one of the most appealing and interesting elements in city life, particularly that metropolitan city life which characterizes new york, is the pushcart man. this curious creature of modest intellect and varying nationality infests all the highways of the great city without actually dominating any of them except a few streets on the east side. he is as hard-working, in the main, as he is ubiquitous. his cart is so shabby, his stock in trade so small. if he actually earns a reasonable wage it is by dint of great energy and mere luck, for the officers of the law in apparently every community find in the presence of this person an alluring source of profit and he is picked and grafted upon as is perhaps no other member of the commonplace brotherhood of trade.
i like to see them trundling their two-wheeled vehicles about the city, and i like to watch the patience and the care with which they exercise their barely tolerated profession of selling. you see them everywhere; vendors of fruit, vegetables, chestnuts on the east side, selling even dry goods, hardware, furs and groceries; and elsewhere again the greeks selling neckwear, flowers and curios, the latter things at which an ordinary man would look askance, but which the lower levels of society somehow find useful.
i have seen them tramping in long files across williamsburg bridge at one, two and three o’clock in the morning to the wallabout market in brooklyn. and113 i have seen them clambering over hucksters’ wagons there and elsewhere searching for the choicest bits, which they hope to sell quickly. the market men have small consideration for them and will as lief strike or kick at them as to reach a bargain with them.
for one thing, i remember watching an old pushcart vendor one sweltering afternoon in summer from one o’clock in the afternoon to seven the same evening, and i was never more impressed with the qualities which make for success in this world, qualities which are rare in american life, or in any life, for that matter, for patience and good nature and sturdy charitable endurance are not common qualities anywhere.
he had his stand at sixth avenue and twenty-third street, new york, then the center of the shopping life of the city—or i had better say that he attempted to keep it there, for he was not altogether successful. he was a dark, gray-headed, grizzle-cheeked “guinea” or “dago,” as he was scornfully dubbed by the irish policeman who made his life a burden. his eye was keen, his motion quick, his general bodily make-up active, despite the fact that he was much over fifty years of age.
“that’s a good one,” the irish policeman observed to me in passing, noting that i was looking at him. “he’s a fox. a fine time i have keeping my eye on him.”
the old italian seemed to realize that we were talking about him for he shifted the position of his cart nervously, moving it forward a few feet. finding himself undisturbed, he remained there. presently, however, a heavy ice-wagon lumbered up from the west and swung in with a reckless disregard of the persons,114 property and privileges of the vendors who were thus unobtrusively grouped together. at the same time the young irish-american driver raised his voice in a mighty bellow:
“get out of there! move on out! what the hell d’ye want to block up the street for, anyway? go on!”
with facile manipulation of his reins he threw his wagon tongue deliberately among them and did his best to cause some damage in order to satisfy his own passing irritation.
all three vendors jumped to the task of extricating their carts, but i could not help distinguishing the oldest of the three for the dexterity with which he extricated his and the peaceful manner in which he pushed it away. the lines of his face remained practically undisturbed. all his actions denoted a remarkable usedness to difficulty. not once did he look back, either to frown or complain. instead, his only concern was to discover the whereabouts of the policeman. for him he searched the great crowd in every direction, even craning his neck a little. when he had satisfied himself that the coast was clear, he pushed in close to the sidewalk again and began his wait for customers.
while he was thus waiting the condition of his cart and the danger of an unobserved descent on the part of a policeman engaged his entire attention. some few peaches had fallen awry, and these he busily straightened. one pile of those which he was selling “two for five” had now become low and this he replenished from baskets of hitherto undisturbed peaches, carefully dusting the fuzz off each one with a small brush in order to115 heighten their beauty and add to the attractiveness of the pile. incidentally his eye was upon the crowd, for every once in a while his arm would stretch out in a most dramatic manner, inviting a possible purchaser with his subtle glance.
the push-cart man
“peaches! fine! peaches! fine! fine!”
whenever a customer came close enough, these words were called to him in a soft, persuasive tone. he would bend gracefully forward, pick up a peach as if the mere lifting of it were a sufficient inducement, take up a paper bag as if the possible transaction were an assured thing, and look engagingly into the passerby’s eyes. when it was really settled that a purchase was intended, no word, however brief, could fail to convey to him the import of the situation and the number of peaches desired.
