AP+2016++Triangle+Factory+Fire

 Triangle Factory Fire (Iliana) >> Works Cited >> >>
 * 1) Aim: Over 100 years ago, on March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The building in lower Manhattan quickly spread, leaving the workers in the factory little time and opportunity to escape. Many of these factory workers were young women recently arrived from Europe; by the conclusion to the fire, 146 of the some 500 employees had died. The only fire escape in the Asch Building has crumbled and fallen during the rescue effort. The United States Department of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recalls, “Long tables and bulky machines trapped many of the victims. Panicked workers were crushed as they struggled with doors that were locked by managers to prevent theft, or doors that opened the wrong way” (“The Worst Day…”). These obstacles to safety include a lack of precautionary measures within the building and horrendous working conditions. Nevertheless, workers had nothing to assist in dousing the flames except a few buckets of water. The calamity only grew as firefighters were unable to reach the top of the building; their ladders were too short to even reach the 8th floor, and their safety nets tore like paper. The disaster sent shockwaves throughout New York City, sparking rage as the causes of the fire were exposed.
 * 2)  Audience: With the fire in a populous Manhattan area, the quiet spring afternoon exploded into mayhem. The horrifying incident would forever alter the lives of young workers, the victim’s families, and witnesses. Not only were the survivors of the fire left to live and relive the agony, but so were those families and the people passing by the Asch building who looked on to see the desperate leaps from the top floors’ windows. Remembering the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire declares, “ Survivors recounted the horrors they had to endure, and passers-by and reporters also told stories of pain and terror they had witnessed. The images of death were seared deeply in their mind's eye” (“Fire!”). However, the anguish that such survivors may have experienced has no comparison to the suffering victims and survivors of the factory fire endured. The Triangle factory workers that were mostly women, were as young as 14 years old. The majority of the women were recent Italian and Jewish immigrants who came to America with their families in order to seek a better way of life. The Triangle employees, as well as other female factory workers, instead underwent troubling lives ridden with poverty and awful working conditions. For such workers and circumstances, “speaking out could end with the loss of desperately needed jobs, a prospect that forced them to endure personal indignities and severe exploitation” (“Fire!”). Some of the Triangle factory women joined labor unions like the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Womens’ Trade Union League (WTUL) because the Triangle Factory was a non-union shop. Such groups fought for better working conditions and protective legislation, and the fight only magnified after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
 * 3)  Cultural: Shockwaves reverberated throughout New York City as a result of the fire, beginning in the neighborhoods of immigrant workers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side where victims’ families struggled to identify their bodies in makeshift morgues. “The Worst Day I Ever Saw” underlines, “ Family grief turned to citizen anger as the causes of the fire – including the abhorrent working conditions at the time – were exposed.” The public protest over a tragedy that was evidently preventable reaffirmed the urgency of the labor movement and encouraging groups to further work to improve conditions and rights in the workplace. One of the few popular incidents that proclaimed and attested to the dreadful working conditions during the early 20th century, the Triangle Factory Fire aided in exploiting the unfair treatment employers were exercising. Moreover, even today, sweatshops still exist in the United States. “Sweatshops & Strikes Before 1911” highlights, “ They [today’s sweatshops] keep attracting workers in desperate need of employment and undocumented immigrants, who may be anxious to avoid involvement with governmental agencies.” Recent studies by the Department of Labor outline employer violations of minimum wage and safety precautions. Despite the significant changes in government regulation of workplaces, employer action, and technology since 1911, workplace health and safety problems persist in 2016.
 * 4) Historical: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was in multiple ways a common factory and workplace in Manhattan. Commonalities among factories and sweatshops like at the Asch building included low wages, excessively long hours, as well as unclean and harmful working conditions. Owners of the Asch building, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris subcontracted much of their work and “supposedly never knew the rates paid to the workers, nor did they know exactly how many workers were employed at their factory at any given point. Such a system led to exploitation” (“ Sweatshops & Strikes…”). Before the 1911 fire, many of the garment workers in the factories were unorganized despite strikes that unions like the ILGWU organized. In the face of unfamiliarity with their surroundings, some immigrant garment workers were dedicated to taking action against the poor working conditions. Two years prior to the fire in the Asch building, 400 young women workers in the Triangle Factory sparked a spontaneous walkout. Incidents as such, fighting to protect not only the rights of women in the workplace, but improved working conditions for all, continued until the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The Triangle fire remained the deadliest workplace tragedy in New York City’s history until the attacks on the World Trade Center 90 years later.
 * 1) “Fire!” //Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.// Cornell University. 2011. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.
 * 2)  “Sweatshops & Strikes Before 1911.” //Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.// Cornell University. 2011. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.
 * 3) “The Worst Day I Ever Saw.” //Occupational Safety and Health Administration.// The United States Department of Labor. n.d. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.