5 – The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Early 1900s New York City was one of the most modern in the world, fuelled by the thousands of immigrants that arrived from Europe every year and the scores of factories that churned out consumer goods to provide these new Americans with the essentials of life. One such factory was to be found on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just a block from Washington Square Park and in the heart of bustling Greenwich Village.
Drawing workers from the nearby Lower East Side and Little Italy neighbourhoods, the factory was one of the largest sweatshops in the city, employing some 500 people, the vast majority of whom were women. They made shirtwaists, a new fashion that had accompanied the rise of women in the workplace and the increasing financial independence for women that had followed. The predominantly Jewish- and Italian-American workforce were no pushovers, and had struck multiple times in the years running up to that fateful day of March 25, 1911.
The spring had arrived in New York City on that Saturday, but in keeping with the norms of the time, the weekend had not yet begun for the workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Just an hour or so from closing at 4.45pm, a discarded cigarette ignited some loose cotton in a bin on the 8th floor of the building, which at the time was one of the tallest in Lower Manhattan. The alarm was raised and workers attempted to flee, but the fire spread rapidly, taking just 18 minutes to engulf the 8th, 9th and 10th floors. The tonnes of loose fabric fragments that had been discarded over months of work provided the ideal fuel for the flames.
There were fire escapes, but two were blocked by the mass of people attempted to get out, while a third had been locked by the owners as a precaution against theft, as it was custom to stop all female workers and search them before they left work each day. The bosses, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were at work that day – Blanck had his two daughters with him – on the 10th floor and were able to reach safety in a neighbouring building, where a university law class had been taking place. Seeing the panic close at hand, students had lowered ladders to allow Triangle staff to escape.
Other staff were not so lucky. An fire staircase was overloaded and collapsed, sending twenty fleeing workers to their deaths in the street 100 feet below. Trapped on the upper floors, many young women died jumping from the building to escape the blaze, the ladders of the fire brigade not tall enough to reach further than the 6th story. The corpses of the workers who had fell impeded the efforts of the firefighters to get close to the building. In total, 148 people, 123 of whom were women, perished through smoke inhalation, burns and as a result of falls. It was the greatest industrial disaster in New York history.
The people of New York were outraged. 300,000 marched in a memorial through the Lower East Side and demanded that the factory owners be held responsible for the deaths. Blanck and Harris were indicted for manslaughter, but were acquitted in December 1911. Their lawyer won them the case by calling into question the testimony of many survivors, most of whom spoke English poorly. A later civil suit found them guilty, but the amount awarded to every victim of the fire was just $75 – a figure that they could easily pay, as the insurance company had paid them $60,000 for their personal damages in the fire.
The legacy of the Triangle Fire would be long-lasting. The female workers, already organised into the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, redoubled their efforts and eventually won huge victories for female workers and greater safety legislation concerning safety in the workplace. Soon afterwards, the 54-hour Bill was passed, which limited the hours that a worker could be forced to work per week, while the Democratic political machine in Tammany Hall adopted the cause of workers’ safety and made it a key issue for newly arrived immigrant voters. Some 64 pieces of legislation would be passed in the following years which held factory owners responsible for the safety of those in their employ.
Frances Perkins, who witnessed the events of March 25, later went on to be US Secretary of Labor under the Roosevelt Administration, and campaigned hard for worker’s rights, particularly for fire regulations and health & safety – largely inspired by the horrors that she saw that day. Over 100 years later, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire continues to be memorialized as the starting point of the movement to bring greater public safety to American workplaces.