At the police house, Grace was surprised to see her Russian boy in the custody of an officer. She discovered that the boy’s devious employer had brought the boy in on a makeshift charge of larceny. At court the next morning, the boy’s boss had seven witnesses to back up his charges that the boy stole from him. On the other side of the aisle, Grace had no witnesses. It looked as if she had already lost. When it was finally her turn, she asked for the specific charges against the boy to be repeated. Once they were, Grace pointed out that the boy was being officially charged with stealing money from his place of employment. She then asked the judge if he knew that the boy had been working for this man the whole time without pay. How could he steal from an employer he didn’t really work for? The judge dismissed the boy and ordered his boss to be brought up on charges instead.
When news of cases like this began to spread, some of the other, more unscrupulous lawyers for the lower class began to get nervous. For years, these lawyers had invented the work of filing and fee gathering to take advantage of New York’s newly American, mostly illiterate community. When they heard that the People’s Law Firm was growing, these shysters grumbled in saloons as they drank their long beers. Some of these lawyers, who managed long, endless cases, were not only angry at Grace’s obvious success, but that she was actually getting results for her clients.
As her enemies kept their hours in bars, Grace continued to spend hers in court during the day and in her office late into the night. At Bible House, Grace paid for most everything herself. She hoped that whatever people could pay—and many could—would allow her to hire a stenographer and some more assistants. Especially women. “I will train any woman who comes to me,” Grace said adamantly. “There is plenty of work for women lawyers who are womanly and do not let their brains dominate their hearts.”
Many of Grace’s clients were women. Mrs. Rosie Pasternack lived in a tenement house on the East Side with her tailor husband when the stork surprised them with three screaming babies. A few newspapers ran their story, and people soon began sending in donations to the newly expanded family to help with the hungry mouths. But once the money started coming in, Mr. Pasternack quit his job and started drinking full-time. Rosie sneaked out one afternoon to meet with Grace. She didn’t know what to do. She needed that money for her babies, but she had no use for her husband anymore. But what could she do? Grace had an idea. She sued the embezzling father for lack of child support, and, when he couldn’t pay, she sent him off to Blackwell’s Island, leaving Rosie alone with her children and free from her parasitic husband. Rosie panicked, wondering who would provide for her, but Grace told her to wait. Once the new developments of Mr. Pasternack’s imprisonment were reported in the papers, Rosie got even more donations than before.
A great number of Grace’s cases involved marriage, especially translating European unions into American ones. One happy couple had been married by a rabbi in Austria before they came to New York. But things changed once they hit New York, and the husband left, claiming that the Austrian government never sanctioned the marriage in the first place. The woman came into Grace’s office and cried her eyes out. She begged Grace to talk to her husband. Grace asked the woman if she really wanted her to do that. When the answer was finally a no, Grace sent a letter to the Austrian government instead. When she received an official reply that the match had been sanctioned, Grace sued the husband for support.
There was also the case of Mary, who had been in jail for three months before she got a message to Grace that she desperately needed help. Mary, who was tall with brown skin, held a good position in a clean, decent household but worked long hours and was homesick. One day, a new female friend invited Mary to a ball, and Mary readily accepted the invitation. She wore the best thing she owned to the ball.
After the ball, the friend left Mary alone with a man, a friend of hers, to escort Mary home. Mary was nervous but went along anyway. Her friend had assured her that the man was a gentleman.
“If you don’t give me your money, I’ll have you arrested,” the man told Mary once they were alone in the dark.
Mary resisted. The man called a policeman and falsely charged her with larceny. When the court couldn’t prove the larceny charge, the prosecutor had her arrested for violation of section 150 of the Tenement House Act: prostitution. The man lied, said Mary. Her employer testified to her good character, but it was to no avail.
“That woman saw my lady pay me,” Mary told Grace, adding that she earned twenty dollars a month and that her new friend had seen how much money she had when Mary treated her to a picnic. Grace could see what had happened. Grace knew that she couldn’t get charges brought against the man, so she focused on getting Mary released instead. Some of her cases were victories only in that they avoided even worse outcomes.
Grace dealt with financial predators of all stripes. Another case involved an Armenian tea merchant who arrived in New York with a hefty seven thousand dollars with which to begin his dream business. After consulting with one of the large brokerage firms on financial opportunities, the man was advised to invest his money several times over in a variety of important-sounding investments. The only problem was that, afterward, there was nothing left for him but plenty for his consultants. The tea merchant hired an attorney who was able to negotiate a settlement of only a few hundred dollars. The tea merchant turned to Grace next, who roared into court and was able to get him back a much larger portion of his money to start his business anew.
Unfortunately, there were also cases of a more pitiful nature. Grace met a poor tailor who mortgaged his precious sewing machines and household furniture for a much-needed seventy dollars. But the bankers handling the paperwork wrote up the mortgage note for $95 instead of $70. The tailor found he could no longer pay the people working for him or make his normal mortgage payment. So he flung himself into the Hudson River, leaving his wife and six little ones to struggle on alone. The little family was days away from losing everything when the widow went to the People’s Law Firm. Grace took the case and threatened to sue the mortgage holders if they did not release the debt on the poor tailor’s family. The bank told Grace that the family couldn’t afford a lawsuit. Grace defiantly told them that she would fund it herself. The bank released the debt, and the man’s widow, selling all his machines but one, was able to eventually enlarge her late husband’s business and support all of their children.
“There is something deeply tragic about these little cases that are spread out before lawyers,” Grace said. “The newly-made Americans are almost at the mercy of any older, cleverer citizen that wants to grind down the heel of oppression on their necks. Things are all so strange to them and the law is so curiously complicated that they awake suddenly to find themselves tangled hopelessly in muddles that seem often to choke them and blind them. It is to fight the battles of these poor and ignorant without taking all their profits that the People’s Law Firm was started, to fight as eagerly for $5 as for $500.”
Grace would tell the story about how a man once came to the firm, very earnest over a case but unable to pay. Grace told him that he could sue as a poor man but that he had to make out an affidavit that he had not a hundred dollars in the world.
“Is your wife worth a hundred dollars?” Grace asked, as she always did, referring to his wife’s net worth.