The building was one of New York City’s landmarks. When the fire broke out, a result of the cascade of calamity set in motion by the insanely selfish actions of a few ideologically driven sociopaths, onlookers on the street were horrified to see people choosing suicide by jumping over death by incineration. The tragedy shook the nation.
At 4:40 o’clock, nearly five hours after the employes in the rest of the building had gone home, the fire broke out. The one little fire escape in the interior was resorted to by any of the doomed victims. Some of them escaped by running down the stairs, but in a moment or two this avenue was cut off by flame. The girls rushed to the windows and looked down at Greene Street, 100 feet below them. Then one poor, little creature jumped. There was a plate glass protection over part of the sidewalk, but she crashed through it, wrecking it and breaking her body into a thousand pieces.
Then they all began to drop. The crowd yelled Don’t jump! but it was jump or be burned the proof of which is found in the fact that fifty burned bodies were taken from the ninth floor alone.
… Messrs. Harris and Blanck were in the building, but the escaped. They carried with the Mr. Blanck’s children and a governess, and they fled over the roofs. Their employes did not know the way, because they had been in the habit of using the two freight elevators, and one of these elevators was not in service when the fire broke out.
Yesterday was the 95th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, in which 141 people died — at least 125 of them young women. The ideology of unfettered capitalism set the stage for the fire. The building’s one fire escape might as well have been made of tinfoil, and the sweatshop owners locked the women in to keep them from taking unauthorized breaks. The fire broke out ten minutes before the women’s shift would have ended.
Girls had begun leaping from the eighth story windows before firemen arrived. The firemen had trouble bringing their apparatus into position because of the bodies which strewed the pavement and sidewalks. While more bodies crashed down among them, they worked with desperation to run their ladders into position and to spread firenets.
One fireman running ahead of a hose wagon, which halted to avoid running over a body spread a firenet, and two more seized hold of it. A girl’s body, coming end over end, struck on the side of it, and there was hope that she would be the first one of the score who had jumped to be saved.
Thousands of people who had crushed in from Broadway and Washington Square and were screaming with horror at what they saw watched closely the work with the firenet. Three other girls who had leaped for it a moment after the first one, struck it on top of her, and all four rolled out and lay still upon the pavement.
Five girls who stood together at a window close the Greene Street corner held their place while a fire ladder was worked toward them, but which stopped at its full length two stories lower down. They leaped together, clinging to each other, with fire streaming back from their hair and dresses. They struck a glass sidewalk cover and it to the basement. There was no time to aid them. With water pouring in upon them from a dozen hose nozzles the bodies lay for two hours where they struck, as did the many others who leaped to their deaths.
This is what work looks like without unions:
The victims mostly Italians, Russians, Hungarians, and Germans were girls and men who had been employed by the firm of Harris & Blanck, owners of the Triangle Waist Company, after the strike in which the Jewish girls, formerly employed, had been become unionized and had demanded better working conditions. The building had experienced four recent fires and had been reported by the Fire Department to the Building Department as unsafe in account of the insufficiency of its exits.
This is the world to which some would have us return.
Thanks to radgeek for the reminder.
Being an immigrant, the first I heard of this was in SJ Gould’s essay, which sent chills down my spine. And to think that things like that are still happening (all those club fires at rock concerts a few years ago - in Chicago, Rhode Island, etc.)...
Not just clubs, but:
“A dreadful fire swept through the Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in the early morning of September 3, 1991.
That morning, workers at the plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, smelled something burning. As they were rapidly engulfed in thick, yellow smoke, an acrid combination of melting insulation and burning soybean oil and chicken, they tried to escape but found the doors to the plant locked. Twenty-five workers died in the tragic fire, one of the worst disasters of its kind, reminiscent of the Triangle Shirt Factory fire in early 1900s New York City, where many seamstresses leapt to their deaths because stairway doors were locked.
The Hamlet story is crucial to factory workers in most parts of the country, leaving many unanswered questions: Why were the doors locked? Why had the plant not had a safety inspection in 11 years? And why did Hamlet Fire Chief Fuller refuse help from the Dobbins Heights fire department, located less than five minutes from the Imperial plant?”
Or maybe mine shafts are just coincidentally falling apart and killing people, as the inspections ceased, and the companies were freed from fines or threats of prosecution by their friends in bushco. And certainly the quality of our meats can be trusted as bushco proposes to test less and thus prove that there is less problems with that whole industry. For sure, bushco would have use believe that everything would be so much better if we just got rid of whistleblowers entirely; they make such a nuisance and ruin profitable business. and on and on and on. We must not forget, ever!!
