Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire

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ROSE SCHNEIDERMANAND THE TRIANGLESHIRTWAIST FIRE

Bonnie Mitelman

The progress Americans made during the Progressive Era depended upon one'sperspective. For middle-class Americans, progress was everywhere visible. Realincome rose and the government worked to insure order and efficiency in theindustrial world. For their part, most large industrialists cooperated with the gov-ernment's effort to impose order, which often resulted in the elimination of both-ersome competition. For example, leading meatpackers supported the Meat Inspec-tion Act of 1906. The act raised inspection standards, thereby driving out smallcompetitors and guaranteeing the quality of American meat on the competitiveworld market.America's working class, however, had reason to question the nature of the"progress" that was being made. The men and women who labored in industrialAmerica often performed uncreative, repetitive tasks at a pace set by machines.Possibly worse than the monotony of industrial life was the danger of it. Machineswere blind and uncaring; they showed no sympathy for tired or bored workers whoallowed their fingers to move too close to moving cogs. Injuries were common, andfar too often industrialists were as unsympathetic as their machines. And for mostunskilled workers, labor unions were weak and unrecognized by leading industri-alists and manufacturers. In the following essay, Bonnie Mitelman discusses the1911 Triangle Waist Company fire, a tragedy which saw 146 workers die. The fireand its results raise serious questions about the extent and nature ofprogress duringthe early twentieth century.


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Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 97

On Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, inNew York City's Greenwich Village, asmall fire broke out in the Triangle Waist Com-pany, just as the 500 shirtwaist employees werequitting for the day. People rushed about, tryingto get out, but they found exits blocked and win-dows to the fire escape rusted shut. They pan-icked.As the fire spread and more and more weretrapped, some began to jump, their hair andclothing afire, from the eighth and ninth floorwindows. Nets that firemen held for them toreapart at the impact of the falling bodies. By thetime it was over, 146 workers had died, most ofthem young Jewish women.A United Press reporter, William Shepherd,witnessed the tragedy and reported, "I lookedupon the heap of dead bodies and I rememberedthese girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remem-bered their great strike oflast year in which thesesame girls had demanded more sanitary condi-tions and more safety precautions in the shops.These dead bodies were the answer."The horror of that fire touched the entireLower East Side ghetto community, and therewas a profuse outpouring of sympathy. But itwas Rose Schneiderman, an immigrant workerwith a spirtt of social justice and a powerful waywith words, who is largely credited with trans-lating the ghetto's emotional reaction intomeaningful, widespread action. Six weeks fol-lowing the tragedy, and after years of solidgroundwork, with one brilliant, well-timedspeech, she was able to inspire the support ofwealthy uptown New Yorkers and to swing pub-lic opinion to the side of the labor movement,enabling concerned civic, religious, and laborleaders to mobilize their efforts for desperatelyneeded safety and industrial reforms.

"~ose Schneiderman and the Triangle Fire" by Bonnie~1ltelman, from Ame ri can H i st or y I ll u st ra t ed (July,;81.1. Copyright 1981 by Historical Times. Inc.I ~pnnted through the courtesy of Historical Times,nc. . Publishers of Ame ri can H i st or y I ll us tr a te d .

The Triangle fire, and the deaths of so manyhelpless workers, seemed to trigger in RoseSchneiderman an intense realization that therewas absolutely nothing or no one to help work-ing women except a strong union movement.With fierce determination. and the dedication,influence, and funding of many other people aswell, she battled to regulate hours, wages, andsafety standards and to abolish the sweatshopsystem. In so doing, she brought dignity andhuman rights to all workers.

