Speaker 1: You're listening to History on Trial, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Listener Discretion advised. Lena Yawler was getting ready to leave
Speaker 1: work when she heard a girl yell fire. Lena whipped
Speaker 1: around and rolled her eyes. The girl who had shouted
Speaker 1: was the factory's prankster. She was always telling her fellow
Speaker 1: sewing machine operators that the boss was coming, making them
Speaker 1: jump in their seats, only for no boss to appear.
Speaker 1: Lena paid the girl no attention. It was a strange joke, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but nineteen year old Lena just wanted to get home.
Speaker 1: It was Saturday, the end of her work week. A
Speaker 1: whole day of freedom awaited her, a day away from
Speaker 1: the clamor of the sewing machines, a day to rest
Speaker 1: her aching fingers and back. So she stayed in the
Speaker 1: dressing room, putting on her coat and picking up her
Speaker 1: pocket book. It was only when she emerged that she
Speaker 1: saw the smoke. The prankster had not been joking this time.
Speaker 1: Lena was terrified. The smoke was already filling the factory floor,
Speaker 1: making it difficult to see, but she could make out
Speaker 1: flames shooting up outside the windows. Across the room. Her
Speaker 1: coworkers were clustered by the nearest exit, a door that
Speaker 1: led to the stairs down to Washington Place, trying to
Speaker 1: get it open. Some were screaming, crying out for their children.
Speaker 1: When Lena tried to make her way to the door,
Speaker 1: the crowd forced her back towards the dressing rooms. She
Speaker 1: was trapped. Then she felt a breeze. A door was
Speaker 1: opened somewhere she thought. The breeze seemed to be coming
Speaker 1: for across the factory floor on the Green street side.
Speaker 1: This was where Lena had seen the flames. But what
Speaker 1: choice did she have. She knew she couldn't stay where
Speaker 1: she was, so she set out, groping her way through
Speaker 1: the smoke, tripping over fallen chairs, passing the burning tables
Speaker 1: where she had been working only minutes before. She opened
Speaker 1: the first window she reached, thinking maybe she could jump out,
Speaker 1: but fell back in shock. The air outside was so
Speaker 1: hot that it had burned her knee. From the street below,
Speaker 1: she could hear people calling for her to jump, but
Speaker 1: she was afraid it was too high, a drop of
Speaker 1: nine stories, and the air itself had burned her. She
Speaker 1: needed a new plan. Near By were the freight elevators.
Speaker 1: Lena stumbled to them and knocked, praying that an operator
Speaker 1: would bring the elevator up. She waited for two minutes,
Speaker 1: maybe three, but it felt more like hours. No one came.
Speaker 1: There was only one more way out now, the door
Speaker 1: to the Green Street stairs. But when she opened the door,
Speaker 1: the stairs were filled with flame. She could not go down.
Speaker 1: It was hopeless, But then an idea. What if she
Speaker 1: went up to the roof. It was risky, but so
Speaker 1: was staying put. She pushed forward and the stairs. The
Speaker 1: air was punishingly hot. The flames licked at her heels.
Speaker 1: She ran. By the time she made it to the
Speaker 1: roof two stories up, Lena's hair was smoldering. She had
Speaker 1: burns on her arm, her neck, and her face, but
Speaker 1: she was alive. On the roof, she found men holding
Speaker 1: ladders that led to the roof of an adjacent building,
Speaker 1: and so she climbed off the roof and away from
Speaker 1: the burning remains of the factory. She worked at the
Speaker 1: Triangle Waste Company. Lena did not know it then, but
Speaker 1: she had gotten extraordinarily lucky. She had just survived one
Speaker 1: of the worst workplace disasters in United States history. After
Speaker 1: the smoke cleared and the bodies were tallied, the horrified
Speaker 1: public would learn that a hundred and forty six people
Speaker 1: had died in the fire in a space of barely
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. They had died on the fire escape when
Speaker 1: the rickety structure, burdened with too many bodies, had sheared
Speaker 1: off the side of the building and sent workers plunging
Speaker 1: to their deaths. They had died on the factory floor,
Speaker 1: smothered by smoke, their bodies burned beyond recognition. They had
Speaker 1: died jumping on top of the elevator cars, desperate to
Speaker 1: make it out, And most horrifyingly, they had died by
Speaker 1: leaping from the building. Making the jump Lena had fortunately
Speaker 1: been too frightened to make. Dozens of men and women
Speaker 1: on the ninth floor had been hemmed in on all
Speaker 1: sides by the fire, pushed closer and closer towards the windows,
Speaker 1: until their only choice had been to burn or to
Speaker 1: jump on the street in the midst of a beautiful
Speaker 1: sunny spring day. Just as Lena reached the roof, the
Speaker 1: bodies began to hit the sidewalk. Onlookers would never forget
Speaker 1: the sight or the sound. Fires had happened before. People
Speaker 1: had died in workplace accidents before. In fact, it happened
Speaker 1: all the time, but this fire, which came to be
Speaker 1: known as the Triangle Shirtwais Factory fire, was different, and
Speaker 1: these deaths were different too. They were very, very public.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of New Yorkers had seen these people, mostly poor
Speaker 1: young women from Eastern Europe and Italy, die. They had
Speaker 1: seen the firemen uselessly try to extend their two short
Speaker 1: ladders to the people huddled on the ninth floor window sills.
