Friday marked the centennial anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history and a seminal moment for American labor.
It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. On March 25th, 1911, a deadly fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, owned by immigrant Jewish merchants Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, in New York’s Greenwich Village. The blaze ripped through the congested loft as petrified workers — mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women — desperately tried to make their way downstairs. By the time the fire burned itself out, 146 people were dead. All but 17 of the dead were women and nearly half were teenagers.
The workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were among the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who toiled in the city’s garment factories at the time. They came from countries such as Italy and Russia in search of a better future, and all around them they saw the riches promised by the American Dream. New York was in its Gilded Age and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was not too far from the limestone mansions of millionaires and the elegant shops of the famed Ladies Mile. Two men who had achieved the dream were the wealthy owners of the thriving Triangle factory. Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, Jewish immigrants who had arrived from Russia only 20 years earlier, had become known as New York’s “Shirtwaist Kings,” and each owned fully staffed brownstones on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
The dream seemed a long way off for the young workers at the factory who toiled 13 hours a day for $0.13 an hour. Though the factory was considered modern with its high ceilings and large windows, the working conditions were difficult. Only a year before the deadly fire, New York’s garment workers had begun agitating for shorter hours, better pay, safer shops and unions. To the horror of Harris and Blanck, the young women of the Triangle factory joined the crusade and called for a strike, becoming leaders in what became the largest women’s strike in American history. Within 48 hours, more than 50 of the smallest factories gave in to their workers’ demands, but the Triangle bosses organized other owners and refused to surrender, paying prostitutes and police to beat the strikers. Their terrible treatment brought the women an unexpected ally. Anne Morgan, the daughter of J.P. Morgan, and many of her powerful suffragist friends — the so-called “mink brigade” — took up their cause, and the press and public began to rally to the plight of the brave young seamstresses.
After the strike had continued for 11 weeks, the Triangle owners finally agreed to higher wages and shorter hours. But they drew the line at a union. Back on the job, the Triangle workers still lacked real power to improve the worst conditions of the factory floor: inadequate ventilation, lack of safety precautions and fire drills — and locked doors.
When a tossed match or lit cigarette ignited a fire on the eighth floor of the building, flames spread quickly. Blanck and Harris received warning by phone and escaped, but the 240 workers on the ninth floor continued stitching, oblivious to the flames gathering force on the floor below. When they finally did see the smoke, the women panicked. Some rushed toward the open stairwell, but columns of flames already blocked their path.
A few workers managed to cram onto the elevator while others ran down an inadequate fire escape, which crumbled under the weight, crashing to the ground almost 100 feet below. The only remaining exit was a door that had been locked to prevent theft. The key was tucked into the pocket of the foreman, who listened to the women’s cries for help from the street. Hundreds of horrified onlookers arrived just in time to see young men and women jumping from the windows, framed by flames.More.
PBS’ televised history series “American Experience” chronicles this deadly fire in “Triangle Fire,” which may be viewed online at PBS.org.
Interestingly, one hundred years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, we look at some of the major struggles facing workers today in the United States and around the world. In one of many recent fires, 26 workers making clothes for U.S. companies were killed in Bangladesh last December. Workers across the United States, meanwhile, are facing a resurgent assault on salaries, benefits and their right to organize—as epitomized in Governor Scott Walker’s Wisconsin’s anti-union bill. More.