Ah, I remeber that now. I have just arrived in the USA at that time, in NC and that was in the local news big time! Horrible, just horrible!
Pipped at the post by spyder. A few years back I was researching the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to compare it to similar modern fires, mostly in Asia, as part of my argument against the cutting back of regulation and inspection, in a range of industries, and worker representation in Australia. I ran into articles about the Hamlet ‘Imperial Foods’ fire and was quite shocked.
The owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist manufactory, btw, were not successfully brought to book, although some regulations were changed and the example was used during the decades before WWII to promote the need for unions and for reining in galloping ‘free enterprise’.
The more modern examples help disprove the often-reiterated Big Lie that capitalism invariably = Democracy.
Hamlet: the Untold Tragedy
[url=http://www.organicanews.com/news/article.cfm?story_id=103]http://www.organicanews.com/news/article.cfm?story_id=103[/url]
I don’t know about the situation today with the film that’s mentioned in the article
=v= The grandmother of my partner-in-crime was an organizer of that Jewish women’s strike, in which she hit a member of the NYPD over the head with an umbrella.
I knew you were going to put in a twist there Chris - I just didn’t know where. I had heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, but not for some time. Reading it today when the Howard govt’s new Industrial Relations reforms come into effect is chilling.
The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were not “brought to book,” it is true. As I recall the story, a trial was held to try to establish their responsibility. One of the young women who survived—perhaps the only one, I don’t recall—testified. She was illiterate and the lawyers presenting her testimony worked with her to commit her story to memory. She told her story on the witness stand, from memory. The crafty lawyer for the owners cross-examined her simply by having her repeat the story, again and yet again, which she did. He then argued that she had been coached to give a made-up story, and apparently the jury bought his argument.
Walmart locks workers in overnight.
Unions save lives in trenches.
Unions save lives in mines.
Unions save lives (of workers and passengers) in the NYC transit system.
And that’s after only a few minutes of looking for stuff I remembered.
Chris, thanks for posting this.
Mez: The owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist manufactory, btw, were not successfully brought to book, although some regulations were changed and the example was used during the decades before WWII to promote the need for unions and for reining in galloping “free enterprise”.
Just to be clear, The problem wasn’t free enterprise; free enterprise didn’t exist in the garment industry in the early 20th century. Under free enterprise workers can form whatever voluntary associations they want, can walk out on jobs that they don’t want to do, can air grievances against unscrupulous employers, etc. without the threat of violent repression. But under the corporatist regime in the early 20th century, the bosses’ hired goons and uniformed goons from the government repeatedly attacked ILGWU picketers and used legal intervention and physical violence to suppress union organizing as far as they could get away with it.
That’s not free enterprise; it’s just state intervention on behalf of predatory bosses.
Carpundit: Wrong, wrong, wrong. I won’t go into everything you said, but let’s just take a couple: that safety and Wal-Mart opposition comes from regulation and public opobrium.
Where do you think those come from? Unions. There wouldn’t have ever been an OSHA without unions, and what’s left of the agency wouldn’t be there either if it wasn’t for unions.
Regulation doesn’t help if unions aren’t aware of how to use the law, or if they aren’t confident the won’t be retaliated against by using the law. That generally only happens when there’s a union.
Finally, who do you think is putting all the pressure and bringing all the attention to Wal-Mart? Unions.
Who’s been leading the charge against MSHA and the mine companies? Unions.
Carpundit: Read more. With all due modesty, start with Confined Space
If Wal-Mart unionizes, wages and benefits will go up and people will be able to buy more. And the media attention comes from the unions—not just a tip-off, but major reports, campaigns, research, etc.
I’d be the first to admit that many unions have problems, as does every other enterprise, including government and private industry. But workers—those in unions and outside of unions - would be in far worse shape without them. And I’m talking about today, not in the distant past (when, by the way, there were plenty of people who that there was no point to unions.)
And “read more” wasn’t a taunt; it was a real, “adult” suggestion. The information is there, you just need to make yourself aware of it.
Jordan,
You can’t persuade someone by telling him he’ll agree with you if only he’d learn more of what you’re teaching. That’s not argument, it’s attack. I’ll leave the debate here in deference to Chris’s excellent blog. If you’d like to open a thread at your site, let me know. I’d be happy to continue the discussion. It’s rude to argue in another man’s forum.
CP