Dubai Debt Issues Push Stocks Down
GMA: Adam Lambert, No; Chris Brown, Yes
Family Gets Early Christmas Gift From Ellen DeGeneres
Mayor: Sex Trafficking Victims, Please Speak Up
Street Artist Proposes on Subway Signage
The "annual Socialist and organized labor May Day parade" which included "10,000 trade union members of both sexes" who paid special tribute to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. (Photo via Library of Congress)
As noted in our newsletter, yesterday was the 98th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. In 1911 approximately 500 workers were sewing shirtwaists at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company's sweatshop near Washington Square in Manhattan when a fire broke out, ultimately killing 146 garment workers who either jumped to their deaths or died from the fire. It was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York.
EV Grieve spotted some makeshift memorials around town yesterday, saying, "Someone took the time to go around the neighborhood and honor the factory workers, most of whom were young immigrant women." Whatever happened to Heather Graham's plan to make a movie about the tragedy?
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
A hellish nightmare. Must have been heartbreaking to watch those poor women fall to the ground and be powerless to help them.
A few safety precautions by the factory owner would have prevented the whole thing. I believe it started when a cigarette ash was tossed into a bin full of cotton scraps and went up like a torch. There were only about 27 buckets of water in the place. Alas, we never learn. On this same date the Happy Land fire in the Bronx ironically also took place. Decades after the Triangle fire, blocked exits once again got people killed needlessly.
I enjoy reading these historical stories about old New York. Terrible tragedy, and as we can see today, we still do not learn from past mistakes.
We did learn...to export those mistakes to China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Guatemala...
This is an excellent example of how the bosses value profits over people.
12-year old girls working 70-hour weeks for $1 a day in deplorable unsafe conditions, while the bosses profited.
Earlier attempts to organize this shop were crushed when the capitalists brought in thugs to terrorize union organizers and hired prostitutes to replace the seamstresses, as a symbolic insult to their honor.
The deaths of these poor women sparked the growth of the ILGWU and other unions, and led to widespread improvement in working conditions. At what a cost!
It is a lesson that no progress is easily won from the greedy capitalists and their stooges. The same greed is still demonstrated today with AIG, Enron, Haliburton, and all the rest who have the Republican Party in their back pocket and conservative toadies as their allies.
fantastic sidewalk memorial. I wonder how much of the lower east side is land marked? the tenements need to be preserved. i lived on clinton street and the building, from 1888 was decrepit. and that hole was an arm and a leg. but it did have a bath tub in a separate room and not the kitchen. that building is a slum for 120 years! that's got to be some sort of record.
I'd always assumed with such a massive loss of life, the factory must have burned to the ground. But the building is still there---in fact, it is now the NYU Chemistry Building (on Greene Street, near Washington Square). It was landmarked about 5 years ago and has a plaque commemorating this awful event.