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The Newark Factory Fire, By Mary Alden Hopkins

1872 Words8 Pages

The city of Newark is an area of high achievements ,enormous growth and the cornerstone to one of the nation’s most important east coast cities. Despite its economic importance, the city of Newark carries a negative perception which overlooks its long history of struggle and hardship. Throughout the 20th century, a negative attitudes developed in and outside of Newark for its substandard working conditions. With the quality of these conditions so low, outsiders usually tend to formulate a negative perspective towards the city without considering the huge the city’s struggles with racism, discrimination, immigration and poverty. Poor labor conditions delayed the transformation of this city; people in Newark were not given the proper care to …show more content…

From the point of view of one of the McClure’s Magazine author, Mary Alden Hopkins, we observe another way how the impact of labor conditions affected the city. This magazine article provides an outsider’s perspective on the factory fire in the early 20th century. In her article, ‘The Newark Factory Fire,’ she not only explains how poor the working conditions were, but she also explains how little safety the workers who endured these conditions had. Safety regulations were not taken seriously and this eventually lead to Newark being the site of the first disastrous Factory Fire. Hopkins explains, “the building was erected before the days of the fire-proof construction… the buildings was classed as extra hazardous by the insurance companies, and rated $2.09 on contents and $1.69 gross on buildings” (Hopkins, 1). As a result of this, there were a disturbing amount of casualties. Newark and even the rest of the country opened their eyes after this horrific incident resulting the country forced to reinforce their safety regulations in the workplace making Newark city a prime example of change in labor conditions. Because of this factory fire, Newark improved their city with these new regulations and the city as a whole has become much safer to work in. The way an outsider, Hopkins, born and raised in Bangor, discusses the way labor was affecting the workers lives is unique because Hopkins learned of all this tragedy from others who have experienced it and not herself. We can see various ways labor identity is being formed by the people who are affected by the poor safety

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