Speaker 1: They had seen how the fire escape, even before it
Speaker 1: had broken, had been deficient the way its bottom rung
Speaker 1: hung above a basements skylight, making reaching the ground difficult,
Speaker 1: if not impossible. And they had heard the rumors which
Speaker 1: began to spread in the days after the fire, that
Speaker 1: some factory had been locked from the outside, that the
Speaker 1: workers had died piled up by the Washington Polace door,
Speaker 1: unable to escape. One of the people who witnessed the
Speaker 1: immediate aftermath of the fire was New York District Attorney
Speaker 1: Charles Whitman, an ambitious reformer. Whitman had long wanted a
Speaker 1: high profile case to make his name on. As he
Speaker 1: stood in front of the still smoldering building, he thought
Speaker 1: he might have found it. With this case, he could
Speaker 1: both raise his own profile and also get justice for
Speaker 1: the victims. He could prove his progressive bonafides, stand up
Speaker 1: for the working class, and punish greedy businessmen. He could
Speaker 1: use the system so often rigged against the powerless to
Speaker 1: make the powerful pay. But the system is not so
Speaker 1: easily changed, as Whitman would discover when he charged the
Speaker 1: Triangle's owners, Max Blink and Isaac Harris with manslaughter. At
Speaker 1: their trial, a shrewd defense attorney and legal norms skewed
Speaker 1: towards business interests would guarantee that the prosecution was in
Speaker 1: for the fight of its life. Welcome to history on Trial.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mira Hayward. This Week New York v
Speaker 1: Isaac Harris and Max Blink. Max Blink and Isaac Harris
Speaker 1: had both arrived in America in the eighteen eighties. Like
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of other Eastern European Jews in the
Speaker 1: last decades of the nineteenth century, Blank and Harris fled
Speaker 1: the anti Semitic persecution of the Old World for a
Speaker 1: chance at something new and exciting. Nearly half of all
Speaker 1: Jewish immigrants during this period entered the garment business. And
Speaker 1: Blank and Harris followed the crowd in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 1: When Blank and Harris got their start, the business was
Speaker 1: a dismal one. Most people worked out of tenement sweatshops,
Speaker 1: tiny dank rooms packed with employees, all struggling to stitch
Speaker 1: or iron or cut in the poor light. The average
Speaker 1: workweek was eighty four hours and pay was nearly nonexistent.
Speaker 1: Disease spread rapidly through the crowded spaces. These conditions killed
Speaker 1: many people. They also made a few people very rich,
Speaker 1: including Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Harris had gotten his
Speaker 1: start in a sweatshop. His needle skills and eye for
Speaker 1: design allowed him to rise through the ranks. Blank came
Speaker 1: to the business through the contracting stude, buying and selling cloth.
Speaker 1: The two men's paths crossed in the late eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: likely through a family connection. Their wives were cousins, and
Speaker 1: decided to team up. In nineteen hundred, they founded the
Speaker 1: Triangle Wasist Company. Their backgrounds were complimentary and their business
Speaker 1: steadily grew. By nineteen eleven, the two men owned multiple factories,
Speaker 1: all employed in making blouses or as they were known then,
Speaker 1: shirt waists or just waists. Blank and Harris were the
Speaker 1: shirtwaist kings. The Triangle Factory alone shipped two thousand blouses
Speaker 1: a day. The profits funded a lavish lifestyle, a far
Speaker 1: cry from the men's early days in New York. They
Speaker 1: lived with their families in neighboring townhouses on the Upper
Speaker 1: West Side and went to work in Chaufford cars. Max
Speaker 1: Blank had five live in servants. Isaac Harris only had
Speaker 1: four the Peasant. As their wallets expanded, so too did
Speaker 1: their flagship factory's footprint. In nineteen o two, the Triangle
Speaker 1: Waste Company had moved into the Ash Building on the
Speaker 1: corner of Washington Place and Green Street in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 1: The company had initially leased the nine thousand square foot
Speaker 1: ninth floor. By nineteen oh nine they had taken over
Speaker 1: the eighth and tenth floors two At first glance, the
Speaker 1: factory facilities at the Ash Building seemed a far cry
Speaker 1: from the horrifying sweatshop conditions of earlier decades. The ceilings
Speaker 1: were twelve feet high, the sewing machines were powered by
Speaker 1: a centralized electric motor, not by foot pedals. There were windows.
