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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Article: 

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

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Perspective, What Shapes Your View of the World?

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Perspective, What Shapes Your View of the World?

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George, Whitney. Perspective: What Shapes Your View of the World? YouTube, YouTube, 21 Oct. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAtTJSELKgA. Accessed 19 May 2023.

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Haddix, Margaret Peterson. Uprising. Turtleback, 2011. Accessed 18 May 2023.

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Poem by: Annie Meharg

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Poem by: Annie Meharg

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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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Perspective: What Shapes Your View of the World? by Whitney George

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Perspective: What Shapes Your View of the World? by Whitney George

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAtTJSELKgA

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Perspective: What Shapes Your View of the World?

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Meharg, Annie. “Poem: The Triangle Factory Fire.” Triangle Fire Open Archive, open-https://archive.rememberthetrianglefire.org/poem-the-triangle-factory-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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The Triangle Shirtwaist factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located on 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 teenage 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 fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it. Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again. On March 25, a fire began in a rag bin and the manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful. 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. The Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law passed that October and the New York Democratic set took up the cause of the worker and became known as a reform party.

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In this video, Whitney George talks about what perspective is, and even the actual definition of what it means. She talks about how many factors are in play with our perspective, like our upbringing, the things we experience in our daily lives, the consequences of our actions, and our cultural environment. All of these major factors and many more play a huge role in our perspective and how we see and judge things in this world. This video relates to the essential question because it talks about how our perspective is changed and our essential question's main idea is about perspective. Overall, I believe that perspective plays a major role in life and affects every decision we make.

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In the book Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix, history did unfold accurately because even though the characters are fake, the situation, the fire, was told accurately. Many facts and details about the fire were correctly stated, like the deaths, and even the process of how it happened. Even the after-effects of the fire were also explained well in the book. All these facts and details prove that history unfolded accurately.

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In my opinion, the person’s thinking, values, state of mind, and many other factors contribute to revealing them and shape the reader’s understanding of their thinking perspective, and reaction. If the person is a thief the author will reveal his thinking as bad and his state of mind as disturbed. If it was a good character the author will reveal his thinking as good and show his state of mind as normal. I also believe that reaction to certain situations also reveals their perspective and personality. Lastly, I believe that the final result also contributes to the person and his perspective, If he ends up a successful person we know he made good decisions in life and has a good perspective. If he ends up a criminal we know he made bad decisions and has a bad perspective.

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The poem Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, by Annie Meharg was a poem dedicated to people that have lost their lives in the factory fire. She talks about how factory workers are underpaid and overworked. No one understood the lives of these young men and women trying to feed their families. She talks about how the fire started. She also talks about the sadness of how the doors were locked, the fire escapes were small, and how they were trapped and suffocated.

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Wiesel, Elie. Night. Avon Books, 1973. Accessed 18 May 2023.

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Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix is a book about 3 young women who have all come from different pasts. Some immigrated to America for a new chance at life and to provide for their families back home. Our main characters, Bella, Yetta, and Jane, all impact the story of this book because they all work together to fight for women's rights. They endure many hardships on their journey and face many problems and complications. However, one day a fire in their factory erupts and changes their lives forever. The fire changed America's view on women and their cause for protesting, especially against the factories that made these young immigrant girls work so cheaply because they needed to support their families.

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The book Night by Elie Wiesel follows the story of the author himself and his hardships during World War ll. He and his family are forced out of their home and moved to a concentration camp. He and his family are then separated and he and his father must work together to survive. It is similar to the book Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix because both are about the stories of people being treated worse than others because of who they are. A difference between them is in Night they are forced to move and stay in the cold and fed little. Whereas in the book Uprising, they choose to leave the factory to protest.

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1. “Don’t you want to know what the job is?” Pietro asked, a mocking tone in his voice that seemed to say, behind the words, Stupid Girl. No more brains than a mule. And she actually thinks she is capable of doing a job in New York City (Haddix 7).

2. “What is a shirtwaist?” She asked. Pietro’s face turned slightly red (Haddix 9).

3. “That is a Shirtwaist ruined”, he said. “That’ll come out of your salary young lady!” Twenty-five cents extra for every shirtwaist I ruin? Bella wondered. I could end up losing money at my new job! (Haddix 47).