The dramatic "uprising of the 20,000" of1909-10, in which thousands of immigrant girlsand women in the shirtwaist industry nadendured three long winter months of a generalstrike to protest deplorable working conditions,had produced some immediate gains for work-ing women. There had been agreements forshorter working hours, increased wages, andeven safety reforms, but there had not been for-mal recognition of their union. At Triangle, forexample, the girls had gained a 52 hour week, a12-15 percent wage increase, and promises toend the grueling subcontracting system. But theyhad not gained the only instrument on whichthey could depend for lasting change: a viabletrade union. This was to have disastrous results,for in spite of the few gains that they seemed tohave made, the workers won no rights or bar-gaining power at all. In fact, "The company dealtonly with its contractors. It felt no responsibilityfor the girls."There were groups as well as individuals whorealized the workers impotence, but theirattempts to change the situation accomplishedlittle despite long years of hard work. TheWomen's Trade Union League and the Interna-tional Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, throughthe efforts of Mary Dreier, Helen Marot, LeonoraO'Reilly, Pauline Newman, and Rose Schneider-man had struggled unsuccessfully for improvedconditions: the futility that the union organizerswere feeling in late 1910 is reflected in theWTUL minutes of December 5 of that year.A scant eight months after their historic waist-

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98 War and Peace in a New Century

makers' strike, and three months before thedeadly Triangle fire, a Mrs. Malkiel (no doubtTheresa Serber MalkieL who wrote the legend-ary account of the strike, T he D ia ry o f a S hirtw aistStriker: A Sto ry of the Shirtw aist M akers' Strike illNew York) is reported to have come before theLeague to urge action after a devastating fire inNewark, New Jersey killed twenty-five workingwomen. Mrs, Malkiel attributed their loss to thegreed and negligence of the owners and theproper authorities. The WTUL subsequentlydemanded an investigation of all factory build-ings and it elected an investigation committeefrom the League to cooperate with similar com-mittees from other organizations.The files of the WTULcontain complaint aftercomplaint about unsafe factory conditions;many were filled out by workers afraid to signtheir names for fear of being fired had theiremployers seen the forms. They describe facto-ries with locked doors, no fire escapes, andbarred windows. The New York Times carried anarticle which reported that fourteen factorieswere found to have no fire escapes, twenty-threethat had locked doors, and seventy-eight thathad obstructed fire escapes. In all, according tothe article, 99 percent of the factories investigat-ed in New York were found to have serious firehazards.

defeated us and we didn't get the open doors orthe better fire escapes. So our friends aredead."The families of the fire victims were heart-broken and hysterical, the ghetto's Jewish Daily

Forward was understandably melodramatic. andthe immigrant community was completely en-raged. Their Jewish heritage had taught them anemphasis on individual human life and worth;their shared background in the shtetl and com-mon experiences in the ghetto had given them asense of fellowship. They were, in a sense, a fam-ily-and some of the most helpless among themhad died needlessly.The senseless deaths of so many youngJewish women sparked within these EasternEuropeans a new determination and dedication.The fire had made reform absolutely essential.Workers' rights were no longer just socialist jar-gon: They were a matter of life and death.The Triangle Waist Company was located onthe three floors of the Asch Building, a lO-story,135-foot-high structure at the corner of GreeneStreet and Washington Place in Greenwich Vil-lage. One of the largest shirtwaist manufacturers,Triangle employed up to 900 people at times, buton the day of the fire, only about 500 wereworking .Leon Stein's brilliant and fascinating accountof the fire, entitled simply The Triangle Fire,develops and documents the way in which thephysical facilities, company procedures, andhuman behavior interacted to cause this greattragedy. Much of what occurred was ironic,some was cruel, some stupid, some pathetic. It isa dramatic portrayal of the eternal confrontationof the "haves" and the "havenots." told in largepart by those who survived.Fire broke out at the Triangle Company atapproximately 4:45 P.M. (because time clockswere reportedly set back to stretch the day, andbecause other records give differing times of thefirst fire alarm, it is uncertain exactly what timethe fire started), just after pay envelopes hadfor adequate fire escapes and for open doors been distributed and employees were leavingfrom the factories to the street. But the bosses their work pas?, It,was a sm?1J firp.o''tfirst, a/~d_,., ., -_.. 1 r b - e . f\.-e I ,~ 2~- , ... ~,,-5 \ I....i\J I

