...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...
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...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...
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...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,...
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...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...
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...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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...“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 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...
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...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...
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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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...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 non-existent and many of the workers were trapped in a fiery inferno. People were choosing to jump, their clothing...
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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 Factory Fire started on the eighth floor for making shirtwaists, were the factory fire started, they shouldn’t have a fabric company on the eighth floor in my opinion. There were always scraps on there tables and on the floor, because they were not allowed to waste fabric. Paper scraps hung from the rafters. They lock people in this factory because they didn’t want people to steal the fabric. We will find out in this paper why the Triangle Factory Fire was such a firetrap. The many reasons why the Factory Fire was such a firetrap. For instance, one reason is because people brought items that where flammable on the eighth floor, in this supposedly fireproof building. There were only a few exits for instance stairs and a couple of elevators. There were 500 workers that day and 146 of them died, either by jumping off the building or burning to death. A lot of them were teenage girls working for way too many hours, for being teenagers. They had another exit but it only let one person go at a time. This was so nobody stole the fabric from the factory. The building was so overcrowded. Only a narrow aisle separated one row from another....
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...The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was a garment factory located in NYC, a city most notable for its unique textile goods. The factory produced the “shirtwaist”, a fashionable women's blouse that caught on quickly on the New York fashion scene, becoming highly demanded in the early 1900s. In order to keep up with the level of demand, owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck disregarded what sparing legislature was in place to protect the workers in factories. The factories in New York after the Second Industrial Revolution were primarily employing immigrants desperate for jobs to survive who were willing to work for lower wages in bad conditions. In the case of the textile factories, specifically the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, those employed were...
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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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...The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a terrible tragedy. The factory in New York City burned down and nearly 145 people died from the tragedy. The factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in Manhattan. It is known for one of the most infamous incidents in American history since the deaths were impossibly preventable. Most of the victims died because of the neglected safety issues, such as locked doors in the factory building. Almost all the employees were teenage girls from ages 14-23 who don’t speak English. These women had just immigrated from Italy or Russia. This tragedy attracted attention for other factories to be aware of their safety of workers....
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