Why Is The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Important

Why is the “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” Is Important Today?

Today I will be talking about the importance of the “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire”. It may not seem that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, which happened over a century ago in New York City, would be relevant today — but it is. It was a tragedy that opened the nation’s eyes to poor working conditions in garment factories and other workplaces, and set in motion a historic era of labor reforms. Lots of people lost their lives to this fire. (Me)

On March 25, 1911, a fierce fire broke out at a factory on the ninth floor of a building in New York City. Some of the exits and stairwells had been locked to prevent workers from taking breaks, stealing, and keeping out late

Some had no choice but to jump cause the fire wax burning their faces. Most of the people didn’t make it. Some jumped but died, some broke throught the safety net cause, the net couldn’t take the kind of pressure from the people. So there is some information before this trgic event happened so, let me give you a summary of the story. (Me)

So The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan, New York. There were 146 workers. 123 were women and the other 23 were men. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the workers were teenage girls who did not speak english, working 12 hours a day, every day of the week. (Keith Mestrich)

So in the building there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. Which doesn’t make sense cause, for some reason they apparently didn’t get the other three elevators fixed. There were also two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. Now this was one of the problems that so many died in the fire.

The blaze, at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx, killed 87 people, the most deadly fire in the city since 1911. (Now this wasn’t the only fire that the Shirtwaist Factory have had before), The Triangle factory was burned and scorched twice in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. (Zachary Kent)

It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again. Which was a real stupid idea and their building burned twice so that had to have made them change their mind. (Zachary