• The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a garment factory in New York City, in which a fire broke out. The fire took place on March 25, 1911. The fire caused the death of 146 garment workers. 

• The cause of the fire is thought to be a cigarette butt that fell into a bin full of fabric scraps and tissue paper.

Where: Baltimore, Maryland

Who: railroad workers 

When: Jul 1877 - Sept 1877 

Why: upset with cut wages

Eyewitness Report:

August 17, 1894

“We, the people of Pullman, who, by the greed and oppression of George M. Pullman, have been brought to a condition where starvation stares us in the face, do hereby appeal to you for aid in this hour of need. We have been refused employment and have no means of leaving this vicinity, and our families are starving.”

Letter from the Pullman Citizens to the Governor of Illinois

Investigation Findings: The short-term cause of this strike was Pullman cutting wages while keeping workers' high rent to pay to live in his town. Along with this, the working conditions in the Pullman industry were very harsh. The long-term cause of this strike was the rise of labor unions, which caused workers to seek higher wages and better working conditions. The person to blame for this is Pullman because he decided to lower the wages his workers got paid while also demanding that they continue to pay the high rent that they used to pay.

Mr. John King, Jr., First Vice President of the Road, was telegraphed to at his country residence, Chesnut Hill, and informed of the trouble at Martinsburg. Mr. King rode into town and arrived at Camden Station about half-past eleven o'clock, and immediately telegraphed to Governor Matthews at Wheeling, West Virginia, stating that the Company's trains in both directions had been stopped at Martinsburg by the strikers; that there had been a riot, and the local authorities were unable to suppress it. He asked the Governor to call out the military of the State to suppress the riot, and to enable the Company to transact its business with safety and regularity. In a short time - Baltimore American Newspaper

Mr. King received the following despatch:

There are two companies at Martinsburg supplied with ammunition. I have telegraphed to my aide-de-camp, Colonel C.J. Faulkner, Jr., to aid the civil authorities with these companies in the execution of the laws of the State, and to suppress the riot. I will do all I can to preserve the peace, and secure safety to your trains and railroad operatives.

The Homestead Strike was a violent strike held by workers at the Carnegie Steel Company that ended in a gunfight.  Tensions between the workers and management in the company is what sparked the initial disagreement, which then led to a lockout.  This strike did not allow the workers in the factory, and Carnegie hired guards to protect the factory itself.  This is what led to the gun fight that resulted in several deaths.

Investigation Findings: What were the long-term / short-term causes of this event? Who - if anyone - deserves blame? 

Both Carnegie and Henry C. Frick are to blame for the Homestead Strike. Carnegie and Frick determined that they would cut wages and eliminate the craft union, the AAISW. While Carnegie set sail for a European vacation in 1892, Frick began taking forceful steps toward that goal. Second, Frick was able to mobilize a military force capable of fighting workers on strike. Frick hired Pinkerton detectives and later gained the assistance of the state militia to put down any workers intent on disrupting the Carnegie plant.

Short Term cause: Frick (in charge of town and mill at the time) refused to negotiate with the union after their contract with Carnegie expired, so he shuttered the steel mill and caused 3,800 workers to walk out.

If anyone should be blamed it should be the workers in the factory at the time the fire started, but we can’t be sure they’re the ones who started the fire since both the workers and the factory owners suffered great losses in the fire.

• What: A secretive society in Eastern US and Ireland blamed for a series of violent assaults and murders.

• Who: Irish immigrants 

  • Leader: Jack Kehoe 

  • When: 1862-1876 

• Where: Coal fields in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania 

Why: Their goal was to protect workers from oppressive mine owners

Part One, Chapter One (excerpt), page 18

The first hook and ladder-Company 20-came up Mercer Street so fast, says Rubino, "that it almost didn't make the turn into Washington Place."

The firemen were having trouble with their horses. They weren't trained for the blood and the sound of the falling bodies. They kept rearing on their hind legs, their eyes rolling. Some men pulled the hitching pins and the horses broke loose, whinnying. Others grabbed the reins and led them away.

The crowd began to shout: "Raise the ladders!"

Company 20 had the tallest ladder in the Fire Department. It swung into position, and a team of men began to crank its lifting gears. A hush fell over the crowd.

The ladder continued to rise. One girl on the ninth floor ledge slowly waved her handkerchief as the ladder crept toward her.

Then the men stopped cranking. The ladder stopped rising.

The crowd yelled in one voice: "Raise the ladders!"

"But the ladder had been raised," Rubino says. "It was raised to its fullest length. It reached only to the sixth floor."

The crowd continued to shout. On the ledge, the girl stopped waving her handkerchief. A flame caught the edge of her skirt. She leaped for the top of the ladder almost 30 feet below her, missed, hit the sidewalk like a flaming comet.

Chief Worth had arrived at the scene at 4:46 O, had ordered the second alarm to be transmitted at 4:48. Two more alarms were called, one at 4:55 and a fourth at 5:10.

In the first two minutes after his arrival, the Chief had assessed the situation. He directed his men to aim high water pressure hoses on the wall above the heads of those trapped on the ledge. "We hoped it would cool off the building close to them and reassure them. It was about the only reassurance we could give. The men did the best they could. But there is no apparatus in the department to cope with this kind of fire."

 “There is no evidence that I or any of us killed, or had anything to do with the killing of, policemen at the Haymarket. None at all. But it was proven clearly that we were all of us anarchists, socialists, communists, Knights of Labor, unionists. It was proven that three of us were editors of labor papers; that five of us were labor organizers and speakers at workingmen’s mass meetings. They, this class court, jury, law and verdict, have decided that we must be put to death because, as they say, we are “leaders” of men who denounce and battle against oppression, slaveries, robbery and influences of monopolists. Of these crimes against the capitalist class they found us guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, and, so finding, they have sentenced us.”