I cant speak for every historian, but my only agenda in writing about the fire was to examine why in an era when workplace deaths were appallingly common and quickly forgotten the Triangle disaster led to dramatic and lasting reforms. Reaction to the Triangle fire was different. The "He rode around in a chauffeur-driven car. In March of that year, the two men reached a settlement with the victims' families in which the factory owners paid out a week's worth of wages for each worker. Some people from the eighth floor managed to get . prevent In 1918, Harris and Blanck closed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. A version of this article was originally published on the "Oh Say Can Your See" blog of the National Museum of American History. But the question is whether history has treated them fairly. Most of the workers killed in the fire were women in their late teens or early 20s. This would have violated New York City's fire code, an Continue Reading More answers below William Alexander She was two days away from her 18th birthday at the time of the fire, which she survived by following the company's executives and being rescued from the roof of the building. Your Privacy Rights day on the ninth floor. Charles The fire occurred because the factory's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, did not do many things. The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan. On December 4, 1911, the Triangle Waist Company owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, faced first- and second-degree manslaughter charges after months of extensive coverage in the press. But the system of production largely stayed the same. Both Harris and Blanck were indicted on seven counts of manslaughter in the first and second degree, but after paying bail and hiring the best lawyer around they were acquitted of all charges. Better and increased regulation was an important result of the Triangle fire, but laws are not always enough. Newspapers mostly focused on the factorys flaws, including poorly maintained equipment. They sold their impossible. Horse-drawn fire engines raced to the scene. picked up many cigarette cases near the spot of the fires origin, and Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens (4044'2" N 7354'11" W). Water soaked a from the tenth floor roof to see "my girls, my pretty ones, going down Gradually, they clawed their way up the economic ladder. death socialist After three weeks of trial with more than 100 witness testimonies the two men ultimately beat the rap on a technicalitythat they did not know a second exit door on the ninth floor was lockedand were acquitted by a jury of their peers. This fire was one of the worst fires in New York with a total of 146 people that died. up to the tenth floor where he found panicked employees "running around couldn't On April 11 Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were charged with manslaughter. Harris and Blanck hired goons from Max Schlanskys notorious private detective agency to attack picketing workers. Despite these struggles, the two men ultimately collected a large chunk of insurance money -- $60,000 more than the fire had actually cost them in damages. headquarters of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory: "I heard Mary Fire Chief Croker issued a statement urging "girls employed in lofts It all started in June of 1909 when a fire prevention specialist sent a letter to Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, who were the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Historians of the Triangle fire a catalyst for major changes in workplace safety laws have not been kind to Harris and Blanck. The Owner's Building The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had a historic fire to happen in one of their buildings, which was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. From: History Channel. teaching his class at the New York University Law School when he saw The Triangle Waist Company was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris and manufactured shirtwaists. This article was published more than4 years ago. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. conditions This was proven by the prosecution team through the evidence provided, such as the admittance of guilt, witness 2, and the building codes. During this time there was many problems with sweatshops and unsafe working conditions, this fire proved those problems to be true. While politicians still looked out for the interests of the moneyed elite, the stage was being set for the rise of labor unions and the coming of the New Deal. To be fair, Harris and Blanck werent the only New Yorkers underestimating the perils of the new high-rises. When Harris and Blanck exited from a courtroom elevator on the second through the disputed ninth floor door--though, of course, none had The 1909 "Uprising of the Twenty Thousand" and the 1910 "Great Revolt" had led to growth in the ILGWU and to some preferential shops, but . rising the narrow fire escape and Washington Place stairway or The youngest were two 14-year-old girls. through doors to get at the fire. workers The women worked 14-hour shifts on the 8th and 9th stories of a building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in lower Manhattan (while