Why the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire still matters

Today in 1911, a fire tore through a sweatshop in the upper stories of the Asch Building in Greenwich Village. In just twenty minutes, the inferno gutted the eighth, ninth and tenth floors — the three levels that comprised the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

The owners and foremen escaped easily, but more than two hundred workers — mostly young immigrant women — remained trapped on the factory floor, because management kept the stairway doors locked to deter theft and unauthorized breaks.

Several laborers squeezed into the two freight elevators. As the packed cars gradually descended — lifts were painfully slow back then — those left behind waited anxiously and cast about for other options amid the growing flames and billowing smoke.

Twenty workers crowded onto the sole fire escape. Unable to bear their weight — and weakened by heat of the blaze — the flimsy structure crumpled, twisted and tore away from the building, pitching the women to their deaths on the pavement, more than a hundred feet below.

The freight elevator doors opened again. Workers packed inside while the brave lift operators — Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo, two Italian immigrants — resumed their slow descent.

By now, the firemen had arrived, but neither their ladders nor the water from their hoses could reach higher than the sixth floor. As the smoke and heat became unbearable, several girls leapt from the windows, trying to catch on to the ladders below. Most missed entirely. All fell to their deaths.

On the street below, the firemen held blankets taut to form life nets. However, too many women jumped at the same time. They tore right through the fabric, fatally crashing into the pavement.

Finally, the freight elevators returned for a third load. Once again, dozens of desperate girls jammed in, overloading the cars. Those who could not fit tore open the screens and watched their last hopes sink slowly down the shafts. Flames and smoke now filled all three floors.

About halfway down the elevator shaft, each lift rocked when a great weight from above slammed down hard on the roof of the car. And then another. And another. Pounding down, over and over. Denting in the ceilings. Again and again. When blood began to seep down the elevator interior walls, the occupants knew it was their coworkers jumping down into the shaft to escape the fire and shattering their bodies on the roof of the lift. Once the cars finally reached bottom, the terrified riders poured out. But now the elevators were stuck on the ground floor — weighed down by piles of corpses on their roofs, their frames warped by repeated impacts, and unable to climb beams and cables deformed and weakened by the fire above.

Now entirely without hope — seared by extreme heat, choking on smoke — the remaining girls began jumping from the windows, smashing one by one into the sidewalk below.

Witness Louis Waldman remembered, “Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street….

“The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines.”

The spectators included the foreman who carried the key to the stairwell doors in his pocket.

In the end, 146 sweatshop workers — 23 boys and men, and 123 women and girls — lost their lives.

Despite multiple violations of city codes, the factory owners — Max Blanck and Isaac Harris — escaped criminal accountability entirely. In 1913, a civil court found them liable for wrongful death and required them to pay $75 in damages for each victim; that would be equivalent to about $1800 today. However, a generous payout from their insurance company more than covered the owners’ losses. In fact, Blanck — already back in business — paid a $20 fine to the city later that year for keeping his factory exits locked during working hours.

The martyrdom of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers helped legitimize labor unions, which — after decades of struggle — ultimately produced sounder laws, safer workplaces and a better quality of life for all Americans.

Economic conservatives sometimes argue that there should be no minimum wage, no workplace regulations and no labor unions. Just a century ago, the laissez-faire dystopia of their dreams really existed.

Triangle Shirtwaist employees worked from 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. — with a 30-minute lunch break—five days a week, plus seven more hours on Saturdays. Sometimes, they had to work Sundays, too. They earned about $9 per week — the equivalent of $220 today, or $4 per hour.

When garment workers in New York City had tried to organize the year before the fire, employers enlisted the courts and the police to break the strike. In the end, the Triangle Shirtwaist owners refused to concede to any of the union’s demands, including requests to unlock the stairwell doors and reinforce the fire escape.

As much as any American soldier on any battlefield, those sweatshop workers died for us.