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pecuniumYou see them from coast to coast. You see them because of The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which happened 100 years ago today.
It was close on quitting time, when the fire started... it was all over but the shouting in about forty minutes. 146 dead of, roughly, 500 employees. I say roughly because the owners didn't know how many people were working there. Of those 62 jumped to their deaths from the building. There were 25 bodies on top of the last elevator to make up and back.
Zito [the elevator operator] reportedly told the New York Times that day that they "pulled my hair, dived on top of me, climbed on the roof, and packed themselves in on top of each other. The car is built for 10 passengers. I carried 40 on the last trip down." (WNYC story)
Why did it happen? Lax regulation was part of it. Inspections had shown grievous failures in basic precautions against fire. The sum total of the means to put the fire out was 27 buckets of water. The only fire escape didn't reach the ground. It didn't help that the equipment the fire department had was inadequate to deal with a fire of a building more than six stories tall. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch building.
Worse, it was something which was predictable. There had been a fire in Newark, New Jersey which cost 26 lives. In a grim precursor 19 of them leapt to their deaths. The result...? The fire chief warned of possible disaster in New York, "This city may have a fire as deadly as the one in Newark at any time. There are buildings in New York where the danger is every bit as great as in the building destroyed in Newark. A fire in the daytime would be accompanied by a terrible loss of life." Things went on as they had before.
How did they go?
The day's work was supposed to end at six in the afternoon. But, during most of the year we youngsters worked overtime until 9 p.m. every night except Fridays and Saturdays. No, we did not get additional pay for overtime. At this point it is worth recording the generocity (sic) of the Triangle Waist Co. by giving us a piece of apple pie for supper instead of additional pay! Working men and women of today who receive time and one half and at times double time for overtime will find it difficult to understand and to believe that the workers of those days were evidently willing to accept such conditions of labor without protest. However, the answer is quite simple -- we were not organized and we knew that individual protest amounted to the loss of one's job. No one in those days could afford the luxory (sic) of changing jobs -- there was no unemployment insurance, there was nothing better than to look for another job which will not be better than the one we had. Therefore, we were, due to our ignorance and poverty, helpless against the power of the exploiters. (Letters of Pauline Newman).
The next morning when I came into the shop at seven o'clock, I saw at once that all the people were there and working steadily as if they had been at work a long while. I had just time to put away my coat and go over to the table, when the boss shouted gruffly, "Look here, girl, if you want to work here you better come in early. No office hours in my shop." It seemed very still in the room, even the machines stopped. And his voice sounded dreadfully distinct. I hastened into the bit of space between the two men and sat down. He brought me two coats and snapped, "Hurry with these!"
From this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried me from early until late. He gave me only two coats at a time to do. When I took them over and as he handed me the new work he would say quickly and sharply, "Hurry!" And when he did not say it in words he looked at me and I seemed to hear even more plainly, "Hurry!" I hurried but he was never satisfied. By looks and manner he made me feel that I was not doing enough Late at night when the people would stand up and begin to fold their work away and I too would rise, feeling stiff in every limb and thinking with dread of our cold empty little room and the uncooked rice, he would come over with still another coat. (account of Rose Cohen)
Why did it goes as it had before?
Chief Croker said it was an outrage. He spoke bitterly of the way in which the Manufacturers' Association had called a meeting in Wall Street to take measures against his proposal for enforcing better methods of protection for employees in cases of fire. (New York Times, 26 March, 1911).
When the Triangle Shirtwaist Company applied for insurance, in 1909, the inspector said they were deficient in fire prevention/escape. They were told to mitigate. They didn't. They had not one fire drill. They only allowed the workers to use one exit, the other was locked. The fire escape was internal, and went to a second story skylight. The people who tried to use it, died.
The owners happened to be in the building, with their children, and a governess. They escaped, by going up to the roof and away, by a route none of the people who worked for them knew about. They were tried for manslaughter, on the question of the locked doors. it appears they had some people willing to testify that they didn't lock it. They were acquitted.
When they tried to open another factory... it had the same sort of conditions. The Building Department became aware yesterday that the “Triangle” factory bosses have opened a new shop at 5-9 University Place, which is just as dangerous as their prior factory. The structure it’s located in is six floors high and is not fireproof. The “Triangle” shop will be on the top floor and the bosses have set so many machines up there that in case of an accident it would be impossible for the workers to access the fire escapes. The elevators there are also poor. The building has one passenger elevator which is extremely slow. The stairs are dark and narrow. (Jewish Daily, "Vorverts" 1 April, 1911and)
They were tried for manslaughter. The case hinged on the question of the doors being locked. The jury chose to believe the witnesses who said they weren't, and returned verdict of not guilty in about two hours.
It would have, pretty much, ended there. As with the protests in Wisconsin, the interest of the press was short lived. Luckily the political machine that was Tammany Hall needed new supporters, as the constituencies they had been serving managed to move into a more middle class life. They saw the huge crowds which turned out for the memorial march. They saw a way to get new votes. To do that, they had to address the wishes and needs of those voters. Those voters saw unionization (which the owners of Triangle had, militantly, resisted, even in the face of a general strike which had rearranged some of the landscape a few years prior), and, more importantly, regulation; and the enforcement of them, as important.
It changed Tammany Hall. They actually started to work towards reforms. The people who were named to the commission to investigate the fire, Al Smith, and Robert Wagner became, New York State Governor and US Senator. The Shirtwaist Fire seems to have informed their attitudes throughout their careers.
Which is why we have signs on doors in businesses, "This door to remain unlocked during business hours," and it's why those doors (and all emergency exits) open outwards.
