...It was near closing time in the Asch Building on March 25, 1911 when the flames began. Within 18 minutes 146 people were dead. The fourth largest industrial disaster in United States history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is remembered today as a tragic incident not only because of all the deaths but because of the fact that they were preventable. The death of 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, would have been preventable if the owners had followed regulatory precautions to ensure that their workers had accessible exit paths and a set plan of action in case of such incidents. From this horrendous inferno arose public outcry for justice and worker safety reform that led to the transformation of the labor code of New York and...
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...In the Industrial War there lay a factory called The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory .The factory made blouses for women , that would make the women look tinier around the waist area so they could have more curvature to their body. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory also had a very bad tragedy in the early years of the factory which i will tell you about in a little bit. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was owned by two gentlemen named Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. The men opened the factory in 1900’s. The Factory was located on the corner of Greene St. ,and Washington Pl. in Manhattan.They factory had a majority of women working at the factory and a couple of men here and there. The Homestead Act was an act on how factory owners...
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...workplace 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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...left,” (Marrin 114). This terrible thought went through many young women’s, men’s, and even little girl’s heads as the flames grew and grew when three floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were on fire on March 25, 1911. Burning clothes fell on people’s heads due to the kerosene that was everywhere in the factory (Lieurance 12). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was one of the most eventful and influential in New York’s and America’s history. The fire occurred on the top three floors of the ten story Asch Building, which was supposedly fireproof on the outside, but on the inside, not so much. Although devastating, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire positively influenced and changed many labor laws and fire safety regulations, making working conditions safer and more fair for future generations. Many immigrants coming to America in the early 1900s came for a better life. Getting a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was highly desired due to the nice building in which the factory was located (Zwonitzer). Most immigrants, even those as young as 14, worked to earn money to support their families in the new country (Zwonitzer). Once the immigrants arrived in America they started...
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...Although the Triangle Fire was a tragic event in history that left 146 workers dead, there was a silver lining. The Triangle Fire was a catalyst to changing workers’ rights and was a motivation for many immigrants and women to fight for a change. The Triangle Waist company, which was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris was a huge success but they did not use moral methods to gain such riches. The factory was dominated by immigrants with most being young women who would work hours upon hours. Taking days off was not an option, “If you don’t come in on Sunday, don’t come in on Monday.” (p. 8). Some shifts could range from 12-14 hours with no overtime pay. Not only were the working days long and never ending but the conditions in the factory...
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...back through history we come to realize that we have a tendency to make changes after a disaster has already occurred. We often have many warning signs prior to an incident but we choose to ignore them and continue to take chances as was done at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. On March 25, 1911 in New York City 146 people paid with their lives because of the unsafe working conditions that many workers endured during that time. Had just a few precautions been taken before that fateful night it is likely the loss of life would have been greatly reduced. This tragedy helped pave the way for new safety standards including better fire codes and factory safety standards. Industrial growth was proving to be hazardous to people’s health; America was now the world leader in industrial accidents. There was no denying the extremely harsh working conditions were to blame for many of the accidents. The workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on the 9th floor were getting ready to go home, standing in single file with open purses so they could be checked to ensure they were not stealing from the company. It was the end of the day and the workers were giddy to be leaving, within moments chaos ensued. Flames had broken out on the 8th floor and as they had in the past workers grabbed pails of water to douse the flames only this time the fire spread quickly, before anyone was aware the 9th floor was engulfed in flames and there was no way out. Doors were locked and fire escapes were...
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...How Does the Triangle Factory Fire Effect us Today? The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was tragic moment for the city of New York. You could have done many things to not start the fire. People don’t know for sure how it started, but we people today think a cigar was thrown into a bin which caused the fire. How does this affect our lives today? Well it does because this tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. 36 laws were enacted after the fire. Many health and safety laws enacted. 146 people died on March 25, 1911.The 36 laws enacted covered improved sanitation conditions such as...
