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Causes Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Of 1911

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Introduction The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 proved to be the impetus for sweeping change, not just in fire and worker safety, but in labor law and employee rights in general. Prior to the fire, workplace safety was largely focused on the protection of buildings and assets rather than the people who worked in the buildings. The only incentives for greater protections came from reduced insurance premiums, with little or no enforcement on the part of government officials. Following a series of strikes over working conditions, the Triangle fire came at the peak of the fight between companies and laborers. The disaster and resulting loss of life sparked a different kind of fire in the bellies of the public, forcing the government …show more content…

The factory occupied the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building. At 4:40 PM, shortly before the day’s work was to end, a fire started in an eight floor wastebasket under a cutter’s worktable. Workers used nearby buckets of water to attempt to extinguish the flames, but the fire quickly spread to other wastebaskets and began to climb the walls as it burned through paper patterns. Out of water, the workers attempted to use the water hose in the stairwell but found that there was no water running to the hose. No sprinklers were installed in the building and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory had never had a fire drill. The eighth floor workers made their way down the stairs, but found that the doors were locked and opened inward, forcing them to remain shut as workers pressed towards the exit. After retrieving a key, most of the 180 workers on the eighth floor were still able to escape the blaze. In the rush to escape the eighth floor, a supervisor called the tenth floor to warn them of the fire. All but one of the 60 people on the tenth floor escaped over the roof, aided by several New York University Law students in a neighboring building. Unfortunately, the worker who accepted the call forgot to hang up the phone in her rush to escape and no one was able to alert the 250 workers on the ninth floor. …show more content…

The last body was removed from the building late that night. Nineteen bodies were discovered on top of the freight elevators, and more than two-dozen were found atop a pile of glass at the bottom of the collapsed fire escape (Berger, March 2011). Six of the victims were so badly burned that they could not be identified until nearly 100 years later - they are buried in the Triangle memorial at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn (Berger, February

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Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist fire Disaster hit March 25, 1911 at 4:40 pm at the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory when it caught on fire by a cigarette bud or burning match. The employees were mainly young women and girls of Italian and Jewish decent and 146 died that day. The workers wanted out of the building but one of the doors was locked in the stairwell. Speculation was that Isaac Harris locked the door. Some of the women and girls jumped off the building and out the windows to trying to survive which was interfering with the firemen trying to put out the fire.

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Eventually, the employees realized they would not win the battle, and returned to work. The founders of this company were selfish in their actions, only stopping to help it’s employees when they started to lack personal gain. After going back to work, a cigarette, still lit, was dropped onto the workroom floor of the 8th floor. The loose fabric and wicker baskets quickly wicked this up, creating a deadly fire. The stairwell was locked, and no one had the key to open

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 was the deadliest workplace accident in New York history. Most of the workers in the factory were immigrants who came to America for a better future. Their dream was economic security, which they saw in America. Getting a job in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a desired position, even if the job consisted of fourteen hour work days, six days a week. At most, the workers would take home $2 a day.

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After the tragedy of the fire there was public outcry for reforms that would help to prevent this kind of travesty from happening again. Fallowing after the fire building codes were more strictly checked and maintained, employees were not allowed to lock their workers inside of the factories, and child labor laws would also eventually be established through the tragedy of the fire and other cases of yellow journalism. Overall, the late 1800s and the early 1900s was a time that saw many different social reforms and journalistic endeavors to help those less fortunate, but it was also a time plagued by poverty and misfortune for the working

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Frances Perkins, a survivor from the Shirtwaist Factory Fire quotes “Moved by this sense of stricken guilt, we banded ourselves together to find a way by law to prevent this kind of disaster.” Frances Perkins became secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and this quote said by Perkins “something must be done. We’ve got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action,” helped new workplace safety standards into law in the state of New York. The benefits that I would like the audience to see is how workplace safety is important by learning about the history of regulation, OSHA, and workers compensation.

