100 years after deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Guno צְבִי

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win
its Jewish and Italian workers get a memorial


As Allison and Rebecca Kestenbaum stood in front of a building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday, they were thinking about another set of sisters: their relatives Celia and Bess Eisenberg, who, as teenagers, worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Bess called in sick on the day that a horrific fire tore through the garment factory. Celia died, along with 145 others.

The tragedy transformed U.S. labor law and the building that housed the factory, now a New York University science building, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. But until this week, there had never been a permanent memorial paying tribute to the fire’s victims.

One was unveiled Wednesday at the site of the factory on the corner of Washington Place and Green Street near Washington Square Park. The memorial was conceived by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a nonprofit group of descendants and labor advocates dedicated to preserving the memory of the mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women who died that day and the fire’s impact on the organized labor movement.


https://www.jta.org/2023/10/12/ny/1...A_DB&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-63288-151159
 
guno said:
its Jewish and Italian workers get a memorial


As Allison and Rebecca Kestenbaum stood in front of a building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday, they were thinking about another set of sisters: their relatives Celia and Bess Eisenberg, who, as teenagers, worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Bess called in sick on the day that a horrific fire tore through the garment factory. Celia died, along with 145 others.

The tragedy transformed U.S. labor law and the building that housed the factory, now a New York University science building, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. But until this week, there had never been a permanent memorial paying tribute to the fire’s victims.

One was unveiled Wednesday at the site of the factory on the corner of Washington Place and Green Street near Washington Square Park. The memorial was conceived by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a nonprofit group of descendants and labor advocates dedicated to preserving the memory of the mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women who died that day and the fire’s impact on the organized labor movement.


https://www.jta.org/2023/10/12/ny/1...A_DB&utm_medium=email&mpweb=1161-63288-151159
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Uh, ok. I guess. :dunno:
 
As usual, the Progressives and radical Left make this about evil management and the evils of things like capitalism.

The factory was on three floors of a ten-story building, and not the only business in the building. The fire was caused by either a cigarette or match igniting cloth scraps. It's to note, that the factory management had banned smoking within the factory and workers who did smoke did it on the sly in contravention of the safety rules that did exist.

The NYC fire department showed up promptly, but as the fire had spread through the 8th and 9th floors quickly, it made escape difficult or impossible for many workers, regardless of the lack of adequate or locked exits. The fire spread so quickly that most exits on those two floors were blocked by it regardless of the status of being locked or unlocked.

If anything, this fire's result was more one of lack of building code than anything else. It wasn't something management or the owners of the factory were negligent of in terms of what existed as safety rules at the time. You can't use the historian's fallacy of applying current code and rules to what was common and legal in 1911.

Even at the time the radical Left used the fire to push their agenda. Feminists such as Rose Schneiderman, a suffragette and ardent Socialist used the fire to argue for unions as an example.

On the other hand, the state of New York did implement new building code as a result of this fire. So, unlike the radical Left's agitators, they did something positive in making buildings safer for everyone.
 
80 years later, almost to the day, we had the Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant fire. Again the emergency doors were locked. That time 25 people died.

It is like we learned nothing. Management again locked and blocked emergency doors.
 
Walt said:
80 years later, almost to the day, we had the Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant fire. Again the emergency doors were locked. That time 25 people died.

It is like we learned nothing. Management again locked and blocked emergency doors.
Click to expand...

A thousand years from now that sort of shit is going to still be going on...
 
T. A. Gardner said:
As usual, the Progressives and radical Left make this about evil management and the evils of things like capitalism.

The factory was on three floors of a ten-story building, and not the only business in the building. The fire was caused by either a cigarette or match igniting cloth scraps. It's to note, that the factory management had banned smoking within the factory and workers who did smoke did it on the sly in contravention of the safety rules that did exist.

The NYC fire department showed up promptly, but as the fire had spread through the 8th and 9th floors quickly, it made escape difficult or impossible for many workers, regardless of the lack of adequate or locked exits. The fire spread so quickly that most exits on those two floors were blocked by it regardless of the status of being locked or unlocked.

If anything, this fire's result was more one of lack of building code than anything else. It wasn't something management or the owners of the factory were negligent of in terms of what existed as safety rules at the time. You can't use the historian's fallacy of applying current code and rules to what was common and legal in 1911.

Even at the time the radical Left used the fire to push their agenda. Feminists such as Rose Schneiderman, a suffragette and ardent Socialist used the fire to argue for unions as an example.

On the other hand, the state of New York did implement new building code as a result of this fire. So, unlike the radical Left's agitators, they did something positive in making buildings safer for everyone.
Click to expand...


Jeezus, you are such the corporate toady! For the reader's clarification:



Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires. Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris’ notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours a day, every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris’ company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.



The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English and worked 12 hours a day, every day. In 1911, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances.

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew, panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells also met awful demises–when they found a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive



https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/triangle-shirtwaist-fire
 
Walt said:
Fire safety technology keeps improving. If we use proper regulations, then we will continue to save lives. It is sad you do not want to.
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That's not what I was driving at. Management of many companies are more than willing to cut corners, avoid doing things by building code, or safety regulations to save money. I know from decades of experience that's absolutely true, and I've lost a lot of work for not being willing to do the same.

I used to have a sign in my office:

You can have it:

Fast
Right
Cheap

Pick two.

That sort always wanted fast and cheap.

Another said: There's never time and money to do it right but there's always time and money to do it over.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
That's not what I was driving at. Management of many companies are more than willing to cut corners, avoid doing things by building code, or safety regulations to save money. I know from decades of experience that's absolutely true, and I've lost a lot of work for not being willing to do the same.

I used to have a sign in my office:

You can have it:

Fast
Right
Cheap

Pick two.

That sort always wanted fast and cheap.

Another said: There's never time and money to do it right but there's always time and money to do it over.
Click to expand...

When it comes to fire safety, you need to do things right. We keep forgetting that, and then are jarred into remembering them.

At least we do not get the citywide fires we used to. But who knows, with Republicans pushing an anti-fire safety agenda, those may start happening again.
 
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