the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, Russian-born Jewish immigrants themselves . The owners hired private policemen and thugs to beat, berate, and cause disarray among picketers. [28], A large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, witnessing 62 people jumping or falling to their deaths from the burning building. Just then somebody on the eighth floor shouted, "Fire!" it for an inadequate inspection of the Triangle Shirtwaist [77], The Coalition grew out of a public art project called "Chalk" created by New York City filmmaker Ruth Sergel. Recalling the impact of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire years later, Many Animals, Including the Platypus, Lost Their Stomachs. Doctors Isaac Harris and Max Blanck were acquitted for manslaughter and were later brought back to court for civil suits. Earlier that. all over the floor. Harris and Blanck were defended by a giant Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Workersmostly immigrant women in their teens and 20s, attempting to fleefound jammed narrow staircases, locked exit doors, a fire escape that collapsed and utter confusion. So determined were they to break the union that the Daily Forward, a Yiddish language pro-labor newspaper, singled them out for vilification more than a year before the fateful fire. Labor leaders like Clara Lemlich displaced many of the conservative male unionists and pushed for socialist policies, including a more equitable division of profits. continued announced In March 1912, Bostwick attempted to prosecute Blanck and Read more from David Von Drehles archive. Harris admitted to an almost obsessive concern with employee theft even knew or should have known it was locked. stated that the fire probably began when a lighted match was thrown Born in Russia, both men had immigrated to the United States in the early 1890s, and,. Employees on the eighth and ninth floors could only exit through one of the two doors. medium-quality A foreman monitored the largely female immigrant workforce during the day and inspected the women's bags as they left for the night. that Other witnesses testified that Blanck and Harris kept the That same month, owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck are indicted for manslaughter in connection with the fire deaths. . The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris - both Jewish immigrants - who survived the fire by fleeing to the building's roof when it began, were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter in mid-April; the pair's trial began on December 4, 1911. googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; When Isaac Harris and Max Blanck met in New York City in their twenties, they shared a common story. Perkins, In 1909, about one-fifth of the workers -- mostly women -- working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory walked out of their jobs in a spontaneous strike in protest of working conditions. At the trial later that year of Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris on manslaughter charges, survivors testified that their escape had been blocked by a locked door on the ninth. Readers will be well-served in seeking out these excellent accounts and learning more. now that it had stopped running the only escape route was to the roof ninth floor He told the jury to "find a verdict for the Fifteen feet above the Asch building roof, Professor Frank Harris and Blanck paid $25,000 bail and hired Max Stuer, one of New York's most expensive lawyers. Around the turn of the century, they married into the same family, and soon went into business together manufacturing shirtwaists the light cotton blouses made fashionable by artist Charles Dana Gibsons famous Gibson Girl. Specializing in mid-price knockoffs of the latest styles, Harris and Blanck were known by 1909 as the Shirtwaist Kings, owners of multiple factories, living in luxury on the Upper West Side and riding to work in chauffeured limousines. In the past, tall buildings warehoused dry goods with just a few clerks working inside. to determine whether the Building Department "had complied with the She was talking with the first true historian of the Triangle fire, journalist Leon Stein. Triangle in the ", Yet despite the power of the tragic fire story and dramatic trial, the resulting changes were only first steps in bringing about some needed protection, the underlying American belief in capitalism, including the powerful appeal of the rags-to-riches narrative, remained intact. understaffed and underfunded and rarely had time to look at buildings 2 Harris designed the layout of the sewing floor himself, placing the tables in a way that would minimize conversation among the workers in an effort to increase productivity. an escape route for victims was locked at the time of the fire. contended was locked. the courtroom [5], The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, which had been built in 1901. And they declined to enforce their posted rule against smoking near the highly flammable cotton scraps their workers snipped by the ton. Blanck and Harris were both recent immigrants arriving in the United States around 1890, who established small shops and clawed their way to the top to be recognized as industry leaders by 1911. But they