The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 in New York City killed 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women. The fire was caused by a cigarette left in a scrap bin and spread quickly due to accumulated scraps and lack of safety measures in the factory. It revealed the unsafe conditions many workers endured, such as locked doors, and led to major reforms regulating workplace safety and the establishment of unions. The tragedy served as a turning point, improving conditions for industrial workers through new laws and organizations in the decades after. However, unsafe factories still exist today in other parts of the world.

1. By: Asia Johnson

2.  The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was
located in the Lower East Side of New
York City on the corner of Green Street
and Washington Place. (Greenwald,
The Burning Building at Washington
Place, 55.)
 The owners were Max Blanck and Isaac
Harris
 The factory produced shirtwaists
(women’s blouses).
 About 500 employees worked in the
factory with majority of the workers
being female Jewish and Italian
immigrants. (Rosenzweig, Who Built
America, 223.)

3.  One of the deadliest disasters within the industrial workforce occurred
within this building. (Jozwiak, Triangle, Kindle edition.)
 A fire broke out due to a cigarette butt that was left lit in the scrap bin.
 The fire grew quickly because of the accumulated scraps that were left
in the scrap bin.
 There was no alarm system to alert the workers of the fire that had
broke out.

4.  The fire escapes were poorly
designed.
 On top of that, the owners locked the
doors to the stairwells and the exists
in order to prevent workers from
sneaking out to rest or steal needles
and thread.
 Many of the workers who were unable
to escape, jumped out the window in
an act of despair. (Mitelman, Rose
Schneiderman, 93.)
 146 people died because of the fire.
 123 of these people were women, and
23 were men.
 Most Triangle workers were between
16 and 23; some were even 14.

5. • Clara Lemlich Shavelson
was a leader of the
shirtwaist workers in New
York City
• She worked as an activist
and suffragist for women.
• Clara organized strikes for
the intolerable conditions
she and many other
women worked in.
 She alongside 20,000 other
women of the 30,000
shirtwaist workers began
to strike.
• This was known as the
“Uprising 20,000” and
the strike continued
from November 1909 to
February 1910.
• Clara was able to
produce union
contracts at nearly
every shop except for
the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory who opposed
these unionized efforts.
• The contracts enforced
safety standards, fire
drills, and handling of
scraps.

6.  The Triangle Fire outraged many Americans.
 They questioned at what cost of human life would it take for measures
to be carried out regarding industrialization.
 Many working people, reformers, and even survivors of the fire
pressured factory regulation.

7. “ No one should have to sacrifice their life for their
livelihood, because a nation built on the dignity of work
must provide safe working conditions for its people.”
Security of Labor Thomas E. Perez

8.  On June 1911, New York created a Factory Investigation
Commission which looked into factories for fire hazards,
unsanitary conditions, and many other matters.
 The commission was very thorough. It investigated 3, 385
workplaces, conducted 59 hearings, and heard testimonies
from 472 witnesses. (U.S. Department of Labor)
 Thanks to the Factory Investigation Commission, 20 laws
were enacted that provided stricter regulation on health
and safety conditions.
 Specifically these laws required better building access, and
exits, fire extinguishers, alarm systems, automatic
sprinklers and fireproofing technology.
 The American Society of Safety Engineers was also founded
October 14, 1911.

9.  National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) prohibited
employers from discriminating against workers who joined unions and
assured the rights to negotiate terms of their employment.
 The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 helped established minimum
wage. It also established a 40 hour work week, so if people worked past
those 40 hours, they would receive overtime which is time-and-a-half.
Lastly, it established a minimum age to work certain jobs seeing as how
some young kids were working dangerous jobs when they shouldn’t
have been. (U.S. Department of Labor)
 The number of deaths in the workplace decreased dramatically after
these reforms were carried out but some owners still broke the rules.
 In 1991, a poultry plant in North Carolina caught fire and 25 workers
died because the doors were locked.

10.  Below is the hyperlink to a video that compares
garment workers of today with the garment
workers during the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory. It gives you insight on how these factories
are set up. To this day, majority of immigrant
women fulfill these garment industry jobs just
hoping to entering the work force in America.
 http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/1000000
00735431/garmentlabor.html

11.  The Triangle Fire as devastating as it was, really served as a
turning point in industrial history. So many people worked
in horrible unsafe conditions without so much as a say to
improve these conditions. This tragedy awakened many
reformers and workers to fight against such cruelty. 146
deaths could have been prevented had a door simply been
unlocked the day of the Triangle Fire. American has greatly
improved their working conditions especially in
comparison to the 1900s, but many factories like this still
exist in other countries and reform needs to happen in
these countries in order to avoid such tragedy once more.

12. 1. Roy Rosenzweig, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joshua Brown, and David Jaffee, Who
Built America: Working People and the Nation’s History, 1877 to present
(Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2008), 223-244
2. Elizabeth Jozwiak, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, 1909-1919 (New
York, (NY) 2006) Kindle Edition
3. Bonnie Mitelman, “Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Fire” American
History Illustrated (1981): 93-95.
4. Richard A. Greenwald, ‘‘The Burning Building at 23 Washington Place”: The
Triangle Fire, Workers, and Reformers in Proressive Era New York. New York
History (2002): 55-91
5. ‘’The New York Factory Investigating Commission” U.S. Department of Labor,
accessed November 27, 2014,
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/mono-regsafepart07.htm