland, Oregon. They came with us to Portland and we all settled here. 

The trip across the country was very uneventful. It didn’t take very long by train and when we came here we came into the Union Station. It was during the nighttime when we came here and got off the train. As we got off the train I saw my father behind bars. They were not allowed to come into the train compound itself where the trains came in. They had to stay beyond the gates there to welcome any visitors as they came through the gates. When I saw my father behind those bars I began to cry because I thought that they had put him in prison. This was my first impression of Portland. But it wasn’t so, of course, and we rejoined the family. There was great joy among us and we came home. He had a home on Arthur Street that he had rented. This was part of the Jewish community. It is what is known as the Old South Portland. We took up residence there. It was an upstairs flat.

Fain: Do you remember who any of your neighbors were when you moved in?
LABBY: Yes. The neighbor right next to us (and the house was only three feet with a narrow alley between the two houses), people by the name of Spivak lived next to us. There was Mendel Spivak, the father. I don’t remember his wife’s name. She was a very motherly person, Jewish. There was Molly Spivak, the oldest daughter and Barney Spivak, the son, and Rose Spivak. These were our neighbors who lived next door to us. They were the first Jewish people whom we met aside from the Jewish people that we knew that came over with us from Woodvine. There were three families that came on the same train with us too. So we knew them. Where they moved to we later found out. At least for the time being we had them there. Then there was a young boy by the name of Sam Soble who lived across the street. This was strictly a Jewish and Italian community.

Fain: Who were the people that moved to Portland with you from New Jersey?
LABBY: There were some people by the name of Volnitzky. A father, his wife and a daughter. And there were people by the name of Sajdkin [he spells it], who was a sausage maker in the old country. And he came and he was here. This is all I remember of those people.

Fain: What were your impressions of your new home in Portland?
LABBY: Well, I was a little too young to form any impressions. We came in during the night. There were little or no street lights in town at that time. Mind you, this was in 1905 and what lights there were in the city were all gas lights. Certainly the town was that small that they didn’t provide for much lighting in the communities and the outer communities away from the core of the city itself. We didn’t have much of an opportunity to see exactly where we were moving into and what kind of a home it was because we came at night with a horse and wagon. This was our method of transportation at the time from the depot to our new home in the United States. At first it was my impression that it was a huge prairie because I could see in every direction without having my vision broken off. There were not too many houses and there were no lights at all. So it was very difficult for me to determine exactly what we were moving into. But it was a home. It was like a home we had in Russia. It seemed to be fairly comfortable. I believe it was four rooms, an upstairs flat. I didn’t realize really how desolate it was until the next morning when I got up and found out the community we were living in. There were a few houses around that were very close, but all I could see was just a city.

Fain: Were you close to a school?
LABBY: Yes. We were very close to a school. A school, which was a grade school, was only about a block and a half from where we lived. 

Fain: What was the name of the school?
LABBY: The name of the school was the Josiah Failing. There were two schools later that I learned in South Portland. One was the Shattuck School, which was a little further down towards the city. The other was the Josiah Failing School, which is the school I went to and that Bob and Bess went to. The three of us went to that school. I enrolled in the first grade and Bob enrolled in the second grade. He was a little older than I. And Bess enrolled also in the second grade. So we started our schooling there. It was a much larger school than the average school that I have known or seen, even in Woodvine, New Jersey where there was a very good grade school. There was also a high school there too, but this was a huge school set up on top of a bank, and all wood. I don’t remember my teacher’s name. I remembered my teacher’s name when I got on in school but in the very beginning I don’t remember my teacher’s name in the first grade.

Fain: Did you go to school with some people who are still your friends now? Do you remember any of them?
LABBY: Oh yes. In that school there were, I would say about 85% of the children who went to that school were Jewish. It was strictly a Jewish community. Jews have a way of gravitating towards each other purely out of a desire for consolation and comfort and knowing that you are among your people. To this extent this was the reason and probably the only primary reason why there ever was such a thing as South Portland. This was probably a throwback from the old country in Russia where the Jews had lived closer together for their own mutual socialization, for their own protection, and so on. The same thing was carried on in America when they came. Because they had no way of communicating with people who were already here who were not Jewish. The country was composed of so many different ethnic groups from all over the world that it was only natural that Jews would gravitate toward each other – sort of a ghetto, as it were. While it wasn’t the best way of life because every one of us was poor to start with: we came here with nothing and we had nothing when we got here. It was simply a question of starting from scratch. We had to gravitate to a community that had nothing much to offer us except the togetherness of being among Jewish people that were under the same circumstances, under the same stresses that we were. Because of that we were thrown together and this originally made the community. And I presume because Italians happened to be there (they were not the majority in the community, but there was a goodly sprinkling of Italians there) I presume the reasons they came to this country was for the same reason that we came to this country. They gravitated towards each other too.

Well, so we had the sprinkling of Italians there and it was their way of life there. This is the way ghettos are born. People who have the same things in common, the same ethnic background, gravitate toward each other until they are able to learn different ways of life in order to expand their background, expand their social programs and so on. They would later move out. But in the first instance it was necessary that the Jewish people gravitate towards each other because the understanding was there. The synagogue was there. The way of life was there. Their markets were there. And you must remember that most of the Jews who came here were of the Orthodoxy. Because of the Orthodoxy, they had to be thrown together. There were two or three synagogues. There was a Temple here of sorts, but this was already reserved for Jews who had been here from the pioneer days. They were more or less the German aspect of the Jewish race because they had the Temple. The Jews of the background where my mother and father came from were all Orthodox Jews. They moved into a place where there was an Orthodox synagogue.

Fain: There was a synagogue, then?
LABBY: Oh yes, yes.

Fain: Was this Shaarie Torah?
LABBY: Shaarie Torah was the Orthodox synagogue. Their customs and their way of life was completely in keeping with the life [my parents] had lived in Russia. The Jew always goes to his background of worship and because of that they knew that they could find the spiritual life that they were seeking in the Orthodox congregation. This was a very fine Orthodox congregation, which had already been there for a number of years. It had quite a membership and so my dad became a member of the Shaarie Torah congregation. There was where we worshipped. 

Fain: What occupation did our father go into when first coming here?
LABBY: When Dad first came here, like I said, he got a horse and wagon and he was out selling fruit. This was not a successful venture. It didn’t have the desired results. And to that extent Dad began to figure that there was more money in going out junking, which many Jews did. He went out and bought copper and metal and iron and steel and whatever he could find, took it to the wholesale junk shop (which was located on Front Street) and they paid a price for what they bought and they sold it for a little profit. So there was a little more to be had there. Dad wasn’t a good fruit merchant; he would buy a lot of fruit and it would spoil, and spoiled fruit can’t be sold. He knew that junk wouldn’t spoil; it would keep. So he tried it and changed his method of making a living by becoming a junkman instead of a fruit peddler, which many of them did.

Fain: Did he stay with this occupation for long?
LABBY: No he didn’t. He was not satisfied to continue to be a junkman. He had a better way of life as far as living is concerned, with the family in Russia. It wasn’t yielding the desired results. He knew he had a trade. He was a good accomplished hat maker. He learned his trade in Woodvine, New Jersey and then he went off looking for a job as a hat maker. There were no hat factories in Portland as such. All the big industry was in the east. But he did make a deal with a man by the name of Alec Miller, who had the Miller Clothing Company. Dad talked him into putting up a little factory in the back of his store where Dad would produce and make hats for him. They were strictly made all by hand. Dad had his trade. He was so knowledgeable in his trade which he had learned in the east, that he would produce a very, very fine hat – a salable product and much cheaper than Mr. Miller could buy from the factories in the east. He would supply him with enough hats in order to keep a straight balance so that he always had enough stock on hand to be able to take care of his trade. So to that extent, Dad and he worked up a little factory in the back of his store and Dad went to work for Mr. Miller making hats. This is what he did for a number of years. He made the factory a little bigger but it was never any more than just Dad and a girl who used to sew the had bands on the hats, and the inside bands, too. He made maybe 8, 10, 12 or 15 dozen hats for him a week and they were a very fine product and very salable. This is what Dad did for many, many years. Later on he branched out for himself and had his own little factory and had a store in front of the factory where he sold his product for retail.

Fain: Was this a profitable venture?
LABBY: It was profitable to the extent that it kept the family in a more comfortable position than he could when he was selling junk or selling fruit. He made better there than he was able to work 40 hours a week. He was able to quit Friday early because Friday was the Sabbath and he never worked on the Sabbath. This was the original agreement he had with Mr. Miller and it worked out very well. He did provide a better way of life for us. We were able to afford things. We were able to have things, buy a little furniture, move into a little better home and had it much better than we had it when he was selling junk or selling fruit. He provided enough money for the family so that we could live fairly comfortably.