Speaker 1: In many ways, it was true these new loft factories
Speaker 1: were much better than the sweatshops, but they were still
Speaker 1: extremely difficult places to work. They were crowded and hot
Speaker 1: and noisy. The hours were very long, workers had few rights,
Speaker 1: and owners regularly exploited their employees, denying them breaks and
Speaker 1: short changing them in their pay. By the end of
Speaker 1: the first decade of the nineteen hundreds, garment workers had
Speaker 1: become fed up with their working conditions. An organized labor
Speaker 1: movement began to take shape. Blank and Harris did their
Speaker 1: best to shut down unionization efforts in their factories. They
Speaker 1: made an in house union, staffed with their own relatives,
Speaker 1: and tried to convince workers to join it instead of
Speaker 1: an outside union. They fired anyone said to be associated
Speaker 1: with the labor movement, but Blank and Harris could not
Speaker 1: reverse the growing tide of discontent. In early October nineteen
Speaker 1: oh nins nine Triangle workers decided to strike. Blank and
Speaker 1: Harris fought back, calling in favors with the police department,
Speaker 1: who promptly arrived and began beating up and arresting strikers.
Speaker 1: The two owners hired strike breakers too, men who were
Speaker 1: willing to violently attack the striking women. Strike leaders began
Speaker 1: to mysteriously get beaten up while walking home at night.
Speaker 1: But the violence did not scare the strikers off. If anything,
Speaker 1: it only attracted more workers to their cause. Over the
Speaker 1: next two months, the call for a general strike of
Speaker 1: shirtwaist makers grew stronger and stronger. On November twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, thousands of workers attended a meeting of
Speaker 1: the local twenty five chapter of the International Ladies Garment Workers'
Speaker 1: Union and in enthusiastically agreed to a general strike. Picketing
Speaker 1: began on November twenty fourth. By the next day, more
Speaker 1: than twenty thousand workers filled the streets of the Lower
Speaker 1: east Side, marching and chanting for change. It was a
Speaker 1: strike of nearly unbelievable size. Around five hundred garment producers
Speaker 1: were affected by the strike. Roughly one out of every
Speaker 1: seven of these shops surrendered in the first forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: agreeing to the striker's conditions of a pay raise, a
Speaker 1: fifty two hour work week, and union only shops. But
Speaker 1: these early surrenders were mainly the smaller factories, the ones
Speaker 1: who could not afford to stop business for long or
Speaker 1: pay for new workers willing to cross picket lines. The
Speaker 1: largest factories refused to give in no one dug their
Speaker 1: heels in more than Isaac Harris and Max Blank. The
Speaker 1: two men proposed to their fellow factory owners that they
Speaker 1: form a manufacturer's association to help one another out during
Speaker 1: the strike. Nearly one hundred factories signed up for the
Speaker 1: association and signed a no surrender declaration. With the battle
Speaker 1: lines drawn, both sides settled in for a long, hard fight.
Speaker 1: For months, neither side budged, but by February nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: things were reaching a breaking point for union leaders and
Speaker 1: owners alike. On February eighth, the Triangle Waste Company, one
Speaker 1: of the last holdouts, agreed to settle with the union.
Speaker 1: Blank and Harris agreed to higher wages and shorter hours
Speaker 1: for their returning workers, but they did not agree to
Speaker 1: the striker's demand for a closed shop a union only factory.
Speaker 1: Though the workers had not gone everything they wanted, the
Speaker 1: strike was a milestone for the growing American labor movement.
Speaker 1: Twenty thousand young people had taken on their wealthy, powerful
Speaker 1: employers and one better conditions for themselves. Their actions would
Speaker 1: inspire workers all across the country to fight for their rights.
Speaker 1: The strike had another legacy. It forever tainted the Triangle
Speaker 1: Waste Company and its owners. Nobody had fought harder or
Speaker 1: more violently against the strike than Max Blink and Isaac Harris.
Speaker 1: One labor newspaper writing after the strike had only contempt
Speaker 1: for the men and their company. The Triangle Company wrote
Speaker 1: the foreword with blood, this name will be written in
Speaker 1: the history of the American worker's movement. But it would
Speaker 1: not be in blood that the Triangle's name woulden history.
Speaker 1: The Triangle's name would enter history in fire. On March
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, nineteen eleven, thirteen months after the garment workers
Speaker 1: strike ended, someone dropped a match or a cigarette butt
Speaker 1: into a scrap bin at the Triangle Waste Company. Isidore
Speaker 1: Abramovitz noticed the fire first. Abramovitz was a cutter. Cutters
Speaker 1: trimmed fabric into the shape of the garment patterns. A
Speaker 1: good cutter organized the tissue paper pattern pieces carefully across
Speaker 1: the yards of fabric stretched across their table, minimizing waste.
