Have you heard about the terrible tragic Triangle Fire that took place in the wonderful, modern industrialized metropolis of New York on March 25, 1911? Well, it's reality for the city's poor, immigrant workers wasn't the glamorized city we know it to be today. The Triangle Waist Company was a clothing sweatshop, popular for making skirts (then called waist shirts) and Gibson Girl style blouses.
It was almost closing time and a fire broke out (it was originally thought to be like any other small, extinguishable fire they'd had several times before)...women piled on top of each other at the steel doors trying to escape, but the doors were locked. The fire escapes did not even reach down to the street of the building and many women who realized that they were trapped in the building jumped some 20 feet to their deaths. The fire department's ladders could not even reach the 8th floor where the fire broke out and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the jumpers.
It was a horrific sight to see, lasting less than half an hour. People lined up on all sides of the building watching the horror scene. Former reporter (who witnessed the tragedy), William Gunn Shepherd wrote, "I learned a new sound more horrible than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk."
146 young women and men died. Most of those who died were in their teens and early 20s. A documentary reported that 11 engagement rings were found in the ashes after the fire. Unfortunately, deaths in factories were quite common in the years surrounding 1911.
Many dangerous situations that were happening abroad in the 20th century, along with the word of America being the "Land of Opportunity," brought an enormous surge of millions of immigrants into the U.S., most of them passing through New York's Ellis Island. For example, many Russian Jews fled Poland as Czar Alexander II was assassinated (1881) which led to ruthless attacks--Russians burning down Jewish homes, murdering them, and looting their businesses. Many Italians were fleeing environmental disasters, such as massive soil erosions and the eruption of Volcano Vesuvius in 1906.
The young women in particular came to the U.S. with expectations, that they would have better opportunities to work, provide for their families, and be treated respectfully but all they were greeted with was poor living conditions in one room tenements, overcrowding in the Lower East Side, working 70 or more hours a week, for extremely low wages.
Young immigrant woman who began to protest these terrible working conditions, helped provide fuel for the Socialist movement, followed by the Progressive Movement, from under which emerged Franklin D. Roosevelt's, The New Deal. These women had expectations of America that were far from being met. Tammany, the corrupt political machine at the time, did nothing to alleviate the worker's needs, and would send out hit-men on protest leaders such as Clara Lemlich.
The Triangle Co. owners, Blanck and Harris were charged with 146 deaths, but were dismissed of all charges (because they had broke no law) and in addition received about $60,000 in insurance money for the burned down building, which in today's terms equals a couple million dollars, an amount far exceeding the total of their loses. The fire departments, Tammany, the Triangle Waist Co., and others all sifted the blame. No one wanted to take responsibility, but Socialist women such as Frances Perkins, who would later become America's first woman cabinet Secretary and the Tammany Twins (Al Smith and Robert Wagner) worked hard to pass safety laws and create the Factory Investigating Commission (FIC).
David Von Drehle's book, "Triangle: The Fire that Changed America," includes the first official complete list of the Triangle Fire victims that has ever been complied, including the names of the 6 or 7 who had been unidentified for years.
The horror of that day, and the aftermath that followed, made the masses say enough! So now every time I do a fire drill, or see a fire escape, or the sign that says "Use stairs instead of elevators incase of a fire," I will remember and solute those who died in the Triangle Fire of 1911, and those who fought to put these safety precautions in place.
[Unfortunately in many places in the world and even in the U.S. we still hear of these terrible factory tragedies due to poor working conditions and locked doors.] In 1991 in Hamlet, N.C. 25 workers died at a poultry plant in a flash fire behind locked doors. In 1993, a fire in a toy factory in Bangkok left 200 dead, again where doors were locked. And most recently in 2012 a garment factory caught fire in Bangladesh that killed 112 workers.
"These are hard questions, but if we set ourselves out to solve them, the people who perished yesterday will become, even against their will heroes. By their deaths they will begin to set us free."--Rev. Dr. Charles L. Slattery
