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Triangle shirtwaist factory fire research report essay
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
On March 25 ,1911 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York city was burned becoming one of the deadliest industrial disaster in the United States history .Killing one hundred and forty six workers ,the majority of them women young as fourteen years old .Many of this women were immigrants that came to America for a better life,but before they could either they felt death or burned to death.Causing a big chaos on New York City during the Industrialization Era.
Throughout this time women were seen more as an object and did not have any rights and would stay home taking care of their children and husband.In Working Women and The Triangular Fire:Press Coverage of a Tragedy ,Elizabeth V. Burt explains the
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According to Valentine Democrat in “Chronicles America:Historic Newspapers” he specifies how big the building was and what floors did this company occupied: “This company occupied the top three floors out of the tenth floor Ash Building. Its workforce consisted of five hundred young seamstresses, mainly Jewish and Italian immigrants between the ages of therteen and twenty three , and fewer than one hundred men.” About two hundred people worked at the eighth floor in the cutting plant of The Triangle Factory were the pieces of the garment were cut and some of the assembling went on.Two hundred and fifty people worked on the night floor which was the main sewing plant and on the tenth floor they were about sixty other workers in the executive offices,sales departments,shipping packing,and pressing department on the top floor totaling about five hundred workers.While the steel and concrete building is fireproof the contents in it are highly flammable for that reason the foreman keeps a constant watch of the scrabs collected each day but most dangerously they would keep the exit doors locked to prevent them from leaving and …show more content…
The New york Times “Men and Girls die in the Waist Factory Fire; Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside." describes the way this workers got killed: “Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.” Unfortunately none of the employees who decided to jump to the floor survive.
In conclusion, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a tragedy that could have been avoided. It caused many innocent people to lose their lives. But, fortunately this caused the factory owners and the government to take more precautions with the factory.Because of this incident, the safety standards have changed significantly such as better firefighting equipment, and fire alarm. Now there are more exit doors which can only be used as an emergency and if you intend to go through that door, the fire alarm will turn
On July 13, 1900 Joseph Aschs’ new building plans in New York City are approved and by January 5, 1901 the building is complete. In 1906, the eighth floor of the Asch building is bought by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company who opens a factory there. Three years later, a letter is sent to the management of the Triangle Shirtwaist building from a fire prevention expert. He suggests they that a discussion about evaluating and enhancing safety measures. Unfortunately, management does not take the letter seriously and “the letter is ignored.” (Linder, “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial”) The inhumane work conditions in the factory led to the decision of twenty-five ILGWU workers to declare strike against th...
The fire lasted only 12-14 minutes and killed 492 and injured 164, the reason for this is the building construction, occupancy, and interior design of the club. For better understanding the structure will be described in great detail.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire most of all impacted all forms of industry, and changed the way workers worked. Along with the legislations that impacted women and children, laws also centered on the safety and well being of all workers. One of the main reforms and changes came through the formation of the New York Factory Investigating Commission, or the FIC: a legislative body that investigated the manufacturers for various infractions. They were based on protecting the workers: both their rights and their lives. The FIC investigated countless factories and “enacted eight laws covering fire safety, factory inspections and sanitation.” The FIC was highly focused on the health and safety of industrial workers, making reports and legislation that focused on “fire safety, building construction, machine guarding, heating, lighting, ventilation, and other topics” and on specific industries like “chemicals, lead trades, metal trades, printing shops, sweatshops and mercantile establishments.” Thirteen out of seventeen of the bills submitted by the FIC became laws, and “included measures requiring better fire safety efforts, more adequate factory ventilation, improved sanitation and machine guarding, safe operation of elevators” and other legislations focused for specific establishments.” Fire safety and new fire codes such as “mandate emergency exits, sprinkler systems, and maximum-occupancy laws,” such as the Fire Prevention Act of 1911, were put into place to limit the likelihood that another fire like the one at Triangle would occur, or be as drastic and deathly. Other organizations like the Joint Board of Sanitary Control “set and maintain standards of sanitation in the workplace,” as well as actually enforcing these stand...
On the fateful and unforgettable afternoon of June 17, 1972 Hotel Vendome experienced yet another fire. Actually it experienced several fires in different locations on this date. Electricians working on the first floor reported smoke coming from the upper floors, and a bartender reported smoke in the basement. All occupants in the basement café were safely escorted out, and 3 engine companies, 2 ladder companies, and 1 District Chief arrived on scene noticing ...
Disasters can be so impactful; some can forever change the course of history. While many at the time thought this story would soon pass, and with it all the potential bad publicity, the story of the Triangle fire spread quickly, and outraged many people. On a beautiful spring day in March 1911 when 146 workers lost their lives, a fire would prove it could do what years of reformers had failed to do, get the government on the side of the workers. I would argue that the fire largely impacted the country. Specifically, the Triangle Fire ended up changing New York’s interconnected political and economic scene, and spurred on the creation of stricter safety codes. For the first time owners would hold responsibility for their actions. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris; being indicted for manslaughter was proof of this. Social change seemed to be spurred as well; the general public and newspapers would come back the workers of New York. Large institutions would suffer as well. Tammany Hall would be feared less and less by waves of new immigrants. The largest change brought about by the blaze would be legislation. Twenty-five bills, recasting the labor laws of the state
Hundreds of people died that day. A good portion of the women who worked at the factory died from the fire, while the others decided to jump out of the building to their death. At the end of the day, the families who had suffered a loss due to the fire received at most $75 as compensation. The corporation learned nothing from the disaster. However, this was an eye opener for some of the journalists who wanted to make a change.
