Tragedy struck in Nineteen-eleven. Nineteen-eleven was a year that impacted not only those personally victimized in the burning of the Triangle Factory, but the individuals who needed the extra push for ultimate progressive reform. Progressive reform pushed Laissez-faire capitalism. “Hands off” government was the new movement. Businesses needed to survive by social Darwinism, not by government assistance. The complete opposite occurred. Through David von Drehle’s light use of Laissez-faire in the novel Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, he neglects the fact that government assistance was prominent and Laissez-faire was seemingly nonexistent in big businesses of this time. Progressives, “supported the vote for women, protection for consumers and workers, trade unionism” (Von Drehle, 20), but how could the progressives push their ideas to big business to protect the workers when the government was constantly in the way. The government provided police force when there were unrestful strikes. It established systems that bought the votes of people in New York City. It destroyed Laissez-faire completely by letting companies do as they please.
Democracy …show more content…
Tammany Hall would do anything it needed to get votes, which included using their own police force to “intervene on the side of the owners” (Von Drehle, 16). Strikers had nothing to offer Tammany Hall, “no money, no ‘sugar’” (Von Drehle. 16), so they were thought of as worthless in politics and needed to be stopped. There came a time when Tammany Hall virtually ruled New York City. If they controlled the votes, they controlled the people. The only threat came with the Progressives. Tammany claimed, “rarely did the reformers accomplish anything” (Von Drehle, 21), but there was this underlying fear that progressives could be the ones to make Laissez-faire important again, thus taking away their