Fain: Your father was a very prominent figure in the synagogue. Did he become this prominent right away? What did he do? What were his duties at Shaarie Torah?
LABBY: Later when Dad gave up the factory … I don’t remember exactly what year that was, but I think it was in 1917 or 1918 when he began to tire of being a hat maker and his hands were not what they used to be. All the hats he made were made strictly by hand and it was a very tiring thing. He couldn’t do the work as well as he did in former years. And because he was so greatly interested in the spiritual life of our community, he took a job as sexton of Shaarie Torah, which was known as the shammash. He held that job, I believe, for 44 years and during that time he was only concerned about the welfare of the church – besides the family which was his first concern. He was concerned that the church should thrive. His whole life was devoted to the church. I shouldn’t use the word “church.” I suppose I should use the word “synagogue.” But his whole life was devoted to it. He didn’t get very much money. I believe he got $40 or $50 a month, but in those days, $50 a month was a lot of money. He could go to market and sustain a way of life for quite a while on $50. Mother was a miracle worker in the kitchen. She stretched the dollar and we were able to have what we needed to sustain ourselves in a healthy fashion at home on that kind of money. 

During that time my brother Bob and I also sold newspapers downtown. After school we didn’t engage in sports. We didn’t engage in any of their extra-curricular activities that some of the students engaged in. By the way, that was pretty much true for everybody there. Because most of the Jewish boys that went to that grade school were of the same background that we were. They had to provide some money into the family too. Most of them sold papers downtown. We came downtown right after school, sold papers from 3:30 to about 6:30 and then came home with whatever few dimes we made there. We used to bring it home, deposit into the family exchequer, which truly helped out in a considerable way. So we sold papers, and Dad kept that job in the synagogue for 42 years. He didn’t make very much; in fact, most of the money he made he returned back to the synagogue in the form of books and different paraphernalia, instruments of religious worship that he provided the synagogue with. So it was nip and tuck for many, many years.

Fain: Did you go to high school?
LABBY: Yes. I went to high school for two years. But I discovered … I had in mind that I wanted either to continue in high school and graduate high school and then later turn to some profession. But it was difficult for me to do that because there was still not enough money coming in to the family to sustain us. By that time, Dad had purchased a home and in order to pay for that home there had to be more money coming in than was coming in from the job that he had with the synagogue. So I had to leave school and I had to go downtown to sell papers all day. I did that for about a year and then I took a job with Miller Clothing Company, who was the man he worked for at the time he had this hat factory. He gave me a job. It was the first job I had and I was making all of $6.00 a week at that time for 45 hours or 50 hours of work. But the $5 or $6 a week that I did get was very important to the family. It carried us quite a ways; and so did my brother Bob.

Fain: Let’s see now. You had gone to work for Alec Miller and his clothing store. How long did you stay there?
LABBY: The reason that I got this job (it wasn’t much of a job) was when I went to high school I also worked for Alec Miller after school for a while from 2:30 when high school let out. That was at Lincoln High School. And at 3 o’clock I was down at the store and we worked till 7 or 8 o’clock. There was no such thing as hours; hours were not counted when we were working in those days. On Saturdays we worked until 10 o’clock. It was open until 10 o’clock then. For that job I got $5 or $6 a week and I got a raise or two. But it was always a 50 cent or 25 cent a week raise. I worked for Alex Miller for about two years. I saw that I was not getting very far. Money was not coming in too much. So I quit Alex Miller and I went to work for the J.K. Gill Company on a full time basis. At that time I was getting $12 a week and the hours were more regular. Besides we would go to work at 9 o’clock in the morning and quit at 6 o’clock in the evening, the same thing on Saturday. I was making already a little more money then but it still wasn’t enough. I worked for J.K. Gill Company for about two years and I was getting into my 20th birthday. At that time I asked my brother-in-law who had gotten married to my sister Bess, a fine man, by the name of Marshak. He had a store and I asked him if I could get a job where I could learn a trade. I saw that my schooling days were over in so far as trying to learn a profession but nevertheless I thought that maybe I might be able to go to night school and possibly take some sort of a business administrative course. I knew to become a doctor or a lawyer (either one of the two professions appealed to me) was completely out of the question. I wanted to study criminal law, I was interested in that, but since that was out of the question, it was just simply a question now of learning a trade and to be able to carry on and help the family out. So I asked Meier, Meier Marshak, if he knew where I could find a job so I could earn a little money and possibly, if I could earn enough money to save out of this job, I could attend night school. He thought because he was a buyer of clothing, I may be able to get a job in one of the shops where he bought his merchandise. So he spoke to a man by the name of Louis Olds who was interested in a factory called the Beaver Suit and Coat Company.

Fain: You mentioned that you went to work for the Beaver Suit and Coat Company.
LABBY: When I told Meier Marshak of my desire to take a job that would pay me a little more money and also possibly teach me a trade, he said that he would talk to a friend of his who he knew. He had a factory where they made coats and suits. Meier later informed me that he had a place for me; he had arranged with Mr. Lou Olds who, was one of the owners of the Beaver Suit and Coat Company, for me to go up and see him. I thought it was a little bit strange but then it was my request to him. He carried his responsibility out toward me. I knew nothing of making coats and suits. I knew absolutely nothing. I had never been in a coat and suit factory. I didn’t know what it was like inside. The only thing I knew was what Mother did at home. But it was a job. I went to see Mr. Olds. Instead of seeing Mr. Olds, I came to the wrong door for one reason or another. I had in my mind going to work as a cutter, to learn the trade as a cutter in the garment industry. Some of my friends were working there and they learned a pretty good trade. While it didn’t pay a lot of money, it nevertheless was a trade to fall back on. And this was my object in going up there; I could learn to be a cutter. It so happened that I came to the wrong door. Instead of seeing Mr. Olds, whom I wanted most to see, I came upstairs into the factory itself out of the office on the ground floor and I ran into a friend of mine up there by the name of Abe Berlant. This entrance to the factory led directly into the pressing department. Abe was a neighbor of ours where we lived and so I waived to him and he asked me what I was doing there. I told him I came up here looking for a job. That I was supposed to see Mr. Olds about going to work. He said, “You don’t have to go any farther. If there is a job you want, come here. I got a job for you. You are hired.” Well, I knew nothing about it. This was the pressing department, not the cutting department.

Fain: Was this for the Beaver Suit and Coat Company?
LABBY: Yes. So I told him all right. He took me behind a table. I took my jacket off and he gave me a hand iron. He told me to press. I didn’t know much what I was doing but the job that he put me at was so simple that anybody could learn it in two minutes. It was simply opening up seams with a hand iron. And I did the job and later when I met Mr. Olds in the factory I told him about my desire to go to work. “Well,” he said, “as long as you are working, you got a job. Stay where you are.” This obviously meant that I was going to be a presser, not a cutter. I stayed in this job for about two years. It is interesting that I describe the job because it led into other fields. We were working, I believe, close to sixty hours a week and it was very hard work. Very hard work. I was getting the big sum of $18 a week, which was a fairly good salary considering the times and what $18 would buy. But I had in mind that if I could save enough out of this salary to be able to put aside enough money to go to night school, I would stay with this job maybe two or three seasons. The spring season and the fall season. In spring they made the lighter garments and in the fall they made the heavier garments, with a little interim between both seasons to make up sample lines and so on. During this time the factory was shut down except for the sample makers of which I was one. 

Well. I worked there for about two year and I discovered that I was not making the money and I was not able to put aside the money that I thought I would. After two years and analyzing my bank account I found out that I had bout $4 in the bank, which was certainly not enough money to further my education. I decided it was not a very good thing. Either I had to get a raise or get another job somewhere, or stay with the job and be satisfied that that was going to be it. I went to ask for a raise and I was turned down although I was a very good worker. I was commended for the work I did. I was diligent. I learned the trade fairly well. Nevertheless, the employer refused to set an example by giving me a raise, knowing that as soon as I was getting a raise the others would ask for a raise too. It was very hard work. Everybody worked in the shop from 7:30 in the morning until usually 5:00 in the evening. But in our department we had to work a lot of overtime for which we got very little. I decided that wasn’t going to do me any good. I decided to go out and see if I could find a job with another garment shop where I could make more money. I knew my trade fairly well by then and I decided that I was going to go to the Modish Suit and Cloak Company to find out if they needed a presser there, and, at that time, see if I could establish a better wage. Having been turned down for a raise, I saw no reason that I had to stay with the shop any longer. So I went to the Modish and I talked to a man by the name of Louis Cramer there, and it so happened that there was a job open in the skill that I was versed in. He asked me what I would work for and I said that I would not consider changing jobs unless I was paid at least $35 to start with. He said, “Come to work the following day.” Well, that was quite a difference, from $18 to $35. So I changed jobs and I stayed with that job for quite a while. 

