Labor History: The Triangle Fire of 1911

Friday's Labor Folklore Con Carbon, the Minstrel of the Mine Patch Shirtwaist Strikers, 1910, New York Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division The Triangle Fire March 25, 1911 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in the Greenwich Villageneighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers - 123 women and girls and 23 men - who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23. The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, at 23-29 Washington Place, near Washington Square Park. The 1901 building still stands today and is known as the Brown Building. It is part of and owned by New York University. Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked, many of the workers who could not escape from the burning building jumped from the high windows. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.  (Wikipedia, edited) Lament for Lives Lost  Rose Schneiderman  and the Triangle Fire The aftermath of the Triangle Fire brought grief and recriminations. Protest rallies and memorial meetings were held throughout the city. During one meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, tension broke out between the working-class Lower East Siders who filled the galleries (and saw class solidarity as the ultimate solution to the problems of industrial safety) and the middle- and upper-class women in the boxes who sought reforms like creation of a bureau of fire prevention. The meeting would have broken up in disorder if not for a stirring speech by Rose Schneiderman, a Polish-born former hat worker who had once led a strike at the Triangle factory.  I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies, if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public -- and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today -- the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch fire. This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death. We have tried you, citizens! We are trying you now and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us. Public officials have only words of warning for us -- warning that we must be intensely orderly and must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back when we rise, back into the conditions that make life unbearable. I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. And the only way is through a strong working-class movement. Source: Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1962). Text from:  History Matters : the U.S. Survey Course on the Web In 2011, on the 100th anniversary of the fire, the AFL-CIO produced this video, narrated by Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Click here  (video : 2.43 min.) Amy Goodman interviews historian Annelise Orleck on the cause of the fire and the labor-rights activism of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers. Click here. (Video from Democracy Now!) Washington Square by Si Kahn Friday's Labor Folklore Missed the PBS film 9 to 5 : the Story of a Movement? You can view it here until 4/1.