On March 25, 1911, a small fire on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory started near quitting time on a Saturday afternoon. The workers present quickly fled only to find the fire door to be chained from the outside. They proceeded to the elevator and began ferrying down ten-at-a-time. Managers on the 10th floor received a call and began evacuating immediately. However, no one saw fit to warn those on the 9th floor.
The fire spread uncontrollably and the upper floor were quickly engulfed. Those unable to escape began hurling themselves out the windows – the only other option being burned alive. While fire crews responded quickly, they were logistically incapable of providing expedient assistance. They tried in vain to catch those who had jumped, only to find their nets and blankets either torn or ripped from their hands as these women hurtled toward the pavement at fatal speeds.
All told, 146 women perished in the blaze or as a result of their falls. Public reaction was emotional and called for justice. An investigation would yield naught but bureaucratic finger-pointing. Charitable organizations responded but the would-be victims and the affected families were beyond calls for compensation. Women, it would play out, were going to be “central to the resistance movement to change the conditions responsible for the fire [1].
New York’s middle class held meetings to try to rally the survivors and other activists. At a meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, class distinctions were made more apparent than unity. While the charitable middle-class took the floor, the workers were relegated to the balconies and out of view. The meeting became unruly “until Rose Schneiderman rose to speak. Schneiderman had been sitting quietly on the platform, representing both the WTUL and the ILGWU” [2].
Immediately recognizable by her fellow working women, Schneiderman commanded the floor. She spoke unapologetically:
“I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We [the working class] have found the good people of the public and we have found you wanting . . . We have tried you, citizens: we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and daughters and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavy upon us. I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement”[3]
A plan was made to have a public funeral for the unidentified women of the tragedy. The city caught wind of the pending demonstration that the funeral was preparing to become of withheld releasing the bodies. The funeral went forward as an honorary event and the march drew 10s of thousands. Schneiderman said defiantly that “‘this parade has been the only thing that will demonstrate to the people of the enormous responsibility resting on them to see to it that fire protection is given these thousands and thousands of factory workers.'” [4]
An investigation was started into those to hold responsible for the fire. In the end, it amounted to mere finger pointing and nobody was willing to take responsibility and undertake preventative measures for the future.
The trial of the owners, Harris and Blanck, was a sham. Their attorney put the women on trial. As working women, that they were working outside the home implied they were loose and lascivious. In the end, the civil suit only remitted a pittance for the victims of the fire.
Greenwald makes a point about the whole ordeal being about gender and he is right. While this tragedy went largely unpunished, the civil disobedience and long-term motivation of the affected women and their supporters would have a lasting effect on the working conditions.
Citations and text taken from :
GREENWALD, RICHARD A. “”The Burning Building at 23 Washington Place”: The Triangle Fire, Workers and Reformers in Progressive Era New York.” New York History 83, no. 1 (2002): 55-91. http://www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/23183517.
[1] p.66
[2]p.73
[3]p.74
[4]p.79