But there was a degree of unrest that began to come into the industry. I began to associate myself with people who were in that industry – the pressers and the operators and the cutters – and I realized that everybody was very unhappy with the money they were making, the long hours, and the tedious work. As a matter of fact, that is where the word “sweatshop” originated. We all sweated good in there for very little money. I began to understand that there was an undercurrent of unrest among all the workers who were just simply at the mercy of the employer. If the employer wanted to give them a little more money, he gave it to them. If he chose not to give it to him, the worker had to be satisfied to continue to do what they were doing without any rewards for ability or skill or proficiency. To this extent there began to be an undercurrent of unrest among the entire industry. There were pretty close to 1200 to 1500 people engaged in various factories around the city who were making different types of garments. Some were high priced, some were low priced. The Beaver made the cheapest garment, presumably calling for the cheapest wage. There began some talk about a union there. Now I didn’t know anything about unions at that time. I knew that if people banded together and showed a little strength (that was simply basic thinking) that collectively they could represent quite a strength to an employer. By going in groups instead of just individuals they could possibly achieve more desired results that way. And this is the way it turned out. 

And since the principle of group strength began to take hold there, more groups began to go to the employer to ask for raises as groups. The entire cutting department would sometimes walk into an employer and would say, “We want more money or we have to leave the job. We are not making a living.” The employer, rather than seeing his workers filter out because they were real skilled, would give it to them. This was the principle that would begin to filter into the rest of the crafts. The operators and the finishers and the pressers. Little by little we began to realize that if we all formed together in one large union in every factory we would be able to see results far better than what we were getting as individuals. Well, we still were not getting very far because the employer was perfectly willing to take a chance and even let their factory shut down rather than agree to the principle of an increase. They knew that that was the beginning of employees showing strength and one thing would lead to another. Not that I could blame them very much but nevertheless it is inherent in the employer’s thinking to say, “no.” He wants to run his plant the way he wants to run it and pay what he wants to pay rather than having the worker have anything to say about it. Either the worker could take it or he could leave it. 

Just about that time President Roosevelt came into the picture. At that time when the country was in the throes of the Depression things were going from bad to worse. Jobs were not to be had. A living was hard to make. Industry was down. There was a real Depression in the country. When Roosevelt took office one of his first acts was to create the NRA, the National Recovery Act. Congress passed the National Recovery Act, which gave birth to what was known as the Blue Eagle Law. This law embodied a certain amount of restrictiveness on the part of employers and employees. The cost of production in factories was laid down by Washington. Each factory could produce just so much and they had to pay so much for its production. They set up administrators and they set up investigators. They set up field people in order to go into these various factories wherever they were and analyzed the books of the employers to see that they were complying with what was known at that time as a Code of Fair Trade Practices. This was a code that was promulgated by the various industries that  sent representatives of the industries to Washington to converse with the lawmakers. They were sent to find out exactly how they were going to set up this Code of Fair Trade Practices among the various industries. They laid down a certain code for every industry, whether it was the auto industry, the plumbing industry, manufacturing, whatever. And they had to comply with the various codes or suffer penalties under the law. If they chose to join with the National Recovery Act (it was a purely voluntary thing) … but those that didn’t join up with the Code of Fair Trade Practices were not going to be able to keep their employees because they had to subscribe to a symbol known as the Blue Eagle. This was the thing that gave birth and the impetus to a large amount of unionization in the country. This was the birth of the union you might say, because employees would not work unless the employer did agree and abide and sign up with the Code of Fair Trade Practices. 

And they were a very fair trade. They increased the wages considerably for each worker in each craft that he was employed with. But they also increased the selling power of the employers so that they were able to get a decent return for the merchandise that they were making. But any employer who did not subscribe to the Code of Fair Trade Practices was not given the use of what they called the Blue Eagle. And those who did not use the Blue Eagle could not keep their employees because the Code of Fair Trade Practices called for much higher wages than were being paid by those who did not subscribe to the Blue Eagle Code. So it became a national thing. There was a desire to get the country back on an even keel, to bring it back to a semblance, not necessarily of prosperity but of normalcy. Conditions were so far gone in the country at that time that they even had to declare a bank holiday and close the banks up to make an entire investigation of the financial structure of the country itself, of the government, of the industry as a whole. The gross national product was way down. This breathed new life into America. But it also breathed new life into the life of the union. They had parades all over the country and the unions began to flourish and gain strength. It was at a time that the employers also joined the Code of Fair Trade Practices. They had an attorney. They had an association. And they sent their representative, who was Mr. Abe Eugene Rosenberg; a very prominent attorney in Portland. He was a corporation attorney and was their legal advisor. So they sent him to Washington to see that when a Code of Fair Trade Practices was beginning to be inaugurated, that he would adequately represent the garment industry, at least so far as Portland was concerned, and that there would be no Code of Fair Trade Practices entered into that would be detrimental to industry, either for the employer’s sake or for the employees’ side. 

And he was instrumental in giving birth to a very fair trade practice for the Portland area. They were given a lot of leeway there because he had a hand in developing some of the basic agreements that were arrived at in Washington. And to this extent that’s where the labor union was born in Portland. It was not necessarily born because we had strikes and stoppages where we had banded together as a labor union and had joined the American Federation of Labor. It was not necessarily born through that because we were not sufficiently strong enough to show this type of strength with the employer. While we truly had our own reasons for wanting what we wanted in individual factories, we were not integrated to the extent that we were able to talk to other workers in the other factories, but we knew them well enough. We were pretty well separated so unionization in that respect did not help us much. When the Code of Fair Trade Practices came up, this developed unity among all of the workers in the industry because we saw that the employers were also unified in having established this Code of Fair Trade Practices. This brought us together. New York sent out an organizer here to Portland and he called for a general membership meeting of all the workers in the industry of which there were about 1500. And we all met at the Labor Temple. At that time we signed up as charter members – signed up for a charter designated to the Portland area from the international Ladies Garment Workers Union. Now we knew nothing about unionism as such. We didn’t know exactly how a union operates, how it was integrated with its affiliates all through the country. We were simply individuals working in various factories and we were all concerned pretty much with our own existence and our own way of life. But this brought us to realize that if we associated ourselves and accepted our chapter in the American Federation of Labor that they would be instrumental in helping us get started by signing a contract with the employers association that would have to be agreed to by the employees; that we would pass on any contract that would be agreed to between the representative of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and our union. He would adequately represent us because he was sent out of New York. He knew more about establishing a union for us than we did ourselves. Which is exactly what he did. 

And at that time we had our strength. Our first demands were from the employers when we asked to meet with them in negotiations for a contract for the abolishing of piece work, and limiting the week to 44 and a half hours a week. These were the only two demands we made at the time. We asked for no further money because we couldn’t ask for the money: our wages were frozen under the Code of Fair Trade Practices that were established when the National Recovery Act was born. So we couldn’t ask for more money although the Lord knows we needed that money. But nonetheless the employer couldn’t ask for more money for his garments either because his prices were frozen at the ranges that he made them in. But we did have a union and that was the start of our organization. Well as time went on and the Supreme Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, we were then thrown on our own resources to be able to bargain with our employers in an independent manner without having to worry about having ceilings put on our wages or ceilings put on his prices for garments. We were on our own with the exception that we had help out of New York to guide us and steer us in our relations with the employers. So this is the way it was. After the N.R.A. was declared unconstitutional our international union center representative out here immediately sent the union a notice that we would revert back to the same conditions that were rampant at the time when the National Industrial Recovery Act was legal. This meant that we would go back to 46 and a half hour weeks again, go back to our old wages again. And this we didn’t want because we had strength enough to know that we could stop this. We sent the employer back a letter telling them that any tampering with the Code of Fair Trade Practices as established under the National Recovery Act would immediately be met with a general strike in the city. And we said we desired to have a meeting with them at the earliest possible time, not to exceed 48 hours, in order to establish the basis for negotiating a new contract since the old contract had expired, and there was no such thing as a National Industrial Recovery Act anymore.