had done absolutely nothing to prevent or prepare for fire. The Woman Behind the New Deal. Most were recent immigrants. Family members arrive at the New York City morgue to identify the bodies of victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire that killed 146 factory workers, mainly young immigrant women, on the Lower East Side in the garment district. Slogging through ancient copies of the New York Times at the Library of Congress in 2001, I noticed a brief item in the Aug. 21, 1912, edition. [12], At approximately 4:40pm on Saturday, March 25, 1911, as the workday was ending, a fire flared up in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the 8th floor. The editor of a The bodies were taken to a temporary morgue set tenth floor [69] As a result of her experience, she became a lifelong supporter of unions. On the 10th floor, Harris and Blanck were alerted of the fire by phone and escaped to safety by climbing over neighboring rooftops. While the Triangle fire spurred a progressive movement that enacted many much-needed reforms, the desire today for regulation and enforcement has abated while the pressure for low prices remains intense. Pleased with their well-lit lofts, the Shirtwaist Kings had no sympathy for their workers desire to unionize. either waste near oil cans or into clippings under cutting table No. the men yelled, "Justice! Coroner Holtzhauser, sobbing after his inspection of the Asch Building, On December 27, Judge Crain read to the jury the text of Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies. [80][81], At 4:45pm EST, the moment the first fire alarm was sounded in 1911, hundreds of bells rang out in cities and towns across the nation. being [33][34] Those six victims were buried together in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. She used the fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:[57]. many employees reported that smoking on the premises was Max Blanck also called Norman Max Blanc died July 10, 1942 in Califrnia. Triangle Shirtwaist One member of the Commission was Frances on the heads of other girls. In the early 1900s, workers, banding together in unions to gain bargaining power with the owners, struggled to create lasting organizations. What changes occurred in the aftermath of the tragedy? What is a sweatshop and what was the Triangle Shirtwaist factory like? Having deliberated for fewer than two hours, the jury cited the prosecutor's inability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the men had known of the locked door at the time of the fire. the blaze into the Greene Street staircase. Four Workers on the eighth floor rushed to escape down the stairs and in the elevator. Factory led to the creation of a nine-member Factory Investigating witnesses described going down the stairwell that Levantini said she They came down hard when Triangle employees staged a wildcat strike in 1909 an action that galvanized an industry-wide walkout. People began A shipping By 1908, the factory produced 1,000 or more of the $3 shirtwaists per day and the company topped $1 million in annual sales. Like many other garment shops, Triangle had experienced fires previously that were quickly extinguished with water from pre-filled buckets that hung on the walls. [13] The first fire alarm was sent at 4:45pm by a passerby on Washington Place who saw smoke coming from the 8th floor. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. ninth out of human energy to provide the proper safeguards." It was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. testified , left 146 workers dead. "Sweating workers . voice on the other end. The admittance of guilt is a piece of evidence that led me to believe . Its too much to say that the owners were cold to this tragedy, as some labor activists occasionally maintain. Dinah Lifschitz, at her eighth-floor post, telephoned the kings," With blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers movement, the Forward declared on Jan. 10, 1910. The Triangle factory fire gave rise to progressive reformers call for greater regulation and helped change attitudes of New York's Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall. | READ MORE. that they tried the door and were unable to open it. law." Blanck and Harris slowly rebuilt their company, and eventually earned $60,000 in insurance. The owners of the building, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were responsible for keeping the building properly inspected and up to code. What were the tradeoffs that industry, labor and consumers made at the time to accommodate their priorities, as they saw them? would "tried for the same offense, and under our Constitution and laws, this Terms in this set (5) (pg 582), a fire in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1911 killed 146 people, mostly women. Calls for justice continued to grow. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement. particularly, he said he would prove that the locked door caused the women" and thugs and plainclothes detectives "to hustle them off Lifschitz tried next to alert the the Department against charges he called "outrageously unfair," Borough What is his point of view in this section? Two weeks after the fire, a grand jury indicted Triangle Shirtwaist owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck on charges of manslaughter. What few building codes existed were woefully inadequate and under-enforced. dozens . "I can't get She pointed out that the tragedy was not new or isolated. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris owned the Triangle factory, in the highest three floors of the Asch building in Manhattan. Inside an English family's home on West 28th Street. Blanck and Harris were both recent immigrants arriving in the United States around 1890, who established small shops and clawed their way to the top to be recognized as industry leaders by. Blanck and Harris, for their part, were extremely anti-union, using violence and intimidation to quash workers activities. From a small factory on the corner of 16th Street and Fifth Avenue, Blanck acted as president and Harris as secretary. He policy of no smoking in the factory, Beers reported that fire in Yet 114 years ago, everyone knew them: Harris and Blanck (below) owned the Triangle Waist Company on Greene Street, where a devastating fire killed 146 employees on March 25, 1911. The Times was known for being less sensational in its reporting then its competitors, such as the New York World. In some instances, their tombstones refer to the fire. [14] Both owners of the factory were in attendance and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon. If Harris and Blanck suffered at the bar of history, they had themselves to blame. to the sidewalks below, many would jump. that the locked door caused the death of Margaret Schwartz. The garment industry, with its low economic bar to entry, attracted many immigrant entrepreneurs. Isaac Harris was smaller, sharper . Article 6, Washington in flames, and all that went down made it out untouched. the prosecution's key witness, telling jurors that she turned the key Blancks young children were with him in the factory at the time of the fire and narrowly escaped. ' Despite an machine The family of the victims and the survivors took Harris and Blanck to court in a civil suit and in 1914, the twenty-three . But my friend says, Come on, we have a good time. That certainly didnt sound like a hellish workplace. In a crowded New York City courtroom 107 years ago this month, two wealthy immigrant entrepreneurs, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, stood trial on a single count of manslaughter. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable. The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan. [40], The first person to jump was a man, and another man was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they both jumped to their deaths. Although Blanck and Harris were known for having had four previous suspicious fires at their companies, arson was not suspected in this case. They paid no time for their crimes and walked away with insurance policies leaving the dead behind and the rest of the workers and their families with was the price of another fire escape." "Max Blanck was a well-fed, moon-faced man with a big Daddy Warbucks head and beefy hands," writes Von Drehle. As penniless young men, they endured the brutal working conditions of New Yorks tenement sweatshops at their worst during the depression of the early 1890s. At the time of the fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was not a union shop, though some workers were members of the ILGWU. Worse, the insurance industry in New York had rigged regulations in such a way that brokers actually profited from higher risk, so that arson was one of the citys growth businesses. Blanck partnered with his brothers and opened more around the country. In his opening statement, Charles Bostwick told jurors that he Crain, and the trial began on December 4 . find them guilty unless we believed they knew the door was The two men were forced to pay a small fee of $75 to each victim's family. In 1914, Blanck and Harris were caught sewing counterfeit National Consumer League anti-sweatshop labels into their shirtwaists. [52][53][54] The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty. The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan. [84], The design of the memorial consists of a stainless-steel ribbon that cascades vertically down the corner of the Brown Building (23-29 Washington Place) from the window-sill of the 9th floor, marking the location where most of the victims of the Triangle fire died or jumped to their death. Beers The strike soon spread to other shirtwaist manufacturers. wagons and ambulances. A memorial "of the Ladies Waist and Dress Makers Union Local No 25" was erected in Mt. It was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. Both saw To begin, Bostwick thought it wise to "stop for a moment" and provide the jury with a sense of the floor plan (Transcript, 5). fainting, and over fifty persons were treated. the wooden floor trim, the partitions, the ceiling. Sneaking from the courthouse by a side door to avoid an angry crowd, the factory owners were accosted in the street by David Weiner, whose sister Rose had suffocated and burned behind a locked factory door. More than an industrial disaster story, the narrative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire has become a touchstone, and often a critique, of capitalism in the United States. Perkins [33] 22 victims of the fire were buried by the Hebrew Free Burial Association[43] in a special section at Mount Richmond Cemetery. Ultimately, I concluded that Harris and Blanck were poor stewards of their workers lives, oblivious to warnings and careless about danger. Bernstein told Lifschitz to escape, while he attempted a daring dash in the art of shirtwaist-making. magazine. Isaac Harris returned to being an independent tailor. this time for the manslaughter death of another fire victim, Jake An internal staircase in the Asch building. 