The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
March 25, 1911 fell on a Saturday. It was also business as usual at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory located in the top three floors of the Asch building on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in Manhattan. The floors were ostensibly reached by four elevators, but since only one of them worked, most of the 600 workers that filed into the cramped rows of sewing machines on the factory floors used the two flights of stairs to get to their station on time. One of those stairs was promptly locked from outside once the last girl started up the stairs. The other set of stairs had a door that opened to the inside to slow down the number of workers who could leave, allowing managers to make sure they did not leave early or with contraband fabric.
The workers were all teenager immigrant girls. They generally did not speak English. The girls were young because the lighting was bad and good eyesight was essential. Being immigrant and unschooled in English did not impair their work, because sewing was an almost universal skill among all females of that time. These girls had almost no rights, but their concern was for some money—any money—rather than what would constitute a fair wage for a fair day’s work. They worked 12-hour days, seven days a week. For this, they received $6—no, not per day—per week. Young, immigrant girls were desperate for work, though the money did not stay in their hands long. It went home to mothers, fathers and siblings. It went for rent, for food, for coal for a fire and, occasionally, medicine. Since the average wage of an immigrant in New York City at this time was $15-$20 the girls were providing almost a third of their family’s income. This was the difference between almost getting-by and getting-by.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union tried to organize the girls at the Triangle and other shirtwaist factories for better working conditions and higher pay they were met by not just resistance, but policeman hired by Blanck and Harris to work as thugs to beat and imprison the striking women. None of this was out of the ordinary. Blanck and Harris had a suspicious history of fires in their factories; it is one of the reasons they refused to put fire sprinklers in the Triangle. Their other buildings had been torched before work began, and after rich insurance policies had been purchased. None of this questionable history had been investigated. The people who should have investigated those fires had their silence bought and paid for out of the insurance money. Not a single soul in the police, the fire department, and political offices in New York City wanted to do the right thing, or protect the workers, or enforce the law. They wanted the money. And these poor, young, immigrant girls had no money to offer in return for justice.
There is no reason to believe that Blanck and Harris started the March 25th fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It started in a rag bin and spread like liquid through the lint-filled, chemical fueled environment of the sweatshop. The fire flashed across the room and started traveling to the two upper floors. Panic ran through the room on the heels of the fire.
The one elevator that worked held only 12 people at a time and made only four trips before it melted down. Girls waiting for the elevator jumped down the emply elevator staff and they died. Other tried the narrow stairs and they also died. One stairway was known to be locked from outside every morning and anyone who could unlock it was now in the building, facing the fire. The other stairway was unlocked, but the door opened inward. When the crush of girls got to the bottom, they threw themselves against the door with no room to open it, they were trapped and burned to death. Some of the girls, who had a path to the stairs up to the next level, fled to the roof of the building which offered some hope. From the roof, they moved across the roofs to other buildings and down to safety.
While making their way down to the street, these lucky girls would have seen their trapped sisters on other floors moving to the window ledges away from the fire and then jumping in desperation or intentional suicide to the ground. Many of these girls who jumped landed among the firemen, whose hoses could not even reach to the floors that were ablaze. In 19 minutes, 146 girls were dead, dead in one of the most excruciating ways a person can die.
In legal action, the owners of the factory, the men who made the decisions that turned their factory into a crematorium, were found not guilty of liability. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris $400/person for each child who died in the fire. Blanck and Harris, in turn, gave the families of the deceased $75 each, making a sweet $325 profit from the death of these young, immigrant girls. Their employers, wealthy men for their time, considered the girls to be expendable. They also considered themselves untouchable—and they were.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire brought needed reform to the working conditions in sweatshops. It gave both legal and moral imperative to labor unions. Now, these safeguards and laws and regulations are under threat from our present-day robber barons. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Evil is always present, and Satan never sleeps. Good people are required to be ever vigilant against those who measure success by money accrued, power by the poor they marginalize, and justice by the laws they are allowed to break.
Are you a good person? What are you doing to combat evil? We must act to keep the faith.
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