In a time when unemployment is high, union activity low and business regulated by strict safety standards, it is hard to imagine just how precious and how dangerous working used to be. Since the American industrial revolution began along the rivers and waterways of New England, no work place disaster has ever been so great as the tragedy at the Triangle Shirt Waist company in New York. The year was 1911 and the work day almost over.

The situation at Triangle was typical of industrial relations of the time. The workers were subjected to unfair wages in unsafe conditions working unbelievably long hours with little time off and little respect. Bosses were absentee landlords and subcontracting middle management had little care about what it took in human dignity to produce the piece garments sold widely throughout the city at that time. Immigrant workers had a lower place on the social ladder than most and female immigrant workers were in many cases the lowest of the low.

But change was happening. Sick of the deplorable working conditions in the sweat shops of New York City, people had begun to organize and union activity was thriving. Triangle was a non union shop and any sort of union activity was discouraged with the terrifying threat of unemployment. Losing a job, especially a minimum wage job in 1911 in a new country where you didn’t know the language and had no family network to rely on for support kept many women workers out of the unions and inside the stuffy overcrowded rooms of the sewing businesses of Manhattan. Change was coming but it was just a little late for Triangle.

On the day of the fire, approximately 500 people were at work inside the Triangle factory located on the corner of Greene and Washington. Most of the workers were young women, some as young as 14 and all worked in rooms full of wooden machinery, piles of fabric and blocked exits. How the fire started remains uncertain but it broke out on the top floors where hundreds were busy cleaning up their work spaces before heading home after another day of hard backbreaking work for measly pay. For about $300 a year, 146 people gave their lives.

The discarded fabric, machine oil, blocked exits, lack of fire safety practices and overcrowded work rooms meant seconds after the fire broke out so too did mass panic. Reports in the local newspaper the next day claimed it was only minutes before the fire engines arrived. But in those few minutes the clawing grasping smoke, over crowding and terrified screams took over and people began to jump out of the windows. Partly due to being pushed by the massive crowds inside, partly due to an insufficient number of elevators and the natural understandable fear of being burned alive. Reports of the time stated that several dozen people did escape by way of the elevators before they broke down. After that, people hurled themselves into the empty elevator shaft to escape the smoke and flames. One man shimmied down the cable to safety but only after landing on the dead bodies of his less successful coworkers.

Bodies falling from the windows above kept one man glued to the spot until helped arrived. Emergency responders brought a net to try and catch the falling bodies. And catch some they did. The problem was no one took gravity into account and people bounced out of the net to land full force on the sidewalk below. Most of the deaths were due to burns and suffocations.

The owners of the factory claimed no knowledge of the safety violations. All told 146 died. Many deaths were later blamed on the fact that the fire engines couldn’t get close enough to put out the flames because of all the falling bodies. When they did get close enough it was discovered that the engine ladders were not long enough to reach the people on the top floors of the building.

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The building that once housed the Triangle factory still stands in Greenwich Village today site of a New York tragedy only surpassed by that fateful day back in of September of 2001. The fire led to a lot of reform in New York. Safety standards improved, real wages went up, hours went down and union activity increased. The survivors of the dead sued the company and two years after the disaster received a total of $75.00 in compensation for the death of their loved one.

Sweat shops still exist in New York City, unfair labor practices abound, but history always reminds us just how far we’ve come in such a short space and time. Out of tragedy comes progress and out of the past comes a glimpse of the future.

Tags: 1911, Early to Mid-20th Century Vintage Women's Fashions and Clothing, factory safety violations, famous fires, History DVDs, history of industrial relations, history of sweat shops, industrial accidents, Industrial Revolution, infamous fires, New England, New York, Reform Movement, Textiles: Birth of An American Industry DVD, trade union history, Triangle Factory fire, Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Unions, Vintage Dairy Farming Film Collection DVD, Vintage Food Canning Film Collection DVD