The employers were now faced with their first strike unless they agreed to a meeting with us. It wasn’t so much that they knew what we were going to ask for, it was simply that they did not want to recognize the union as a bargaining agent for all the workers because they knew that as soon as they stepped into that arena there were going to be demands made on them that were not in existence before that time. Nevertheless they did write a letter back to us telling us that they would agree to meet with us in negotiating a new contract in place of the old one that had expired. Well, what did we know about negotiating? I knew little or nothing. I knew about pressing, but I didn’t know about negotiations and how to conduct the negotiations. I didn’t know about meeting with the employers particularly, or an attorney who is well versed in the laws that I didn’t know. He would know how far we could go and I didn’t. I didn’t know whether we had the strength of the organization to sustain a strike or not. The reason I say I didn’t know is because I knew at the time we formed our union that it would have to have some administration in it. Basically we were pressers; we were operators; we were finishers; and we were cutters. While we knew our trades, we knew little or nothing about negotiating a contract or how to maintain our strength, how to conduct even a union meeting in order to see that the people who were representing us were behind us in our demands, whatever demands we would make. So I had little knowledge of the union. I had learned from some of the representatives of the New York union that New York had sent us. I diligently learned my trade unionism from some very fine men who gave me the basics exactly of how collective bargaining works and what strength means to workers when they band together to show strength. When we had this first meeting we were rebuffed on all corners. So we settled for the abolishment of piece work and 44 and half hours, which was our method of getting our foot in the door. To be able to recognize that the employers will give in to something that they would never have given into had we asked for it on an individual basis. It was conceivable that an employee could go to an employer and say, “I’ll no longer work 46 and half hours. I want to work 40 hours and I don’t want to work piece work anymore. I only want to work hourly work.” The employer has the choice. He can either accede to the demands or he can fire him which we knew would be exactly what would happen if I went to an employer as an individual. This is exactly what would happen. He would tell me to get out of the factory. Well, now we had a union. He couldn’t very well tell all of his workers to get out of the factory because his industry would completely grind to a halt. And he knew he had to deal with us. It was important that we would gain the first two points. While they were not in themselves a huge gain, nevertheless it was a foot in the door. Mr. Rosenberg knew it. The employers knew it. But there was nothing they could do about it short of being met with a strike. 

Shortly before that we had a mass membership meeting and we told them what we were going to go in for. We told them because we were electing the officials that this is what we were going to ask them. We asked them if it was all right with them to not ask for any more money but simply to ask for these two demands to see if they would be met with resistance. If they would be met with resistance then it would have to be agreed among our membership. We would take a secret ballot and then we would strike in order to get these two points. If they would give us the authority to go in and ask for these two points and if we didn’t get them we would threaten them with a strike, then we knew that we were on the right road. However, we wanted to have assurances that the employees would stand behind us if we had to strike. They voted to a man and to a woman that they would stand behind us and that we would empty the factories if they did not comply with what was reasonable enough because it didn’t cost them any money to begin with and we knew with our employers that the dollar was uppermost in their minds and that they were not too concerned with our welfare. That we had the authority to strike the industry in case they didn’t comply with our request. And we didn’t pull our punches. We told them that it was not a request but that it was a demand. It was a must. There was no negotiating these two items. Either that or nothing and we met with the employers and they finally settled and this is the contract that we finally settled. 

Then we got a little more strength through the few years. The contract had to run two years and we began to associate ourselves with other unions and pay more attention to what could be had by learning more about the labor laws in existence in this country. And I new that unions had to have leaders and there was not very much to choose from our group as far as union leadership was concerned. Basically we were just simply workers and I was chosen as president at the time. I retained that job as president from 1932 until 1937 – five years. And during the five years we managed to make some fairly good gains on an individual basis. On the basis of experience, on the basis of contract renewal negotiations, and so on. So we began to ask for a little more, never asking too much that would throw the industry into an uproar. Always asking only what the employers could adequately stand, what the profits would bear. And we never had to resort to the weapon of strike after that because being reasonable in our demands we met with some degree of victory there and some degree of success. In 1937 I was elected as business agent of the organization and at that time I believe we had 14 factories. The total membership was around 1200 people and mostly, strange to say, they were women in the industry. It was not like in New York where most of the operators were men because they had come from the old country. They did not know very much about the customs and ways. The same as my father. But basically they could learn tailoring easily enough and jobs were easy to get. So most of the operators in New York were men. But here in the far west it was an entirely different story.

Most of the operators were women. It was basically a woman’s job to sew for the family and graduating from sewing at home to sewing in a factory was just simply a step of learning more and having a little experience with running a commercial machine. So I kept this job as business agent and it was a successful venture insofar as I was concerned. I had charge of the organization I believe until 1952 with the exception of the war years when I went overseas during the Second World War. We had a woman substituting for me for the time I was gone until I came back from overseas and I could step back into the business agent’s job again. I successfully held that job. Although it was an elected position I seemed to be elected every time it came up for reelection without any opposition, presumably because I conducted my affairs in an acceptable manner to the employees and the members of the union. They wanted me to continue as business agent. In 1957 I became an officer in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union out of Los Angeles and a new business agent was elected for Portland. I became the administrator of the San Francisco organization for a couple of years and then I became the manager of the San Francisco Joined Organization for a couple of years. After that time I transferred to Los Angeles and became a field organizer there, representing the International Ladies Garment Workers out of Los Angeles for New York. And in 1966 I put in for my retirement. And I was retired then, at my request.

Fain: Uncle Manly, you stated that there were so many factories, about 1400 to 1500 employees in this business at one time. Whey is there only one factory manufacturing here in Portland?
LABBY: Nancy, that is an interesting question. It has to deal with the birth and death of an industry. How does an industry that is so firmly entrenched in the few years that it was in existence – to the extent that they had 1500 or so workers, and possibly 15 factories – why does an industry like that wither and dry up and die? It is quite an interesting thing and an observation that I think we ought to go into. Let’s drop back to 1932. I think that is a pretty good starting point because it was just a few years prior to that time that I introduced myself into the industry when I was looking for a job and I worked some years there. First of all, it is interesting to note that there are several factors that are responsible for that. Some are physical and some are geographical and some have something to do with the continuation for the industry – handing it down from father to son, which is generally done in industry where a father has achieved a certain amount of financial success and built into himself a little empire and conducted a successful business through the years. That he had, and it being a profitable industry, it is interesting to note that that industry did not in itself continue to thrive insofar as staying as an industry. Now, most of these factories were owned by people who immigrated to America just as my father did. Some of them were tailors that came to New York and gradually filtered into Oregon and some were professional people who had to learn new skills and new trades because they were not acquainted with the ways of this country. They knew very little of the language and had to resort to menial jobs like tailoring and so on, and had to learn a new trade. Not necessarily for a man who wants to learn how to sew or a woman who wants to learn how to sew to be very conversant with the English language. For the simple reason that a product is involved and the conversation is not necessarily an important factor in producing a product, especially with the sewing machine. It is a skill that is required. It required little or no conversation. Now we had 14 or 15 factories in Portland around 1932 and it is 1975 now and there is only one factory left. It is a small factory compared to what its history was in the life of the garment industry in Portland. 

Now here are some of the factories that were in existence at the time: Mr. Cohn owned the Beaver Suit and Cloak Company and he had a partner by the name of Morris Blake. Mr. Sam Metz had the Columbia Garment Company and he was a tailor to begin with. Mr. Cohn was a tailor to begin with. Mr. Cohn had no son. He ran a successful business for years. Mr. Sam Mets from the Columbia Garment Company had no son who was interested enough to take over the factory, although it was a successful venture. Mr. Ruben Kalis had a large factory known as the Pacific Garment Company. He had no son to take over the business. Mr. Louis Kramer – five daughters, no son to take over the business. National Garment Company, which consisted also of Mr. Louis Kramer and Mr. Abe Axe and a fellow by the name of Laitoff – no sons. The Modish Suit and Cloak Company owned by Mr. Hyman Kirshner had a very successful factory (which is the only one presently in existence today in Portland) but no son who was interested in taking over the business. He did have a younger brother who was associated with him in his younger years who passed away, but Mr. Kirshner had no son to take the shop over and a very successful venture it was. At one time Mr. Kirshner and Mr. Modish had about 125 to 130 workers working for him in the factory itself. Today he only has three operators and just a little handful of finishers. It’s that small and that is the only shop that is left of the entire industry. 