Yet no action was taken.It was the Triangle fire that emphasized, spec-tacularly and tragically, the deplorable safetyand sanitary conditions of the garment workers.The tragedy focused attention upon the ghastlyfactories in which most immigrants worked;there was no longer any question about what thestrikers had meant when they talked about safe-ty and sanitary reform, and about social and eco-nomic justice, ':The grief and frustration of the shirtwaiststrikers were expressed by one of them, RoseSafran, after the fire: "If the union had won wewould have been safe. Two of our demands were


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there was a calm, controlled effort to extinguishit. But the fire began to spread, jumping fromone pile of debris to another, engulfing the com-bustible shirtwaist fabric. Itbecame obvious thatthe fire could not be snuffed out, and workerstried to reach the elevators or stairway. Thosewho reached the one open stairway raced downeight flights of stairs to safety; those who man-aged to climb onto the available passenger eleva-tors also got out. But not everyone could reachthe available exits. Some tried to open the doorto a stairway and found it locked. Others weretrapped between long working tables or behindthe hordes of people trying to get into the eleva-tors or out through the one open door.Under the work tables, rags were burning; thewooden floors, trim, and window frames werealso afire. Frantically, workers fought their wayto the elevators, to the fire escape, and to thewindows-to any place that might lead to safe-ty.Fire whistles and bells sounded as the firedepartment raced to the building. But equip-ment proved inadequate, as the fire laddersreached only to the seventh floor. And by thetime the firemen connected their hoses to dousethe flames, the crowded eighth floor was com-pletely ablaze.For those who reached the windows, thereseemed to be a chance for safety. The New YorkWorld describes people balancing on windowsills, nine stories up, with flames scorching themfrom behind, until firemen anived: "The netswere spread below with all promptness. Citizenswere commandeered into service, as the firemennecessarily gave their attention to the one engineand hose of the force that first arrived. The cata"pult force that the bodies gathered in the longplunges made the nets utterly without avail.Screaming girls and men, as they fell, tore thenets from the grasp of the holders, and the bodiesstruck the sidewalks and lay just as they fell.Some of the bodies ripped big holes through thelife nets."One reporter who witnessed the fire remem-bered how,

A young man helped a girl to the window sill onthe n inth floor, Then he held her ou t deliberately ,aw ay from the build ing , and let her drop. H e heldou t a second girl the sam e w ay and let her drop.H e held ou t a th ird gir l w ho did not resist. Theyw ere a ll a s un resistin g a s if h e w ere h elping theminto a street ca r instea d of into etern ity . H e sa wthat a terrible death aw aited them in the flam esand his w as on ly a terrible chiva lry. H e broughtaround another 9irl to the w indow . I saw her puther arm s around him and kiss h im . Then he heldher into space-and dropped her. Quick as aflash , he was on the window sill him self H is coatflu ttered u pw ards-the air filled his tro user leg s a she cam e dow n. I could see he w ore tan shoes.

Those who had rushed to the fire escapefound the window openings rusted shut. Severalprecious minutes were lost in releasing them.The fire escape itself ended at the second floor, inan airshaft between the Asch Building and thebuilding next door. But too frantic to noticewhere it ended, workers climbed on to the fireescape, one after another until, in one terrifyingmoment, it collapsed from the weight, pitchingthe workers to their death.

