Introduction:
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was just like one of the many thousands of factories dotted all over the United States, a terrible place for workers who had to trudge to work every day in abominable conditions without any dignity. So it was of no small wonder that the incident known as the Triangle killed over 100 men and women (the death toll was mostly women) with several more ending up badly injured. The book focuses on statistics and details with a lot of research being done on those who died as well as other angles including the condition of the factory, the state of the fire escapes and the equipment which was available. The large high rise building which dominated the New York skyline was full of nooks and crannies as well as dangerous areas which obviously increased the chances of disaster.
JoAnn Argesinger’s introduction deals with the situation regarding women factory workers in those days and she points out several crucial issues which led to the disaster. Principally she spoke of the bad safety conditions inside the factory as well as the fact that the girls worked in abominable conditions. She also focuses on the fire itself, how it spread quickly without leaving much chance for survival as well as the extensive reform which was undertaken afterwards by the authorities who wished to avoid this great tragedy happening again. The Triangle Fire is described as ‘The Fire that Changed America’, a tough and descriptive statement in this respect which also shows how more than one hundred years after it occurred, this was still an incident which was seen as seminal and hugely important in history.
The Documents
One of the most interesting documents which is reproduced in the book is Arthur McFarlane’s Fire and the Skyscraper, the Problem of Protecting factory workers in New York’s High Rise factories. Mcfarlane who was an insurance executive deals extensively with the problem of the protection of the said workers. He gives a fastidiously detailed account on the conditions in the factories and how these were extremely susceptible to fires which would obviously have made the chances of survival for those who were caught in them virtually nil especially if these occurred above the seventh storey of a building.
Pearl Goodman and Elsa Ueland focus on the Shirtwaist trade where one can read about the absolutely abominable conditions in which most of the New York women worked. The statistics are absolutely astonishing where girls worked an average of 80 nights per year in overtime with one girl even working 120 nights in a year so this must have been quite indicative of their state of mind and concentration levels (Goodman, Ueland, 1911).
However, the piece with interest is the one where Rose Cohen, a survivor of the Triangle fire goes into extensive detail about her work experiences. Cohen describes the abominable working conditions which were rife in those factories and the incredible privations which her father went through to keep the family afloat, a situation which was probably all too prominent in the families of the Upper East Side. Cohen continues to describe the arbitrary way in which she was employed at the shirtwaist factory being paid just a miserly 3 dollars a week for several hours of back breaking work.
‘From this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars for this and he hurried me from early till late” (p 49)
Clara Lemlich (1909) also goes into great detail on her life in the sweatshop which was also nothing short of horrifying. She accounts for the situation where girls had to work in extremely hot conditions without any sort of care for their welfare. Having come from Russia, she was adept at organizing workers on strike and had incredible success in 1909 with over forty thousand workers obeying the call to go out on strike accordingly.
Probably the most informative of the articles in the book is the account of the actual fire by The New York World in an article published on March 27 1911. William Sheppard who happened to be on duty at the time describes the situation quite graphically especially regarding the women jumping out of the windows, most of them ‘with their hair and clothing ablaze’. He also eloquently describes the thuds as these women crashed to the ground ‘without uttering a moan’ (p 73).
The Chicago Sunday Tribune is perhaps more intent to grab its readers by the scruff of the neck when it describes the incident as ‘Thrilling Gotham Holocaust claims over One Hundred and Fifty Lives’ on March 28th 1911. Here the dramatic descriptions are given a sombre and almost macabre foil, descriptions of girls hanging by their fingers from 10th floor windows ‘until the flames licked at them’ or a woman ‘throwing out her furs and pocketbook and jumping to her death’ (p 77). Although these vivid and film like snapshots may not be true, they certainly add drama to what must have been a horrible situation.
The partners account of the factory fire is slightly hypocritical as it does nothing but absolve them of the blame with regard to the worst disaster in New York labour history. Their account was published in The New York Times on the 26 March 1911 and makes for intriguing and almost fantastical reading. What is certain is that Max Blanck and Isaac Harris did actually participate in the rescue and salvage operations but the hellish nature of the building and the lack of proper safety features doomed their efforts from the start.
Conclusion – no safety for the workers.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was definitely a terrible thing and came just a couple of years after the massive strike of factory workers who were campaigning for better safety amongst themselves and for their peers. The book is definitely an excellent snapshot of the day and also includes extensive detail especially in the accounts of those women who survived the fire which I found most interesting and intriguing. The articles from newspapers describing the funeral of the victims are also harrowing reading especially the one from The New York Times however what stuck in my mind was the description of the lives of the factory girls who had to face a life of toil and misery almost on a daily basis to satisfy those who wanted to make substantial amounts of money out of them. The book is an essential one for those wishing to gain an insight on the situation for factory girls in the US at the time.