The Oregon City Manufacturing Company, a large plant in Oregon City, had a couple of hundred workers there. The women who owned the factory, and Mr. Jacobs – no sons to take the factory over. Mr. Sidney Stern (who by the way came over on the same boat that our family came over on from Russia) and Mr. Nate Helman owned the Goldstein Garment Company, neither one of them had sons to take the garment factory over. And a successful business it was. Davis Dress Shop, the only man who had a little dress shop in Portland, which I organized into the union, had no son to take the factory over. Max Barthman, who later became the owner of the Beaver Garment Company when Mr. Cohn left it, had no son to take the garment factory. Mr. Dave Golub, who had a little shop, a very successful little factory it was and produced a very high class garment, no son to take the garment factory over. A Mr. Carl Peters of the Columbia Garment Company, who later bought Mr. Metz out, had no son to take the garment factory over. 

Now the reason for the demise of the industry itself are a few. First, to begin with, why was there a garment industry in the city of Portland? Portland was not a fashion center. Buyers didn’t flock to Portland; they had no style showings here. This was not a fashion center where styles were born and models paraded their garments in front of buyers from all over the country. Los Angeles, yes, to a limited extent, but the fashion industry where they had models showing, where they brought out their samples and presented them for the buyers all over the country was in New York, and in Paris and Chicago. But more in New York. So actually there was no valid reason why the garment industry had to be born in Portland. These people who had their factories were in their own right tailors to begin with. They knew the tailoring business and those that didn’t know the tailoring business when they first got into it, would soon learn it. And as they became more affluent and as they became more successful in the small operations that they started, and as they began to show profits in their business, they bought two machines and then three machines and four machines and gradually added to their industry as the years rolled by until they finally made it as extensive as it was in the 1940s. And they became manufacturers in their own right and showed a profit. 

Now since none of these men had sons to take the business over it simply then became a question of either – after they decided to retire or when they passed away and the widow was left with the shop, not knowing what to do with it – to either sell his business outright to somebody who already knew manufacturing because it was an established concern, or to close it up. Where there was a son that might have taken the business over, certainly he was not interested in becoming a tailor. He was not interested in producing suits and cloaks because Jewish people being what they are, they are more interested in seeing that their sons become doctors or merchants or lawyers or some profession where they would not be bound up to a sewing machine. To run a successful business like that takes a lot of knowhow. It takes to knowhow to buy, how to anticipate trends in the market. You have to know how to sell, how to handle people, you have to know cost of production. And competition was very stiff. So because they were not interested with continuing this type of business, those who had sons, the business either had to close up or to be sold. Now and then there would be somebody coming into the city who was interested in starting a factory. Possibly a retailer from a small town who had a store and wanted to manufacture instead of selling retail would buy a factory. This happened in a couple of instances, like in the instance of Carl Peters, who took the Columbia Garment Company. Or the instance of the people, a man and a wife, who had a little store in a town in Washington who had made a fortune selling ladies’ coats and suits in their own right as a retailer and who were now interested in becoming manufacturers. So she bought the former factory. The others had to close up because they had nobody that they could transfer their efforts and their abilities to. No son who would be interested in continuing the enterprise. 

This is primarily the result of what happened through the years. Since nobody was interested in taking the factories and buying them (because of Portland not being a fashion center) there was nothing to be looked forward to insofar as getting an employer from New York to come and settle out west and buy a factory where there was not fashion center involved. The result was that the factories themselves had to simply close because of stagnation. There was nobody available who could translate those factories into moving concerns. And since availability wasn’t there, there was only one thing they could do. The factories had to close. And this was probably the demise. And so I say, the birth of an industry I told you and the death of an industry is elaborately set forth here. All of these factories that were in existence were in existence 15, 20, and 30 years ago. There is only one left. 

Now why is there one shop left? Not because it is a paying deal. It is not a paying proposition so far as Modish is concerned. A man who had employed at one time 125 to 150 people producing coats and suits – and a very nice garment he made – becomes very concerned about a garment having a good reception in the trade. And he conducts a very successful industry. He achieved financial security beyond his wildest dreams. Why is he still in business then? The reason is very simple. He now has two or three operators where he used to have forty. He has one or two finishers who are the hand workers. He had a pressing department of pretty close to 12 pressers. Now he has one. He had a cutting department at one time that had 11 cutters. I think he has a cutter than comes in only at odd hours to do his cutting for him. The production where he used to produce hundreds of garments a week, he now produces possibly 75 or 50. But he produces a nice garment. So it is not a money making thing. But the reason that Mr. Kirshner and the Modish Suit and Cloak Company is still in business is simply that he has to stay with the business. He had made no provisions as far as I know and I know him very well because we went to school together. We sold papers together. We chased around together. So it isn’t as if he is not known to me. We were boys together in the same ghetto. We were raised in South Portland. The reason that he continues to stay in business is that he has to have a place where he can spend the day. Now he can come to his factory, sit by the telephone, converse with the buyer, go to New York and interest himself in a style he wants to produce. So with him it is more of a vocation, more of a pleasure, more of a haven of refuge for him. Knowing what he does about the garment industry, having the elaborate set-up that he did have to provide coats and suits for Portland and other areas, it is simply just a thing for him to have a place to stay, to get to the telephone, conduct the business, make the new garment, because certainly it is not a profitable thing for him now. 

In the last three or four years when I tried to negotiate the contract for him (and there was a union in the factory), he explained to me that he had lost money in the factory but he wanted to keep it running because he had to have a place where he wanted to spend the day. He is not going to travel much more. He is not too well a person. He is not too greatly interested in the community as such. He is no great belonger to groups or associations or clubs or lodges and so on. He is not too interested in the administration of the community as a whole. He is somewhat active in church affairs, in the synagogue, but he has to have a place where he can spend the day. His physical activities have to be very closely regulated. He can’t play golf. He does little or no fishing and because he has no vocation, no sports to turn to, he must have the factory as the place to spend the day. I venture to say that it is a losing business with him. He is no longer concerned about losing money because he has financial security to the extent that he can play around a little bit and take it easy. Have the day to spend in an office, have an office that he can turn to. And since he can’t travel extensively, he has a place where he can spend the day. This is his vocation. This is his retirement. I might say he is commercially retired.

Fain: How were you accepted in your negotiations by most of these manufacturers? Did you ever have difficult times?
LABBY: Yes, we had difficulties all the time. When we came to our negotiations … in compliance with the contract, an employer had to be notified 90 days prior to the expiration of the agreement. His representative with the employers association notified him. If he desired to sit in on the negotiations for the new agreement, that was a time for everybody to put on their armor. When we came in to the negotiations there were representatives of the employers of each industry, and there were some employers who did not desire to belong to the association, but had to sign the agreement of what was known then as the independent employers who did not desire the association. Because the association meant that they had to pay their representatives a salary and they were not sufficiently well-funded. They could get what they called a buggy ride. Whatever we signed through the association, they agreed to buy. Oh yes, when we met with the association the employers would ask us what we wanted this time. We would lay down our requests and our demands and we scaled them down so that they were negotiable. If we asked for 20% increase, we knew we were not going to come out with a 20% increase in our wages. But we also knew that while asking for a 20% increase in wages the employer would ask for 20% decrease in wages. So because the disparity was so great we had to build towards each other. There were pretty hard session involved but eventually we were able to resolve our differences by finding a medium line. Just exactly how much the employers could traffic into their profits and how little we would or rather how much less we would refuse to accept prior to calling the industry into a strike. We never had to resort to this weapon of strike because we always managed to find a middle line. The employers generally agreed that I was very fair with them. Sometimes we couldn’t resolve our differences in the company of the employers who were there and my committee was with me. We decided there was too much talk and negotiations were dragging on. The time for a strike was drawing close at hand. We didn’t want to tie the industry up from either side – the employers or the employees. Sometimes they would agree to whatever Mr. Rosenberg and I would agree to and we always found ways and means to agree to it.

In the latter few years of our contract negotiations, we were less concerned about getting wages, for we knew we were of limited endurance insofar as wages. We could only saturate so much into the payroll before the employers would begin to lose money. We were more concerned about establishing other things, other than wages, what is usually commonly known as fringe benefits. We were interested in setting up a retirement plan for workers who stayed with an industry for 20 years or longer, regardless of whether they worked in one shop or another. They would be covered under one agreement. We were interested in the health end and the welfare of the workers because these were very hard factories to work in. Many workers became sick because there was constantly lint floating through the air because of the fabrics in the cutting department. We were not ventilated to the degree that we could say we were working in open air places. The air was very close and we were interested in seeing that the people maintained their strength. We succeeded in getting the employers interested to see that after they invested in taking on a worker who would finally turn out a garment for them, produce a satisfactory salable garment for a profit for the employer, it was his responsibility to see that the health of the workers was protected, to see that the worker could do this from day to day and not to have long layoffs because of illness and to develop such things as industrial disease. The employers were interested in that. 

