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small stones was considered, an alternative that thus far has not been accepted.
There
was yet another difficulty: The American demands today the same quality
in small stones as in large. So the Americans had to do something about
it. Out of this came the first diamond apprentice school and
melee-cutting plant in America. It was founded early in the year 1941
by the Baumgold Brothers diamond-cutting firm. They issued no
high-sounding phrases to the effect that it would give new opportunity
to American youth, or that it would be of great benefit to the American
diamond trade, or that it even might be the genesis of a tremendous
postwar American diamond-cutting industry. The attitude was: We're
short of melee, so let's start cutting them ourselves.
The
company had an important thing to overcome: tradition—the tradition
that only the relatives of cutters may be employed as apprentices; the
tradition that women are not permitted to work in the same shop. But a
new factory went up on the 25th floor of a building in New York's West
40's, a building of high windows out of which you may see today three
vistas of the metropolis, and there were set up the most modern
machines and conveniences, even to a roof garden for the employees.
Any
young man between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one—the younger the
better—was eligible. All he had to have was a proper moral character
that passed the scrutiny first of the Baumgold representatives and then
of the officials of the Diamond Workers Protective Association. A
routine announcement was placed in the newspapers. But before the
machinery could be installed the Baumgold offices were flooded by youngsters hardly out of high school, seeking admittance.
These young fellows had the idea they were going to get
(108)
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