100 Years of the New Deal? The Triangle Shirtwaist Disaster
Volume 2 | Issue 6 - Travel
Article by Tom Hercock. Edited by Rosie Rogers. Additional research by Andrew Shepherdson.
Reading the descriptions of conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in Manhattan, New York City, it seems amazing that a major fire did not break out earlier. The typical factory employee was female, of Jewish or Italian descent and between the age of 12 and 20. Working 72 hours a week, wages were pitiful at $6-7 per hour. The materials used in making shirtwaists (women’s blouses) were both highly combustible and poorly stored. Lighting was by gas lamps and many workers illicitly smoked. It was on March 25th 1911 that a fire broke out just before the end of the working day.
Because the owners had locked the doors to prevent theft and the fire escape from the factory (occupying the top three floors of a ten story building) was totally inadequate, 146 people died either through incineration or jumping from the windows to their deaths. The blaze was put out in half an hour, but until September 11th, 2001 the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster was still the most deadly fire in the history of Manhattan. Crowds had gathered at the site as the fire blazed, and the memorial service for the victims was attended by nearly 400,000 people. The New York Times reported the crowds had shouted “Don’t jump” to the workers trapped inside the inferno, but “it was jump, or be burned”. Later, a reporter made the mistake of asking a policeman whether one of the charred bodies laid out on the pavement was a man or a woman. The grim answer: “It’s human, that’s all you can tell”.
Observers quickly noted that the building itself had been fireproof; it looked virtually undamaged from the outside and in fact still stands today. Only the material and people inside burned. In some ways, this can be seen as a microcosm of industrial America at the turn of the century – at the same time as it pushed ahead, constructing ever more modern buildings (this period saw the original skyscrapers), workers laboured for long hours for meagre wages with scanty provision for safety. Furthermore, any attempt by workers to group together to change the situation was frustrated, as unions were at best patchily tolerated. Just a year earlier the employees at Triangle Shirtwaist had been involved in a city-wide strike of garment workers. They had demanded the right to unionise, shorter hours, better pay and improved conditions in the workplace. However, the strike had failed and the owners of Triangle Shirtwaist, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who had been major figures in the anti-union effort, hired thugs to disrupt union meetings. They further showed contempt for their employees by hiring prostitutes as strike-breakers.
Following the fire, the prosecution of Blanck and Harris for manslaughter failed (Blanck was later found to have again locked workers in at another of his factories). After the failure of the prosecution, families of the victims brought civil suits for compensation against Blanck and Harris, which were successful. However, the compensation payouts actually totalled less than the insurance received from the fire damage, so for presiding over one of the worst industrial disasters in American history, Blanck and Harris turned a profit.
It was fortuitous then that what could have been just a tragic accident instead became a catalyst for change. The New York state government broadened its investigation by examining the issues of child labour, safety and working conditions as well as the original immediate causes of the fire. The reforms that prevailed quickly made New York one of the leading states for protection of workers. These changes were just one part of a wider transformation in American government around the turn of the twentieth century – known as Progressivism – a loose term and movement which aimed to create a more activist state, appropriate to the modern industrial age, and thus promoted reforms to update government institutions still largely based on eighteenth century principles. A generation later, similar laws were adopted by the federal government and were central to Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programme. The disaster boosted the growth of unions and offered them different strategies. Now that the law favoured them, unions were able to negotiate on an industry-wide basis. Frances Perkins, who as Secretary of Labour under Roosevelt was the first woman cabinet member in American history, had been one of the horrified bystanders at Triangle Shirtwaist in 1911. She later said that the disaster marked the birth date of the New Deal.
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According to the Ladies’ Garment Worker Union, the Triangle factory was known in the trade as the ‘prison’ thanks to its extraordinarily harsh discipline and low wages.
Fireman tried to catch the falling bodies using a blanket. Unfortunately the number of workers throwing themselves to ‘safety’ was too great. The blanket split, and those on the ground could only watch in horror as bodies rained upon them.