Read Ebook: Adventures in American Bookshops Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Bruno Guido
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"No, I have no place of business. I have to turn my money over at once or I should be out of work tomorrow. I walk about picking up stuff until eleven o'clock and then go to Baxter Street and sell.
"In the afternoon I go into another part of the city and again buy up as much as I can get and in the evening between five and six, back to Baxter Street."
"What is on Baxter Street?" I interjected.
"That's where all the dealers are. I sell to dealers only and they have fixed prices. For instance, we get from seventy-five cents to one dollar for a pair of trousers without patches, twenty-five cents to fifty cents for patched-up trousers, according to the extent of the necessary repairs. Waistcoats bring fifty cents, coats from twenty-five cents up to a dollar. Shoes according to their condition, anything from five cents to seventy-five cents. Hats, neckties, shirts, collars; socks bring a few pennies only, according to their attractiveness. Overcoats are in great demand in the cold season. They bring from one dollar up to five dollars. Women's dresses bring about the same prices. I usually make from twenty-five to fifty cents profit on the dollar. Often I make a hundred per cent and often, too, I make a mistake and lose money. Once in a while I pick up a piece of jewelry, but people don't sell jewelry outright. They would rather pawn it, and then sell the pawn ticket.
"I've bought pawn tickets. I paid ten per cent of the loaned amount, but I got stung so often by buying fake tickets that I don't bother with them any more. I know people who go about as I do who make ten and fifteen dollars the day, but I call it a fair day if I clear from three to five dollars. Ten dollars is about a fair capital to start with in buying and selling old clothes, but I know a man who started with fifty cents and in less than a year he owned a shop on Baxter Street.
"Once I had a great day. A man called me in. It was on Forty-fifth Street, and I think he must have been an actor. He asked me to take away all the clothes contained in a big trunk in his room. They were all women's clothes of expensive fabric. I had to come three times before I had taken it all away.
"'How much will you give me for it?' he inquired. All I had in my pocket was twelve dollars. I made him an offer of ten dollars, and I was never more ashamed of myself than in that moment. But he didn't pay any attention to me. He smoked a cigarette and simply said: 'That will be all right, but take it out immediately.' I made bundles and carried it out in portions. I gave him ten dollars. I laid the money on the table, and before I left the room the last time, I said: 'Mister, here are the ten dollars,' pointing to the money that was still laying on the table. 'Take it along, too,' was his answer. 'It would bring me only bad luck. Take it quickly and get out with you.'
"I got frightened and took the money and went downstairs to the landlady of the rooming house and asked her whether he was 'all right,' whether it was safe to buy the things from him.
"The landlady answered: 'Oh, yes, he's all right, the poor fellow. His wife ran away with some other man only yesterday, and he seems to take it very hard.'
"Another time I found a five-dollar gold piece in a waistcoat that I bought from a Jap in a big house on Madison Avenue. I went back with it, and told him that he had forgotten the five dollars which I found in the garment. He gave me two dollars and a half and told me that I was a damned fool. I am sure the waistcoat and the money had belonged to his master.
"If one wants to take chances, big money can be made in buying old clothes. I have an uncle--he is dead now--peace be with his soul!--who made thousands of dollars. But he was constantly mixed up with the police and had to pay graft on all hands, and lived in perpetual fear that something unfortunate would happen to him. I wouldn't touch such business.
"He went to the Tenderloin and to the bad houses: he knew girls who were living a fast life. He would buy their clothes and their jewelry for next to nothing if they needed money to pay fines in the Night Court, or if they were driven out by the police and had to leave for another dwelling. He would sell those things, perhaps on the same day for a hundred times as much money to other girls who were flush. But the money brought no blessing to him. His son is blind and he himself died of cancer in the hospital, and he was in awful pain to the last moment."
Again I interrupted my visitor, who seemed very generous with his time, and asked him:
"But what happens to the things on Baxter Street after you have sold them to the stores?"
"They go to the four winds," he said, pointing characteristically with his upturned thumb. "People buy them and wear them again; dealers from uptown buy the better things and put them in their shops; there are never enough goods on the market. But why don't you go down to Baxter Street and see for yourself?"