Those who had made their way to the eleva-tors found crowds pushing to get into the cars.When it became obvious that the elevators couldno longer run, workers jumped down the eleva-tor shaft, landing on the top of the cars, or grab-bing for cables to ease their descent. Severaldied, but incredibly, some did manage to savethemselves in this way. One man was found,hours after the fire, beneath an elevator car inthe basement of the building, nearly drowned bythe rapidly rising water from the firemen's hos-es. Several people, among them Triangle's twoowners, raced to the roof, and from there wereled to safety. Others never had that chance."When Fire Chief Croker could make his wayinto the [top] three floors," states one account ofthe fire, "he found sights that utterly staggeredhim ... he saw as the smoke drifted away bodies


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burned to bare bones. There were skeletonsbending over sewing machines."The day after the fire, the New York Timesannounced that "the building was fireproof. Itshows hardly any signs ofthe disaster that over-took it. The walls are as good as ever, as are thefloors: nothing is worse for the fire except thefurniture and 14 [sic] of the 600 men and girlsthat were employed in its upper three stories."The building was fireproof. But there had nev-er been a fire drill in the factory, even though themanagement had been warned about the possi-ble hazard of fire on the top three floors. OwnersMax Blanck and lsaac Harris had chosen toignore these warnings in spite of the fact thatmany of their employees were immigrants whocould barely speak English, which would surelymean panic in the event of a crisis.The New York Times also noted that LeonoraO'Reilly of the League had reported MaxBlanck's visit to the WIUL during the shirtwaiststrike, and his plea that the girls return to work.He claimed a business reputaton to maintain andtold the Union leaders he would make the nec-essary improvements right away. Because hewas the largest manufacturer in the business, theLeague reported, they trusted him and let thegirls return.

But the improvements were never made. Andthere was nothing that anybody could or woulddo about it. Factory doors continued to open ininstead of out, in violation of fire regulations.The doors remained bolted during workinghours, apparently to prevent workers from get-

\ ting past the inspectors with stolen merchandise.t;()Triangle had only two staircases where there~f' should have been three, and those two were verynarrow. Despite the fact that.the building wasdeemed fireproof, it had wooden windowframes. floors, and trim. There was no sprinklersystem. Itwas not legally required.These were the same kinds of conditionswhich existed in factories throughout the gar-ment industry; they had been cited repeatedly inthe complaints filed with the WTUL. They were

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not unusual nor restricted to Triangle; in factTriangle was not as bad as many other facto-ries.But it was at Triangle that the fire tookplace.The J ew ish D aily F orw ard mourned the deadwith sorrowful stories. and its headlines talkedof "funerals instead of weddings" for the deadyoung girls. The entire Jewish immigrant com-

munity was affected, for it seemed there wasscarcely a person who was not in some waytouched by the fire. Nearly everyone had eitherbeen employed at Triangle themselves. or had afriend or relative who had worked there at sometime or another. Most worked in factories withsimilar conditions, and so everyone identifiedwith the victims and their families.Many of the dead, burned beyond recogni-tion, remained unidentified for days, as search-ing family members returned again and again towait in long lines to look for their loved ones.Many survivors were unable to identify theirmothers, sisters, or wives; the confusion of han-dling so many vlctirns and so many survivorswho did not understand what was happening tothem and to their dead led to even more anguishfor the community. Some of the victims wereidentified by the names on the pay envelopeshanded to them at quitting time and stuffeddeeply into pockets or stockings just before thefire. But many bodies remained unclaimed fordays, with bewildered and bereaved survivorswandering among them. trying to find someidentifying mark.Charges of first- and second-degree man-slaughter were brought against the two menwho owned Triangle, and Leon Stein's book art-fully depicts the subtle psychological and socio-"logical implications of the powerful against theoppressed. and of the Westernized. German-Jewish immigrants against those still living theirold-world, Eastern European heritage. Ultimate-ly, Triangle owners Blanck and Harris were ac-quitted of the charges against them, and in duetime they collected their rather sizable insurance.

