Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Analysis

The Fire That Sparked Change

The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire of March 25, 1911 is a day that will forever stand out in the heart of communities, families, American factory workers and employees alike. Not only did it needlessly take the lives of 144 people, mostly young women, ages 16-23, and a few men, but it called into light the dangers of poorly constructed buildings, overcrowded work spaces, and dangerous work environments. Historians, teachers, and journalists have poured over trial transcripts, newspaper articles, commission reports, and first hand accounts from either victims or analysis of what was left behind, on that fateful day knowing full well the far reaching grasp of that event. Whether first hand accounts as told by the “Commission” in the “Preliminary Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission” (1912), recounts of information supplied to the newspapers as in the story published by the New York Times (1911), titled “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire, stories that covered how journalists reported on the story, Elizabeth V Burt’s (2005) “Working Women and the Triangle Fire: Press Coverage of a Tragedy or Doug Linder’s “The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial” each account has not only helped to bring reality to the existence and subsequent deaths of each and everyone of those individuals who lost their lives that fateful day, but also to the need and responsibility for the community and government alike to ensure for safer workplace regulations and stronger building codes.

For many of these women, this wasn’t a choice, but a necessity. The factories were often dangerous and rot with sexual abuse and utter disrespect for the workers, who were forced to work in unsafe work environments, in buildings and surroundings that were equally as unsafe (Burt, 2005, p.