Sorrow and Outrage
100th Anniversary of the Triangle Factory Fire
by Anne Silverstein
On March 25, hundreds gathered to pay their respects to the 146 victims of the Triangle Waist Company factory fire near Washington Square 100 years ago. At a time when labor is under attack across the nation, CSA urges its readers to take a moment and remember that unions formed in response to hideous work conditions, greedy bosses and federal and state governments that turned a blind eye to the exploitation and suffering of millions. To learn more about the fire and its impact on organized labor, click here.
The 10-story building, which housed the Triangle shirtwaist factory, is today a federal and city landmark. Several plaques commemorating one of the state’s worst industrial accidents are affixed to its front. The steel-framed structure at 23-29 Washington Place, was donated to NYU many years ago.
The fire’s victims were mostly women, Italian and Jewish immigrants, mostly teenagers or young adults. The Triangle Waist Company’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were “the very prototype of sweatshop bosses. They billed their female employees for needles and other supplies, taxed them for the chairs on which they sat, charged for their clothing lockers, and imposed fines treble the value of goods accidentally spoiled by the girls.”1
On March 25, 1911, 500 to 600 employees sat elbow-to-elbow and backto-back at their sewing machines on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors. At closing time, the girls prepared to leave. A fire of unknown origin – perhaps a carelessly tossed match? – broke out. Flames rapidly engulfed the eighth floor.
“Inside the flaming building, horror was being piled on horror. Like many lofts, this one had no sprinkler system. There was a stand-pipe hose; but the working girls panicked, and the hose was never used. Eighth-floor windows blew out, sprinkling glass slivers onto the sidewalk. Sheets of flame now licked out of the glassless windows, only to be sucked into other windows two floors above…[Elevator operator Joseph Zito] rammed through a gauntlet of flames to the ninth floor, bringing down 25 to 30 girls [in each of five trips.]
Girls on the eighth floor ran to the stairway exit on the Washington Place side, but the door was locked. Fences of flame cut them off from the elevators. Screaming, praying, coughing, and clawing, they stampeded to the windows,
leaned out and tried to gulp fresh air. Other girls, unable to reach the windows and suffocated by smoke, collapsed on sewing machines and burned to death. When the inferno became unbearable, young women at the windows started jumping.” 2
Blanck and Harris were acquitted of manslaughter after a judge effectively directed a verdict of not guilty. The Literary Digest, a news magazine, commented a week later, “Capital can commit no crime when it is in pursuit of profits.” But the outrage over the fire was widespread and could not be silenced. Eventually, a state investigating commission for the fire was organized including the future governor, Alfred E. Smith, and state Sen. Robert F. Wagner, father of the future mayor of the same name.
“…. [the state’s] entire labor code was rewritten, becoming the best of any state in the nation. Labor unions, so long ignored and repressed, began to come into their own. Some historians pinpoint this tragedy and its consequences as the genesis of the New Deal.” 3
1-3) “The Epic of New York City: A Narrative Account,” Edward Robb Ellis.