The shirtwaist, popularized by Gibson girls,

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01 f~ A fe w d ays a fte r th e h olo ca ust in 1911 a t th e T ria ng le S hir tw ais t C om pa ny in N ew Y or k C ity , e ig hty th ou sa nd p eo plem ar ch ed in th e r ain ill a f un e ra l p r oc e ss io n l ip F i ft h Avenlle. A quart e r m i ll ion specta to rss t ood wi tness.

had come to represent the new-found freedomof females in America. After the fire, it symbol-ized death. The reaction of the grief-sticken Low-er East Side was articulated by socialist lawyerMorris Hillquit:The girls who w ent 01 1 strik e la st y ea r w ere try in gto read just rite con dition s und er w hich th ey w ereobliged to w ork. 1 w onder if there is n ot so meconnection betw een the fire and that strike. 1wonder if th e m agistra tes w ho sent to jail the girlswho did picket duty in front of the Triangle shopre alize d la st S un da y th at so me o f th e re sp on sibilitym ay be theirs. H ad the strike been su ccessfu l, -thesegirls m ight have been alive today and the citizenryof New York would have less o f a burden upon itsconscience.

For the first time in the history of New York'sgarment industry there were indications that thepublic was beginning to accept responsibility forthe exploitation of the immigrants. For the firsttime, the establishment seemed to understandthat these were human beings asking for theirrights, not merely trouble-making anarchists.The day after the Triangle fire a protest meet-ing was held at the Women's Trade UnionLeague, with representatives from twenty lead-ing labor and civic organizations. They formed"a relief committee to cooperate with the RedCross in its work among the families of the vic-tims, and another committee ... to broaden theinvestigation and research on fire hazards inNew York factories which was already being car-ried on by the League."


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The minutes of the League recount the deepindignation that members felt at the indifferenceof a public which had ignored their pleas forsafety after the Newark fire. In an attempt totranslate their anger into constructive action, theLeague drew up a list of forceful resolutions thatincluded a plan to gather delegates from all ofthe city's unions to make a concerted effort toforce safety changes in factories. In addition. theLeague called upon all workers to inspect facto-ries and then report any violations to the propercity authorities and to the WTUL. They calledupon the city to immediately appoint organizedworkers as unofficial inspectors. They resolvedto submit the following fire regulations sugges-tions: compulsory fire drills, fireproof exits,unlocked doors, fire alarms, automatic sprin-klers, and regular inspections. The League calledupon the legislature to create the Bureau of FireProtection and finally, the League underscoredthe absolute need for all workers to organizethemselves at once into trade unions so that theywould never again be powerless.The teague also voted to participate in thefuneral procession for the unidentified dead ofthe Triangle fire.

The city held a funeral for the dead who wereunclaimed. "More than 120,000 of us were inthe funeral procession that miserable rainy Aprilday," remembered Rose Schneiderman. "Fromten in the morning until four in the afternoon weofthe Women's Trade Union League marched inthe procession with other trade-union men andwomen, all of us filled with anguish and regretthat we had never been able to organize the Tri-angle workers,"Schneiderman, along with many others. wasabsolutely determined that this kind of tragedywould never happen again. With single-mindeddedication. they devoted themselves to unioniz-ing the workers. The searing example of the Tri-angle fire provided them with the impetus theyneeded to gain public support for their efforts.They dramatized and emphasized and capital-ized on the scandalous working conditions of the

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immigrants. From all segments of the communi-ty came cries for labor reform. Stephen S. Wise.the prestigious reform rabbi, called for the for-mation of a citizens' committee. Jacob H. Schiff,Bishop David H. Greer, Governor John A. Dix,Anne Morgan (of th e Morgans) and other lead-ing civic and religious leaders collaborated in amass meeting at the Metropolitan Opera Houseon May 2 to protest factory conditions and toshow support for the workers.Several people spoke at that meeting on May2, and many in the audience began to grow rest-less and antagonistic. Finally, 29-year-old RoseSchneiderman stepped up to the podium.In a whisper barely audible, she began toaddress the crowd.I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies, ifI cam e here to ta lk good fellow sh ip. W e have triedyou good people of the public and w e have foundyou w anting . The old Inqu isition had its rack andits thu mbsc rew s a nd its in stru men ts o f to rtu re w ithiron tee th . W e know w hat these things are today:th e ir on te eth a re o ur n ec es sitie s, th e th um b sc re wsthe high-p ow ere d a nd sw ift m ach in ery c lo se towhich we must work, and the rack is here in thefirep ro of stru ctu res tha t w ill d estro y u s th e m in uteth ey c atc h o n fir e.

