100 Years Ago Today, The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire.
Abel Malcolm
corporate controlled Republican party, unions were very rare and they
were very weak in our country, if they even existed at all. The
Triangle factory was located on the very top floors of a tall building
in downtown Manhattan. This was a dangerous sweatshop in every sense
of the word, and full of cramped spaces that were lined up with busy
work stations, and these work stations were packed with lots of poor
immigrant workers, mostly teenage girls, and they worked very hard for
12 hours a day, with little if any breaks, and they made less than $3
a day, under appalling work conditions. At the time that the fire
broke out in this tall building, there were only two stairways down to
the street, both of them were deliberately locked so that no one can
get out. There were some other fire escape ladders, but they quickly
burned down too, as they were very shoddily constructed and could not
even support the weight of people on them.
The owners of this particular factory, Blanck and Harris, already had
a suspicious history of setting their factories on fires. Triangle
factory buildings were twice scorched to the ground, in 1902, and in
1910. Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces in
order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased,
which was a very common practice in those days, where apparently, in
those days, for the rich corporate executive type, the law did not
apply (it still does not apply).
After the fire, upon investigation, it was revealed later on, that
Blanck and Harris refused to install any sprinkler systems or to enact
any other safety measures, because they wanted to leave their options
open, in case they wanted to burn down their factory again.
Blanck and Harris, the typical Republicans of their time, were
notorious for their anti-union and anti-worker policies. When the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909, they
were asking for higher pay and better working conditions, so Blanck
and Harris paid the Police in New York city to act as thugs and to
rough-up/beat-up these striking women. Those who were still left
standing after the melee were handcuffed, taken away and then
imprisoned. At that time, Republicans were firmly entrenched in our
government, Republicans controlled all branches of our government, and
their campaigns were bankrolled by these anti-union business people,
people such as Blanck and Harris. As a result, the Republican members
of our government looked the other way, as these workers were
violated, oppressed and brutalized. The President of the United
States, in those days, was William Howard Taft, a Republican, he too
looked the other way, as these injustices took place.
The evil stench of corporate oppression filled our entire nation, more
than a hundred years ago today, when on March 25, 1911, on a sunny
Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers (mostly teenage girls)
working at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, when suddenly, out of
nowhere, a spontaneous fire flamed out of a rag bin on the eighth
floor of this factory. The manager tried to turn a fire hose on it,
but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. The fire grew
fast and spread fast, so panic ensued. Workers fled to every exit,
but the elevators broke down, and women began jumping down the
elevator shafts, to their deaths. Those who fled down the stairs were
trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth
floor began jumping out the windows, some of whom fell on top of the
firefighters below. The firefighters' ladders did not stretch high
enough to reach the trapped workers, and on the ground, their safety
nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who just kept jumping
down to their deaths, one after the other.
The owners of this factory, Blanck and Harris, were on the building's
top floor when the fire broke out. They were able to escape by
climbing onto the roof and hopping to an adjoining building.
The fire ended in under an hour, after which, about 149 workers
(mostly teenage girls) would be found dead. They were all either
burned to death, suffocated to death, or they ended up jumping to
their deaths, or they piled up dead in the elevator shafts. This is a
historical American tragedy which should be commemorated.
A few days after this tragedy, on April 5, 1911, about 80,000 people
would attend a protest march in down town Manhattan, the march was
organized by the workers' unions, to protest the conditions that led
to this fire.
Blanck and Harris were eventually put on trial for manslaughter, but
because of a Republican bias towards the rich corporatists, Blanck and
Harris managed to get off scot-free.
However, due to the work of good people in our government (Democrats),
and due to the political pressure applied by good people in our
country (union activists), the horrible massacre at this Triangle
Shirtwaist factory did not go in vain. The memory of this massacre
would eventually be used as a catalyst to enact some very basic worker
protection reforms, reforms which the Republican party were adamantly
opposed to and which they are still opposed to, to this day.
From that day, until today, and into the future, it has been the
DEMOCRATIC PARTY which has taken up the cause of the American worker
and it has been the DEMOCRATIC PARTY which has taken up all of the
other causes of MUCH NEEDED reform in our country, reforms that
protects the American public and the American worker. After the
election of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1933,
unions were strengthened, working conditions and public safety were
improved, and people's wages increased as America got out of the Great
Depression which the Republicans created.
The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire is a turning point in American
history, as this tragedy led to the development of a series of laws
and regulations that would protect the safety of the American worker
and the American public. This tragedy is remembered as one of the most
infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were
largely preventable–most of the victims died as a result of neglected
safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The
tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop
conditions of factories, and has led to the development of a series of
laws and regulations that better protects the safety of workers, such
as the October 1911 passage of the Sullivan-Hoey law, which
established the Bureau of Fire Prevention. For more information, go
to these links:
http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston57/triangle/
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C11F73C5813738DDDAE0A94DA405B828DF1D3
Abel Malcolm
struggle for workers' rights has been a righteous struggle, it's been
a long and drawn out struggle, it's been a bloody struggle, and it's
been a very important struggle. All of the rights which we have as
workers today, people don't realize it, but we got ALL of these rights
because of the brave struggle of the people who belong in unions. I
think that this documentary explains it very well. It's very
important that people know this, it IS American history. Back then,
100 years ago, Blanck and Harris, they were the Koch brothers of
today, and they went about constantly destroying unions and abusing
workers. All those young women, more than a hundred of them, they
were burned to death, or allowed to burn to death, just because their
abusers had the power to abuse and oppress them, and the people who
killed them all are the same people who we still have here in America
even to this day, the anti-union crowd (we all know who they are, the
Republicans). When Republicans, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
go about with destroying unions, it's business as usual for these
scumbags, this is what these Republicans want to take our country back
to, they want to take our country backwards to the day when workers
can simply be burned to death, so that the rich and the corrupt can
get even richer still with the evil that they routinely perpetrate.
It is the Republicans who enable this type of evil on the land.
Blanck and Harris had a history of paying people to violently beat up
union organizers and to violently attack peaceful protesters and then
they also bribed politicians to support such evil and they burned down
buildings, and they committed all sorts of crimes. Not much has
changed since those days, Republicans still think the same way, they
still hate the MAJORITY of the American people (all minorities, all
workers, e.t.c.) and Republicans still worship the FEW who are rich
(the evil few who get rich by stepping on the carcass of the poor
people who they rob and kill).
Here's a great link, to a documentary on the subject of the Triangle
Company fire:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/25/rosenbaum.triangle.anniversary/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/22/fraser.triangle.fire/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
On Mar 24, 4:26 am, Abel <abelmalc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 100 Years Ago Today, The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire.
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C11F73C5813738DDDAE...