...In the film Triangle Fire, directed and produced by Jamila Wignot, many historians and writers recount the stories surrounding the “deadliest workplace accident in Manhattan’s history”. This accident took place at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory soon after the Triangle strikers demanded to work as a Union but were greeted in return with only higher wages and shorter work days. The fire began on the 8th floor, the location of many of the Triangle strikers, when a cigarette was thrown on the ground. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory owners, were on the 10th floor when they received a phone call about the fire and quickly found refuge next door. Although they were later acquitted, it is believed the two men were aware the stairway and exit...
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...A Meditation on the Triangle Fire The Triangle fire was one of the worst fires in American history. This tragic event truly changed American history. Government then saw that they had to enforce rules for a safer working environment. The triangle fire happened right at the time that the workers were on strike for better working conditions. The triangle fire happened in the efforts to unionize and during the strikes for better working conditions. Most factory workers at this time were on strike because the working conditions were terrible in the building in wit they worked in. the triangle factory is a factory were they make shirtwaist with was very popular at this time. This factory was on Greenwich Village with is in New York City, New York. The factory was located in the Asch building at 23-29 Washington place in a building known as the brown building. At this factory the docked workers whenever they messed up a piece of fabric and had them work long hours. In the triangle factory they only had two exits in the whole place and one of the exits was closed off because the bosses didn’t want the workers to start stealing the fabrics. In addition to this they also only had one water bucket to put out a fire with and it was on the seventh and eighth floor so it is not like if it was a fire the workers could just run out of the building. The workers were starting to make workers unions against the factory bosses. Unions are when people get together to fight one common cause...
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...Reactions to the Fire: Triangle Shirtwaist Company On March 25, 1911 a deadly fire broke out on the ninth floor of a clothing warehouse called the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Out of five hundred employees working, (mostly young women), one hundred and forty six had died as a result of the fire. The survivors of the fire were left to relive those agonizing moments over and over in their heads. How could such a horrible disaster occur? The images of people leaping from ninth story windows to their death because they did not want to burn alive would forever haunt the victims and the people of New York City. Employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company mostly had been young women, some as young as fifteen years old, and most were Jewish and Italian immigrants hoping for a better life no matter how bad working conditions were (http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/story/fire.html). The Triangle fire was the perfect example of how inadequate fire prevention had been back in 1911, not enough fire escapes, doors had been locked, fire escapes were not functional, many problems had captured after this tragic fire erupted. When the fire did erupt, firefighters arrived to the scene with inadequate ladders, most of the ladders were too short to even reach the ninth story. After the fire had subsided, many people were furious and took to the streets protesting for better working conditions, workers went to the unions hoping for a change to occur and also demanding that...
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...The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and its effect on labor. In contrast to modern day, Unions during the industrial revolution lived up to the era, and through demonstrations, strikes, and tragedies, were revolutionized. Making the workplace safer, hospitable, and bringing an end to the horrors seen through tragedy and scandal. Upton Sinclair’s tell-all book “The Jungle” brought the inhumane conditions in the meat packing industry, and gave people an inside look into the day-to-day operations of a factory cloaked in scandal, and expelling filth and disease through out the populations. While such tragedies such as the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire of 1911, brought to the masses another look into what these extreme conditions can do for production, and its employee’s well being. These factors contributed to reforms in the way America does business. The modern union was born, and in its infancy proposed the basis of the way we work to this day. The industrial revolution brought the United States into a technological and production level that helped to bring the US into the world stage as an economic super power. However, this technology and ramp up in production resulted in poor working conditions, the exploiting of children, meager wages, and a sense that the inhumane was routine and normal. The story of a building thought to be completely and safe with state of the art fireproofing and “their owners put had their trust in that.” ("141 men and," 1911) However at about...
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...New York City is a myriad of buildings and cultures. Consequently, many of the buildings have political and historical significance. The sites range from being the birthplace of the New Deal or George Washington’s favorite hangout tavern. Some buildings have more political significance than others. For example, the Brown Building housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. In 1911, a brief factory fire would shed light on the cruel working environments endured by workers. The history of the fire and building has a lifetime impact on the workplace and employer standards. The Shirtwaist Factory fire played a significant role as a catalyst for labor reforms. The Triangle Waist Company, founded in the early twentieth century by Isaac Harris and Max...
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...But it never could face big business and things never really improved. It wasn’t until the Great Depression hit did unions have some pull. In Bell’s story, Out of This Furnace, Dobie finally stands up against big brother and demands support for the Amalgamated Association, and to sign a contract covering wages, hours, vacations with pay, and seniority” (319). He knew that this move may very well cost him his job, but the fight was more important. Something needed to be done for the well-being of the workers, even if it took the intervention of the...
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...The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 was the deadliest work related accident until the terrorist attacks on 9/11, ninety years later. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a large sweatshop run in New York City. This business was run in the top three floors of a ten story building(Workers in the Industrial Age). This fire on Saturday March 25, 1911 caused 146 people to die from multiple causes such as suffocation, burning alive, and jumping to their deaths. All this destruction still has no definite determined cause but is believed to be caused by a cigarette that got thrown into a wastebasket with highly flammable material. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire contributed to the improvements of today's quality of working places...
