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The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy
Mar. 25th, 2011 02:42 pmA hundred years ago, teenage females did not have options especially if they were poor. They weren't able to go to a free school because their families needed the money and there were no labor laws preventing them from working in dangerous conditions. Older people, in their twenties and up, who were immigrants with little English were stuck taking whatever jobs they could find.
For thousands of women, men and children, this meant working in dangerous textile mills and clothing factories, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Two hundred women, men and children, one worker was 11 years old, worked there and one hundred years ago today, 146 of them DIED.
A fire started in the ten story building from an unknown cause. Either the owners were worried about theft or they wanted to keep out the International Ladies Garment Workers Union who had been causing "problems" by trying to help the workers unionize, but the exit doors were blocked or locked. The flimsy metal fire escapes broke. Even the nets the firefighters carried to catch them falling tore under the force of their bodies.
The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were paid over $60,000 from their insurance companies. The victim's families received $75. Blanck and Harris were also acquitted of first and second degree manslaughter.
Not that Blanck got off lightly, his family lost more members than any other, including his own brother in law. He moved his family to California and changed the name to Blank.
This fire caused people to want better working conditions, including Frances Perkins who championed the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor, the Federal Works Agency as well the Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act.
Everything from unemployment benefits to OSHA to social security is because of Frances Perkins and those workers she witnessed being burned to death or taking that one last fatal fall ten stories to the ground: something good to come out of all that tragedy.
We must never forget them.
Find out more information here:
The American Experience: Triangle Fire
Susan Harris, granddaughter of Max Blanck, has made her own memorial to the victims:
http://www.nycfiremuseum.org/exhibits/harris/harris.html
For thousands of women, men and children, this meant working in dangerous textile mills and clothing factories, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Two hundred women, men and children, one worker was 11 years old, worked there and one hundred years ago today, 146 of them DIED.
A fire started in the ten story building from an unknown cause. Either the owners were worried about theft or they wanted to keep out the International Ladies Garment Workers Union who had been causing "problems" by trying to help the workers unionize, but the exit doors were blocked or locked. The flimsy metal fire escapes broke. Even the nets the firefighters carried to catch them falling tore under the force of their bodies.
The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were paid over $60,000 from their insurance companies. The victim's families received $75. Blanck and Harris were also acquitted of first and second degree manslaughter.
Not that Blanck got off lightly, his family lost more members than any other, including his own brother in law. He moved his family to California and changed the name to Blank.
This fire caused people to want better working conditions, including Frances Perkins who championed the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor, the Federal Works Agency as well the Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act.
Everything from unemployment benefits to OSHA to social security is because of Frances Perkins and those workers she witnessed being burned to death or taking that one last fatal fall ten stories to the ground: something good to come out of all that tragedy.
We must never forget them.
Find out more information here:
The American Experience: Triangle Fire
Susan Harris, granddaughter of Max Blanck, has made her own memorial to the victims:
http://www.nycfiremuseum.org/exhibits/harris/harris.html