Speaker 1: But even the most efficient cutter created scraps. These scraps
Speaker 1: were swept into bins under the tables and periodically emptied
Speaker 1: by rag traders. The Triangle's bins had last been emptied
Speaker 1: in January. By late March, there were hundreds of pounds
Speaker 1: of scrap piled under Isidor Abramovitz's cutting table. Scrap fires
Speaker 1: weren't unknown. There were no smoking signs on every floor
Speaker 1: of the factory, but everyone ignored them, and all it
Speaker 1: took was a single spark to light up the highly
Speaker 1: flammable fabric and tissue paper waste. The factory kept fire
Speaker 1: pails on ledges around the cutting floor for just such incidents.
Speaker 1: Now Abramovitz grabbed a pail and splashed it on the
Speaker 1: flames to no avail. Other cutters saw him and join
Speaker 1: in the effort, but the fire wasn't slowing. A gust
Speaker 1: of wind blew into the room from the elevator shaft
Speaker 1: and the workers saw the flames jump. Someone tried the
Speaker 1: fire hose, which was connected to a water tank on
Speaker 1: the roof, but no water came out. People began to panic.
Speaker 1: What happened next happened fast. The factory was a tinder
Speaker 1: box filled with flammable fabric and pattern paper, and an
Speaker 1: air shaft in the back corner of the building made
Speaker 1: the perfect vehicle for the fire to travel to higher floors.
Speaker 1: The speed of the fire is a crucial part of
Speaker 1: the story. As David Vandreali says in his book Triangle,
Speaker 1: the Fire that Changed America, All the crucial things that
Speaker 1: happened inside the factory that awful afternoon, the heroics, the terror,
Speaker 1: the tragedy, the strokes of fortune, both saving and deadly,
Speaker 1: transpired in a handful of minutes and in the presence
Speaker 1: of a hideously voracious fire. Isidore Abramowitz first spotted the
Speaker 1: fire around four forty pm. By four forty five, the
Speaker 1: fire fire had nearly consumed the eighth floor and had
Speaker 1: traveled to the ninth. There was no good way for
Speaker 1: workers on the different floors to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: A telephone connected the eighth and ninth floors to the
Speaker 1: tenth floor, but the two lower floors could not communicate
Speaker 1: directly with each other. A bookkeeper on the eighth floor
Speaker 1: called up to the tenth floor shortly after the fire
Speaker 1: began to spread. The phone operator on the tenth floor
Speaker 1: alerted the workers there, giving them a few crucial extra
Speaker 1: minutes to escape, but she panicked and did not call
Speaker 1: down to the ninth floor. It was only at four
Speaker 1: forty six pm, just as the fire was already reaching
Speaker 1: the ninth floor that someone on the eighth floor pulled
Speaker 1: the internal fire alarm, setting bells ringing on all three
Speaker 1: floors outside. A passerby saw the flames and ran for
Speaker 1: the nearest public fire alarm. Each factory floor had four exits.
Speaker 1: There was a door leading to the stairs on the
Speaker 1: Washington Place side, there was a fire escape in the
Speaker 1: air shaft in the rear corner. On the Green Street side,
Speaker 1: there was a bank of elevators, and next to these
Speaker 1: elevators another door leading stairs. Many of those who survived
Speaker 1: the fire survived because of the heroic actions of two
Speaker 1: elevator operators, Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortilalo. Despite the overwhelming
Speaker 1: heat and the flames licking at the elevator doors, Zito
Speaker 1: and Mortillalo kept making return trips, rescuing close to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people between them, nearly half of all
Speaker 1: the survivors. Some of those survivors had only made it
Speaker 1: onto the elevator cars by flinging themselves into the shaft
Speaker 1: and landing on top of the cars as they traveled down.
Speaker 1: Many of those who died died because they took the
Speaker 1: fire escape. It is a cruel, terrible irony. The fire
Speaker 1: escape on the Ash Building was a death trap. City
Speaker 1: inspectors had allowed the developer to substitute a fire escape
Speaker 1: for the normally required third staircase. When the architects submitted
Speaker 1: the building's planned to the city, an inspector noticed that
Speaker 1: the fire escape ended over a skylight in the basement.
Speaker 1: There was no way for those evacuating to safely reach
Speaker 1: the ground. The architect promised to change the plans. He didn't.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the fire escape was rickety and
Speaker 1: extremely narrow. As more and more people crowded onto the escape,
Speaker 1: the iron frame began to groan, and suddenly it collapsed,
Speaker 1: sending terrified people plummeting to their deaths. On the eighth
Speaker 1: and tenth floor, employees escaped via both sets of stairs.
