The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

New York’s garment industry was built on low wages, long hours, and crowded, dangerous loft factories. Workers — many of them recent immigrants struggling with a new language — risked their jobs if they complained. A year before the fire, Triangle workers had struck for union recognition, higher wages, and better safety conditions; the shop remained non-union.

Fire inspections and precautions were woefully inadequate. Owners frequently locked exit doors, claiming workers stole materials. The building’s fire escape was flimsy, and fire department ladders reached only a few floors up.

A fire broke out near closing time on the top floors of the ten-story building. Workers on the ninth floor struggled to open doors to the stairs; they and many others believed the doors had been deliberately locked. The single fire escape bent and collapsed under the weight of those trying to escape. Firefighters’ ladders were several stories too short, and their hoses could not reach the top floors. Many workers jumped to their deaths in front of horrified crowds rather than burn. By the end, 146 were dead and 71 injured.

Mourning and protest followed; the labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, a former Triangle worker, declared that “the life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred.” The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were tried for manslaughter, but on December 27, 1911, the jury acquitted them because it could not be proven they knew the doors were locked. In a civil settlement they paid $75 per life lost. Blanck was later fined just $20 for locking a door at another factory.

The fire exposed the inhumane conditions industrial workers could face and became a rallying point for labor and reform movements. As The American Yawp puts it, events such as the Triangle fire convinced many Americans of the need for reform and for government intervention in the economy — central aims of the Progressive movement. The victims are still remembered as martyrs of the labor movement.