The Open Air Exchange on Baxter Street
Baxter Street is situated in the oldest part of New York. Fifty to seventy-five years ago the houses were private homes occupied by respectable and well-to-do citizens, by merchants after whom streets and places are named today. The street is lined with shops. Clothes are displayed along the house fronts; shoes in long rows lie along the show windows; while boxes with neckties in profusion invite the lover of colors to make a selection. Business is carried on in the street. The stores are dark and seem to serve merely as workshops and store rooms. About noon I strolled down the street and took in the sights which are as confusing as the turmoil in Broad Street during the busiest hours of the Curb Market. Men with bundles on their backs and with pushcarts were constantly arriving. They offered the contents of their packages for sale. Others stood about looking at the various wares and making offers. Dickering was going on in all quarters. Things changed hands rapidly. There was one dark overcoat with a Persian lamb collar which had originally been brought in by a "Cash-clothes" man. The coat was sold to the proprietor of one of these stores and resold at once to a man who had watched the original bargaining. The same coat was thrown upon a pushcart with several other overcoats and sold "wholesale" to a third man who evidently took his purchases out of the district. In a basement I noticed an unusually tall and dignified looking man wearing a sombrero who didn't seem to pay much attention to the buying and selling of his clerks, or were they his sons? He really looked like a Western Colonel, and I christened him at once "Colonel Baxter." He was very friendly and accessible. He answered my many inquiries: "You see these men with the bundles and pushcarts? They have bought the stuff all over the city, and now they are disposing of it at the best prices they can get."
"I know," I cried, "how they get it. But please tell me what you do with it after you have bought it."
"Come inside with me and I'll show you," was his answer. We descended to his basement. Piles of clothes and shoes lay on the floor, they must have been recently purchased. He opened the door and we entered a veritable workshop. Several gas arms illuminated the room which had a low ceiling. The air was thick and at least ten men and women were at work.
"Here is our laundry," and he pointed to one corner of the room.
"All underclothes, shirts and collars, overalls and linen suits are washed and ironed here. We sell only by the dozen and to dealers uptown."
"Over there is the tailor shop. We clean the clothes which come in, sew on the buttons, press them and make them look as good as possible. We are wholesalers only. We sell old things by the dozen just as factory owners sell new things in large quantities only. But there are many shops on Baxter Street which cater to private customers. This part of the city is frequented by "down-and-outers," men who come from no one knows where. They stay a while; they sleep wherever they are undisturbed, they hang out in our saloons and then they disappear. These men have to buy clothes. They very rarely have money; a quarter is about the biggest sum which passes at a time through their hands.
"These people and their like from other parts of the city are the customers of our shops. A man could get a complete and very decent outfit with a couple of changes of underwear for about three dollars. He can buy a collar for a penny, a necktie from two cents to a nickel, a hat from fifteen cents or a quarter. Our shops here are cheaper than the Salvation Army 'department stores,' and we don't make any pretences to be charitable or especially kind to people because we sell to them. And we have to pay for things, we don't get them for nothing.
"Before the war, immigrants used to come down on Saturday and Sunday in great numbers and even fairly well-to-do immigrants who have been in this country several years cannot get accustomed to purchasing new things and pay us a shopping visit occasionally. In many countries in Europe the laboring classes seem to be under the impression that they must buy second-hand things to wear. They are our best customers, but they also believe that if we ask a dollar for something we really mean fifty cents, and so, therefore, we have to advance our prices fifty and seventy-five per cent, and if we get a little more than we really expected to get, the time it takes in dickering with these people is worth the money.
"Men and women in all walks of life who have met with reverses steal down to us in the darkness of the evening, afraid to be noticed by someone who might know them, and they buy their overcoats or their shoes."
"But Colonel Baxter," I interrupted him, "to whom do you 'wholesale' your own goods?"
He seemed pleased with the new name I had bestowed upon him, and explained:
"In certain parts of Sixth Avenue, of Eighth Avenue and of Ninth Avenue, there are 'second-hand stores' which cater to a peculiar class of customers." These want snappy clothes, shirts with modern patterns, coats fashionably cut, but they have not the money to purchase them in the shops where such goods are sold. They sneer at cheap clothes cut roughly but made out of good material. They want to appear flashy. You see them on the street corners and in police courts. We supply these stores with their needs. We specialize in everything that they can possibly use."
In the meantime, the open-air exchange on Baxter Street had reached its culmination, voices surged through the air like shrapnel bursting here and there creating disturbance. Everybody seemed eager to buy, eager to sell, money was exchanged in doorways, on sidewalks, bundles were tossed from pushcart to pushcart.... "Much ado about clothing."
The Salvation Army
Of course you have seen Salvation Army wagons on the streets. An elderly gentleman usually occupies the driver's seat. The horse moves on slowly and solemnly as if to the air of a very slow litany. The wagon is loaded with papers and books, with pieces of old furniture, and with bundles of clothing. The wagon proceeds from door to door. The horse stops. The old gentleman descends from his seat, rings the bell of the house and asks:
"Any old things for the Salvation Army?"
You have heard a good deal of the Salvation Army, and so you don't hesitate to turn over some things you cannot use to the wagon. The elderly gentleman in Salvation uniform takes everything he can get hold of. You, of course, think that the magazines are sent to hospitals to be read by the poor lonesome patients, that the clothes are distributed among the needy, and the furniture given to some wretched families who have no beds to sleep on or to others whose hardhearted landlord deprived them of chairs and tables. Let us take a walk to one of the many industrial homes of the Salvation Army when the wagons come in, and the things are assorted and assigned to the different departments, and you will see what a gross mistake you made by assuming that your gifts are given away. They go to the needy all right, perhaps to the neediest of the needy, but for cash exclusively, and no credit is granted.
Books and magazines are turned over at once to the book department, which conducts a book store on Fourteenth Street near Union Square, not in the name of the Salvation Army, but in the name of the Reliance Book Store. Its employees are experienced booksellers who do not wear the Salvation uniform. In fact, every possible indication that this store belongs to the Salvation Army is carefully concealed. Magazines are here sold wholesale to other dealers or retail to you or to me or to anybody. The magazines given to the Salvation Army by charitable people are sold for from five to fifteen cents each. A very well-equipped rare book department attracts collectors from all over the city; "Book Prices Current" is the guide for the sales prices. School books are sold in great quantities. I believe the profit of this shop to be far greater than of any other book shop in the city, as its proprietors do not need to pay for the books they are selling.
There seems to be a good deal of hypocrisy in concealing the fact that the Salvation Army owns the Reliance Book Store. Why not put a sign out that would tell everyone that the books and magazines sold have been received as gifts for the poor and sick by the Salvation Army?
The so-called industrial homes sustain furniture factories where skilled labor is employed to rejuvenate furniture collected by the wagons. Antique furniture dealers have the pick of the really valuable things and hundreds of dollars are often paid for something which has been carted away as junk by the Salvation Army's ragman.
The "Salvation Army Department Store," a sort of a systematized and orderly looking junk shop, contains and displays everything to fit out men and women from head to foot. The things are scrupulously clean, but sold at far higher prices than in the shops of our friends on Baxter Street.
The buyers who come here are mostly people recently picked up by the Salvation Army and employed in some of their shops. They are not treated with the courtesy due to a customer, but with the brutality of a charity worker.
It will not be out of place to interject here a few words about the methods employed by the Salvation Army in recruiting its shopmen. They are unfortunate people out of work without a home, down-and-out in spirit, perhaps just released from hospital or prison. They receive some food, a bed remembered with a shudder in years to come and they receive a few pennies for work which represents many dollars to the Army. Mental and physical constraint is constantly exercised over them. The discipline of a Salvation Army Industrial Home is very similar to the prison rules of twenty-five years ago. All these brokendown men to whom the Salvation Army "grants a temporary home" were originally promised regular work and employment through friends of the army. Naturally, it is in the interest of the Army to keep them as long as possible, especially if they happen to be good workmen, and only such men are really welcomed with open arms. They will not receive the promised employment as long as the Army can possibly keep them in its own shops. To quit the "home" is synonymous with an escape from prison and usually they are worse off when they quit the Salvation Army than before they went in. The few cents they earned they were compelled to spend in small purchases in the Salvation Army Department Store. Thus the Salvation Army robs unfortunate men and women of the last shred of their faith in humanity.
