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Summary Of Conditions At The Triangle Shirtwaist Company

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At the end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth, America was in an era of industrial growth. People began to think that the social and economic problems of the last century had to do with rapid industrialization in America. Progressives, also known as reformers, sought to fight against issues such as the status of women in society, labour rights and immigration. With the growth of industrialization, factories had grown in size and unsafe working conditions were the norm. The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on March 25, 1911 in New York City changed the way America dealt with labour reform regarding working conditions. By examining the conditions at the factory, one can see that the fire stirred the need for labour reform in factories, making Americans aware of the problems of industrial capitalism; this is important because it changed the face of labour and rights of workers for generations to come. In Conditions at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, historians have compiled five separate accounts that detail the working conditions and give look into the lives of those who survived the fire. These accounts provide the reader with a glimpse into the abuses that workers endured day in and day out, painting a visual snapshot of a worker in the factory. The need for reform in workplaces was …show more content…

Employees worked a six-day workweek starting as early as seven-thirty and ending around nine o’clock at night. They were underpaid, had cramped workspaces in unventilated buildings, no safety precautions and were locked in their workplaces. Workers were charged for electricity, thread used and any damage that occurred. Housing compared to working conditions was no different; many of the workers lived in

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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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On a warm day in New York City in 1911, tragedy struck. It was an incident that would be written up in newspapers across the country; a horrendous incident that would change legislature, labor laws and hundreds of lives forever. This dreadful event left nearly 150 girls and women dead, and became one of the most murderous fires in the history of New York City. The day was March 26, 1911, and the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was an historic one.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was one such typical sweat shop. The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, typically employed young Jewish immigrant girls who had come to the United States with their families in search of a better life for them and their loved ones. Instead, they encountered lives of relentless poverty and dismaying working conditions. Being immigrants who struggled with a new language and culture, the factory owners took advantage and made the working poor their ready

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The Fire That Changed America is a historical monograph discusses the rise of labor reforms along with the Progressive Movement throughout the state of New York during the early 1900’s, and pushes forward the argument that the fire which decimated the Triangle Waist Company was vital to the entrance of laws advocated by unions that protect the safety of workers. Drehle himself is a journalist, a former editor of Time Magazine, and a frequent visitor of American History in most of his works. The fire at Triangle was a devastating tragedy, but its sheer scale caused incredibly welcoming effects on the common workplace. Before the fire, labor unions that belonged to the progressive movement were only able to secure “a pay raise, [and] a fifty-two hour work week” for a pitifully limited number of workers, as the

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The company owners did not care for their employees at all. In the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, many young women and girls were forced to work six days a week with very little pay. According to source five of the research packet, the “girls worked in tight spaces with sewing machines close together” (What Went Wrong?). So close, that a person could barely get up and move around. Around this time, none of the girls in the factory have ever done a fire drill.

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“When the fire began to rush on our floor we wanted to jump out of the window at first but somehow I kept my head while the others were fighting in the dark from the smoke. I kept saying to myself what all the greenhorns used to say, that in America they don't allow one to burn.” Rose Indursky was one of 275 women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that went up in flames on March 25th, 1911. One hundred and forty-six people died. The majority of deaths were on the ninth floor.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire led to imperative reforms that sought for adequate conditions for workers and the advent of the Progressive Era. (Source 2). The United States was in the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of the rural population migrated into cities for jobs, while immigrants from Europe also added to the growth of the cities.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory had no clearly marked exit signs and only one functional elevator reached by a narrow corridor. There were two stairways in the factory, however one was locked due to theft and the other had a door that only opened inward. The factory did have one fire escape, but it was very narrow and would of taken hours for all of the workers to get to safety. This fire causes the public to become aware of the conditions of sweatshops. Sprinkler systems and installing sufficient fire escapes those are properly marked with exit signs were implemented in new factories for the safety of the workers.

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Industrialization had swept America off its feet as big industries took over the entire country in not just an economical perspective, but in social and political environments as well. As leadership was lacking on a political level and technology and inventions began to expand, the business industry boomed as more and more citizens moved away from urban areas into industrialized cites to provide for their families. Corporations such as the railroad industry had participated in the growth of capitalism, as they became the central hub for commerce, labor, and transportation. But, since big industries started to take over so much of the economy in such little time, corruption became a problem as business owners took advantage of their authority

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These workers faced dangers everyday and received little pay. At the same time, many other people also had more money and leisure time. Henry George’s book, Progress and Poverty, talks about this divide. “ It was as though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down” (Document 3).

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The time period from when the Second Industrial Revolution was beginning, up until President McKinley’s assassination in 1901, is known as the Gilded Age. After the Civil War, many people headed out West to pursue agriculture, and many immigrants moved to urban areas to acquire jobs in industrial factories. It is in this context that farmers and industrial workers had to respond to industrialization. Two significant ways farmers and industrial workers responded to industrialization in the Gilded Age, were creating the Populist Party and the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

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Due to the bad working conditions there was laws passed such as child labor law, workmen's comp law and minimum wage law. The Progressive Era

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Karen Cortez Professor Bell HIST 1302-81420 September 24, 2017 Written Exercise 2 The progressives were a group of well-educated people who were concerned about the poor working environments of others and wanted to protect consumers and other problems that existed in the 1900’s. In 1911, workers had died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, some jumped to their deaths while others were burned. Work safety was an important issue for the progressives. Progressives wanted to end corruption and make the government more attentive to the people’s needs.

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These laws were a significant departure from the earlier idea that the government should not intervene in the economy and showed that Progressives believed in using government power to control business practices and, most importantly, protect its employees. The Triangle Fire documentary puts the spotlight on the change brought by the Progressive movement. The documentary shows the horrific conditions faced by workers in 1911, which led to the death of 146 workers, and the poor response of the factory owners and government officials. This tragedy served as a humongous catalyst for the Progressive movement, which pushed for laws and regulations that would protect workers and prevent similar tragedies from happening

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