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32 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
to the East Side and unbosomed himself to the warm and understanding Mrs. Lowy. She was working in her own way. On the third Sunday of the Zukor invasion of America, she called together the Hungarian denizens of her tenement house for a symposium on the burning question: what could be done about Adolph.'*
An upholsterer spoke up. “Maybe the boy can’t stand the work,” he said, “but they’re looking for an apprentice in my shop.”
Next morning, Adolph presented himself to the foreman and was engaged at two dollars a week. The foreman put him to tacking covers on sofas. You knelt on the spring upholstery, forced it down with your weight, pulled the cover into place, and drove home the tack. Naturally clever with his hands, Adolph Zukor caught the trick in a day. But his size proved a distressing handicap. He weighed less than a hundred pounds. Where the heavyweights working beside him forced down the springs without difficulty, he lived through a perpetual wrestling match. After two weeks of this, he felt his strength passing; plainly, he was not born for an upholsterer. Then, as he walked heavily home from work on the second Saturday night, a voice hailed him in Hungarian from a front stoop — Max Gross of all people! Max was one of those peasant apprentice boys at Blau’s store who had given him that spiritual hazing on his first night at Szanto. Somehow, he had broken his indenture not long after Adolph arrived, and disap