(for more on the fire, and what it means today, Cornell University has some excellent resources, as does the Jewish Daily Forward; from which I gained much of the material I took specific incidents: Archival, and Why it matters today)
It was close on quitting time, when the fire started... it was all over but the shouting in about forty minutes. 146 dead of, roughly, 500 employees. I say roughly because the owners didn't know how many people were working there. Of those 62 jumped to their deaths from the building. There were 25 bodies on top of the last elevator to make up and back.
Zito [the elevator operator] reportedly told the New York Times that day that they "pulled my hair, dived on top of me, climbed on the roof, and packed themselves in on top of each other. The car is built for 10 passengers. I carried 40 on the last trip down." (WNYC story)
Why did it happen? Lax regulation was part of it. Inspections had shown grievous failures in basic precautions against fire. The sum total of the means to put the fire out was 27 buckets of water. The only fire escape didn't reach the ground. It didn't help that the equipment the fire department had was inadequate to deal with a fire of a building more than six stories tall. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch building.
Worse, it was something which was predictable. There had been a fire in Newark, New Jersey which cost 26 lives. In a grim precursor 19 of them leapt to their deaths. The result...? The fire chief warned of possible disaster in New York, "This city may have a fire as deadly as the one in Newark at any time. There are buildings in New York where the danger is every bit as great as in the building destroyed in Newark. A fire in the daytime would be accompanied by a terrible loss of life." Things went on as they had before.
How did they go?
The day's work was supposed to end at six in the afternoon. But, during most of the year we youngsters worked overtime until 9 p.m. every night except Fridays and Saturdays. No, we did not get additional pay for overtime. At this point it is worth recording the generocity (sic) of the Triangle Waist Co. by giving us a piece of apple pie for supper instead of additional pay! Working men and women of today who receive time and one half and at times double time for overtime will find it difficult to understand and to believe that the workers of those days were evidently willing to accept such conditions of labor without protest. However, the answer is quite simple -- we were not organized and we knew that individual protest amounted to the loss of one's job. No one in those days could afford the luxory (sic) of changing jobs -- there was no unemployment insurance, there was nothing better than to look for another job which will not be better than the one we had. Therefore, we were, due to our ignorance and poverty, helpless against the power of the exploiters. (Letters of Pauline Newman).
The next morning when I came into the shop at seven o'clock, I saw at once that all the people were there and working steadily as if they had been at work a long while. I had just time to put away my coat and go over to the table, when the boss shouted gruffly, "Look here, girl, if you want to work here you better come in early. No office hours in my shop." It seemed very still in the room, even the machines stopped. And his voice sounded dreadfully distinct. I hastened into the bit of space between the two men and sat down. He brought me two coats and snapped, "Hurry with these!"
From this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried me from early until late. He gave me only two coats at a time to do. When I took them over and as he handed me the new work he would say quickly and sharply, "Hurry!" And when he did not say it in words he looked at me and I seemed to hear even more plainly, "Hurry!" I hurried but he was never satisfied. By looks and manner he made me feel that I was not doing enough Late at night when the people would stand up and begin to fold their work away and I too would rise, feeling stiff in every limb and thinking with dread of our cold empty little room and the uncooked rice, he would come over with still another coat. (account of Rose Cohen)
Why did it goes as it had before?
Chief Croker said it was an outrage. He spoke bitterly of the way in which the Manufacturers' Association had called a meeting in Wall Street to take measures against his proposal for enforcing better methods of protection for employees in cases of fire. (New York Times, 26 March, 1911).
When the Triangle Shirtwaist Company applied for insurance, in 1909, the inspector said they were deficient in fire prevention/escape. They were told to mitigate. They didn't. They had not one fire drill. They only allowed the workers to use one exit, the other was locked. The fire escape was internal, and went to a second story skylight. The people who tried to use it, died.
The owners happened to be in the building, with their children, and a governess. They escaped, by going up to the roof and away, by a route none of the people who worked for them knew about. They were tried for manslaughter, on the question of the locked doors. it appears they had some people willing to testify that they didn't lock it. They were acquitted.
When they tried to open another factory... it had the same sort of conditions. The Building Department became aware yesterday that the “Triangle” factory bosses have opened a new shop at 5-9 University Place, which is just as dangerous as their prior factory. The structure it’s located in is six floors high and is not fireproof. The “Triangle” shop will be on the top floor and the bosses have set so many machines up there that in case of an accident it would be impossible for the workers to access the fire escapes. The elevators there are also poor. The building has one passenger elevator which is extremely slow. The stairs are dark and narrow. (Jewish Daily, "Vorverts" 1 April, 1911and)
They were tried for manslaughter. The case hinged on the question of the doors being locked. The jury chose to believe the witnesses who said they weren't, and returned verdict of not guilty in about two hours.
It would have, pretty much, ended there. As with the protests in Wisconsin, the interest of the press was short lived. Luckily the political machine that was Tammany Hall needed new supporters, as the constituencies they had been serving managed to move into a more middle class life. They saw the huge crowds which turned out for the memorial march. They saw a way to get new votes. To do that, they had to address the wishes and needs of those voters. Those voters saw unionization (which the owners of Triangle had, militantly, resisted, even in the face of a general strike which had rearranged some of the landscape a few years prior), and, more importantly, regulation; and the enforcement of them, as important.
It changed Tammany Hall. They actually started to work towards reforms. The people who were named to the commission to investigate the fire, Al Smith, and Robert Wagner became, New York State Governor and US Senator. The Shirtwaist Fire seems to have informed their attitudes throughout their careers.
Which is why we have signs on doors in businesses, "This door to remain unlocked during business hours," and it's why those doors (and all emergency exits) open outwards.
(for more on the fire, and what it means today, Cornell University has some excellent resources, as does the Jewish Daily Forward; from which I gained much of the material I took specific incidents: Archival, and Why it matters today)