Speaker 1: The Green Street doors were open. Employees were required to
Speaker 1: exit via these doors so that a security guard posted
Speaker 1: there could inspect their bags for stolen items. The Washington
Speaker 1: Place doors were locked at closing time to keep workers
Speaker 1: from leaving that way. On the eighth floor, a man
Speaker 1: named Lewis Brown unlocked the Washington Place doors, allowing the
Speaker 1: workers to escape. By four forty seven. The eighth floor
Speaker 1: had completely evacuated. Workers on the tenth floor were also
Speaker 1: able to take both sets of stairs. By the time
Speaker 1: they evacuated, the fire blocked their escape downwards, so they
Speaker 1: headed for the roof, where people in the adjoining buildings
Speaker 1: held ladders out for them to climb to safety. Things
Speaker 1: were different on the ninth floor. This is the floor
Speaker 1: where Lena Yall, the young woman whose story we followed
Speaker 1: in the prolog worked. The ninth floor was the last
Speaker 1: to hear about the fire, only learning of it nearly
Speaker 1: six minutes after the blaze started. By this time, the
Speaker 1: fire had already reached them. Traveling via the air shaft,
Speaker 1: the floor quickly filled with smoke and flame. The four
Speaker 1: exit options dwindled. By four fifty one, the fire escape
Speaker 1: had collapsed, and by four fifty three the elevators could
Speaker 1: no longer travel through the superheated shaft. Some people were
Speaker 1: lucky enough and fast enough to reach the Green Street door,
Speaker 1: as Lena did, and make their way up to the roof.
Speaker 1: The remaining eighty or ninety workers were trapped on the
Speaker 1: edges of the room. They could not get the locked
Speaker 1: Washington Place door open, and they could not travel through
Speaker 1: the growing flames to reach the Green Street door. The
Speaker 1: fire pushed them away until they were standing on the windowsills,
Speaker 1: praying for a way out outside. The fire department had arrived.
Speaker 1: They began to raise ladders, but their ladders only reached
Speaker 1: the sixth story, some thirty feet too short. Instead, the
Speaker 1: firefighters began to spread out nets because they had realized
Speaker 1: what many of the workers huddled above had. The only
Speaker 1: way out was down. As David Vondrelei points out, many
Speaker 1: of the people working at the factory that day had
Speaker 1: survived pegroms in Russia organized massacres of Jews, where fire
Speaker 1: was often used as a weapon. They knew what fire
Speaker 1: could do. They wanted their relatives to be able to
Speaker 1: recognize their bodies. At four fifty, the first person jumped.
Speaker 1: The nets were futile. A body falling nine stories is
Speaker 1: moving so fast that a net can barely slow it down,
Speaker 1: and so many people began to jump so quickly that
Speaker 1: there was no chance of catching them all. Even if
Speaker 1: catching would help, There was nothing anyone on the street
Speaker 1: could do but watch, horrified as people began to fall.
Speaker 1: Those who went first jumped. Those who came later did
Speaker 1: not have the luxury of choice as the windowsills burned
Speaker 1: out from beneath them and sent them tumbling to their
Speaker 1: deaths inside the ash building stairwells. Fire crews were battling
Speaker 1: the inferno by five point fifteen PM, only thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes after Isidore Abramovitz had first noticed a fire in
Speaker 1: his scrapin. They had the fire under control, but by
Speaker 1: then nearly one hundred and fifty people, more than twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the people in the Triangle factory that day,
Speaker 1: were dead. Most of those who died in the Triangle
Speaker 1: fire were young women, immigrants from either Eastern Europe or Italy.
Speaker 1: Many of them had worked alongside their sisters or mothers,
Speaker 1: and many families lost more than one person that day.