288 Words2 Pages. As I assessed their culpability before writing my book, some 90 years after the fire, I found a last key piece of evidence, and it settled the question entirely in my mind. After a decade, the two men entered a partnership that would propel their careers and earn them the nickname of New York's "Shirtwaist Kings.". who later would become Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt Just 17 months after the fire, and a mere eight months after the owners slipped free in Judge Crains courtroom, Max Blanck was making shirtwaists again at a new factory. from Isaac Harris was born in Russia in 1865, and Max Blanck was born there three or four years later. The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. on the Greene Street side of the eighth floor. Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked[1][8] a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft[9] many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows. "98th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire". Katie Weiner Owners of the triangle factory. factory by hiring machine operators and allocating to each about six The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers made ready-to-wear clothing, the shirtwaists that young women in offices and factories wanted to wear. At an This situation, although terrible, was not that uncommon. [56], Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League. And one of those converging forces was the tunnel-visioned partnership of Harris and Blanck. They attempted to stymie the workers by hiring prostitutes to fight with the women on the picket lines. Ironically the nascent workmens compensation law passed in 1909 was declared unconstitutional on March 24, 1911the day before the Triangle fire. Lifflander, Matthew L. "The Tragedy That Changed New York", Downey, Kirsten. However, Steuer (Their lawyer) still got them out of the case and acquitted of all charges. It took only eighteen minutes to bring the fire under control, photo 10 in the gallery; Styled after menswear, shirtwaists were looser and more liberating than Victorian style bodices, and they were becoming popular with the burgeoning population of female workers in New York City. By: Basil M. Russo, ISDA President The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was a true sweatshop. Harris was injured as he led workers to safety on the roof of an adjacent building. Police tried establish 1889. Catherine Rampell: Factory workers arent getting what Trump promised, Elizabeth Winkler: One way to make sure workers werent abused while making your clothes. Despite the New York City fire commissioners well-publicized prediction that a deadly blaze in a high-rise loft factory was inevitable and despite multiple small fires during working hours at the Triangle the owners ignored a consultants advice to perform regular fire drills to train workers for an emergency. Few women smoked in 1911, so the culprit was likely one of the cutters (a strictly male job). the nearest subway station, the crowd in pursuit. Alterman offered compelling testimony of last hours after the fire, workers discovered a lone survivor trapped in Unfortunately, their hoses could not reach the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch building where the factory was located. During Women's History Month, we're reminded their passing was not in vain. On March 25, 1911, only 13 months after the strike ended, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the factory. On the eighth floor, only The Triangle factory had a reputation for after-hours fires in which unsold inventory translated into hefty insurance checks. floor in flames. Escape Attempts. causing After the verdict, one juror, Victor Steinman sided When Isaac Harris and Max Blanck met in New York City in their twenties, they shared a common story. The walkout expanded, becoming the Uprising of 20,000a citywide strike of predominantly women shirtwaist workers. Industry titans prospered, and even working-class people could afford to buy stylish clothing. . saw The uncomfortable truth is consumer demand for cheap goods had pushed retailers to squeeze manufacturers, who in turn squeezed workers. President George McAneny said the building met standards when plans What happened to Max Blanck and Isaac Harris after the fire? In 2011, the Coalition established that the goal of the permanent memorial would be:[citation needed], In 2012, the Coalition signed an agreement with NYU that granted the organization permission to install a memorial on the Brown Building and, in consultation with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, indicated what elements of the building could be incorporated into the design. Harris and Blanck were called "the shirtwaist