March 02, 2011
Most of the recollections for this blog entry came from my mother, Norma. Thanks Mom!
My grandfather Louis met my grandmother Bertha and her older sister Rose at a garment factory. For several years after World War I, Louis received training in the garment shop and learned sewing machine maintenance in addition to his other work. During the 1930s to early 1940s, Grandpa Louis was a contractor for ladies’ dresses in Ridgewood, Brooklyn. His jobber, who supplied the dresses to be assembled and sewn, was located in Manhattan’s garment center in the West 30s and Seventh Avenue.
The shop address for his Salo Dress Company was 797 Hart Street, Brooklyn, NY and telephone number was Foxcroft 9-7154. The neighborhood was residential, with homes on both sides of the street of the shop’s location. There were approximately 15 to 18 women employees who worked on sewing machines; some lived on the same block as the shop.
Work was delivered each day by John, the trucker. An accountant came weekly for payroll. Before Grandpa closed the shop each evening, he had to prepare bundles of the assorted cut material to be sewn together by the sewing machine operators the next day. A finisher inspected the completed garments before they were assembled for shipping to the jobber. Lily the presser was part of the team. She lived on the same block as the shop.
On a delivery to pick up completed dresses, the trucker advised Grandpa there was no more work for his shop. He tried but could not locate a new jobber. He paid rent for two years for an empty shop. After being out of work during the Depression, he worked as a foreman at a dress factory on West 37th Street in Manhattan.
My grandmother Bertha’s father wanted her to work in a factory when the family arrived in New York. She was only 14 years old but managed to have some schooling first; she stopped working when she married Louis in 1924. Her older sister Rose worked all her life, even after she married my great uncle Sam. Unfortunately, Rose died of lung cancer, probably from exposure to fabric dyes many years ago; she never smoked.