Speaker 1: The sarah Chinos lost Tess and Sarah Fina. The Goldsteins
Speaker 1: lost Mary and Lena. The Brenmans lost Rosie and Circa,
Speaker 1: while their brother Joseph survived. One family. The Malteses lost
Speaker 1: two girls, Lucy aged twenty and Sarah, the youngest victim
Speaker 1: of the fire, only fourteen years old, and they lost
Speaker 1: Lucy and Sarah's mother, Catherine, two three family members gone
Speaker 1: in the blink of an eye. Identified bodies were laid
Speaker 1: out in a large building on a pier in the
Speaker 1: East River, and friends and family members lined up to
Speaker 1: try to find their missing loved ones. The task was
Speaker 1: heart wrenching and gruesome. Many of the bodies were so
Speaker 1: badly damaged by the fall or by the fire that
Speaker 1: they had to be identified by jewelry, or hairstyles, or
Speaker 1: even the darns in their stockings. By the end of
Speaker 1: the week, all but seven corpses were identified. On April fifth,
Speaker 1: a funeral procession for the Triangle victims traveled through Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Some one hundred and twenty thousand people marched and another
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand lined the streets. It was a clear
Speaker 1: sign of the fire's impact on New York. The city
Speaker 1: was reeling. Writing about the procession for the Women's Trade
Speaker 1: Union League, Martha Bensley Breweer asked the question on the
Speaker 1: lips of many New Yorkers. The fire is over. The
Speaker 1: girls are dead, she wrote, Now what is going to
Speaker 1: be done about it? Political leaders shied away from answering
Speaker 1: the question. New York Mayor William Gaynor directed reporters to
Speaker 1: the fire chief. The State Labor Commissioner directed reporters to
Speaker 1: the City Building Department. The building department head was on
Speaker 1: vacation and refused to return, but he did direct reporters
Speaker 1: to the fire department. Conflicting information about the fire and
Speaker 1: the cause of the deaths filled newspapers and official statements.
Speaker 1: No one knew quite what to believe or who to blame,
Speaker 1: but everyone wanted to blame someone. New York District Attorney
Speaker 1: Charles Whitman was also struggling the question of what to do.
Speaker 1: Whitman had arrived at the scene of the fire shortly
Speaker 1: after five pm on the twenty fifth, after the last
Speaker 1: person had jumped, but before the bodies had been taken
Speaker 1: away or the fire had been extinguished. The images of
Speaker 1: that terrible day stuck with him. As Whitman considered how
Speaker 1: to get justice for the fire victims, he faced a choice.
Speaker 1: Would his office pursue the city's Building Department and accuse
Speaker 1: them of Lack's oversight, or would he go after the
Speaker 1: factory's owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blank. He felt he
Speaker 1: could not pursue a case against one without weakening his
Speaker 1: case against the other. For almost a week after the fire,
Speaker 1: he equivocated, encouraging his office to investigate both lines of inquiry.
Speaker 1: But on March thirty first, after William Randolph Hurst's newspaper
Speaker 1: ran an editorial accusing Whitman of moving to far too slowly,
Speaker 1: the DA made a decision he would pursue the factory owners.
Speaker 1: We can only speculate as to why he chose this path,
Speaker 1: but if I had to guess, Whitman may have felt
Speaker 1: that this was the more straightforward case. Instead of tackling
Speaker 1: the systemic issues of worker protections and factory safety laws,
Speaker 1: Whitman could focus on proving the individual responsibility of Harris
Speaker 1: and Blank. The District Attorney's office organized a grand jury
Speaker 1: to look into the fire. The testimony Whitman heard at
Speaker 1: the grand jury convinced him that the Washington Place door
Speaker 1: on the ninth floor had been locked. Under New York law, quote,
Speaker 1: all doors leading in or to any factory shall not
Speaker 1: be locked, bolted, or fastened during working hours. Violating this
Speaker 1: law against locked doors was a mist. Whitman and the
Speaker 1: two assistant district attorneys he had assigned to the case,
Speaker 1: Charles Bostwick and j. Robert Rubin, wanted a stronger charge,
Speaker 1: something that carried a larger penalty than just a fine.
Speaker 1: They wanted jail time for Harris and Blank. The locked
Speaker 1: door was the prosecution's way in. Although locking the doors
Speaker 1: was simply a misdemeanor, a misdemeanor that resulted in death
Speaker 1: was manslaughter. On April twelfth, the grand jury indicted Isaac
Speaker 1: Harris and Max Blink on charges of manslaughter. The two
Speaker 1: men were arrested that same afternoon. Many felt that this
Speaker 1: was a good first step towards getting justice, but no
Speaker 1: one could predict what would happen in the courtroom. On
Speaker 1: December fifth, nineteen eleven, a crowd gathered outside Judge Thomas
Speaker 1: Crane's courtroom. It was the second day of jury selection
Speaker 1: in the Triangle fire trial. When the defendants Isaac Harris
Speaker 1: and Max Blink arrived, someone in the crowd shouted, Oh, mamma,
Speaker 1: look here they come. Here are the murderers. The crowd
Speaker 1: began to yell and wail. People held up photographs of
Speaker 1: their deceased relatives, women tore out their hair. Max Stoyer,
Speaker 1: Harris and Blank's attorney, was unfazed. An immigrant, Stoyer had
Speaker 1: himself worked in sweatshops as a child before fighting his
Speaker 1: way to the top of New York's legal ladder. Not
Speaker 1: much could trouble him. Stoyer pushed his way through the crowd,
Speaker 1: leading his clients into the courtroom. Nearly nine months after
Speaker 1: the Triangle fire, many people were still horrified and outraged.