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...What happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911? The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is one of the deadliest, horrific workplace accidents in the history of New York City. At the end of the half of terror, 146 people were dead. According to the documentary the fire which started on the eighth floor spread to the 9th floor where the Triangle Shirtwaist Workers were getting ready to leave for the day. The workers have no Idea there was a fire raging through the building until it was too late for most of them to evacuate the building. The owners, on the other hand, made it out the building alive through the rooftop. The triangle fire’s tragedy was compounded by the hazardous working environment in the factory and consequently lack of emergency preparedness. According to Berger (2011), Workers unraveled a hose from a stairwell fixture, but no water came out. The building had no sprinklers, nor had the factory ever held fire drills. More disheartening is that the doors in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory only opened inward, therefore when the...
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...Reform That Triangle! The Industrial Revolution launched the world into a new time of machines and cities. Change happened so quickly, nothing could keep up with it, not even the governments. Consequently, there was a lack of regulations and laws. This absence of procedures led to one of the worst disasters in United States history—the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. In our textbook, we learned about labor reforms and how they were created, however we were not given any specific examples of events that directly affected this. These are the details on one such example. On March 25th, 1911, a fire spread through the upper floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company’s Factory, sending laborers into a frenzied panic. “In front of me I saw flames on the outside of the windows shooting up. The flames were climbing up from the 8th floor”(http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/). At the end of the day, more than 140 people perished in the...
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...25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the New York, and one of the deadliest in US history. No one knew that the tiny spark of a cigarette would cause 146 deaths in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The negligence of proper fire safety equipment, poor building design, absence of an appropriate fire escape, and substandard evacuation routine caused innocent lives to wither in the inferno. Disregarding proper safety measures had a resounding effect in the tragedy. As Abramowitz was taking his coat and hat from a nearby peg, he noticed the fire. The fire that would ultimately burn and destroy the factory. Dinah Lipschitz, a worker at Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, tried desperately to alert the staff above her...
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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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...“Triangle Fire of 1911” is a documentary based on the fire that occurred in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911, in which 145 workers of various ages died. The shirtwaist factory fire was the deadliest workplace accident in history, although shirtwaist factory workers had gone on strike for better working conditions before the fire it was not until after the tragedy that several laws were passed to improve working conditions. “The Triangle Fire of 1911” also talks about how the women that worked in shirtwaist factories had protested before the fire a couple years before for better working conditions. They demanded for better pay and less working hours a day. Harris and Blanck would hire prostitutes and thugs to beat the women...
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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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...nationalism and tolerance of other societies. As history changes overtime our views of ourselves and others also change, creating our societies “narratives of origin” (Moscovici, 1988). A fundamental representation of our nation’s origin and aspirations are influenced by the changing circumstances, which guides modern society’s response to new challenges. Change in civilizations is sparked from societal wrongs that cause a civil up-roar. Court cases provide the best historical evidence of how the past can redefine present culture. Since the civil war, African Americans role within the nation has changed drastically from a slave to the President of the United States. Monumental cases like Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, along with mass protests across the United States; all influenced the civil rights of African Americans. Another case that shaped our civilization was from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Due to negligence of the factory owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, one hundred and forty-five people died in a factory fire because of inaccessibility to fire escapes. This devastation sparked outrage among civilians, and the government of the United States was forced to respond. In October, 1911, in the aftermath of the fire, New York State passed the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law, requiring that factory owners install sprinkler systems….New York also set up the Factory Investigating Commission… and overhauled or enacted...
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...The Triangle Factory Fire took place on March 25, 1911. It made history by being the most deadly workplace fire to have ever occured in New York. The flames that attacked the top three floors of the Asch building killed 176 people. Families were left devastated and citizens were horrified. Most of the people that worked in that building were immigrants. They moved from another country, many wanting a better life. What was life actually like for the brave people who sailed across the ocean, hoping for change? Between the years 1900 and 1915 over 15 million immigrants arrived in America. This is about equal to the number of immigrants who arrived in the previous forty years combined. The majority of newcomers came from non English speaking countries. It was during this time of immigration that the Triangle Factory Fire took place. Most of the people working in the Asch building at this time were Italian or Jewish. Jewish families were trying to escape the prosecution and economic hardships that were taking place in their home countries. Italians came across the sea with the promise of wealth and prosperity in America. (Haddix 283)...
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