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History Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factor Fire Of 1911

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One of the biggest fire tragedies in the 1900’s was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factor fire in 1911. The factory was a very dangerous environment to work in. There were no law that protected the laborers from the unsafe work environment. The factory workers were mostly immigrants from Europe. Also at this time there were no laws making the businesses have fire escape plans, or have any fire protection equipment. Fire drill, fire escapes, sprinkler systems, and forty-eight hour work weeks may seem so common, but if it wasn’t for the fires that broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the early 1900’s, there might not be fire and labor laws like there are today. The triangle shirtwaist factor was a clothes making facilities in downtown Manhattan. …show more content…

There were no guards over the belts that drove the sewing machines, the ventilation was terrible, and the working environment was very unsanitary (Schaefer 8). The factory hired over 500 immigrants to work in the top three floors of the Asch Building. It was a very cramped workplace and with bad ventilation the air didn’t move much so it was extremely hot. The young women were requires to work a minimum of 12 hour per day, every day. They earned a whopping wage of 15 dollars per week which was barely enough to get by (History). Many referred to these wages as “starvation wages” because it barely gave them enough money to buy food and clothes for their families (Marsico 14). The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was not at all clean. With the factory not being sanitary many of the workers would get sick. If a worker was to get sick they couldn’t afford to not go to work so they would keep going to working and the sickness would spread to all the other workers in the factory. The workers didn’t have any control over their wages or hours spent working. If a worker whined about their low wage or the long hours spent working they would be fired, and the owners would hire a new worker. Most of the time the workers didn’t get any time off for breaks or even going to the bathrooms. It wasn’t just young women who had to work in the harsh factory conditions. Children also worked in the factory because their families need

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There was an abundance of workers, and the items they were producing were being found in homes across the country. Industry was making a lot of money, but due to the number of able workers, these same companies believed that they did not need to treat them well. The workers were putting in ten to twelve hours a day, five and a half, or six days a week (p. 9). The working conditions

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Most of the people who were working in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were on a strike before the fire for working rights and safety precautions. If the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory followed the safety precautions the strike was proposing, the fire could have been prevented, and would have saved many lives. According to source 5, the doors were locked, long wooden tables became obstacles, and boxes crowded the exit. All of that could have easily been prevented. Also, higher class people were also involved in the strike which made it bigger and more popular to people.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Factory was partly burned or burned down twice in 1902. Another Factory they worked in was their Diamond Waist Company Factory which just like the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Factory partly burned and almost burned down twice, in 1907 and 1910. There are suspicions that Blanck and Harris purposely torched their factory building before work hours opened so they could receive the large fire insurance policies they had purchased for every building. Although there is evidence that they weren’t the cause of the 1911 fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Factory. Both Blanck and Harris refused to install water sprinklers systems within the building and take other safety

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Despite the death and destruction it caused, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire ultimately benefited America by opening the eyes of mistreated factory workers and inspiring them to fight for better working conditions. Though it was unbeknownst at the time, the fire would inspire mistreated workers to rise out of the ashes and work tirelessly not for a factory, but for their own wellbeing. The history, the fire, and the trial that are all connected to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company are the events that led to the exploration for better working conditions. While we may not wish to remember all of the suffering the conflagration caused, we see its imprint it left on society whenever we see someone at work. This just imprint is one of safety.

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On March 25,1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City was the deadliest business tragedy in the history of New York. Every morning 100,000 people would head off to work, some of the girls would be as young as ten years old. In Asch Building on the 10th floor was where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was located. The people had to work up to 14 hours a day with a salary of 2 dollars. Out of the 100,000people there were 500 blouse makers.

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Workers rights were very minimal and their was uproar among the workers. Many lower class impoverished workers forced to terrible conditions and

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It was later discovered that the fire had probably started when a worker disposed a cigarette or match into a rag bin containing three hundred pounds of thin, oxygen-rich, cotton fabric. It was also estimated that there was a total of more than one ton of those cotton scraps in the upper three floors of the factory. “In that brief span, the fire did more killing than any other workplace disaster in New York City history up to that time, or for ninety years afterward.” It was considered “the worst industrial fire in American history.” The fire was one of the most important and biggest factors in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

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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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Could the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory have been prevented? I am not going to answer that question just yet. Without assessing all of the information to prevent the making of unfounded accusations. First things first you may be asking yourself what a Triangle Shirtwaist is. A triangle shirtwaist is a type of blouse that many women wore in the early 1900's.

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire In March of 1911 the deadliest industrial fire disaster in the history of New York City and one of the deadliest in US history occurred that changed the world. Men and women who were working hard in the Asch building, ready to be released in five minutes, burned to their death in a matter of minutes. By the senseless actions of a worker throwing his cigarette into a bin filled with scraps of inflammable clothing, the whole building suffered.

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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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In 1902, the Triangle Factory was burned twice and Blanck’s and Harris’s other company, Diamond Waist, was scorched twice; once in 1907 and in 1910 (1 “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” 3). Those fires were purposely started by them before work hours to collect large fire-insurance policies (3). That was a common act in the early 20th century (3). Though they didn’t cause the fire in 1911, it contributed to the disaster, because Blanck and Harris refused to install a sprinkler system and other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again (3). This would only add to the severity of the upcoming event.

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Workers Rights During 1911, workers did not have many rights. The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire caused 146 innocent women and children to lose their lives. The people of the public started to realize the harsh conditions that the blue collared workers of America have to deal with. They had absolutely no safety regulations or rules.

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Automatic sprinklers, properly working fire escapes, and fire proof receptacles were among the recommendations for the businesses to instill. The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory could have been prevented and more lives could have been saved if there were fireproof receptacles in the factory and were properly emptied. The fire spread so quickly trapping many inside. An article from the New York Times states “what burned so quickly and disastrously for the victims were shirtwaists, hanging on lines above tiers of workers, sewing machines placed so closely together that there was hardly aisle room for the girls between them, and shirtwaist trimmings and cuttings which littered the floors above the eighth and ninth stories” (141 men, 1911). The trimmings that laid among the floor is what caused the fire to spread so rapidly.

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The factory offered high pay, but desired hard work in a poor conditioned area. This left many factory girls very sick, and almost causing them to die. Many girls started to protest, forming the petition.

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