Speaker 1: On the next day of the trial, when Harrison Blank
Speaker 1: went to lunch, relatives of the victims followed them and
Speaker 1: yelled at them from the sidewalk while they ate. Judge
Speaker 1: Craane ordered police protection for the defendants. That afternoon, Charles
Speaker 1: Bostwick delivered the prosecution's opening statement. In his forties, Bostwick
Speaker 1: was a veteran lawyer with a brushy mustache and a
Speaker 1: dignified manner. His co counsul was J. Robert Rubin, a
Speaker 1: young attorney who had been on the scene of the
Speaker 1: Triangle fire. The horrible things Reuben had seen that day
Speaker 1: had motivated him as he prepared for the trial. Now
Speaker 1: he hoped that his and Bostwick's hard work would see
Speaker 1: justice done for the victims. Bostwick's opening was straightforward. He
Speaker 1: talked to jurors through the layout of the ninth floor
Speaker 1: of the Triangle factory, pointing out the various exits as
Speaker 1: he spoke. He mentioned the elevators and the fire escape
Speaker 1: and the Green Street door. Then he began to speak
Speaker 1: about the Washington Place door. One of the employees that
Speaker 1: ran to the Washington Place door, Bostwick said, was a
Speaker 1: woman named Margaret Schwartz, and Margaret Schwartz was now dead.
Speaker 1: The District Attorney's office had filed manslaughter charges against Harris
Speaker 1: and Blank for the deaths of seven different people. In
Speaker 1: this trial, they were only focusing on the death of
Speaker 1: one of those people, Margaret Schwartz. The DA's strategy was
Speaker 1: to hold on to the other manslaughter charges in case
Speaker 1: something went wrong in this trial. Margaret Schwartz, Bostwick said,
Speaker 1: had tried to escape via the ninth floor Washington Place door,
Speaker 1: but like everyone else who tried to do so, he
Speaker 1: failed because, Bostwick argued, the door had illegally been kept locked.
Speaker 1: The factory owners had kept this door locked so that
Speaker 1: employees would have to exit through the other door, where
Speaker 1: a security guards sat to inspect their bags for stolen goods.
Speaker 1: The illegal act of keeping the door locked had caused
Speaker 1: Margaret Schwartz's death, Bostwick said, making Harris and Blank guilty
Speaker 1: of manslaughter. Bostwick's first witnesses helped establish both the layout
Speaker 1: of the factory, as well as Margaret Schwartz's cause of death, asphyxiation.
Speaker 1: Several witnesses also testified about the conditions at the factory,
Speaker 1: including a rag trader named Louis Levy, who testified that
Speaker 1: he had last cleared out the scrappins on January fifteenth,
Speaker 1: more than two months before the fire. On Monday, December eleventh,
Speaker 1: the try Angle fire victims began to testify. Bostwick led
Speaker 1: them through their recollections of the fire. Each witness described
Speaker 1: their actions that day, including their desperate attempts to escape.
Speaker 1: One after another, witnesses testified to their fear and anger
Speaker 1: at finding the Washington Place door impassable. As they spoke,
Speaker 1: Bostwick asked the witnesses to rise from the witness stand
Speaker 1: and go to the courtroom door to demonstrate how they
Speaker 1: had tried to get the Washington Place door open. I
Speaker 1: took hold of the handle and I turned and pulled it,
Speaker 1: Mary Buccelli said as she yanked on the courtroom door.
Speaker 1: Sam Bernstein recalled, I tried with both hands to open it.
Speaker 1: There where the lock was. I wanted to tear it open.
Speaker 1: Lillian Weener said, I tried to turn the handle and
Speaker 1: it would not bend. It was locked. Over and over,
Speaker 1: jurors watched the young men and women re enact some
Speaker 1: of the worst moments of their lives. Over and over,
Speaker 1: the jury heard that the Washington Place door had been locked.
Speaker 1: It was powerful, compelling testimony, but even as it occurred,
Speaker 1: defense lawyer Max Steyer was doing everything he could to
Speaker 1: reduce the impact of the witness's words. One of Stoyer's
Speaker 1: main arguments was that the Triangle fire victims had been
Speaker 1: doomed not by any action of Harris and Blank, but
Speaker 1: by their own, panicked, irrational choices during the fire. Whenever
Speaker 1: he could, Stoyer worked to undermine the credibility and intelligence
Speaker 1: of the survivors who were testifying. He picked up small
Speaker 1: inconsistencies in their stories and used these inconsistencies to imply
Speaker 1: the witness was either lying on the prosecution's behalf, or
Speaker 1: did not speak English well enough to understand what they
Speaker 1: were saying, or was not clear headed enough during the
Speaker 1: fire to properly remember what happened during worker yetto Lubberts's
Speaker 1: cross examination, for example, Stoyer implied that Lubets did not
Speaker 1: know what a square was, that she thought that doors
Speaker 1: could stop fires, that she had answered the prosecution's questions
Speaker 1: without understanding them, and that she was lying about her
Speaker 1: testimony rubbing salt in the wound. In the midst of
Speaker 1: making these accusations, Stoyer chided Lubberts, don't get upset. Stoyer
Speaker 1: had two other approaches for tripping up the prosecution's witnesses.
