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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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Many people in the world we live in today are greedy and always worry about what they don't have and are desperate for new situations. this picture shows how there is a person on a boat and a person on an island and both are excited to have a chance for something new. The person on the island is excited because they can finally get somewhere safe with resources using a boat, and the person on the boat is excited to get a break and find land. This image is similar to a story of a dog with a steak who was staring at his reflection in a lake. The dog thought his reflection's steak was bigger so he tried to drop his steak quickly and steal his reflection's steak. However, this causes the dog to lose his steak because of the greed he had and not being grateful. This relates to the essential question because their experiences through bad times of what they had caused them to want something new even if it's better or worse.

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Haddix, P. Margaret. Uprising. Simon & Schuster, 2007

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Wiesel, Eliezer. Night. Hill & Wang, 2006

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History.com Contributors. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.” Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 2 December 2009, https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/triangle-shirtwaist-fire. Accessed 19 May 2023.

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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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"Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" by History.com editors

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"Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" by History.com editors

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Table of Contents

1. Working Conditions in The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

2. What Started The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

3. Importance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 146 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable-most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers.

Working Conditions in The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

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. 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 teenaged girls who did not speak English and worked 12 hours a day, every day. In 1911, 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. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances.

Did you know? Exactly 79 years to the day after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, another tragic fire occurred in New York City. The blaze, at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx, killed 87 people, the most deadly fire in the city since 1911.

The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires. Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. 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.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris' notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours a day, every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris' company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.

What Started The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew, panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells also met awful demises-when they found a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive.

Those workers who were on floors above the fire, including the owners, escaped to the roof and then to adjoining buildings. As firefighters arrived, they witnessed a horrible scene. The girls who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the windows to escape it. The bodies of the jumpers fell on the fire hoses, making it difficult to begin fighting the fire. Also, the firefighters ladders reached only seven floors high and the fire was on the eighth floor. In one case, a life net was unfurled to catch jumpers, but three girls jumped at the same time, ripping the net. The nets turned out to be mostly ineffectual.

Within 18 minutes, it was all over. Forty-nine workers had burned to death or been suffocated by smoke, 36 were dead in the elevator shaft and 58 died from jumping to the sidewalks. With two more dying later from their injuries, a total of 146 people were killed by the fire.

Importance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The fire helped unite organized labor and reform-minded politicians like progressive New York Governor Alfred E. Smith and Senator Robert F. Wagner, one of the legislative architects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda. Frances Perkins, who served on a committee that helped to set up the Factory Investigating Commission in New York in the wake of the fire, would later become Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor. The workers union set up a march on April 5 on New York's Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that had led to the fire. It was attended by 80,000 people.

Despite a good deal of evidence that the owners and management had been horribly negligent in the fire, a grand jury failed to indict them on manslaughter charges. To settle lawsuits against them, they eventually paid $75 in compensation to each victim's family-a fraction of the $400 per death that they were paid by their insurer.

Still, the massacre for which they were responsible did finally compel the city to enact reform. In addition to the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law passed that October, the New York Democratic set took up the cause of the worker and became known as a reform party. Both were crucial in preventing similar disasters in the future.

Fact Check

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On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 146 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable.

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The book Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix was pretty historically accurate throughout the book. This includes things such as the right setting, amount of casualties, and just the overall sequence of events. One mistake that isn't historically accurate was when they foreshadowed the idea of there being no fire escape at all because the rich didn't like the way it looked. However, in the real fire, there was one fire that escaped but it became ineffective after collapsing. I think at least one of these situations such as Bella's could have been an accurate representation of someone back then for a couple of reasons. One was that many people were looking to come to America to get a fresh start even without knowing much of the land. Also, I believe that many people were trying to work long jobs to support a family whether they were with them or not.

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DK Drawings. "3 OR 4 ??? Funny Optical Illusion Drawing", Youtube, https://youtube.com/watch?v=OG0evAfzq28. 5/19/2023

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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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What shapes a person and their perspective?

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The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir about the author's experiences during the Holocaust. It talks about the troubles and injustices done against Jewish people during the reign of Hitler in Germany. The book begins with Wiesel's life in Sighet, a small town in Transylvania, and promptly moves to when the Nazis start deporting the Jews. Eliezer and his family are among the people who got deported. They are forced to separate from their family when they arrive, so Eliezer is left with his father. The rest of his family members and not seen ever again, and are then found out to be dead. The rest of the book goes through the horrific events that Eliezer has experienced through the holocaust. By the end, he has to witness and be a companion to his father's death. After going through many horrific events and endless torture, the book ends with freedom for Jews from the death of Hitler. They are similar in that they are both about a great struggle. In both struggles, there are two sides, (rich-poor), (people, Nazis), and perspective plays a big part. However, this theme of perspective is much more evident in Night than in Uprising. However, one main difference is that they are different struggles, and perspective does not play a big role in the fire in Uprising, while the entire book of Night was about differing perspectives.

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In life, there are so many things that can change how a person views things through their perspective. Also, many times when people's perspectives don't line up and are the same people will argue and fight. This is shown in the picture above which shows two people arguing over how many planks are laying on the ground. This can be connected to real life because there are points in say something like sports where something such as a foul is called. After all, that is what the referee can see even though maybe the person who got fouled just tripped. It is important to recognize other people's perspectives because this can prevent big problems and makes the world a better place.

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“Different Perspectives Game” PLATO - Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization Date, https://www.plato-philosophy.org/teachertoolkit/different-perspectives-game/. 5/19/2023.

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This is a very good article summarizing the events of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It states how this is a horrible infamous event that proved how poor the safety of workplaces was back at the time. The article refers to the working conditions as true sweatshops that specifically recruited immigrant women looking to get jobs. It says there were ineffective ways to get through the factory which were on the top 3 floors of a building. Another weird thing that this article says is that these problems were very well- known yet they were ignored. This related to the main question because of how the different perspectives about the factory led to a bad event like this. The workers did not like the factory at all because of its low pay, and some people were also scared that it was "rich" and did not have any fire exits. The rich people did not think there would be a fire and they did not add any fire exits, which shows different perspectives. These different perspectives are shaped by the different life experiences of the rich and poor. Another thing about perspective was how, even though different people have different perspectives, everyone everywhere thought it was a bad, unfortunate event and that fire exits are needed.

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The book Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix is a historical fiction story about an incident in 1911. This horrible event was the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire which had casualties of 146 workers. This story is told through the view of three main characters one being Bella who is a young woman from Italy who moved to the US to live with her cousin Pietro. Once she gets to America she is overwhelmed by how different everything is and gets a job at a factory where she gets paid nearly nothing and then Pietro leaves and she has more struggles with her family. Another character is Jane who is a former rich high-class girl who has lived her whole life in the gossip thinking she is better than everyone else. However one day she gets a realization and realizes she isn't surrounded by good people. The third girl is Yetta who is a Russian Immigrant and has a life with her sister. These three end up meeting and through the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire only one ends up alive and one falls to their death, well one gets trapped in a fire.

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“‘You tricked me!’ She said… She glared at him” (Haddix 48)

Bella never talks back to the manager, but in the three months, she has gotten used to the factory, and her perspective of the factory owner as a powerful, merciless man has changed.

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“...she’d [Yetta] had her own glorious moment of rebellion.” (Haddix 34)

From Bella’s perspective, a Strike was horrible, but from Yetta’s, it is necessary. This shows how two different experiences can shape two different perspectives.