Grace
INTERVIEW with Sophie Toner
Grace Burns: Good morning Sophie to start the interview is there anything you want to tell me a about you or a little bit about your life in a tenement?
Sophie Toner: Thank you and yes… um…hi my name is Sophie, well my real name is Sopha but people might call me sopha as in the couch so I changed my name to Sophie, I am an immigrant from Slovakia. I moved to America in 1909 when I was 22 in hopes for a better life. Now it is 1910 and let me tell you it is not what I expected at all. Me, my sister Helena and my Grandfather, who we call Popos, got a tenement in the Lower East Side. We have 3 boarders, Henry, Rose and Henretta. When the tenement inspectors come, if the tenement inspectors come, this tenement would not pass. Everything would have an X. The tenement inspectors would be looking for rags on the floor, out houses were not aloud, rodents and other sorts of things. The tenements are stinky, dirty, small and hot. It had been very hard to fall asleep the first night we got here but after we all got jobs we fell asleep in the wink of an eye.
Grace: Can you tell me about you and your sisters job?
Sophie: Well…um…so me and Helena got jobs as seamstresses at a big sewing factory called…the…the…The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. We are the sewing machine operators, and most of us are teenaged girls or young w-w-women, we sit at tables arranged in long rows. Each seamstress sews only one part of the garment, maybe the side seams or the sleeves. It takes ten seamstresses to finish one shirtwaist blouse. The pace is set by the fastest sewer and everyone is badgered to keep up with her. Repeating the same actions over and over makes the job tedious and really tiring.
Grace: And the factory owner?
Sophie: Oh the factory owners …don’t get me started…
Grace:Well you don’t have…
Sophie: …The factory owners treat us like slaves. If it weren’t for us they wouldn’t have any money for food or to pay the rent. We get locked in a room with no food or water. We have big windows and a bathroom but we are only allowed in there for two minutes at a time. They hold us in a room with complete strangers and we are not allowed to sociali… I…I just know that some day something bad is going to happen.
Grace: Was there any family members that couldn’t come across to America with you if so do you keep in touch with them?
Sophie:I keep in touch with my Grandma “Babi” do you know she wasn’t able to come across so I write to her my “Babi” all the time just to see what’s going on back home because even though I don’t live in Slovakia, I really miss my old home, and my friends and family.
Grace: Now that you moved here to the lower east side dose Slovakia seem different?
Sophie: now that you mention it looking back on my life there,in Slovakia, it seems so carefree. When I first arrived here I couldn’t believe my eyes, the buildings were like monsters compared to our tiny town which had always seemed big to me. I bet if I went back there I it would not be as big as I remembered it.
We live in horrible conditions and yet we didn’t dare to complain until now. A lot of the immigrants form the Triangle ShirtWaist company are demanding a strike, they are planning to march around the neighborhood and demand for a change. The strike has caused some people to get thrown in jail and some are being beaten up or killed. I do not dare join the strike. People may be mean to me but my first priority is always to keep my family safe.
Grace: Have you heard about the man named Jacob Riis?
Sophie: Well…um…I heard my Popos talking with a strange man who lives around the corner of the wall in our tenement about some man named… Jacob Riis. Apparently there is this Jacob Riis is going into tenements at around 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM and taking pictures of other immigrants like me and showing them to the wealthy men and women up town at fancy tea parties and such. My friend came up to me on my way to work and told me that she had heard about Jacob Riis and that he just published a book called …um…How The Other Half Lives 20 years ago. And it turns out that he published the book and showed those pictures to the wealthy men and women to show them how we were living and how our everyday lives were compared to their luxurious were.
Grace: Because I was not in the fire was there any details about your self or any details in general that people did not know of?
Sophie: Well… it started like this it was March 24th and we were really busy. People were coming in like wild cattle after a storm. The night before the before the fire was was the most tiresome night of my entire life. I woke up the next morning and I realized that it was Saturday, March 25th 1911 so that meant that I would not have to wake up at the crack of dawn the next morning because I didn’t have to go to work. We were all working when I started to smell smoke and then realized a fire had started. I worked on the 9th floor. People started to panic and run out of the building but I ran down to the 8th floor to try and save others. I was too late. People were going crazy, running into the fire thinking hope was lost. They started jumping out the windows for the same reason. The patches of red burning fire prevented me from saving the lives of the people around me. At least I was able to save my sister.
Grace: We know that you made it out of the fire but your sister did she?
Sophie: We made it out of the fire but now more strikes were on and the people were more fierce than ever. 146 people died that day and the government did nothing to help them. The factory owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris locked the doors so the immigrants were unable to escape the fire. Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck were not sentenced for manslaughter and they went in court to decide if they would be punished or not. The one part I can not believe is that Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were immigrants themselves and yet they didn’t try to help all of the poor souls who lost loved ones (mostly women).
Grace: A lot of people did die right
Sophie: Yes, a lot of people died in the fire, but it was finally over and done with. There had been a funeral for all the people that died in the fire. I know that it won’t help but I wrote a letter to all the people in my neighborhood.
I heard about the fire. Did you you know anyone who did died in the fire?
Is Helena your only sibling? I have four sisters and two brothers!
Did you know Max and Isaac? I heard they were losers!
Did you go to the big ceremony after the fire? I did it was sad.
I think our tenement is great! Our apartment is clean I never see rodents!
What about your parents? I never see them around are they in Slovakia or dead?
Hi, Maria here. This is so much like your story and is so long that I had to read the transcript.