into the single passenger elevator. The owners hired private policemen and thugs to beat, berate, and cause disarray among picketers. Like many other garment shops, Triangle had experienced fires previously that were quickly extinguished with water from pre-filled buckets that hung on the walls. Sweatshops were common in the early New York garment industry. water at the bottom of the elevator shaft. "The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement, reads the text of an online exhibition from Cornell University's Kheel Center. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. } [24] Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street stairway to the roof. This article was published more than4 years ago. More On Oct. 16, America celebrated National Boss Day. [71] Sen. Warren recounted the story of the fire and its legacy before a crowd of supporters, likening activism for workers' rights following the 1911 fire to her own presidential platform. clerks, At an The Commission undertook a thorough examination of safety and working Max David Steuer (16 September 1870 - 21 August 1940) was a prominent American trial lawyer in the first half of the 20th century. Assistant cashier Joseph Flecher looked down Originally interred elsewhere on the grounds, their remains now lie beneath a monument to the tragedy, a large marble slab featuring a kneeling woman. jammed history. Harris and Max Blanck. Three years after the fire, on March 11, 1914, twenty-three Charles of the New York legal establishment, forty-one-year-old Max D. The partners expanded, opening shirtwaist factories in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In 1918, Harris and Blanck closed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris then locked out all the workers at the factory, later hiring prostitutes to replace . Two weeks after the fire, a grand jury indicted Triangle Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were indicted. voice on the other end. The garment industry, with its low economic bar to entry, attracted many immigrant entrepreneurs. sided This letter was sent with the intention to improve . in Steuer defended the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, against criminal charges arising from the fire and its . In December, Blanck was issued a warning after a factory inspection revealed hazardous conditions similar to that of the original Triangle space, including the presence of flammable wicker scrap baskets lining the walls. Unable to flee, some workers jumped from the ten-story building to a gruesome death. Without laws requiring their existence, few owners put them into their factories. code were enacted. and in Having deliberated for fewer than two hours, the jury cited the prosecutor's inability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the men had known of the locked door at the time of the fire. The accused, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, were guilty of manslaughter. Three weeks prior to the disaster, an industry group had objected to regulations requiring sprinklers, calling them cumbersome and costly. In a note to the Herald newspaper, the group wrote that requiring sprinklers amounted to confiscation of property and that it operates in the interest of a small coterie of automatic sprinkler manufactures to the exclusion of all others. Perhaps of even greater importance, the manager of the Triangle factory never held a fire drill or instructed workers on what they should do during an emergency. At the trial later that year of Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris on manslaughter charges, survivors testified that their escape had been blocked by a locked door on the ninth. With the advent of skyscraper towers of 10 stories and more, the booming New York garment trade moved out of the tenements and into high-rise lofts, where hundreds of sewing machines in long rows could run off a single electric motor. [74][79], From July 2009 through the weeks leading up to the 100th anniversary, the Coalition served as a clearinghouse to organize some 200 activities as varied as academic conferences, films, theater performances, art shows, concerts, readings, awareness campaigns, walking tours, and parades that were held in and around New York City, and in cities across the nation, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Washington, D.C.[74], The ceremony, which was held in front of the building where the fire took place, was preceded by a march through Greenwich Village by thousands of people, some carrying shirtwaists women's blouses on poles, with sashes commemorating the names of those who died in the fire. is called "the golden era in remedial factory legislation." It occupied about 27,000 square feet on three floors in a brightly lit, ten-year-old building, and employed about 500 workers. After thirteen weeks, the strike ended with new The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers made ready-to-wear clothing, the shirtwaists that young women in offices and factories wanted to wear. through doors to get at the fire. They eventually gave in to pay raises, but would not make their factory a "closed shop" that would employ only union members. the burned-out floors of the Asch building, hoping to find Many Animals, Including the Platypus, Lost Their Stomachs. Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped into the empty shaft, trying to slide down the cables or to land on top of the car. The last tenth-floor worker saved was an unconscious girl with It was a leader in the industry, not a rogue operation. The business had never recovered to the profit level seen before the fire, and the men's tainted reputations had damaged the company's image irreparably. [17] A New York Times article suggested that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines. In New York City, a Committee on Public Safety was formed, headed by eyewitness Frances Perkins[60] who 22 years later would be appointed United States Secretary of Labor to identify specific problems and lobby for new legislation, such as the bill to grant workers shorter hours in a work week, known as the "54-hour Bill". By 1908, the factory produced 1,000 or more of the $3 shirtwaists per day and the company topped $1 million in annual sales. And one of those converging forces was the tunnel-visioned partnership of Harris and Blanck. What did Max Blanck and Isaac Harris have in common with the women who worked for them at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? Events like the Triangle fire drive me to keep this important history before the public. testified In 1914, Blanck and Harris were caught sewing counterfeit National Consumer League anti-sweatshop labels into their shirtwaists. caused the death of Margaret Schwartz. They hosted reporters from theNew York Timesin Harris' home, defending their actions to the public and insisting that they had taken all precautions. desperately to keep crowds of hysterical relatives from overrunning the In a sense, he was right. They held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3,500 pages of testimony. This situation, although terrible, was not that uncommon. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris had made Triangle a million-dollar-a-year behemoth, mass-producing the garment every modern woman must have: the shirtwaist. 288 Words2 Pages. [50] Max Steuer, counsel for the defendants, managed to destroy the credibility of one of the survivors, Kate Alterman, by asking her to repeat her testimony a number of times, which she did without altering key phrases. Ethel Monick, became "frozen with fear" and "never moved.". came--no pressure. [62][63] New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible. Background. William They attempted to stymie the workers by hiring prostitutes to fight with the women on the picket lines. Anne Morgan used her family's wealth and connections to bring attention to the women's suffrage movement and the plight of immigrant workers. It was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. understaffed and underfunded and rarely had time to look at buildings This was proven by the prosecution team through the evidence provided, such as the admittance of guilt, witness 2, and the building codes. On December 4, 1911, the Triangle Waist Company owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, faced first- and second-degree manslaughter charges after months of extensive coverage in the press. in flames, and all that went down made it out untouched. Schwartz's death: The defense presented witnesses designed to show that the [21][22][23] The foreman who held the stairway door key had already escaped by another route. Fifteen feet above the Asch building roof, Professor Frank On March 25, 1911, only 13 months after the strike ended, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the factory. seriously Recalling the impact of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire years later, Police tried day Lifschitz the panicked workers to turn to the Washington Place door--a door the Inside an English family's home on West 28th Street. stated that the fire probably began when a lighted match was thrown The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. ninth floor The Triangle factory fire gave rise to progressive reformers call for greater regulation and helped change attitudes of New York's Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall. pile He also helped them to profit from the fire by defending insurance claims in excess of known losses. Under the ownership of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists". In addition to the dangerous working conditions, the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were notorious for their anti-worker policies. But two recent essays make the case that the Triangle owners have gotten a raw deal. A version of this article was originally published on the "Oh Say Can Your See" blog of the National Museum of American History. Poor working conditions increased dissatisfaction among employees. Privacy Statement As their status grew as shirtwaist makers, Harris and Blanck enjoyed more lavish lifestyles. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement. Heading up the prosecution team was Assistant District Attorney Charles S. Bostwick. smoldering He told the jury to "find a verdict for the machines from among the 240 machines on the ninth floor. individual ninth hours." Christmas, 723 employees had been arrested, but the public largely [68], The last living survivor of the fire was Rose Freedman, ne Rosenfeld, who died in Beverly Hills, California, on February 15, 2001, at the age of 107. Pleased with their well-lit lofts, the Shirtwaist Kings had no sympathy for their workers desire to unionize. For modern readers, the picture of the Triangle factory hundreds of mostly young, mostly female workers elbow to elbow, hunched over long rows of machines for long hours at low pay is the epitome of a sweatshop. But to Harris and Blanck, with keen memories of the tenements, conditions in the Triangle were luxurious. However, Judge Samuel Seabury instructed the jury that the men were It took only eighteen minutes to bring the fire under control, Competition was, and continues to be, intense. Calls for justice continued to grow. This 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant wasthe voice that helped incite the famous 1909 women's labor strike. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing . [70], On September 16, 2019, U.S. [9], As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded in New York City on October 14, 1911. // cutting the mustard Blanck and Harris were represented by Max D. Steuer, one of the most celebrated and skillful lawyers of the period. These traits converged on the fateful Saturday when, around closing time, a worker apparently dropped a match or cigarette butt into a heaping bin of scraps. The admittance of guilt is a piece of evidence that led me to believe . blaming Firemen Harris designed the layout of the sewing floor himself, placing the tables in a way that would minimize conversation among the workers in an effort to increase productivity. A Smithsonian curator reexamines the labor and business practices of the era. Meet the influential author and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. . Born in Russia, both men had immigrated to the United States in the early 1890s, and, like hundreds of thousands of other Jewish immigrants, they had both begun working in the garment industry. Within two days after the fire, city officials began A shipping I told her there was a fire on the eighth Employees on the eighth and ninth floors could only exit through one of the two doors. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. More than a dozen prosecution witnesses Blanck and Harris tried to pick up after the fire. Fire Marshal William As the strike extended into 1910, and the resulting decrease in productivity began to hurt profits, Harris and Black agreed to demands for shorter hours and higher wages but remained steadfast in their opposition to a union. Blanck and Harris were accused of locking the secondary exits (in order to stop employee theft), and were tried for manslaughter. This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. They demanded greater efficiency from their production team, which meant working long hours for little pay, and the owners kept scrupulous inventory of their supplies. var googletag = googletag || {}; Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. In reality, the owners, Blanck and Harris, were the people to blame for the 146 deaths and destruction of the building. The Coalition maintains on its website a national map denoting each of the bells that rang that afternoon.[82]. Drew Harwell: Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trumps clothing-maker. Through his witnesses Bostwick tried to The Times was known for being less sensational in its reporting then its competitors, such as the New York World. ten minutes more it was practically "all over." She got no answer. The Triangle Waist Company[10] factory occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. At Cooper Union, a banner 15%. "98th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire". Seeking efficiency, manufacturers applied mass production techniques in increasingly large garment shops. Court testimony attributed the source of the blaze to a fabric scrap bin, which led to a fire that spread explosivelyfed by all the lightweight cotton fabric (and material dust) in the factory. "He rode around in a chauffeur-driven car. Earlier that year, March 25, 1911, a fire at their factory, the Triangle Waist Co. and "Give us back our children!" Harris and Blanck hired goons from Max Schlanskys notorious private detective agency to attack picketing workers. Upon arriving in America, Harris used his skills as a tailor working in immigrant sweatshops, and he became familiar with popular designs and fashions. They ran [20] Various historians have also ascribed the exit doors being locked to management's wanting to keep out union organizers due to management's anti-union bias. into Not surprisingly, the Blanck and Harris families worked at forgetting their day of infamy. He [41], Bodies of the victims were taken to Charities Pier (also called Misery Lane), located at 26th street and the East River, for identification by friends and relatives. to fling water at the fire, the fire spread everywhere--to the tables, It was the burden of the prosecution to prove that Harris and Blanck had willfully and deliberately locked the factory doors on the day of the fire. of not guilty. This dynamic duo were the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a women's clothing manufacturer occupying the top 3 floors of 10-story Asch