Th is is n ot the first tim e girls have burn ed alivein the city . Every week I m ust learn of theun tim ely death of one of m y sister w orkers. E veryyear thousands of us are m aim ed. The life of m enand w om en is so cheap and property is so sacred.There are so m any of u s for one job it m atters littleif 140-o dd are burned to dea th.

W e have tried you, c itizen s, w e are trying younow , and you have a couple of dollars fo r theso rro win g m othe rs a nd d au ghte rs a nd siste rs byw ay of a charity gift. Bu t every' tim e the w orkerscom e ou t in the only way they know to pro testa ga in st co nd itio ns w hich a re u nbea ra ble , thestrong hand of the law is a llo we d to p re ss d ow nh ea vily u po n 115 .

P ub lic o ffic ia ls ha ve o nly w ord s o f w arn in g tous-warning that w e m ust be in tense ly orderly

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and m ust be in tensely peaceable, and they have thew orkhouse just back o f all their w arn ings, Thestrong hand of the law beats us back when we riseinto the co nd ition s tha t m ake life beara ble,Ican 't talk fellow sh ip to yo u w ho are g ath ered

h ere. T oo m uch bloo d ha s been spilled. I knowfro m m y experien ce it is up to the w orking peopleto save them selves. The on ly w ay they can saveth em selv es is by a stro ng w ork in g-c la ss m ov em en t.

Her speech has become a classic, It is morethan just an emotional picture of persecution; itreflects the pervasive sadness and profoundunderstanding that comes from knowing, final-ly, the cruel realities of life, the perspective ofhistory, and the nature of human beings.The devastation of that fire and the futility ofthe seemingly successful strike that had precededit seemed to impart an undeniable truth to RoseSchneiderman: they could not fail again. Theevents of 1911 seemed to have made her, andmany others, more keenly aware than they hadever been that the workers' fight for reform wasabsolutely essential. If they did not do it, itwould not be done.In a sense, the fire touched off in Schneider-man an awareness of her own responsiblillty inthe battle for industrial reform. This fiery social-

ist worker had been transformed into a highlyeffective labor leader.The influential speech she gave did helpswing public opinion to the side of the tradeunions, and the fire itself had made the workersmore aware of the crucial need to unionize.Widespread support for labor reform and union-ization emerged. Pressure from individuals, suchas Rose Schneiderman, as well as from groupslike the Women's Trade Union League and theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,helped form the New York State Factory Investi-gating Commission. the New York Citizens'Committee on Safety. and other regulatory andinvestigatory bodies. The League and Local 25(the Shirtwaist Makers' Union of the ILGWU)were especially instrumental in attaining a newIndustrial Code for New York State. whichbecame "the most outstanding instrument forsafeguarding the lives, health, and welfare of themillions ofwage earners in New York State and,.. in the nation at large."

It took years for these changes to occur, andlabor reform did not rise majestically, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Triangle fire. But thatfire, and Rose Schneiderman's whispered pleafor a strong working-class movement, hadindeed become the loud. clear call for action.

STUDY QUESTIONS1. How successful had workers at the Triangle Waist Company been in gainingbetter working conditions before the fire? What had been their major successes andfailures?2. What were the major labor concerns of the immigrant women workers? Howhad their Jewish heritage influenced their outlook on life and work?3. Why did the fire lead to so many deaths? How did the design of the buildingcontribute 1O the tragedy?

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Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire