Rent Strike
A Play by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923)
First Published in the Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward) on Jan. 12, 1908.
Translated from the Yiddish by Kenneth Wishnia and Arnold Wishnia.CHARACTERS
YANKEL SHVARTZ: A fat-bellied landlord, 40 years old. He has a small round beard and otherwise looks very ordinary.
SARAH LEMPEL: Yankel Shvartz's sister, a poor widow who works to support herself, and has strongly radical views.
BUBBE GITELE: Yankel and Sarah's mother. Old, sick and poor, but loved by all. Already a bit deaf.
LEIBE GAITZ: A tall, thin man, 35 years old, a "leaser" (someone who rents houses and then re-rents them at higher prices), he is very nervous.
MADAM TSHATSHKE: A middle-aged widow who owns a whole block of houses. She wears a dress with a long train and an insanely large hat with many curly ostrich feathers. She also wears too many diamonds.
MRS. KNUP: One of Madam Tshatshke's housekeepers.
JUDGE BOODLE: A judge, a political hack of the lowest type, who is for sale cheap.
A STRIKER
Bystanders, police, waiters, "fallen women," pickpockets and drunkards.
The action takes place in a Jewish neighborhood in New York in 1908.
SCENE ONE
A meeting room above a beer hall, where landlords and landladies are gathered. Waiters are running back and forth like mad serving the group. Yankel Shvartz enters wearing a high silk hat, with a cigar in his mouth, carrying a gold-topped walking-stick. He crosses directly to center stage.
SHVARTZ (takes the cigar out of his mouth and bangs a gavel on a marble-topped table): Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is now called to order. We must proceed with our business, we must. This is truly an important meeting, this is.
GAITZ (jumping out of his chair): I second the motion!
SHVARTZ (banging the gavel): Sit down! Right away Leibe Gaitz has to be the first-you are just a leaser, you are, let the landlords and landladies speak.
ALL: Mr. Shvartz is right (to GAITZ), sit down!
GAITZ (sitting down): I second the motion.
SHVARTZ: Sisters and brothers, you know what the purpose of this meeting is. You kow what a problem the socialists--may their name be erased--have cooked up for us with the tenants; you know how they have all gone out on strike for cheaper rent, they have. A thousand are striking already and even more want to strike: What is to be done?
FIRST LANDLORD: Brother chairman, ladies and gentlemen, and my brothers, I say let's look for a way to straighten things out with them, let's promise them a month's free rent if they agree to live for two years in the same rooms.
GAITZ: I second the motion!
SHVARTZ (banging the gavel): Sit down!
GAITZ sits down, trying to look serious, as if SHVARTZ hadn't meant him.
SECOND LANDLORD: Brother chairman, ladies and gentlemen, and my brothers, I say we should give in to nothing and throw them out into the street.
THIRD LANDLORD: Brother chairman, ladies and gentlemen, and my brothers, the man who says don't give in must have empty houses, he wants us to throw out the tenants so that he can take them in. I protest!
GAITZ (standing up): I second the motion! The leasers second the motion!
SHVARTZ: Once again leasers, sit down! (GAITZ sits down.) I also say we shouldn't surrender so easily. And you know, almost all of you know, that I have no empty houses anywhere, I haven't. Everything's kosher, the tenants aren't all going to move.
GAITZ (seated): I second the motion.
The sound of a marching band is heard, playing "The Marseillaise"; then we hear loud "Hurrahs" and violent shouts of "Down with the Bloodsuckers." The characters look at each other a bit awkwardly.
THIRD LANDLORD: Brother chairman, ladies and gentlemen, and my brothers. You hear what they're doing outside? Be careful with the socialists, they won't give in.
MADAM TSHATSHKE: Ladies and gentlemen and my brothers and sisters. I am all right, my housekeeper Mrs. Knup can tell you.
MRS. KNUP: You-know-who should help me.
GAITZ (standing up): I second the motion.
SHVARTZ: Sit down!
MADAM TSHATSHKE (making a big show of tossing the train of her dress to one side): My late husband, may he be arrested in peace, left me well-fixed, with a whole block smeared in front and in back with houses. As to the You-know-who, it's no sin that I have rooms that are always occupied. The tenants are grumbling about it now, but let them grumble. As my husband, peace be to him, used to say, "Don't worry, Yakhne, things will turn around." He was a rope-maker back home, so he really knew what was kosher and what wasn't. My rooms are lovely, ask my janitress, Mrs. Knup, she'll tell you.
MRS. KNUP: We should all have such good fortune, my Madam's rooms are a delight: Oy, such rooms! The Tsar could move in to them.
SHVARTZ: My idea is we should see Judges Poodle and Boodle, they'll fix everything. They're ours, they are. Not kosher, eh? The police have clubs in New York-prisons. I hear the one who's doing all the agitating is a woman. She has stirred up all the tenants, she has. My agent says so, so he says. I don't know a single one of my tenants, I don't, and I don't know their names, but tomorrow morning I'll be in court and I'll take care of them, I will. All we have to do is grease the judge.
GAITZ: I second the motion. The leasers will have to contribute.
SHVARTZ: Sit down! Once again, leasers. Let the landlords speak.
FIRST LANDLORD: I've got tsuris with a second mortgage.
SECOND LANDLORD: I've got a third.
THIRD LANDLORD: I've got a fourth.
FOURTH LANDLORD: I've got a fifth.
A LANDLORD: Brother chairman, ladies and gentlemen, and my brothers. For nw, let's give in to the swine, the rebelniks, then, a little later, when the work season begins, we'll have them by the bowels.
GAITZ: I second the motion. The leasers are satisfied.
SHVARTZ: All right, let's put it to a vote anyway.
SECOND LANDLORD: I make a motion that those with empty houses not be allowed to vote.
The room erupts with loud protests. They start throwing beer glasses and sandwiches at each other. MADAM TSHATSHKE loses her hat in the melee. "The Marseillaise" can be heard playing outside.
GAITZ: I second the motion.
The curtain falls, the lights go dark, then they come up again.
SCENE TWO
We are in a courthouse on the East Side. Milling around are two-bit lawyers, politicians, political hangers-on, thieves, pimps, "fallen women," swindlers, professional witnesses, tough guys, robbers, burglars, landlords, leasers, janitors, beaten and bloody rent-strikers, real estate agents, rent collectors, policemen and some curious onlookers. JUDGE BOODLE sits high above them all.
BOODLE: (to a beaten-up STRIKER, who is bloody from head to foot and who can barely stand up. Near the "murdered" man stands a POLICEMAN, holding on to him): So you're a rent-striker, huh? A troublemaker? Think you can take the law of the land into your own fists. And the revolutionary is looking for sympathy!
STRIKER (pointing to the POLICEMAN who is holding on to him): This policeman here nearly killed me for no reason. I didn't break any laws.
BOODLE: What do you mean? We're going to keep you riotniks quiet. You want to make America socialist: You want to live for free, you're always waving red flags, you beat up policemen.
POLICEMAN: Your Honor, he tore a button off my coat.
BOODLE: Why are you striking? Move when the rent is too high.
STRIKER (straining): Sure, and since food is too expensive, we should stop eating, gas is expensive, so we should sit in the dark, coal is expensive, we should freeze, wages are low, so we should stop working, and the rent is high, so we should sleep in the gutter. Where is law and justice, that should protect the people who make this country work? Why did America free itself from England? Why did England not retreat? Why? Why?
BOODLE: You're an anarchist. Take him away! Two days in jail. (The STRIKER is taken away.) Shvartz versus Lempel.
MRS. LEMPEL and BUBBE GITELE enter. The old woman is very poorly dressed; she is very weak and sick, and can barely keep on her feet. SHVARTZ enters from the opposite side. H goes pale and begins trembling upon seeing his poor sister with his old, abandoned mother, but he pretends not to see.
SHVARTZ: Your Honor
BUBBE GITELE (seeing her son): Murderer! (She faints; people rush to help revive her. When she opens her eyes she wants to run to SHVARTZ, and trembles with age, anger and sorrow.) Yankel My child Let me go to him To my
BOODLE (to SHVARTZ): Who is this old woman?
SHVARTZ: She She is I don't know.
MRS. LEMPEL: A lie, Your Honor, he knows, he knows that this old, sick, neglected woman is his mother, our mother, whom he won't even let in his door, and whom he doesn't support with a single cent. She lives with me, with me, a poor, weak widow, his own flesh-and-blood sister. I go out and work to feed my children and my mother.
BOODLE (to SHVARTZ): Is this true?
SHVARTZ: Well So she says
BOODLE: And you?
SHVARTZ: I, I -- No.
BOODLE (to SHVARTZ): So what's your complaint?
SHVARTZ (pointing to his sister): This woman, Your Honor, is my tenant, she has stirred up all my tenants into going on strike, she has stirred them up with violence; she even hit my housekeeper.
BUBBE GITELE: Vey iz mir, what is he saying?
MRS. LEMPEL: A lie, Mama, he's exaggerating.
BUBBE GITELE: Vey iz mir.
BOODLE: So, incitement to violence and deadly assault.
SHVARTZ: All right, I'll forgive her, she's a poor woman. I'll cut her rent a dollar a month, but all the other strikers have to move.
MRS. LEMPEL (excitedly): Let him throw me out, too, me and his old, sick mother-the murderer-he's already let me get thrown out of his house a couple of times when I came to ask for help for our sick mother. Being around all those millionaires has made him go crazy, and the former tin-peddler has cut himself off from his old mother. A curse on him and his friends and the dirty, moldy holes that they call houses.
There is a faint stirring among the people in the courtroom. Women wipe their eyes with their handkerchiefs.
SHVARTZ: What the hell does she want from me?!
CURTAIN