We were interested in establishing a severance bond. After a worker was severed or an employer decided to quit business because he had nobody to leave the business to and he was going to close up… there were people who worked for him for 15, 20, and 30 years. Some of them as much as 35 and 40 years. To see that this worker would not be tuned out to pasture without any kind of a bonus or anything. So we established a severance fund, which consisted of a percentage of the payroll, paid into the union of which the union was the trustee. And these were the things that we were more concerned about in the latter course of our negotiations with the employers. They were nothing that the employers opposed very much except on the amounts that would be paid in from the contract negotiations. We successfully established a retirement fund from which the workers today retired from the industry are getting $100 a month. This cost the employee nothing. The employer had to put in a percentage of his payroll into a special fund for that. We established a severance pay for them. We established certain holidays for which they never received a holiday pay. I think we received seven holidays with full pay. Certain overtimes were paid for. These were the things that we were concerned about rather than being concerned about wages. Because we figured that the employees now had reached the same standard of wages per hour for piecework wage as they were established in the various markets around the country. With the exception of a little percentage differential of about 10%, it cost more to live in New York than to live in Portland. We allowed that 10% differential to remain and we always settled for 10% less in our negotiations insofar as actual wages are concerned than we were getting in New York. 

Fain: Were there ever actually any strikes because the employer would not agree to any of the specific terms?
LABBY: Yes. We had one general strike in the city. It only lasted about four days. The employers refused to pay. We were asking for a 15% increase in wages and we believed through an investigation of their books – we had Certified Public Accountants going in to investigate their financial structure with factory and industry as a whole – we discovered that they could very well stand a 15% increase in the salaries of the workers. A 15% increase in the piece rates and a 15% hourly increase. They didn’t want to pay and at that time they offered 11%. We had scaled our negotiations down from 20% to 15%. 15% was the line that I was told to hold. The employers finally decided that they were not going to negotiate further with us. We made several attempts which they would not meet and we had to finally call the employees out on strike. The strike lasted four days. On the second day of the strike I called the industry together at a mass meeting at the Labor Temple and had conceived of an idea whereby we could avoid any more strife. I put it very plainly before the membership. As I have an idea that there are some people in the industry who are getting fairly good wages, adequate enough for what they are putting into the industry and there were some people who were not getting enough, there were some very low paid workers and there were some who were getting an excess amount. To that end I put it before them that we would negotiate what they would call and inverse ratio agreement. That is the lower paid workers would get the higher raise and the higher paid workers would get the lower raise. My recommendation to them was this. That we would accept an 11% increase, although they offered 12%, for those who were possibly getting $3 an hour or better, and for those who were getting around $1.75 an hour we would demand the full 15% increase. This only involved a handful of workers, not too many that they should be so concerned about that they would be willing to keep their workers out on the street. They agreed that this would be a practical solution providing that they would also put in an additional 1/2% to the retirement fund. And I asked the membership to secretly vote on it. If they approved it I would dispense with my committee, meet with Mr. Rosenberg and put it plainly before him. If they decided they were not going to do that and comply with my recommendations in this respect then I would continue to hold the industry out on a strike. So we took a secret ballot and it was agreed that they would give me full authority to act in that capacity. I called Mr. Rosenberg and had a meeting with him. I put it plainly before him. He told me he would give me his answer in an hour. In an hour I had his reply that they would agree and we called the strike off. We sent the workers back into the plants.

Fain: What kind of a person was Mr. Rosenberg?
LABBY: Very difficult to deal with. Very, very difficult. But there is one thing I should say about Mr. Rosenberg. When we were right he would support us regardless of how much the employers fought him, how much they mutinied his recommendations. When we were right he told them to comply with our request because it was no more than fair and they were adequately financed to meet our request. When we were wrong he fought us to a standstill. We had many stoppages in the shops but those were for personal reasons because the employers were not complying with their contract in the various shops where they were contracting with the union. This had nothing to do with the association. I found Mr. Rosenberg a very fair man to deal with. When we were right he complied with us; when we were wrong he fought us to a standstill. 

I might add as a final point that no employer had to suffer bankruptcy as a result of being associated with the union contract and employing union labor. They all achieved a very, very fine degree of financial security. They left some very fine estates. Unfortunately, sadly, most of the employers have passed on. This is partly the result of the industry also dying with the employers when they passed away. Nobody had ways and means of conducting the industry but nobody had to file bankruptcy as the result of demands that the union had made upon them through the years that we were in negotiation and contract with. 

Carr: Mr. Labby, today we would like to know a little more about the Newsboys association. Could you tell us when you joined the Newsboys?
LABBY: Yes. I think that I can give you an approximate. I think most of the dates that I’m going to have to talk about will have to be approximate dates. Nothing can be pinned down to the day, the month, and the year, but it’s close enough to be at least authentic enough to be able to be recognized. Yes. It wasn’t a matter of joining the Portland Newsboys in their endeavors to sell newspapers downtown that there was an opening date where you could join or closing date where you couldn’t join if you didn’t at first. It was simply a matter of when you arrived in Portland, as most all of us did, from the east. All immigrants. We were all children of immigrants. It was a matter of them becoming acclimated, orientated to the community, going to school, and finding out the best way to earn a few cents so we could help Dad in order to live. Conditions weren’t the best at that time. We were poor. We didn’t know the community. We didn’t have very good knowledge of the language. Because of that, it was necessary for us to help out with the finances of the family. In a very short time, it wasn’t very long, before you got acquainted with one of the classmates that were in school with you, that he was also selling papers, and told you about the possibility of getting a bundle of newspapers, going downtown, making a few cents, and contributing to the finances of the family. So it wasn’t a matter of dates so much as when you were ready to join.

Carr: Approximately what age were you ready to join?
LABBY: About ten. 

Carr: About ten.
LABBY: About ten years old. It wasn’t very convenient, or politic, or even safe to go downtown and sell newspapers before you could handle yourself on the street. If you were less than ten years old it was pretty much a situation where you come home with a bloody nose or a black eye or something like that, because the boys were very jealous of the corners that they sold papers on, and they didn’t allow what we called, “interlopers.” Before you were ten years old you couldn’t hardly hold your own. It was a war all day down there in order to bring a few cents home.

Carr: Yes. That must have been very rough. Now tell me a little bit about the Newsboys club. About how many members did it have? Do you recall, approximately?
LABBY: Roughly, I would say, possibly 200, and that will range from say 180 to 210. The Portland Newsboys Association actually didn’t come into existence until about 1912 – ‘11 or ‘12. The reason for that was because there was no cohesion; there was nobody to organize us. We were just boys that lived in the community in Old South Portland and in Fulton, and simply gravitated towards each other because we were Jews. And by the way, there was not kinship but a very strong bond of friendship in Old South Portland between the Jewish boys and the Italian boys. Because these seemed, predominately, to be the two types of people that gravitated towards that end of town. There were no Blacks. There were no Japanese. There were no Chinese. There was just simply, either you were of Italian descent or of Jewish descent. It was simply a matter of going down and finding out where you could buy your newspapers wholesale and paying for them cash, and then getting on some street corner, and trying to sell them until about six o’clock in the evening. After that it was pretty well over and we all came home to our families and our suppers and so on. 

