评论
打印
Practitioners of the clothing art, dealers in wonderful cloths from every corner of Europe,
服饰艺术的从业者，来自欧洲每个角落的经营神奇布料的服装商，
traders who visited the centers of industry on their annual buying tours—these were the merchant princes of my youth.
每年都要拜访行业中心，进行购买之旅的经贸商——他们是我年轻时有影响力的富商。
Their voices were heard, their weight felt."
他们有话语权，他们很有分量。”
Borgenicht worked in piece goods for a man named Epstein,
各尼特在一个布料店为一个叫伊泊斯坦的人干活，
then moved on to a store in neighboring Jaslow called Brandstatter's.
然后到一个叫布兰德斯达特的邻居店里。
It was there that the young Borgenicht learned the ins and outs of all the dozens of different varieties of cloth,
就在那年轻的鲍各尼特学到了各种布料的里里外外的东西，
to the point where he could run his hand over a fabric and tell you the thread count,
这是他能上手纺织品并告诉你其中细节的地方，
the name of the manufacture, and the place of its origin.
制造商的名字，起源地。
A few years later, Borgenicht moved to Hungary and met Regina.
几年后，鲍各尼特搬到了匈牙利遇到了瑞吉娜。
She had been running a dressing making business since the age of sixteen.
从她16岁起，她就一直在经营服装制造生意。
Together they opened a series of small piece goods stores,
他们一起开了好几个小布店，
painstakingly learning the ins and outs of small business entrepreneurship.
辛苦地从中学到了小商品企业家要了解的细枝末节。
Borgenicht's great brainstorm that day on upturned box on Hester Street,
那天当鲍各尼特坐在翻过来的箱子上时，
then, did not come from nowhere. He was a veteran of Schnittwaren Handlung,
他伟大的灵感不是凭空而来的。他是个布坊里的老手，
and his wife was a seasoned dressmaker. This was their field.
他的妻子则是富有经验的裁缝。这就是他们的领域。
And at the same time as the Borgenichts set up shop inside their tiny apartment,
同时当他在他们的小公寓设立起小店的时候，
thousands of other Jewish immigrants were doing the same thing,
成千上万的犹太人在做同样的事，
putting their sewing and dressmaking and tailoring skills to use, to the point where by 1900,
利用他们的缝纫技术，到1900年的时候，
control of the garment industry had passed almost entirely into the hands of the Eastern European newcomers.
对服装行业的限制完全取消了，服装行业完全进入了东欧移民的手中。
As Borgenicht puts it, the Jews "bit deep into the welcoming land
当鲍各尼特干上这行的时候，犹太人已经“深深的控制了这行”
and worked like madmen at what they had knew."
并且在他们熟知的领域疯狂而执着地工作。
Today, at a time when New York is a center of enormous and diversified metropolitan area,
如今，当纽约还是大量的多元的城市中心地区的时候，
it is easy to forget the significance of the set of skills that immigrants like the Borgenichts brought to the New World.
人们很容易遗忘掉像鲍各尼特这样的移民带来的大量的技术。
From the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century,
从19世纪晚期开始到20世纪中期，
the garment trade was the largest and most economically vibrant industry in the city.
服装贸易是城市里最大的最繁荣的行业。
More people worked making clothes in New York than worked at anything else,
纽约有比任何其他地方都多的人从事服装制造，
and more clothes were manufactured in New York than in any other city in the world.
纽约制造的服装也比世界其他任何地方制造的都多。