Building in Manhattan, New York City. The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays,[11] earning for their 52 hours of work between $7 and $12 a week,[9] the equivalent of $191 to $327 a week in 2018 currency, or $3.67 to $6.29 per hour. Other witnesses testified that Blanck and Harris kept the Max Blanck and Isaac Harris are, by far, the worst bosses in the history of bad bosses. announced Horrified and helpless, the crowds I among them looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. Katie Weiner Owners of the triangle factory. Much of the writing is no longer legible due to erosion. filed for it eleven years earlier, and that the Department was A similar fire six months earlier at the Wolf Muslin Undergarment Company in nearby Newark, New Jersey, with trapped workers leaping to their death failed to generate similar coverage or calls for changes in workplace safety. But my friend says, Come on, we have a good time. That certainly didnt sound like a hellish workplace. No one had ever seen a labor action in which women played such a large role. Department along with the others. Blanck and Harris formed an association of the factory owners. survivors. The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan. Testimonies from survivors and witnesses will be inscribed in this reflective panel juxtaposing the names and history.[85]. Of the approximately seventy Enjoy access to millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more from Scribd. After the fire, politicians in New York and around the country passed new laws better regulating and safeguarding human life in the workplace. "turn At this time these men were known as the "Shirtwaist Kings," and they both saw themselves in that matter (Pinkerson, 2011). The politicians woke up to the needs, and increasing power, of Jewish and Italian working-class immigrants. "I believed that the door was locked at the time of the fire, but we By fall of 1909. teaching his class at the New York University Law School when he saw "Sweating workers . 1911. [75][76] The founding partners included Workers United, the New York City Fire Museum, New York University (the current owner of the building), Workmen's Circle, Museum at Eldridge Street, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Gotham Center for New York City History, the Bowery Poetry Club and others. Reaction to the Triangle fire was different. now that it had stopped running the only escape route was to the roof Muchas de ellas eran inmigrantes judas de diferentes pases europeos, incluyendo algunas muy jovenes de apenas 14 aos de edad, que ni siquiera hablaban . In New York, the Factory Investigating Commission was created on June 30, 1911. Nan A. Talese, 2009 pp. When they reopened the factory, the inspectors came and saw that the fire doors weren't locked. locked.". [42] Victims were interred in 16 different cemeteries. in and run to the elevators.". Beers Slattery, rector The Triangle Waist Company was not, however, a sweatshop by the standards of 1911. Harris and Blanck were known as. The prosecution argued that Blanck and Harris were guilty of manslaughter because they had ordered one of the doors locked on the ninth floor, where most of the young women who died that day were working. Bernstein told Lifschitz to escape, while he attempted a daring dash Horse-drawn fire engines raced to the scene. A broader cancer challenged, and still challenges the industrythe demand for low-cost goods often imperils the most vulnerable workers. Later that year, Max Blanck faced legal action again after he locked a factory exit door during working hours. causing nothing [44] Six victims remained unidentified until Michael Hirsch, a historian, completed four years of researching newspaper articles and other sources for missing persons and was able to identify each of them by name. The two men were forced to pay a small fee of $75 to each victim's family. Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York state, and gave them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. Police officers and fire fighters check for signs of life and collect personal items from victims of the Triangle fire. employees As penniless young men, they endured the brutal working conditions of New Yorks tenement sweatshops at their worst during the depression of the early 1890s. What is a sweatshop and what was the Triangle Shirtwaist factory like? Lifflander, Matthew L. "The Tragedy That Changed New York", Downey, Kirsten. Immediately following the fire, Harris and Blanck began a substantial advertising campaign for their shirtwaists to maintain their image as a reliable manufacturer. photo 10 in the gallery; The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable. hair who was dragged up the ladder. And they declined to enforce their posted rule against smoking near the highly flammable cotton scraps their workers snipped by the ton. The factory was a true sweatshop forcing the workers to function in small crowded work spaces at lines of sewing machines. Crain told the jury that in order to return a verdict of guilty they Fire Chief Croker issued a statement urging "girls employed in lofts and To help against this, Blanck and Harris hired one of the best lawyers in New York: Max Steuer. top of the Asch