Headlines, North America

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS: Sweatshop Martyrs Gone But Never Forgotten

Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Mar 30 2004 (IPS) - Just before quitting time on a pleasant Saturday in late March 1911, someone at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City shouted, "Fire!"

Within five minutes, the small blaze that began with a carelessly discarded match or cigarette had become an inferno. Although everyone on the eighth and tenth floors of the building would manage to escape, either to the roof or to the stairs leading to the crowded street, the young workers on the ninth floor were not so lucky.

Two dozen plunged to their deaths when the flimsy fire escape collapsed, and more than 50 chose to leap from the large windows facing the street rather than burn, after they discovered the exit door was locked. Twenty others tumbled down an open elevator shaft in a desperate bid to get out.

Fire-fighters arrived after just 90 seconds, but their tallest ladder only reached to the sixth floor.

The final toll was 146 dead, 123 of them women. Two were just 14 years old.

"The Triangle company," noted the ‘Jewish Daily Forward’ of Jan. 10, 1910. "With blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers’ movement and with feeling will this history recall the names of the strikers of this shop – of the crusaders."

Nearly a century later, a new book, ‘Triangle: The Fire That Changed America’, by Washington Post reporter David von Drehle contains the first complete list of the victims’ names, and explores the lasting impact the tragedy had on the U.S. labour movement.

"As terrible as it was, it really wasn’t out of the ordinary in America," von Drehle said at an event to mark the 93rd anniversary of the disaster. "By one estimate, at least 100 Americans died on the job every day at that time. But this fire was different."

"It was different because it was more than just a horrific half hour," he said. "It was the crucial moment in a potent chain of events that ultimately forced fundamental reforms from the political machinery of New York and, after New York, the whole nation."

The Triangle was New York’s largest blouse factory, one of about 500 such sweatshops in the city.

Young seamstresses earned about three dollars per week, while the most skilled and experienced took home perhaps 20 dollars every seven days. Most were women, and fierce struggles erupted to demand a voice in the male-dominated union movement.

The Triangle Factory was a non-union shop, although some of its workers had joined the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).

The Triangle was owned by two Russian immigrants, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, popularly known as the "Shirtwaist Kings" (a "shirtwaist" being the term then for a woman’s blouse).

Eighteen months before the fire, a massive strike had broken out in New York’s shirtwaist industry to demand better pay and working conditions. Fifteen thousand workers walked off the job the first day, and their numbers reached almost 40,000 by the end of the week.

Led by women, it was unprecedented in the history of organised labour, von Drehle notes, and "shocked and thrilled the city".

The leaders of the resistance to the strike were the Shirtwaist Kings.

After the fire, Harris and Blanck were indicted on one count of manslaughter (the penalty was the same for one count as for 146 counts). They were also charged with locking factory doors during working hours, a misdemeanour carrying a 25-dollar fine.

The Shirtwaist Kings promptly hired Max Stoyer, considered the greatest lawyer of his time.

It emerged at trial that the routine at the Triangle was to lock one door and have a night watchman posted at the only other exit to search purses and coats for stolen items. Still, the owners were acquitted after the judge instructed the jury that it was not enough to show the doors were locked, but that Harris and Blanck had to know on the specific day of the fire that they were locked.

Fire safety was hardly a new concept, von Drehle pointed out in a presentation at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labour Relations here. By 1911, fire-safe factories had been a reality for more than a generation. The owners of the Triangle, he says, had a "bafflingly irresponsible attitude".

Despite the acquittals, public outrage and pressure for reform was too strong to ignore. A month after the fire, New York’s governor created the Factory Investigating Commission, which developed a revolutionary set of labour laws that went far beyond fire safety to take on core issues like workers’ compensation, a 54-hour work week and limits on child labour.

The commission even discussed creating a minimum wage – a "completely radical concept for 1913", von Drehle says.

The Triangle fire also helped fuel an extraordinary boom in progressive politics and labour activism. Between 1909 and 1913, union membership in the United States grew on the order of about 5,000 percent.

Today, U.S. union membership is waning, with 12.9 percent of wage and salary workers belonging to unions in 2003, down from 13.3 percent in 2002, according to government figures.

The Shirtwaist Kings weathered the tragedy and its aftermath largely unscathed. The pair collected about a million dollars in insurance under current terms and never personally paid anything to the relatives of the victims, although an insurance company eventually settled with 23 families for about 75 dollars each.

Two years after the funeral procession for the Triangle victims drew half a million mourners, Blanck was again arrested for locking a door during working hours at his Fifth Avenue factory.

He tried to argue that his employees would steal if he did not lock them in, but the judge found Blanck guilty and fined him 20 dollars – the minimum punishment. Apparently, von Drehle relates, the judge apologised for having to fine him at all.

This year, the former Triangle factory (now part of New York University) was given landmark status by the City of New York, the first building to be recognised for its historic rather than architectural importance.

But while the tragedy served to expose the horrors of unbridled workplace exploitation, its lessons are too often ignored.

"In 1991, in Hamlet, North Carolina, 25 workers died behind locked doors in a flash fire at a poultry plant," von Drehle says.

"Conditions in poorer countries are far worse. A fire at a toy factory in Bangkok in 1993 left nearly 200 workers dead. Factory owners had locked the doors to prevent theft of toys by their employees."

Just last month, the giant retail chain Wal-Mart was sued for civil rights violations by immigrant workers who said they were locked inside U.S. stores during their overnight cleaning shifts.