“five—ten.” the mention of a sum of money. “these,” or your hand held up, would bring quickly what you desired.
grace was the perfect word with which to describe this man’s actions.
from one until seven o’clock of this sweltering afternoon, every moment of his time was occupied. the police made it difficult for him to earn his living, for the simple reason that they were constantly making him move on. not only the regular policemen of the beat, but the officers of the crossing, and the wandering wayfarers from other precincts all came forward at different times and hurried him away.
“get out, now!” ordered one, in a rough and even brutal tone. “move on. if i catch you around here any more to-day i’ll lock you up.”
116 the old italian lowered his eyes and hustled his cart out into the sun.
“and don’t you come back here any more,” the policeman called after him; then turning to me he exclaimed: “begob, a man pays a big license to keep a store, and these dagos come in front of his place and take all his business. they ought to be locked up—all of them.”
“haven’t they a right to stand still for a moment?” i inquired.
“they have,” he said, “but they haven’t any right to stand in front of any man’s place when he don’t want them there. they drive me crazy, keeping them out of here. i’ll shoot some of them yet.”
i looked about to see what if any business could be injured by their stopping and selling fruit, but found only immense establishments dealing in dry goods, drugs, furniture and the like. some one may have complained, but it looked much more like an ordinary case of official bumptiousness or irritation.
at that time, being interested in such types, i chose to follow this one, to see what sort of a home life lay behind him. it was not difficult. by degrees, and much harried by the police, his cart with only a partially depleted stock was pushed to the lower east side, in elizabeth street, to be exact. here he and his family—a wife and three or four children—occupied two dingy rooms in a typical east side tenement. whether he was at peace with his swarthy, bewrinkled old helpmate i do not know, but he appeared to be, and with his several partially grown children. on his return, two of them,117 a boy and a girl, greeted him cheerfully, and later, finding me interested and following him, and assuming that i was an officer of the law, quickly explained to me what their father did.
“he’s a peddler,” said the boy. “he peddles fruit.”
“and where does he get his fruit?” i asked.
“over by the wallabout. he goes over in the morning.”
i recalled seeing the long procession of vendors beating a devious way over the mile or more of steel bridge that spans the east river at delancey street, at one and two and three of a winter morning. could this old man be one of these tramping over and tramping back before daylight?
“do you mean to say that he goes over every day?”
“sure.”
the old gentleman, by now sitting by a front window waiting for his dinner and gazing down into the sun-baked street not at all cooled by the fall of night, looked down and for some reason smiled. i presume he had seen me earlier in the afternoon. he could not know what we were talking about, however, but he sensed something. or perhaps it was merely a feeling of the need of being pleasant.
upon making my way to the living room and kitchen, as i did, knowing that i could offer a legal pretext, i found the same shabby and dark, but not dirty. an oil stove burned dolefully in the rear. mrs. pushcart man was busy about the evening meal.
the smirks. the genuflections.
118 “and how much does your father make a day?” i finally asked, after some other questions.
this is a lawless question anywhere. it earned its own reward. the son inquired of the father in italian. the latter tactfully shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands. his wife laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
“‘one, two dollars,’ he says,” said the boy.
there was no going back of that. he might have made more. why should he tell anybody—the police or any one else?
and so i came away.
but the case of this one seemed to me to be so typical of the lot of many in our great cities. all of us are so pushed by ambition as well as necessity. yet all the feelings and intuitions of the average american-born citizen are more or less at variance with so shrewd an acceptance of difficulties. we hurry more, fret and strain more, and yet on the whole pretend to greater independence. but have we it? i am sure not. when one looks at the vast army of clerks and underlings, pushing, scheming, straining at their social leashes so hopelessly and wearing out their hearts and brains in a fruitless effort to be what they cannot, one knows that they are really no better off and one wishes for them a measure of this individual’s enduring patience.
