Triangle Fire Impact

The Impact of the Triangle Fire

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the immigration rate to the United States of America was higher than ever. The excess of people created an overflowing market of people seeking employment. As a result, factory owners could offer arbitrary wages for extremely excessively long hours of work. Due to the fact that a majority of the immigrants entered the country through Ellis Island, NY, one of the two major ports, the Triangle Waste Company was a prime source of employment for many immigrants who stayed in New York. However, the lack of regulation in factories combined with the numerous fire hazards present in the Triangle factory, set the stage for the tragic fire that commenced major reform for

industrialization regulation.
Beginning with the original construction of the Asch building where the Triangle Waste Company was located, the detrimental effects a potential fire could ignite were bound to happen eventually. When the construction of the building was taking place, “city officials in 1900 had allowed developer Joseph J. Asch to hand a little fire escape in place of the required stairway when he erected the building” (118). The absence of a third stairwell very well could have been the difference between life and death for many during the fire. Not only was the fire escape, that took the place of a stairwell, small in size, “[t]he Asch building fire escape was badly conceived, badly designed, and badly installed” (147). Before the fire hazards, such as piles of flammable fabric and overcrowding, were even in place, the building itself was not designed for a large number of workers to have a smooth exit in the case of an emergency.
Even though some regulations were already in place in order to aid in the prevention of fire-hazardous situations such as the Triangle fire, most of them were either ignored entirely or not executed to the full extent. For example, laws against overcrowding existed, but “in reality, no one—contractors or city authorities—paid meaningful attention to laws against crowding” (47). Overcrowding would not only make it all the more difficult to evacuate in the case of a fire, but it would be twice as difficult due to the inadequate evacuation methods instituted—the fire escape.
Furthermore, the issue of the fire department only being able to reach the sixth floor of a building posed problematic in the instance of a fire due to the fact that because of industrialization and “the coming of the steel-framed high rise” many factories were expanding (46).

As a result, “half the workers in Manhattan toiled on the seventh floor or above—which was at least one floor higher than the city fire department could easily reach” (48). When the New York Fire Department was unable to save many of the trapped victims of the Triangle fire, blame was placed on the fire department “for failing to insist on adequate safety measures” (179). Though, the NYFD was known for being the one of the top fire departments of the time, and those victims would have had a greater chance of survival if there were more adequate means of evacuation or if evacuation had been practiced in the form of a fire

drill.
Conversely, fire safety, or safety in general was not a main concern to the industrial workers during this era. Their main focus resided on wages and the 54-hour workweek. During this period, especially during the busy season, it was common to find factory employees working “from 5 A.M. to 9 P.M., a hundred or more hours per week” (41). Regardless, workers could not afford to be picky because there was always someone else who would be willing to take their place. Eventually, the workers bound together to form unions. Unions served to unite workers of all races which would, in turn, give the workers enough power stand up to the factory owners. Owners of large factories, such as the Triangle, did not like the idea of their workers banding together because “they were no longer insulated from labor strike and strong unions” (48). In fact, Harris and Blanck, the owners of the Triangle, created the Triangle Employees Benevolent Association, a false union run by their relatives, in order to keep tabs on their employees, so they could fire the people who they thought were conspiring against them.
Furthermore, the factory owners banded together with the corrupt Tammany Hall to help stop strikers through the use of strikebreakers.

The police would physically assault and arrest the striking women. Nevertheless, strikes still occurred; the Local 25 and the Women’s Trade Union League went on strike where the main purpose was “for the strikers to get New York to pay attention to the mistreatment of poor immigrants” (52). Not only were the factory workers enduring an overcrowded, dangerous environment, but they got paid next-to-nothing for the 10-15 hours of work they were doing. Eventually, in response to the strikes, some improvements were made when “an inspector was dispatched, and he ordered the owners to install adequate rest rooms and other amenities” (143). The conditions of the factory leading up to the Triangle fire were still not up to par, but the union and strikes set the preface for the momentous change that was instituted post

fire.
The tragic Triangle fire was the last spark needed to light the torch of lasting reform. In a mere two years after the fire, “nearly every deficiency in the Asch Building had been addressed” (215). The doors of the building swung outward instead of opening inside. One of the major conflicts encountered by the mass of workers trying to evacuate during the fire was not being able to pull open the door because so many of the workers had crowded it so quickly. Now, they would simply have to push in the case of evacuation. Also, other regulations were required, such as automatic sprinklers and “[f]ire drills were mandatory in large shops” (215). Stricter regulation and the institution of fire drills drastically improved the safety of industrial workers.
In addition to all of the physical changes implemented to decrease fire hazards, political reform also occurred in response to the Triangle fire. Tammany Hall underwent a significant change after the fire: “The change was shocking, from the Tammany of the shirtwaist strike to the Tammany of the Factory Commission in just two years” (213). The Factory Investigating Commission was signed into law a mere three months after the fire. The FIC swiftly investigated “nearly two thousand factories, covering twenty industries” in a short two month time frame (213). If fact, many of the improvements and regulations instituted after the fire were a result of this commission. A striking eight out of fifteen laws were passed “covering fire safety, factory inspections, [and] employment rules for women and children” which created “a new model for worker safety in American mills and workshops” (214, 267). However, the reform would not have been to this extent without the steadfastness of unions during the period before the fire are what set the stage for this quantity of reform. The Triangle fire was simply the final push people needed to realize the reform that desperately needed to take place.
Ultimately, the Triangle Waste Company fire served as a token that symbolized the need for change among the expansion of industrialization. Key political figures such as Francis Perkins, who got the 54-hours bill passed, and Robert F. Wagner, “the author of more important progressive laws than any figure in history, both had their motives shaped from the Triangle tragedy.