To celebrate International Workers' Day, I will highlight an important moment from the labor movement, which is too often overlooked in education.

It began on March 25, 1911, in a sweatshop in New York City. A building known as the Asch Building, three floors of which were owned by the Triangle Waist Company, a company which manufactured women's shirtwaists, caught fire.

Sweatshops like it weren't uncommon at the time. Work was subcontracted to different individuals who hired the workers, and these subcontractors could pay workers at whatever rates they wanted. The people working for the Triangle company were mostly immigrants desperate for jobs, and without anyone seriously examining the standards, they were ripe for exploitation. Unsanitary conditions, long hours, and extremely low wages were the norm.

People as young as 13 or 14 worked within the building 6 days a week. They were mostly Italian and European Jewish immigrants, enduring lives of poverty and abuse. The poverty forced them to accept jobs with dismal conditions, and when they would be mistreated and underpaid they could be fired. Without proper union protections, speaking out against any kind of abuse would mean losing your job, and if you lost your job you had no source of income, which could be worse than the abuse in the factories.

Unions such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Womens' Trade Union League (WTUL) were concerned about the mistreatment of workers and fought for better legislation which could protect them. Everything the unions feared came to a head on the night the Triangle fire began. It's not clear what exactly caused the fire, but it was likely something as simple as the spark from a stray cigarette. The building erupted into flames, and within minutes people were fleeing for their lives.

The people on the ninth floor struggled to open the doors to the stairs, but found that they were locked. The doors were often locked because the owners insisted that workers stole materials, and so people were unable to flee. The fire escape bent under the weight of the workers and didn't lead to safety. Firefighter ladders were too short to reach the buildings, and many people, faced with certain death, chose to plunge to their deaths from the windows rather than face the agony of burning alive. Those who didn't leap endured that agony and died.

Survivor testimony:

"A group of men made a human ladder of themselves in an attempt to make it possible for girls hunched in fear at the windows not yet on fire to cross over to the next building, to which there was a small bridge (or passage.) But all the men, about 10 of them, fell down, not being able to bear up under the weight, and were killed together with those who tried to save themselves."

- Mary Domsky Abrams

"I think it was Mary Levinthal - she was a pretty girl. Everybody loved her. I've never been able to forget - maybe I could have saved her. She came down from the 9th floor only a few minutes before the fire. She said to me, 'Joe I have a few girls coming in on Sunday. Can you give me a couple dozen cuffs?' She took 3 or 4 bundles. Why didn't I hold her back? If she had stayed with us she would have escaped with us. She died on the 9th floor."

- Joseph Granick

"I wanted to go back and get my sister, but as I turned back there was a fireman. He grabbed me by the shoulder. He says 'What are you doing here?' I said 'I want to go back. My sister's up there, I have to save my sister!' He says 'You had better go down if you want to stay alive.'...My sister was burned to death. She was so badly burned we couldn't identify her, but her boyfriend did identify her. My sister's name was Esther Hochfield. She was about 20 years old at the time. I worked at the Triangle only three months, but she had worked there about three years. She was one of the strikers at Triangle in 1909."

- Max Hochfield

"My friend was screaming all the time while she pulled me to the window...I was scared and she was pulling me to the window and suddenly I felt I was going in the wrong direction. I think this thing that saved me was that I always had, even as a child, a great fear of height and I was afraid to go to the windows for that reason. Even now I don't like high places. In the crush I was separated from my friend. She jumped to her death."

- Sylvia Kimeldorf

The Triangle factory's response to the tragedy? One week's wages paid to the families of the dead people. Three days after the fire they moved their headquarters to 9-11 University Place. The day after they had it ready, it was found that the new building wasn't fireproof and that the exits to the single fire escape had already been blocked. The owners insisted their factory was an excellent model and had high safety standards.

The city mourned, and the people were sent into an outrage over what had been done. The owners of the factory were indicted by the courts for violating section 80 of the Labor Code, which ensured that doors not be locked during working hours, but they were acquitted.

It was the deadliest workplace tragedy of New York City until the attack on the World Trade Center. Thanks to union action and outrage, New York City ended up passing fire safety codes and increased penalties for non-compliance, helping to make buildings safer. However, it took until 1938 for Congress to ban child labor.

Today, May 1st, is International Workers' Day, and on this day it is good to remember the lives lost and exploited due to these workplace conditions, and commemorate those who have fought so hard for better standards.

Sources:

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Mar. 2019, www.britannica.com/event/Triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire.

"FIRE!" Cornell University - ILR School - The Triangle Factory Fire, trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/story/fire.html.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. "The Deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire." ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 17 Mar. 2017, www.thoughtco.com/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-p2-1779226.

"SWEATSHOPS & STRIKES BEFORE 1911." Cornell University - ILR School - The Triangle Factory Fire, trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/story/sweatshopsStrikes.html.

"TESTIMONIALS." Cornell University - ILR School - The Triangle Factory Fire, trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/testimonials/ootss_MarthaBensleyBruere.html.

"THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY FIRE," United States Department of Labor, www.osha.gov/oas/trianglefactoryfire-account.html.