The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. The Triangle Fire. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is remembered as one of the most horrific incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable-most of the victims died as a resul. Harris countered by saying later that if the doors were locked, it was to prevent the girls from coming in late and sneaking in. Yet when I contacted the New York City archives, I was told that, well, the transcriptall 2,000-plus pagesseemed to have been lost. The Triangle firm occupied the 8th, 9th and 10th floors, at the top of the building. If you need help, contact our WebSupport via LiveChat. This reference work provides an annotated account of the views of Congress, the courts, OSHA, and the public on the enactment and enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1974. Samuel Johnson famously declared that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," and I have never been wealthy enough to test his theory. Most of the companys employees were young, immigrant women; and like many manufacturing concerns of the day, working conditions were not ideal and the space was cramped. It would still be years before reforms finally took root, but the sacrifices made by the workers that died that day may have saved countless others. My curiosity led me to a spare and forceful book, The Triangle Fire. Photo source: International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University, Mourners from the union that represented the Triangle employees gathered 10 days after the fire to remember the dead and call for workplace safety reforms. The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires. One hundred years ago on March 25, fire spread through the cramped Triangle Waist Company garment factory on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building in lower Manhattan. No other document could take me closer to that factory in the moments before and after the fire erupted. As tragic as the event was, it became the hallmark for change in 20th century working conditions, and is responsible for creating many of the laws that keep the everyday workplace safe today. It had been founded early in the 20th century as an alternative to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, whichin those dayswas not open to women, blacks or Jews like Steuer. centennial commemoration on March 25, 2011, Fire-fighters could not extinguish the flames or reach the trapped workers, many of whom fell to their deaths from the windows attempting to escape the blaze. General Collections, Goldstein Foundation CollectionPrints and Drawings, [Group of mainly female shirtwaist workers on strike, in a room, New York], 148 Perished in Fire: Wild with Fright Girls Leap to Sure Death on Pavement., International Ladies Garment Workers Union, National Womens Trade Union League of America, National Consumers League Records, 1882-1986, Jacob Riis: Revealing How the Other Half Lives, National Child Labor Committee Collection, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project, 1936 to 1940, Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Topics in Chronicling America, From Haven to Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life in America, Birds Eye View of Cumberland, Maryland 1906, Annapolis and the Naval Academy from the State House Dome, A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland., Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600 to 1925. 1-866-4-USA-DOL The city of Baltimore, founded in 1729, remains one of the busiest ports in the nation with respect to handling foreign tonnage and the dollar amount of cargo handled. answer choices. What were the effects? Search the Library of Congress digital image collection for photographs and prints of New York City at the time of the disaster. The use of ground hoses proved ineffective and rescue operations were virtually non-existent. The fire helped unite organized labor and reform-minded politicians like progressive New York Governor Alfred E. Smith and Senator Robert F. Wagner, one of the legislative architects of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal agenda. Like so much flammable cotton fiber left on the cutting room floor, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only caused the deaths of 146 immigrant pieceworkers, but also provided the spark to incite the Labor-Reform Movement and scores of fire and building code improvements.
