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Fire at the triangle factory cause and effect
Triangle Factory Fire
Fire at the triangle factory cause and effect
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Kate Leone was a worker during the Triangle Factory Fire. Kate Leone was one of 8 children. Her parents were Italian Vito (Victor) Leone and American Luisa Kischlin. Kate was 14 when she joined her cousins Michelina Nicolosei and Annie Colletti as workers on the 9th floor of the Asch Building.
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.
The late 1800s and the early 1900s saw an extraordinary increase in the size and the amount of people living in cities in America. Thousands flocked to cities like New York and Boston looking for work in Americas thriving industrial economy, where it was promised that anyone could get wealthy through hard work. As more people began to move into cities the amount of room was beginning to run low, which eventually lead to the first skyscrapers being built in order to create more room. Wealthy individuals who lived in cities lived extravagant life styles, being able to buy the best homes, cloths, and products available to them without having to worry about anything but their social statues. The working class however were living very different
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.
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.
The Shirtwaist Fire had an impact on Immigration, Workplace conditions, the Factors of Production and The Women’s Rights Suffrage. The fire that changed America was the deadliest Industrial Disaster in History. At the beginning of the twentieth century, factory owners treated their workers with little consideration. They paid very few, Wanted long hours without breaks, and took small care for the safety of their employees. a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a clothing company located in the top floors of a New York Building.
One of the biggest workplace disasters in the American industrial history was The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in Manhattan, New York. On March 25 of 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory, which manufactured women blouses, erupted in flames, killing 146 people and injuring nearly 71. Most of the people killed and injured by the fire were women and children. This incident caused an outrage among labor workers against hazardous working environments in factories not just in New York but also in many industrial centers all over the states.
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.
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.
Companies did not care if their employees got hurt or injured in any way, shape, or form. The workers were working for many hours a day with very little pay. Children were working instead of going to school. If a worker died, the company would just replace them with someone new. The workers that had it the worst were immigrant women and children.
Progressives played a significant role in tending to all of the industrial related issues and this event really opened their eyes to many of the ongoing problems. In a Cornell University article, it was said “This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected” (Triangle Fire). To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism”. During this time, the factory was like any other factory that had workers who were paid bare minimum wages and worked long shifts in unsafe and filthy conditions. It also caught the attention of Progressives because of all the problems immigrants faced because “Many of the Triangle factory workers were women, some as young as 14 years old.
After the fire, the horrible event made factories transparent to Americans and Americans realized that industrial workers were being treated unfairly. The tragedy exposed the inhumane working conditions that the industrial workers had to the government also, so social reform became the nation’s number one issue to focus on. Countless state and federal laws were passed in direct relation to this incident. This event affects Americans today because it played a key role in the laws and regulation we have in the
In April 2013, Matthew Yglesias, an American Economics Journalist proposed the people of Bangladesh would not appreciate having stronger safety standards in their country because it would cause undue harm economically. He asserts Bangladesh should have different lower standards for safety because they are a poorer country. Most of the people involved in the New York tragedy of 1911 also known as the Triangle Fire, would not agree with Matthew Yglesias on his assertion that lower economic status would be an indication of lower safety standards in factories. Namely, the workers, the union leaders, the progressive reformers and the political leaders would all vote for higher standards commiserate with the United States. The only ones who would not argue with Yglesias are the owners of the Triangle Factory with their vested interest, their own problems of multiple fires and accusations of safety neglect.
They also had to work in harsh conditions. The business owners would simply fire the workers and replace them if they did not want to work in these conditions. Firing them would leave them jobless and with no money. Packingtown was making profits while its workers suffered in harsh
The Robber Barons forced the workers to live in a town that the Robber Barons built, and they couldn’t leave. The reason they could not leave was because, when the workers came to the town they did not have very much money. The Robber Barons offered to buy them the house, but the worker would have to work in their factory, and pay them back. This means that the worker could not leave their job until they paid back the Robber Baron which took a very long time. Also within the factory there were many issues.
