March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a sweatshop located on 23-29 Washington Place, right off Washington Square Park. The majority of workers were immigrant women. In the years preceding the fire, The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union had been working to organize garment workers all over America. There were many strikes, some violent. Because the garment workers were mostly immigrant women, organizing them was difficult. After fleeing pogroms in Russia, you tell the boss you need better ventilation? Here is how capitalism entrenches itself. In the early days of the labor movement, groups of mainly middle-class reformers attempted to put together a program of demands and getting workers on board. They demanded an 8-hour work day and safe working conditions. In 1909, there was an historic walk-out. Change didn’t come in time to stave off the worst single disaster in the entire Industrial Revolution, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

146 people died.

A first-hand account from immigrant Louis Waldman:

One Saturday afternoon in March of that year — March 25, to be precise — I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library…I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. Along with several others in the library, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire.

A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.

Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. 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. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.

The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines.

Cornell University has an excellent treasure trove of information on the Triangle fire.

More below the jump.

 
 

Survivors said if the fire had broken out on a weekday, as opposed to Saturday, the death toll would have been much higher. Workers stopped by on Saturday to get their paychecks. Many decided to wait until Monday to pick up their paycheck, saving their lives.

The fire broke out on the top floor. The fabric workers stored underneath their stations basically made the fire explode in the enclosed space. Many of the exit doors were locked. (One of the survivors said the doors were locked because the superintendent was afraid women would try to sneak out, taking the shirts they had made.) Women crowded at the locked doors, their hair and clothes on fire. Women climbed out onto the fire escapes to escape the blaze, and the fire escapes buckled under the weight. Some of the women on the top floors escaped via the rooftops. There were only a couple of elevators. Within minutes, the 8th and 9th floors were engulfed in flames.

The fire trucks arrived within minutes, but, awfully, the ladders did not reach the 8th floor.

The trapped women began to jump. Passersby stood and watched, screaming, as woman after woman leapt out of the windows.

I was talking with my friend Jen about it once and she told me her great-grandmother worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and quit two months before the fire.

Here is the story, transcribed from text messages between Jen and her mother:

[Her name was] Sadie Heilweil, married name. Sadie Coopervasser maiden name…She was born in Austria on September 24th 1886. She was married to Abe in 1911, in NYC, while she was working at Triangle. I know she worked on collars and cuffs. She told me she helped another woman with her work as she was a slow worker and Sadie was fast. They did piecework. She said one of her friends escaped down the elevator shaft, wrapping her long hair around the cable and sliding down.

The fire was a watershed moment in American labor. It forced change, because these rich people need to be forced to do the right thing. Because they are not good people. The rich have no financial incentive to change (in fact, it’s the opposite). For the robber barons, the oligarchs, the criminal tech bros, whoever, they still walk among us, money is the only thing that matters. Triangle Shirtwaist was a disgrace and a galvanizing tragedy. Protests exploded across the country, people walked out on strike joining the protests. Here’s a tip: You don’t want to be on the side of people saying “Sorry those women died, but …” If you are in any way neutral when faced with needless loss of human life, here’s a tip: you’re on the wrong side. All kinds of sweeping changes were implemented in the wake of the fire: Safety codes, fire codes, clearly marked and unlocked exit doors, proper ventilation, regular safety inspections, cleanliness codes, plus longer fire engine ladders. (Imagine how helpless those firefighters must have felt on March 25, 1911. )

In 1990, Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky wrote a haunting poem about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire called “Shirt”.

Shirt

by Robert Pinsky

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes–

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers–

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

A couple of years ago, 25 years after its first publication in The New Yorker, Pinsky’s poem was the first poem chosen by the Nantucket Poetry Project for their beautiful film/poetry installation series.

Here it is:

Rasputina’s song “My Little Shirtwaist Fire” commemorates.

Rasputina: “My Little Shirtwaist Fire”
Lyrics:
Once it started
The frail and fainthearted
Just withered to the floor
Oh, so sadly
We examined hands burned badly
By that which no man fears more.

The terrible flames of
All that remains of
My Little Shirtwaist Fire

My best friend
Was alone in the alcove,
Does anyone see her there?

Such a sweet face
Trapped in a staircase
By the smell of her own burning hair and the

Terrible flames of
All that remains of
My Little Shirtwaist Fire

Glow baby glow as the embers they died there,
Nobody knows what we saw inside there.
Twisting and burning, the girls’ fine young bodies

Yes, we’re burning can you help us please?
Yes, we’re begging, we’re on bended knees
Oh, My Little Shirtwaist Fire.

Girls work hard for
Small rewards or
Invitations to dine.

Or one kind word from
One who loves them but
What I have earned is mine

The terrible flames of
All that remains of
My Little Shirtwaist Fire

I took this photo on December 14, 2015 when I was walking around Washington Square. A larger memorial is now in the planning stages.

 
 
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