...one-hundred and forty six times, one chime for each of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. A fire that had taken place over one-hundred years ago is, to this day, one of the most horrific events up until the bombing of the World Trade Center. The Brown Building of New York University that stands on the corner of Greene street and Washington place in Washington Square of Greenwich Village was formerly known as the ‘Asch Building’, and on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Leading up to the fire, 1911 was a time that women were not permitted to vote, and sweatshop labor was the driving force behind the garment industry in New York City. In only eighteen...
Words: 1567 - Pages: 7
...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...
Words: 1304 - Pages: 6
...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...
Words: 504 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 558 - Pages: 3
...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...
Words: 890 - Pages: 4
...the shirtwaist business. That woman was Clara Lemlich and she was only 23 years old when she initiated the strike. She and her supporters protested for over two months on the streets of New York, until certain textile-manufacturing factories finally agreed to fairer income and decent hours for the employees. However, this wasn’t entirely a success as many companies refused to agree to the terms, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. As a result, a year later, 146 workers employed at the Factory perished in a tragic fire due to a lack of safety preparation, including...
Words: 1082 - Pages: 5
...Chapter 29 Essay The government protection was without doubt necessary to improve the lot of the laborer from being taken advantage of by industries; for them to work in safe environments, have fair and reasonable wages, working hours, and compensation. Many industrial jobs were known to be dangerous. Without the accountability of the government, workers risked their lives in hostile working environments. Nothing would be done to protect the workers from these evils unless the government was willing to step in and pass laws to protect the workers and enforce them. In many cases laborers did not have a set of working hours, or compensation for injury in their job. They could be taken advantage of because their bosses had absolute power over them. The laws passed to guard women and children workers are completely justifiable, because women worked just as hard as men in dangerous and tough working environments, and children were made to work in positions not adequate for their anatomy, and logically needed to be protected also. The Massachusetts first annual report of its labor statistics bureau said “There is a peril to life and limb from unguarded machinery, and peril to health from lack of ventilation, and insufficiency of means of escape in case of fire, in many establishments…. These evils can only be prevented by detailed enactment.” Massachusetts hoped to pass the Factory Inspection Legislation which would protect workers by demanding factories have machine guarding...
Words: 936 - Pages: 4
...1911 Triangle Waist Factory Fire What exactly is a sweatshop? Have they ever existed and if so, do they still exist in today’s society? According to Dictionary.com a sweatshop is “a shop employing workers at low wages, for long hours, and under poor conditions.” Factories in which the definition mentions, do, in fact exist. These factories can be traced back to the 19th century. One in particular, was called the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. The ending result of what happened to the factory was considered “the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.” (Introduction) Back in 1911, the Triangle Waist Factory began in the Asch Building, which was owned by Max Blanc and Isaac Harris. The factory employed nearly 500 workers, which were mainly young, women immigrant workers. Workers were of Italian and European Jewish descent and were as young as 14 years old. Reportedly, the workers were made to work for low wages, excessively long hours, and in unsanitary and dangerous work conditions. The doors of the factory was even said to have been locked, for fear that workers would steal. Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire blazed on the top floors of the Asch Building. Because of locked doors, it made it hard for workers to escape, and some workers even resorted to jumping from the ninth floor, in order to say their life, many were unsuccessful. The end result of the fire caused 146 workers to have their lives ended in death. In today’s society, the...
Words: 580 - Pages: 3
...inside and outside the homes. There work was occupied with the work they traditionally performed on the farms before the industrialization. The south had little to none manufacturing capability in which cotton was one of the most valuable exports in the south. The north was already exposed to the industry and was highly industrialized. The pace of the working industry of northern workers was much faster than the pace of southern workers. Another aspect that influenced U.S. society economy and politics during the industrialization was the industrial tycoon entrepreneurs of the late 19th and early 20th century. Andrew Carnegie was one of the wealthiest self made steel tycoons of the 19th century. Carnegie started off as a poor factory worker working a...
Words: 1840 - Pages: 8
...Her life before the cabinet was even better than her earlier life. She was head of the New York League. This was in 1910. She did different things with this. Mostly she lobbied which she was working for her hours and conditions. She just did not do that she also worked as a professor. She taught at Adelphi College teaching sociology. Her life was always busy. She never seemed to stop. The year after that something horrible happened. She was their when the Traingle Shirtwaist Factory fire happened. This was a bad part of her life. This was in New York where she worked at. This was dealing with the Consumers League. After all that happened she became the executive secretary. Not any secretary, the secretary for the Safety of the City of New York,...
Words: 763 - Pages: 4
...non-fiction story, Triangle-The Fire That Changed America, depicts one of the deadliest fires of its time. The circumstances of the factory, which led up to this fire are still debated. However, the situation which caused this fire and its numerous deaths, produced changes that were the stepping stones for what is present today. The Triangle factory employed about 500 people. Most were European immigrants like the men in the story, Out of This Furnace. However, in the Triangle factory, most of the employees were women and minor children workers. who were underpaid and overworked. The factory kept boxes for these children to hide in, when an inspector might visit since children were not allowed to work in factories. The women who worked in this factory went on strike the year prior for better working conditions, but failed at changing anything. They were angry at working conditions since “workplace safety was scarcely regulated, and workers’ compensation was considered newfangled or even socialist” (Von Drehle 3). The men in the steel mills of Out of This Furnace were also outraged at the working conditions too. But what could they do, they were immigrants after all and if they complained, there was a mile long of other men to take their place. The same could be said for the women of the Triangle Factory too. Very little would change in the steel mills, but change would happen textile business because of the Triangle Factory fire. After this disastrous fire, many labor...
Words: 1322 - Pages: 6
...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...
Words: 674 - Pages: 3
...“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...
Words: 349 - Pages: 2
...The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that occurred in 1911 was a huge tragedy and led to discussion of why safety regulations are important. The girls couldn’t escape because the made assumptions about the moral character of the works and locked the doors that led to the fabric so the workers didn’t steal any. The fire killed 148 people because there was no escape route; so most of the people either jumped out the window or burned in the fire. If there had been safety regulations in the factory then there would have been fire escape doors like there are now in this generation. These immigrants came to America to work, so they could make their own American Dream possible. The American Dream wasn’t possible for the factory workers, because the safety regulations prohibited them from being happy at work. The American Dream for them was to be able to go to work and feel safe and secure in their workplace. Safety regulations in the factory would have allowed the workers to have the American Dream of being comfortable and safe in their work place, live the pursuit of happiness, and want to continue living and working in America. By having safety...
Words: 988 - Pages: 4
...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...
Words: 288 - Pages: 2
