Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Essay

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

Most of the factories workers were primarily women working to be able to support themselves and help support their families but would often be locked inside of the factory to try and promote better productivity. But after a fire had broken out inside of the factory the locked doors trapped the women inside with nowhere to go. Fire escapes that had been put onto the building were so poorly made that they bended and warped from the heat of the fire burning inside of the building. Some women with now where to go tried jumping out of the building to flee the flames, other attempted to jump from the roof to another building with many not making the jump, with many other burning alive locked inside of the building. In the end there were 123 women and 23 men died in the fire, with some of the women being as young as 14 working inside of the factory. 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