#22 What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

#22 What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Jacob Schlitt

"Observing my son's recent struggle to decide between two job possibilities, which may well determine his future, brought back my struggle to choose between a career in education or trade unionism."

circa 2005

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en

1941/1950

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# 22 WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

Observing my son’s recent struggle to decide between two job possibilities, which may well determine his future, brought back my struggle to choose between a career in education or trade unionism.

By the time I was 14, I thought I would become a teacher. My role model was my cousin Louis Goldstein who taught biology at DeWitt Clinton High School. His true love was forestry, but there weren’t many forests in the Bronx. His wife Esther was also a teacher in a Bronx elementary school. The country was still in the depression, my friends’ parents (and my mother) were struggling to find work in garment factories, and the most secure job we knew was teaching in the NYC school system.

There was another profession that interested me: law, in part because of my cousin Esther. She had a brother, Max Kavenoff, who lived around the corner on Beck Street, and he was a lawyer. He had an office on Nassau Street in lower Manhattan, although he did see clients in his home. When I was going to high school, I would drop by to chat with him, and would imagine myself arguing cases before a jury, or helping poor people fight the corporations. I later learned that most of what Max did was preparing wills and contracts.

Though my mother encouraged me to become a teacher, she secretly dreamed of me as a writer. What kind of writer didn't matter. To get paid for putting words on paper was the most wonderful way to make a living. Whether it was working for a newspaper or magazine, or writing poetry, short stories, novels or plays, a writer, to my mother, achieved immortality. She idolized the writers whose work appeared in the Yiddish newspapers and periodicals that she was never without, and the Yiddish playwrights of Second Avenue. Their photographs were arranged in a collage, and featured prominently in our living room. After she died, I learned that in her will, she asked that, if I became a writer, I would use Tsirlson (her Yiddish name) as my pen name.

Though Stuyvesant High School emphasized science, it had an excellent social studies and English faculty. I was impressed by a couple of history teachers, and the idea of teaching high school history began to take shape. Still, writing intrigued me. My part time job at the newspaper division of the NY Public Library gave me the opportunity to sample pretty much every major newspaper published, and to come in contact with researchers and writers. It was my job to bring them the newspapers they requested which were in bound volumes and shelved on six floors at 137 West 25 St. Then at the end of the day, we had to reshelve them. My boss, Mr. Fox, once asked me if I would like to become a librarian, and I remember trying to say no in a nice way, so as not to offend him.

On to CCNY in the fall of 1945 and the commitment to major in history, economics and education. At the end of four years, I will have a degree--a Bachelor of Science in Social Science—and will have completed the "education sequence" of courses qualifying me to take the test for a teaching license in New York City. In my junior year, I developed an interest in the labor movement—my mother had been active in her local of the ILGWU—and I began to think about working for a union. CCNY offered two courses in labor economics and I took them both, as well as courses in statistics. I thought that if I went to work for a union, it would be as a labor economist. My hero was Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers and the CIO.

In the beginning of 1949, I began to juggle two career goals: a NY high school social studies teacher, and a union economist. When I graduated in June, I made the rounds of all the unions I knew with offices in New York: the UAW, the IUE, the Textile Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the ILGWU. But I had no real contacts. I later learned the truism that it is not what you know but who you know. I presented my resume and indicated that I would like to work for their union. They took my resume but explained that there were no positions. I was impressed by the person with whom I spoke at the UAW. He suggested that I get a factory job, get active in the union, and after a few years, run for office in my local, and then express an interest in a position with the union. All positions, staff and line, come from the ranks of the members.

Instead, in the fall of 1949, I began work toward a Master's in Education at CCNY; another step toward a career as a teacher in the NYC school system. I passed the tests (both written and speech) enabling me to teach at the high school and elementary school levels, and began to work as a substitute teacher while taking classes toward a Master's degree.

In January 1950, the ILGWU announced with great fanfare that it was initiating a one-year training program for union leadership; The ILGWU Training Institute. The program was to start in May and would consist of six months of class work and six months of field work. Forty trainees (or Institutniks as they were later called) would be selected, and upon graduation, they would be assigned as organizers in different regions around the country. This was the opportunity I had hoped for. It was a natural for me. I submitted my application, though I continued to take classes at City, working part time and substituting occasionally. In March, I had an interview with the program’s director, Dr. Arthur Elder, and the assistant director. I learned that there were more than 1,300 applicants and I was one of the lucky ones to be interviewed. I was told that I would be notified the following month if I were selected. In April, I received a letter notifying me that I was chosen as an alternate. Close, but no cigar.

For one of my classes at City, I was writing a term paper about the ILGWU's education program, and had a 10 am appointment to see Mark Starr, the union's education director. I had reconciled myself to the fact that I would not be a part of the Training Institute. It was the second week of May and the program had started the week before. By coincidence, Mark Starr's office was on the same floor as the program's class room, and when I arrived, the class was on a break and I recognized one of the trainees from City. I asked him about the program, told him that I was an alternate, and asked how many were in the class. He said about 33 or 34. I noted that they were supposed to have 40, and stormed into the director’s office. I angrily demanded that since I was an alternate, and there were less than 40, that I be accepted for the class. Dr. Elder pulled out my application, said he would have to talk to the chairman of the union’s education committee, Vice President Julius Hochman, and would get back to me that afternoon with an answer. At 4:30 pm that afternoon, he called and told me to come down the next morning. I was in.

I couldn’t believe it. Is this what is known as "being in the right place at the right time?" If I had come a half hour sooner or later, I would not have seen the class or learned about the numbers in the class. Or Dr. Elder might not have been in his office, or Hochman could have said no. It must have been fated: "Bashert". My career path which had been moving steadily toward teaching took a shift (left?) in a totally different direction. I was now a part of the union’s first Training Institute, also called labor's West Point. We were all on a path toward careers with the ILGWU and if our assignments didn't work out, we had the credentials to work anywhere in the labor movement.

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