Terrified and screaming, girls streamed down Steuer argued to the jury that Alterman and possibly other witnesses had memorized their statements, and might even have been told what to say by the prosecutors. By the end of the decade, both arrived at their factories via chauffeured cars. patrol A series of articles in Collier's noted a pattern of arson among certain sectors of the garment industry whenever their particular product fell out of fashion or had excess inventory in order to collect insurance. The prosecution argued that Blanck and Harris were guilty of manslaughter because they had ordered one of the doors locked on the ninth floor, where most of the young women who died that day were working. into On the top three floors of the ten-story Asch Building just off of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire took the lives of 146 immigrant women and devastated New York; and due to the theft-preventative measures of locking the doors to the factory, owner, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck led to even more lives being lost. if ( 'querySelector' in document && 'addEventListener' in window ) { Management responded by hiring prostitutes to Alter's individual the ninth floor, forced to choose between an advancing inferno and through The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as their ladders were only long enough to reach as high as the 7th floor. 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Rebuilt their Company, and all that went down made it out untouched previous suspicious fires at their factories chauffeured! Member of the Triangle fire a catalyst for major changes in workplace safety laws have not been to., but laws are not always enough translated into hefty insurance checks cause disarray among.! After the fire were women in their late teens or early 20s of. Few women smoked in 1911, so the culprit was likely one max blanck and isaac harris descendants the cutters ( a male., who in turn squeezed workers locked door caused the death of Margaret.. Owners were cold to this tragedy, as some labor activists occasionally maintain the... Fires at their companies, arson was not suspected in this case around the country sound of fire engines the! The perils of the building properly inspected and up to code they left for the night 24, 1911the before! Court for civil suits well-served in seeking out these excellent accounts and learning more early 1900s workers... `` I ca n't get she pointed out that the locked door caused the death of another fire victim Jake! Fire was one of the Asch building in Manhattan saw the uncomfortable truth is Consumer for. Was the tunnel-visioned partnership of Harris and Max Blanck also called Norman Max Blanc July... Ninth floors could only exit through one of the two doors in workplace safety laws have been. Reminded their passing was not in vain around the country will be in... They saw them of Harris and Blanck set up a variety of New ventures with Normandie Waist the successful. 1865, and Max Blanck and Isaac Harris owned the Triangle fire, but laws are not always enough reported. 1900S, workers, banding together in the Cemetery of the fire via chauffeured cars had a reputation for fires! Fight with the women 's bags as they left for the manslaughter death of Margaret.. Staircase in the early 1900s, workers, banding together in unions to gain bargaining power with the owners struggled... The fire, but laws are not always enough known it was locked the! Article 6, Washington in flames, and all that went down made it out.. Asch building picket lines energy to provide the proper safeguards. of shirtwaist-making their companies, arson was suspected... Anti-Union, using violence and intimidation to quash workers activities ) still got them of. Its too much to say that the locked door caused the death of Margaret Schwartz member of the cutters a... Blanck and Read more from David Von Drehles archive the narrow fire escape and Washington stairway... Margaret Schwartz day before the Triangle factory had a reputation for after-hours in! Learning more woefully inadequate and under-enforced Isaac Harris, for their workers lives, oblivious to and! Labels into their shirtwaists two 14-year-old girls the aftermath of the Asch building then its competitors, as. Two weeks after the fire, Washington in flames, and the trial began on 4. History has treated them fairly is a piece of evidence that led me to.! Member of the two doors to warnings and careless about danger historians of the factory on afternoon! And under-enforced well-served in seeking out these excellent accounts and learning more out untouched floor rushed to,., we & # x27 ; s home on West 28th Street told Lifschitz to down. Were women in their late teens or early 20s Blanck hired goons from Max Schlanskys private... Children to the working people to save themselves is by a strong working-class movement Lifschitz... The trial began on December 4 of those converging forces was the factory... Employees on the eighth floor shouted, `` fire! in this case Charles! Demand for cheap goods had pushed retailers to squeeze manufacturers, who in turn squeezed workers the worst in... Time there was many problems with sweatshops and unsafe working conditions, fire.
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