The Triangle fire: one hundred and forty-six dead
The stairway doors were locked so the workers could not carry out cloth. More than half the dead were Jewish girls between fourteen and twenty-three.
On 25 March 1911, a Saturday near the end of the shift, a scrap bin caught fire on the eighth floor of the Asch Building on Washington Square. The fire went upward; the tenth floor was warned in time, the ninth was not. The Greene Street door was locked from outside: the owners kept it shut so the workers could not carry out cloth and would pass inspection on leaving. The fire ladders reached the sixth floor.
One hundred and forty-six people died, one hundred and twenty-three of them women and girls. More than half were Jewish, recent immigrants; most of the rest were Italian. The youngest, Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese, were fourteen; most of the dead were girls between fourteen and twenty-three. People jumped from the ninth floor in front of the crowd; the nets tore.
The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, themselves immigrants from Russia, were acquitted: the jury was not satisfied they had known the door was locked. Two years later Blanck was fined twenty dollars for the same offence.
The funeral for the unidentified drew, by police estimate, a quarter of a million people. Rose Schneiderman's speech at the Metropolitan Opera House—"I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves"—became a starting point for the labour movement. In four years the state Factory Investigating Commission carried thirty-six workplace safety laws through the legislature; its secretary, Frances Perkins, would later carry that experience into Roosevelt's administration and the whole country.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Trial record, People v. Blanck and Harris, 1911 — acquitted: it was not proved the owners knew the door was locked
- Reports of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, 1911–1915 — thirty-six workplace safety laws in four years
Basis: documents and evidence.