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Yet, they still worked there even though they knew they could die easily. The sad thing was they were only paid a mere 15 dollars a week, even after working for 12 hours a day every day. Blanck and Harris also torched their workplaces to collect money from the insurance policy. While this wasn’t uncommon in the 20th century, Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinklers to extinguish the fire. The fire began with ashes from a bin with cloth inside of it.

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One of the main reasons the fire took such a psychological toll on the New Yorkers was because of the workers jumping to there deaths. One witness even remarked the event saying quote 'I know a new sound a terrible sound the sound of a body hitting the pavement". The inferno was also not an uncommon occurrence the triangle shirt was burned before the tragedy to collect insurance money. Knowing this information, many Jewish and women workers went on strike to secure improved working conditions. There strike in fact proved successful with the New York state legislature creating the Factory Investigating Commission.

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On March 25, 1911 in New York City, one of the most tragic disasters on record in the history of American industry transpired. This horrendous event will forever be known as The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Somewhere near closing time on that horrific Saturday afternoon, a fire broke out on the top three floors of the Asch building which were being occupied by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Within minutes chaos arose, everything had erupted into madness, forever disrupting the lives of hundreds of young workers. When the fire was over, 146 of the 500 employees had died an extremely miserable death during the disastrous event.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a devastating fire that killed 146 girls in New York City (Leap for Life, Leap for Death). At this time, citizens of New York were furious and demanded that the government do something to prevent future tragedies. The government responded and the reforms that the government made, it changed the future of New York industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, one of history’s deadliest fires, came as a result of outrageously unsafe working conditions, led to a high death toll and injury total, but, ultimately resulted in reforms that helped safeguard future factory workers.

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The Triangle Fire trial was a famous trial in December of 1911 after a detrimental fire broke out in March of the same year. This fire occurred at a shirtwaist factory in Manhattan, New York City. 146 workers’ lives were taken during the fire from smoke inhalation while trapped inside with limited ways out and other fatalities occurred from employees jumping out of windows nine to ten floors high. The trial outcome was not what most wanted after the two negligent owners were not held accountable for their actions regarding the fire and the deaths from it. Interviews, transcripts, and appeals can be used to understand how the Triangle fire led to a push for better working conditions in factory work settings.

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The building was highly flammable and not very safe for people to be in. If there was fire there which nobody thought there was going to be one they could not stop the fire because the fire hose was not connected to the water. This is a little backstory on when Rose was little. She was born on March 27th 1893 in a small town north of vienna.

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Trapped Inside the Blaze On “March 25, 1911 one of the deadliest industrial disasters” in US history took place in New York City (Wiki paragraph 1). The fire caused 146 deaths and many more injuries of the workers in the Asch building. It took place on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. Many of the workers who couldn’t escape the blaze decided to jump of the building to their deaths so their bodies could be recognized.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred on March 25th, 1911 in New York City, and flabbergasted the citizens of the US by showing them the brutal consequences of the way that factory workers were being treated at the time. The triangle factory fire was the deadliest industrial disaster to have ever occurred in the city at the time that it happened. Located on the top three floors of the Asch building, the factory was one of the largest producers of the popular women’s shirtwaist blouse, and became a martyr for employee rights after 1911. Because of its location in what was considered to be one of the most progressive cities in the world and its adjacency to some of the most influential people in the country, the triangle shirtwaist factory

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The detrimental Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is considered to be one of the most tragic disasters in history. On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out and killed 146 garment workers who were mostly women. These women worked countless hours with low wages and inhumane working conditions in a factory. Even though this event was tragic, the triangle shirtwaist fire helped to shape the new world for the better. The multitude of workers trapped within the inferno to their demise was the final straw for the mistreatment of America’s workers.

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On this fateful Saturday afternoon, a vicious fire unexpectedly broke out at the factory, sending panic through its towering floors (Pence et al. 408). A total of 146 workers died in the tragedy, shocking the public and shaping the future of labor laws (Burt 190). "And all Who Jumped Died: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" by Patricia Pence et al. summarizes the fire, reviews the response of the factory owners, examines the laws that resulted from the fire, and offers three lessons to be learned from the incident (Pence et al 407). "

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