Carr: Did you have a special place where you met? You said the group was quite cohesive, so it probably had some organization of leadership, didn’t you? Could you perhaps remember any of these people, or could you describe the people who had the leadership? And where did you meet?
LABBY: Yes. At first, as I said, we were just a whole gang of boys selling papers and didn’t have any place to meet. Gradually, as we got closer together, toward each other, we found out that there was something that we had to do. There was something that we had to do about having so many newspapers forced upon us to sell, during the day while we were selling them on the street corners, and what papers we did not sell we had to take home and burn in the stove. They wouldn’t take the returners back from us. We began to talk among ourselves about forming some kind of organization whereby we could show a little bit of strength to the circulators, because the circulators also worked on commission. The more papers they made us take in order to sell to the public, the more money they made. So it was a matter of competition between the four circulators. At the time there were four newspapers in Portland. They were The Daily News, which was located on about Fifth Street between Clay and Market, I think. It was just an old little cement building, and that’s where the press; Fred Bolt was the editor. There was a newspaper that was a part of the Scripps-Howard Newspaper chain. Then there was The Evening Telegram (it was known at that title, The Evening Telegram) which was published downtown. It was a local paper. There was The Oregon Daily Journal. The Daily News cost us one cent, and we sold it for two cents. The Journal cost us one cent, and we sold it for two cents. The Evening Telegram cost us two cents, and we sold it for three cents. But if one of our customers wanted all three papers, and many of them did, they could have them three for five cents. This was the daily chore that we had to face. Then we realized that we were getting short-changed. We were getting short-changed because of the average money that a newsboy made in those days. If you brought home 25 cents, or 40 cents, or even 50 cents… some who had the better corners, where there were more passing buy, probably brought home 75 cents. This made quite a contribution, because prices being what they are, and market being what it is, conditions also, were very cheap… people were working in those days for 65, 70 hours, for $15 a week, $18 a week. So that meant quite a contribution to the family, to the family finances. But because we lost so much of our money that we made, in having to take more newspapers than we could sell, this brought up a problem, and we discussed it openly on the streets, among each other, in schools, in classes, wherever we would have a little group of people, boys, and we finally got together on the idea that if we would form some kind of organization, show some strength, that we would refuse to take all these papers, or at least ask for them to be able to return them to the circulators, what we didn’t sell when we were ready to go home, that would be beneficial to us. 

Carr: Did this come from the membership as a whole?
LABBY: That’s right. It was a problem that hurt all of us. Because it was a common problem, which each one was suffering from. It was a matter of getting a few of us together and forming a committee to go to the circulators and ask them to take the papers that we couldn’t sell. At that time Paul Schneiderman was a circulator of The Portland News… The Daily News. He circulated the papers around town in a little bit of a cart that was pulled by a mule, a single cart. Goodman Bader was a circulator of The Evening Telegram. Phil Polsky was a circulator of The Journal, The Oregon Daily Journal. We came to them, as a little committee. It was just a committee that was done purely voluntarily on our part. We didn’t have a group of officers. We weren’t organized into a solid bargaining unit. 

Carr: This is what I meant.
LABBY: Right. 

Carr: Perhaps you had one particular…
LABBY: No we just chose among ourselves three or four of the toughest kids. We were all tough, but when we took the toughest, we knew we could get some place. At least we were perfectly willing to abide by any negotiation that would be able to settle with the circulators. These were the circulators I talked about. Well, the boys went to the circulators, asked for a meeting with them, and they couldn’t get anywhere, because the circulators themselves, the street circulators, were also bound by the mandates of their bosses. They had to sell as many papers as they could. They had to circulate as many papers around the street as they could, or probably they came in for some kind of a tongue lashing. We couldn’t get very far with them because we were talking to the wrong group. They didn’t have the authority to tell us, “Yes, we’ll take back as many papers you can’t sell and return your money.” They didn’t have that authority, and they refused to go to their bosses to ask for that authority to settle this problem. Although they sympathized with us and realized that it was a real problem for us. But because they were forced in to doing what they were doing to us, there was no choice in the matter. They couldn’t negotiate with us.

Carr: What I understand is you had to buy the papers from the circulators. 
LABBY: Pay cash for them.

Carr: Pay cash for them and then you were stuck with what was leftover.
LABBY: If you had half a dozen of each issue left, they wouldn’t take them back, so we had to take them home and then in one day the newspaper becomes obsolete. There was nothing that could be done with them, except throw them in the fire. They couldn’t do a thing about it. 

Carr: What was the age of the boys that sold?
LABBY: I would say the average age would run between ten years and about 14 years. Maybe a half a dozen of them were 15 or 16, that was about all. We all went to school. Right after school is when we ran downtown and got our circuit, got our papers from the circulators and took our various corners that were allotted to us, and some corners that weren’t allotted to us, we just took them by force, whether they liked it or not, because it was a matter of survival on the street.

Carr: Did you have real struggles over these territories were you sold the papers?
LABBY: Oh yes. Yes. Yes there was. I sold newspapers on the corner of Second and Alder street – on the SE corner of Second and Alder Street. That was a very lucrative corner. But it didn’t become financially lucrative, because there were 13 of us on that one corner selling newspapers. Not only did we get in each other’s way, but every time it got so that every time we recognized our customer, either they came from work around five, five-thirty, four, four-thirty, and so on, and we could see them from across the street, so it was a matter of rushing over there and jumping over the fenders of the street cars in order to get to them first, and whoever got there first sold them the papers. The competition was very heavy, very heavy. Which resulted in black eyes and bloody noses and fights and so on. This was our way of life, and we had to live with it, and if you couldn’t survive, it was too bad, you had to get out. 

Carr: It was like a jungle.
LABBY: That’s right, it was a jungle, because each one of us was concerned about taking home more money than… [Carr Inaudible] That’s right. It had to be a fight, all day.

Carr: Was the reason for you having so many boys on one corner because you represented different papers?
LABBY: No, no, no. No, we all took the three newspapers that were published. There was another paper, the newspaper The Morning Oregonian, but that was a morning paper, and that was more or less sent to the homes by mail. We were in no position, unless you wanted to go downtown at five o’clock in the morning and take a few papers and sell them. It sold for five cents. But it was very difficult to do that, because you’d spend an hour downtown, and it wasn’t very good for the school year. You’d miss something out of school. So that wasn’t the newspaper that was sold by us in the afternoon, because it came out late in the evening, and was sold the following morning. So we didn’t concern ourselves about that, but we did concern ourselves about selling the afternoon paper, because that fit in our hours, it was more suitable to our hours, because we spent until 3:30 in school. At 3:30 we’d rush downtown as fast as we could, and got our papers, and about 5:30, 6:00, we were ready to come home. Because, you remember, family life was a cohesive thing in Portland at that time. You didn’t stop at the hamburger place and buy yourself a hamburger. There were no such places. You ate at home. The family was an intact unit. And when suppertime came, you had to be at that table. So that’s what… besides the town was pretty well cleared out by 6:00 with people coming home, going home after their day’s work. There was nothing much left to hang around town for anymore. 

Carr: And it was just too expensive to eat out. It was just out of the question at that time I’m sure. 
LABBY: Well, no. There was a matter of family more than anything else. When the father, the father of the family, and the sisters, all of the family eat together. 

Carr: So you came together.
LABBY: That’s right. And we had our supper; we had to all be there. Because of that way, we came home. But there was no other reason to hang around town anyhow, because it didn’t have the lighting system that they have there today. It was pretty dark on the corners. Inside of an hour, the town was depleted of all the people who came down to work and went home. My corner, on Second and Alder Street, was the main transfer point for most of the east side. Across the street from us there was a drug store, and Morris Rockaway sold papers on that corner. And on that corner, he was the only one there. Across the street from him, which was the corner of the street which we sold papers on, there were just about 13 of us. In the middle of the block there were two there. Wherever there was a place where you could stand and sell a paper where a person would buy it, there was a newsboy to sell that paper. The competition was fierce. It was simply fierce. The reason there was so many on that corner was because, first of all, there was a saloon there. We always managed to get a few nickels more out of those who came out of that saloon that had imbibed a little too strongly and more than was good for them. And they were a little more liberal. Sometimes we’d be able to get a 25-cent piece for three papers. Because when a person got drunk he was pretty liberal about it. He didn’t have that fighting spirit like they have today when they drink some of that crazy whiskey, because whiskey in those days were aged. Beer was a food more than it was a drink. When those guys got to drinking pretty heavy, they felt pretty good about it and they wanted to do somebody good – always full of love. So there was that many of us and we managed to racket a few dimes other than just selling newspapers to the drunks that came out of that saloon. But more important than that, was that it was the transfer point for most of the east side. The people who got on that corner to wait for the streetcar were the ones who lived up in Woodlawn and Alberta and Mt. Scott, Cazadero, Estacada, Boring, Oregon City, and some of them lived near the Oaks, Milwaukie… This was the main transfer point for the entire east side. That was the reason why there was so many on that corner there, we sold a lot of papers.

Carr: I can see that you sold a lot of papers there, and it was worthwhile for so many of the boys.
LABBY: Yes.

Carr: Well that is very interesting Mr. Labby. Now I was wondering also, do you recall, and I’m sure you do, the newspaper strike of 1908?
LABBY: Oh yes! 

Carr: Or were you too young?
LABBY: No, no I was part of it at that time! I was a part of it at that time. 