“The ‘Triangle’ company, “With blood this name will be written in the history of the American workers’ movement, and with feeling will this history recall the names of the strikers of this shop- of the crusaders” (Von Drehle 86). Even before it happen, the Forward predicted the terrible disaster of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that occurred one year, one month, and seventeen days later (86). Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, by David Von Drehle tells the story of the horrible fire.
Life in the early 1900’s wasn’t easy. Competition for jobs was at an all time high, especially in New York City. Immigrants were flooding in and needed to find work fast, even if that meant in the hot, overcrowded conditions of garment factories. Conditions were horrid and disaster was inevitable, and disaster did strike in March, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York set on fire, killing 146 workers. This is an important event in US history because it helped accomplish the tasks unions and strikes had tried to accomplish years earlier, It improved working conditions in factories nationwide and set new safety laws and regulations so that nothing as catastrophic would happen again. The workplace struggles became public after this fire, and the work industry would never remain the same again.
The documentary strived to show us how factories were corrupt that they couldn’t provide good working conditions for the workers until we lost people. This documentary is about the tragic fire that took place on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle factory. We can clearly see through this documentary that these people didn’t matter to the factory owners because their needs were not met. The documentary shows that the year before the fire took place the workers led a strike asking for better working conditions, but obviously their voices were not heard. After the fire took place this is when factories started improving working conditions. It is sad to learn that it took 146 lives of innocent people in order for factory owners to be convinced that they need to improve the poor working
Two of the major parts in the history of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire were the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Like many other factory owners, both of the men immigrated to the U.S. during the great wave of Jewish emigration. They ran shops in which they barely knew their employees (as the turnover rate was high). During the trial the two owners even noted that they had no idea how many women were working in their shops as “day to day, new faces always arriving, old faces gone without ever catching their attention” (p. 273). They were solely concerned with production and were staunchly against laborer rebellion and negotiation. Blank and Harris hired strikebreakers and men to assault strikers and bribed police (p. 4). As a response to union action, the men eventually formed their own in-house union; the workers, of course, were dissatisfied with this establishment as unions run by factory owners are logically working against the interest of the workers (not to mention the leaders of the union were relatives of either owner) (p.
During this time period, the idealistic view of a woman was running the household while the husband provided a source of income. For a woman not to follow this role, society deemed as untraditional. However, many women began to criticize this role because they believed they should be granted the same opportunities as men. For example, in Document 3, a woman can be seen working in a factory. This is an example of a woman breaking the traditional societal role to provide a source of income for herself, rather than having it be provided for her. Not only did a vast amount of women enter the workforce, but they also began to fight for more opportunities. They fought for opportunities such as equal education, pay, and political
The novel Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle is a novel that brought worldwide recognition of what terrible events that occurred on March 25th 1911. Von Drehle is a well-known American author and a journalist. With a bachelor degree from the University of Denver, and earning his masters in literature from Oxford University. He worked in many newspapers such as the Denver post, the Washington post, and the Times. Therefore, publishing many pieces which he received an award for such as Among the lowest of the dead: inside death row, Deadlock: the indie story of Americas closest election, and Rise to greatness: Abraham Lincoln and Americas most perilous year. The novel Triangle is about a shirtwaist factory fire that occurred on March 25th, 1911. It was a deadly fire that happened in the New York triangle factory that killed approximately 146 workers. This tragedy is well remembered in American industrial history, because the deaths could have been prevented. Most of the victims were burned alive or jumped to their death, because the factory did not have the proper safety equipment and the doors being locked within the building. This tragedy brought attention to the dangerous working conditions that the victims endured in the sweatshop factories. Which therefore led to new laws
This was the start of a new age in the history for women. Before the war a woman’s main job was taking care of her household more like a maid, wife and mother. The men thought that women should not have to work and they should be sheltered and protected. Society also did not like the idea of women working and having positions of power in the workforce but all that change...
“I was upstairs in our work room when one of the employees who happened to be looking out the window cried that there was a fire around the corner. I rushed downstairs, and when I reached the sidewalk, the girls were already jumping from the windows. None of them moved after they struck the sidewalk…”, Benjamin Levy said of his memories of the fire (“Stories”). The Triangle factory fire most likely started in a waste bin of cotton by a match or a cigarette butt, and a rack of clothes overhead caught fire (New). Max Rother tried putting the fire out with a nearby pail of water, but the rack of clothes fell on top of him (“Stories”). The fire spread impossibly quickly because of all of the fabric scraps on the floor and on the tables. Trying to get to the only fire escape was like going through an obstacle course: workers had to get around tables of sewing machines seventy-five feet long, back to back chairs, and waste baskets in the aisles (Kheel Center Image Identifier: 5780Pb39f15g). If people did not have to waste time crawling over tables and dodging chairs, they might have made it out safely (Kheel Center Image Identifier: 5780Pb39f15g).
Then there was the woman’s movement and women felt they deserved equal rights and should be considered man’s equal and not inferior. The man going out to work, and the wife staying home to care for the home and the children would soon become less the norm. This movement would go on to shape the changes within the nuclear family. Women deci...