The Salvation Army is the greatest bargain hunter in New York. Trained bookmen and art experts choose the most valuable among the books and pictures brought in on collection wagons. They employ connoisseurs of bric-a-brac and do a large business with the antique dealers.
Connoisseurs
When a man has made money in America he at once becomes a victim to the craze for an artistic home. The tradespeople with whom he comes in contact in order to achieve his artistic desires speak of art and rugs and paintings. He reads in the newspapers about Mr. So-and-So who spent thousands of dollars for antique furniture or for pictures in auctions, and he begins his walks on these dangerous and costly grounds where one may buy for goodly sums the ephemeral fame of a collector and a lover of objects of art. The reputation of an art expert seems to go with the objects as well as the wrapping paper and string.
It is the dream of every antique dealer once in his life to enter one of those coveted garrets where treasures of six generations are stored in boxes, in cases and trunks. To enter this garret at the invitation of some real estate owner or lawyer who represents an estate anxious to sell the house and to clear out the 'rubbish'; to buy the contents of such a garret for a few dollars and to find a painting by Rubens or Tintoretto or Martha Washington's wedding slippers or a suite of magnificent Colonial furniture ... sure enough these are red-letter days in the career of almost every antique dealer. Only recently, for instance, in an old garret on Ninth Street, an old Persian rug was discovered which no second-hand dealer would have paid fifty cents for, an expert rug man realized its value, gave eighteen hundred dollars for it in competition with other dealers and sold it to a famous rug collector for twenty-six thousand dollars.
Some time ago a buyer of Marshall Field in Chicago saw a painting in one of the minor art shops of the city. He liked it and purchased it for fifteen hundred dollars. It was marked six thousand dollars and put on sale in Marshall Field's art gallery. It is a standing rule of this art gallery to resell once a year all their purchases. This particular painting seemed unsalable. It was reduced and reduced for a number of years, but it could not be sold. Finally a picture speculator bought it for six hundred dollars, took it back to New York, sold it in an auction sale for ten thousand dollars. The picture was sold and resold eight times during the following six months and ultimately found a final resting place in the mansion of a very well-known man on Fifth Avenue. He paid for it one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Not the man who keeps shops and stores has the great adventure in seeking after the old and antique. But people who are "picking up things," attending action sales here and there, visiting junk shops and second-hand shops all over the city, constantly expecting to find something and never tired or disappointed. I know highly educated men unusually gifted, possessing expert knowledge that in many cases surpasses the "infallibility" of our museum authorities, who prefer the free life of buying and selling to high-priced positions in art shops and in art galleries. I know one man who is "picking up" a living by looking through the book-stalls of dealers and buying odd volumes for small amounts of money and selling the same books to rare-book dealers for as many dollars as he pays cents.
Auctions As Amusement Places
Real enjoyment of life is caused by life's contrasts. And what greater contrast than to witness Mrs. Astor, for instance, bidding against a second-hand furniture dealer from Second Avenue for a curious crazy-quilt, soiled, torn and catalogued as genuine, direct from some old farmhouse?
Amusement? Galore. And more than that. Studies in human nature, scale exercises of human passions. Everybody has his chance in New York auction rooms. The gambler, the collector, the book hunter, the shrewd dealer, the speculator, the bargain fiend; these auction rooms are a paradise for those who know their own wants, needs and desires. A Dorado for the careful and cautious who have taken advantage of the exhibition on the previous day who have examined the articles for which they wish to bid, who know the condition of the offered wares.
But these auction rooms are a dangerous playground for the emotional, the weak, who really doesn't need the objects on sale, whose eyes and voice seem to miss constantly proper telephonic connections with his central, his seat of thinking. Disastrous prove these auction rooms for those who bid without seeing properly what they are bidding for, who bid higher and higher because perhaps they do not want the other fellow to have the thing, or prompted by pure gambling instinct.
Fascinated by their surroundings, they are easily moved to action; by a look of the auctioneer, by a nod or a word, that places them all at once in the limelight of public attention. They pay their bills and do not know what to do with their purchases. What a comedy!
Exactly as you know where to go to when you wish to see a musical comedy or an opera, so do I know in what particular auction room I can get a view of human vanity, a peep at greed, an exhibition of plain, delightful collectors' mania.
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