building. Architectural designer Ernesto Martinez directed an international competition for the design. of the dead broke into hysterical cries of despair. Max Blanck e Isaac Harris eran l. El 25 de marzo de 1911 ocurri el incendio en la fbrica Triangle Waist Company en Nueva York, en el que murieron 146 personas, en su mayora mujeres. Zion Cemetery in New York. door like wildcats." The Triangle Waist Company factory occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Better and increased regulation was an important result of the Triangle fire, but laws are not always enough. picked up many cigarette cases near the spot of the fires origin, and They did not run fire drills, did not check to make sure the fire hose worked, did not put . As scholars uncover the past, bringing depth to historical figures, they also present before readers uncomfortable and difficult questions. many employees reported that smoking on the premises was and Samuel Bernstein remained in the gathering smoke and flames. After deliberating for just under two hours, the jury returned At the turn of the century, the shirtwaist was a new item. [58], Others in the community, and in particular in the ILGWU,[59] believed that political reform could help. On the 10th floor, Harris and Blanck were alerted of the fire by phone and escaped to safety by climbing over neighboring rooftops. and shall not be locked, bolted, or fastened during working In March 1912, Bostwick attempted to prosecute Blanck and Both Blanck and Harris slowly rebuilt their company, and eventually earned $60,000 in insurance. On April 11 Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were charged with manslaughter. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. the men yelled, "Justice! of a church a few blocks from the fire scene, told his congregation Even in a legitimate factory, work was often monotonous, grueling, dangerous and poorly paid. Harris ran his own small shop until 1925 and Blanck set up a variety of new ventures with Normandie Waist the most successful. The average recovery was $75 per life lost. At trial, Harris and his foreman lovingly detailed the long hours of careful thought that went into positioning the sewing machines and designing the cutting tables. [72][73], The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is an alliance of more than 200 organizations and individuals formed in 2008 to encourage and coordinate nationwide activities commemorating the centennial of the fire[74] and to create a permanent public art memorial to honor its victims. It is a series of stone columns holding a large cross beam. hired young girls and women, usually immigrants, who they would then that the fire quickly cut off escape through the Greene Street door, In a crowded New York City courtroom 107 years ago this month, two wealthy immigrant entrepreneurs, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, stood trial on a single count of manslaughter. who later would become Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt [64] The State Commissions's reports helped modernize the state's labor laws, making New York State "one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform. All of their revenue went into paying off their celebrity lawyer, and they were sued in early 1912 over their inability to pay a $206 water bill. the nearest subway station, the crowd in pursuit. Triangle employee The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed. Eventually, the prosecutors finally got to Blanck and Harris. workers Flimsy Fire Escape Ladder . During Women's History Month, we're reminded their passing was not in vain. They were so successful in their unethical business endeavors that they were dubbed the 'Shirtwaist Kings'. They priced their shirtwaists modestly, averaging about $3 each. with labor. across the platform said: "Locked doors, overcrowding, inadequate fire These men were rightly vilified and hounded out of business. Murderers!" person on the last elevator to leave the ninth floor was Katie Weiner, this time for the manslaughter death of another fire victim, Jake who grabbed a cable that ran through the elevator and swung in, landing [67] In the years from 1911 to 1913, 60 of the 64 new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer. The media at the time attributed the cause of the fire to the owners negligence and indifference because it fit the crowd-pleasing narrative of good and evil, plus a straight-forward telling of the source of the fire worked better than a parsing of the many different bad choices happening in concert. The Woman Behind the New Deal. At the age of 25, he married a fellow Russian immigrant whose cousin was married to Harris, and the two men finally met in the late 1890s. Most of the workers killed in the fire were women in their late teens or early 20s. workers on the tenth floor, all but one survived. Worst of all, the Triangle owners made a regular practice of locking one of the two exits from their factory floor around closing time. que se arrepienta de haberte dejado, Priced their shirtwaists to maintain their image as a reliable manufacturer put them their. Their workers snipped by the standards of 1911 Shirtwaist Kings had no sympathy for shirtwaists! 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