Carr: Do you remember how it started approximately?
LABBY: Now I don’t really remember if it was 1908 or not. I think it was a little later than that. Has somebody else substantiated that?

Carr: Well somebody said it was 1908. 
LABBY: Well, I think it was a little… because I was part of that, and I really didn’t start selling papers until I was about nine or ten years old. But I’m willing to go along with that date, because most of the dates that we’re mentioning, at least most of the dates that I mentioned for the record, will have to be just approximate dates – up a year or down a year, because it was so many years ago.  

Carr: I admire the accuracy of your memory, anyhow.
LABBY: Well, I try to hold… Now the newspaper strike was strictly the result of the reason that the boys, the circulators, would not let us give returns. After we got finished selling a day of papers, we had papers left. They wouldn’t take them back. They refused to negotiate with us. They wouldn’t meet with us. They wouldn’t even take the matter up to their superiors, because they were afraid to. And because they didn’t, they only had to get together and all meet at some common place, some place. I don’t even remember where we had the meeting because at that time there was really no union among us yet. Not yet. This was one of the factors that brought us together, and maybe even forced the union into existence. Then we decided that on a certain day we would all meet at The Oregonian corner. And The Evening Telegram was being published at that time on Tenth and Washington Street, but we made our headquarters on the building called “The Oregonian Building,” which was just catty corner from Meier & Frank at that time. It was a tall structure with a high tower on it, and it was just the northwest corner of Sixth and Alder Street. We decided to meet there. 

We decided to test out one newspaper at a time. So we decided to test The Oregonian for results, because some of the boys also sold papers for The Oregonian in the morning. They went down early in the morning. And on Sunday, most of us sold a newspaper. It was a big, thick, newspaper on Sunday. At least twice as thick, I think, as The Daily. That was the reason why we also had our problem with that newspaper company, too. They wouldn’t take returns. We decided to hold our strike there. We took a strike vote, and every one of us decided that they we were not going to let a newspaper on the street if they could possibly help it. They were not going to let the trucks back up and take the mail out, which many newspapers were mailed to people who were subscribers. The trucks, of course, were for the purpose of taking newspapers out to their communities, like Brooklyn, out to Mt. Scott, Oregon City, Milwaukie, and different communities where we did not sell papers and deliver them to their circulators out there where they could bring them to their homes and boys who had their routes there. We decided we were not going to let any trucks out. In other words, we were going to close down on the newspaper, not let them get circulated at all, whether it was mail, whether it was on the truck, or whether it was on the street circulation. 

We held the strike, and I believe that it lasted two days. It was a bloody strike. We had our problems. But we just didn’t allow any newspaper that came out of the basement in bundles… we immediately shredded them to pieces and scattered them all over the streets. The police came, but there wasn’t very much they could do about it anyhow. They had at that time, what they call a Black Maria, a patrol wagon, with an old wheel. It was a very high thing. And it was top heavy. And as soon as they drove that up to where we were having the strike, and we were going to fill that, we didn’t have to fill it with us at all, we all rushed into the patrol wagon. And we began to rock it. It was a very narrow thing, very high, top-heavy. It wasn’t very long, it took about five minutes, then we had it over on its side. So that took care of the patrol wagon. I believe it was Captain Circle, who was the chief of police at that time; I think, Chief Circle. He came down and saw what it was all about. There was a lot of noise. There was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of fights. Somebody dropped a bag of water on his head. It was off of the third story of The Oregonian building. So that took care of him for a while. Well the police were not going to allow a situation like that to exist any longer than necessary. I believe they went and talked it over with the employers of the different newspapers. The employer decided not to have the situation continue any longer, because there wasn’t a newspaper being let out in circulation. People were clamoring for the news. And it was the only way that you could get the news, because there was no such thing as a radio in those days, and certainly not a television.

Carr: And you prevented the newspaper from actually being delivered in the homes? 
LABBY: Oh yes. That’s right. Well we didn’t allow the newspaper to get circulated to the smaller towns or even to the city (they were in bundles) where the route was, the route to come out to the various homes and distribute them. We didn’t allow that. We had to fight. It took a little energy on our part, but we finally won our case.

Carr: You were a powerful group. 
LABBY: Yes, well, this give us some food for thought. We figured this way: we could do this, because we showed some strength. Why couldn’t we just organize ourselves and maintain that strength? Because once we had won this point, there was no doubt in our mind that sooner or later we could lose this point and separate our strength and split it up. So we decided to continue to maintain that strength, that strengthening position, in order to be able to survive. And we did. And out of that was born the Portland Newsboys Association. That was the beginning of the union itself. Well we became sort of a force on the street whereby we could call on each other when we needed help. There were gang fights on the street corners. I remember the Albina Gang. There was a little community called Albina. It is still in existence. And they also had a lot of tough kids going to school there. They were more the group that came from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Moravia, Germany, and they were the tougher group. Jack [Vahn]. But they didn’t sell newspapers. They were just a tough gang, that’s all. And it was more or less to do with athletics. They played baseball in those days. Strong for baseball. 

Carr: Did they get in on the strike, too?
LABBY: No, they weren’t in on the strike, but we used to have gang fights. We had a baseball team of sorts. And so whenever we played baseball, we played either with the Mt. Scott Gang, or we played with the Albina Gang. And that always resulted in a fight, too, at the end of the game. They didn’t participate in the strike at all. We realized that we had to have our strength. Because sometimes the gang would get together and come downtown and start fights among the newsboys and the Mt. Scott Gang, and/or the Albina Gang. We had a signal that we would transmit to all street corners wherever the newsboys were. The gang word was “sluggers.” When one began to yell, “sluggers” it was just like a telephone. It just went all through the town. Wherever the kids were selling papers, they would drop their papers, and just come running because they knew there was going to be a big gang fight. And that’s where we were able to hold our strength together. 

And it became a sort of political thing, too. After we had regular meetings. We used to meet at homes, first. Then some of the politicians in the city began to recognize that there was this powerful entity in the city composed of newsboys, and these were tall, tough kids. And they could do their selves some good in their political campaigning. So mayor at that time, Al Rushlight, who was a local plumber, was running for mayor. And he came to the newsboys, and he asked them if they would insert his picture as a card into every newspaper that they sold, “Al Rushlight running for mayor.” We recognized that we needed friends in the upper echelons, especially in the City Hall. We said that we would, because he was also a very liberal person. He made several donations to our organizations and so on, so we did help him. He got elected. Every newspaper we sold on the street had his picture in it, with a card, “Vote for Mayor Al Rushlight.” This sort of seemed to become contagious, and other politicians got on the bandwagon. Then there was a gentleman by the name of [Dori Keasy]. He was the largest real estate dealer in Portland at the time. 

He owned an old building right across the street from Shaarie Torah at the time, the synagogue. He decided at the time to refurnish the building and use it as a home, as a newsboy’s home. Some of the boys who actually didn’t have homes, and some of them didn’t, parents passed away and so on, had a few sleeping rooms there. But it was more of a home to meet in. Like a club home. They had a swimming tank in the back and a swimming tank in the basement. We used that. They had a gymnasium there. They would use that. Then they had a library of books, and we used that. So we had our entertainment down there. They sort of gave us a home to meet in. We had our regular meetings once a week we used to come there. It wasn’t necessary. If you didn’t come, alright. It was a home for the boys to spend… a cultural, social and recreational activity… purely for that and that only. But because [Dori Keasy] had been at some time in the East somewhere a newsboy, he was conscious of the needs of the boys. That they had no (at that time) they had no place to turn to [new] meetings, and so on. So we had this home and we used it for many, many years after that. 

Carr: That was very nice. Did you have any particular offices then? How were you organized?
LABBY: The home was open every evening from 5:00 until 8:00. After we came home, and we had our supper, we went. It sort of took the place of the neighborhood house. Only the neighborhood house was four or five steps above us. We were just the newsboys on the street that wanted a place to meet for our self. We had problems and distress. We were all familiar with each other. So we had this place. 

Carr: And that gave you some privacy.
LABBY: Right.

Carr: I would like to know more about the newspaper strike. Do you recall how it was settled? You said it lasted about two days. 
LABBY: Oh yes. Finally the employer decided to meet with us. They told us that they would take our returns back. Any boys that had any newspapers left after 6:00. They set a deadline. At 6:00, if they had any papers left, they could turn them into their circulators, and the circulators would return them the little money that they paid for it. In other words, we actually won what we started off to fight for. All we asked for was just return. There was nothing else we needed. It was not a matter of minimum wages or hours or anything.