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...BUS2100-101 February 05, 2016 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Research/ Analyzation The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire was on March 25, 1911. It was one of the worst tragedies New York City has ever had it caused the demise of 146 workers. The company was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Hariss. It started out as a small business and by 1900 it had expanded quickly. They relocated the business to the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the new ten- story Ash Building. The company employed around 500 employees. Most of the employees were immigrant women. Most of the women died from the fire or they perished from jumping from the burning building because the ladders on the fire trucks could only reach the seventh floor. The factory managers kept all of the doors locked to prevent employee theft and to keep the workers from leaving. The building only had one fire escape that collapsed during the rescue. Long tables and large machines trapped many of the people. In my opinion, the managers should not have locked the doors just to save the company money and time. This kind of behavior from the company and managers was unethical behavior. Human life should always take precedence over saving and making money. The company should have taken employee health and safety more serious before the fire. The only legal consequences for the managers were attorney fees. Civil lawsuits against the managers were filed, they proved to be pointless. No money was ever collected from...
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...The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was the loss of one hundred and forty-six women in the Asch building on March 25th, 1911. The fire started on the eighth floor of the building at four forty PM and spread upwards to the ninth and tenth floors. While the workers attempted to get out, the doors were locked and one only swung inwards. This trapped in the masses of women that were trying to get out. So, with them realizing they were trapped in they made the hard decision of how they wanted to die, either burning to death or jumping out the windows. While some women got out to the fire escape it was useless because it began to melt and it was already two stories from the ground. After thirty minutes of the top three floors being up in flames, the fire had died down (Triangle Factory of 1911, Slide Six)....
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...their employees safe. In the book The Triangle Fire: A Brief History with Documents, A series of documents explain the disaster that happened at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. The disaster became known around the country and started a revolution of safety hazards for work. The fire was significant because of the cause of the fire, the irresponsible employers, what the media wrote about it, and how the families of the deceased were compensated. On March 25, 1911, a fire occurred at a shirt factory and climbed the 10 story building. The fire might have been caused by the “sparks from the motors” (242). There is no direct proof what might have caused the fire, but it is likely that the recent sparks ignited nearby cloth and spread throughout the building. Once the chaos was set,...
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...The deadliest workplace accident in New York City's history on March 25th, 1911 was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.(1) Which killed 146 of 500 employees, mostly young female immigrants from Europe working long hours for low wages. The young women died from unsafely inadequate, precautions, and lack of fire escapes. The ten-story building known as Brown Building in which the fire occurred was owned by Max Blanca and Issa Harris. Housing for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was on the top three floors. Triangle Shirtwaist employees worked hard from 7a.m. until 8p.m. with one thirty minute break for lunch.(2) Subcontractors paid employees extremely low wages which employees would work long hours and many worked six days a week in order...
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...disaster in the history of New York City occurred. 146 women and teenage girls died in a fire that broke out on the top three floors of the ten-story work building that the Triangle Shirtwaist Company shared with other businesses. The fire was likely started with a cigarette bud being dropped, and the fire quickly grew with all the clothing and material to burn on. The young women tried to escape without the accommodation of a safe and appropriate exit. There was one flimsy fire exit staircase that quickly buckled under the pressure of dozens and dozens of women trying to run down it and one working elevator out of five that functioned enough to make four trips before the tragedy ended. Women...
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...Triangle Shirtwaist Factory The American labor force was vastly different in the 1900s than it is now. The industrial revolution opened up thousands of jobs in an industry that had never existed before. Due to the infancy of these jobs it was a generally unregulated market by the government. There were essentially no laws protecting laborers at work, no minimum wage, and no child labor laws. Employment at will was the dogma for employee-employer relationships and this inherently favored the employer in all aspects. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was one of the largest garment producers in New York City at the time. The garment industry primarily was made up of women and children. This group had never traditionally worked before because labor male driven. This allowed for employers to take advantage of women and children with maximum hours for minimal wages in unsafe working conditions without any repercussions. Unions were despised by business owners and they would hire scabs to fill in for any workers who went on strike against the company. The police and elected officials were benefactors of the titans of industry so they did not see any need to help the workers in the garment industry until a tragic fire. The specific conditions of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the equipment contributed to the large loss of life in the fire. There were no laws mandating that the owners provided its employees with fire exits or adequate machinery. First, equipping all...
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...Book Report: "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America" David Von Drehle, author of the book titled "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America", was born on February 6, 1961, in Denver, CO. “David Von Drehle married a woman by the name of, Karen Ball, the White House correspondent for the New York Daily News, in 1995 and had four children together.” according to some online research. As an American author and journalist David Von Drehle's education consisted of a B.A. from the University of Denver in 1983, where he was "a Boettcher Foundation Scholar and editor of The Denver Clarion's student newspaper", and a Masters in Literature as a Marshall Scholar from Oxford University in 1985. David Von Drehle “began his career in journalism when he...
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...Audrey Glasgow FOS 2530 Research Project It is 1645 hours on March 25, 2014 (actual year of incident is 1911), and Public Safety Communications has dispatched fire units to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, located in the Asch Building at 23 through 29 Washington Place, Manhattan, NY, which is on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, for a report of a building on fire. As your agency’s Fire and Arson Investigator on duty, you are dispatched to the scene. Fire suppression units arrived on the scene finding heavy smoke and fire showing from the eighth floor. Multiple fatalities have been reported. Coming on to a scene with so much blood shed is never easy, but the job has to get done to try to bring justice to the crime committed. We all risk our lives in some way form or fashion; I just do it more than others. Upon arrival I am getting as much information as I can so that I can task fully assets the scene as it needs to be. First, I would recognize the problem to be able to determine the origin, cause, and responsibility. Second, I would define the problem by going into a thorough detailed investigation of info given to me and my team. Third, collect data not limited to drawing a diagram and or taking photos of the scene, physical evidence, witness statements, and reports. Finally, I would analyze the fire pattern, structural damage and find the fuel source or any factor that plays into determining the correct point of origin; only going off of facts and investigators...
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