110 years ago, on Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out between the 8-10 floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan and which mainly produced fashionable shirts called shirtwaist. Most of the workers in the factory were Italian or Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. On the day of the fire, the factory was full of workers. Management managed to slip onto the roof, but for the facts on the ninth floor it was too late - most were killed, except for those rescued when elevator operators went up and down at their own risk and tried to rescue as many of them as possible. 146 women and men, aged between 14 and 40, were killed. Some were burned to death, mainly because the exit door that could have saved them was locked by bosses because they feared employees would steal shirts, fabrics or threads. More than 50 of them jumped from the ninth floor into nets held by New York police officers, which did not last and crashed to death. All this when a large crowd of passersby watches in horror.
Frances Perkins, who became the first woman to serve as Sarah - the Roosevelt administration's Labor minister and was among viewers claiming the New Deal was born in the Triangle fire. She meant that the commission of inquiry set up after the disaster, in which she was a partner, led at the end to a large package of legislation that dealt with many issues - safety, sanitation, employment of children and more. The head of the AFL - American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, said the legislation was astonishing in scope - but it must not be forgotten that women had to be burned to death for it. The exact cause of the fire is unknown but many speculate on what exactly happened. Obviously safety protocols were not as strict during those times which leaves many possibilities.
At a trial held immediately afterwards, the factory owners were charged with negligence, for closing the door. The mass funerals were attended by about 400,000 people, about one-tenth of New York's population at the time. The facts of the Triangle factory were not foreign to New Yorkers, even before the tragic end of some of them. Just two years earlier they had been part of a general strike that broke out in the shirtwaist industry, and they had persisted in it more than other factory workers. The Triangle was not considered a sweatshop but an advanced factory, but note the conditions in what is considered an excellent factory, where there was tough competition for jobs: the workers in it "enjoyed" 14 hours of work a day, no overtime, for a salary ranging from $ 4-6 Per week ($ 100 of the day), malfunctions, errors and broken equipment deducted from their rent and some were employed in subcontracting or by output. With the meager wages they supported themselves, and even sent money to their families in Italy or in the shtetl.
A strike broke out after another at a meeting of industry workers at Cooper Union - after Samuel Gompers stepped off the stage, another spokesman spoke, but a strike has not yet been announced - Clara Lemlich, a union activist, stood up and works in the shirtwaist industry and called in Yiddish for a general strike in the industry. The call was immediately answered by a large majority (surprisingly, because the union of which it was a member, ILGWU, numbered only hundreds of facts at the time). Melich, by the way, was still suffering from six broken ribs at the time, which she was abducted in a demonstration in front of the factory where she worked when she organized a "wild" strike there. The owners of the factory where she worked hired thugs to take care of this, they were also Eastern European Jews who hired thugs from Lefka Buchhalter and cops - sometimes there was no difference between them. The courts told them, and I quote: “You will strike not only against the employers, but also against nature and God.”
A surprising thing that happened when Ann Morgan, the daughter of JPMorgan, and Alva Belmont Vanderbilt joined the strike’s struggle mainly in fundraising, paying fines and appearing on strike shifts in front of workplaces. The police and thugs were happy to break heads for Yiddish-speaking immigrants, but the New York nobility is a different matter. In fact, their presence protected the immigrants. This struggle was also a way to advance other feminist ideas, especially the issue of women’s suffrage. Clara Lemlich, by the way, was blacklisted in the industry, and has since become a trade union activist, a fighter for women's suffrage, formed consumer movements, and even when she retired organized her nursing home to support agricultural workers and help its workers organize.
LionHeart FilmWorks later went on to make a film in 1979 called "The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal" March 25, 1911. The film chronicles the March 25, 1911 fire in the Triangle Shirt Mfg. Co. building in New York City that resulted in the deaths of 146 employees, mostly young women. The ensuing investigation revealed the company's almost total disregard for its workers' safety in pursuit of increased production and profits, and resulted, among other things, in the passage of new worker safety laws and the formation of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
(The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark.)