Speaker 1: The first was questioning their motives. On cross examination, he
Speaker 1: questioned witnesses about lawsuits they had filed against Harris and Blank.
Speaker 1: Many of the survivors, as well as relatives of the victims,
Speaker 1: were pursuing claims against the triangle's owners. Steyer framed these
Speaker 1: lawsuits as conflicts of interest. Steyer's second plan to damage
Speaker 1: the prosecution witnesses was raising the theory that their stories
Speaker 1: were coached. He planted the idea that many of the
Speaker 1: witnesses had attended union meetings, where he implied they had
Speaker 1: learned what to say on the stand. He devised a
Speaker 1: cunning way of supporting this theory on several cross examinations.
Speaker 1: Instead of trying to poke holes in the stories of witnesses,
Speaker 1: he simply asked them to repeat their stories again over
Speaker 1: and over as they repeated their stories, The witnesses inevitably
Speaker 1: repeated certain phrases, making their stories sound rehearsed. This tactic
Speaker 1: was particularly damaging to one of the star prosecution witnesses.
Speaker 1: Kate Alterman, had been a friend of Margaret Schwartz, the
Speaker 1: woman whose death Harris and Blink were accused of causing.
Speaker 1: On the stand, Altman broke down crying as she told
Speaker 1: the story of her last moments with Schwartz. The two
Speaker 1: friends had tried to open the Washington Place door. Alterman
Speaker 1: re counted, but could not. As they frantically tried to
Speaker 1: force the door, Schwartz suddenly collapsed. Altman tried to rouse her,
Speaker 1: but Schwartz would not wake up. Altman had no option
Speaker 1: but to leave her friend behind to save her own life.
Speaker 1: As she ran across the room, she looked back and
Speaker 1: saw Schwartz on the floor, the hem of her dress
Speaker 1: and the ends of her hair beginning to burn. The
Speaker 1: jury was stunned more so than any other witness. Altman
Speaker 1: had transported them into that burning building and confronted to
Speaker 1: them with the horror of being trapped by a locked door.
Speaker 1: Steyer had to control the damage. He had noticed that
Speaker 1: Alterman's testimony contained a number of distinct evocative phrases. She
Speaker 1: didn't call the fire simply fire, for example, but described
Speaker 1: it as a quote red curtain of fire. Steyer thought
Speaker 1: these phrases sounded rehearsed. On cross examination, Stoyer had Alterman
Speaker 1: go through her testimony four times, pausing to highlight the
Speaker 1: specific she repeatedly mentioned. In between. He asked her if
Speaker 1: she had ever told this story before or studied her words.
Speaker 1: Alterman denied it. As David Vondrelli points out, Altman was
Speaker 1: probably lying about whether she had ever told her story before.
Speaker 1: Her testimony was so well organized that it's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine she never practiced it allowed. However, a rehearse story
Speaker 1: does not imply an untruthful one. It is extremely common
Speaker 1: for attorneys to prepare witnesses for trial by having them
Speaker 1: practice their testimony. Kate Alterman's story was consistent and its
Speaker 1: details aligned with both the physical evidence and the testimony
Speaker 1: of other witnesses, but Stoyer had gotten her to repeat
Speaker 1: herself so frequently that her words began to seem artificial
Speaker 1: to the jury. After raising questions about the prosecution witnesses credibility,
Speaker 1: Stoyer tried to bolster the reputations of the defendants by
Speaker 1: having Harris and Blank testify. Both men had been at
Speaker 1: the factory on the day of the fire, Blank had
Speaker 1: actually had two of his young daughters there with him,
Speaker 1: and both had had harrowing experiences. It was a risk
Speaker 1: to put the defendants on the stand. Stoyer hoped that
Speaker 1: their testimony would humanize them and make them appear to
Speaker 1: be victims like all the other survivors. In some ways
Speaker 1: this strategy worked. Isaac Harris had behaved heroically during the fire,
Speaker 1: climbing from the rooftop of the ash building to an
Speaker 1: adjacent rooftop and badly injuring his hand by breaking a
Speaker 1: skylight to get help. But in other ways having the
Speaker 1: owners testify backfired. On cross examination, Bostwick pressed Harris on
Speaker 1: the issue of employee theft. Theft was the owner's justification
Speaker 1: for locking the Washington Place door, but Bostwick pushed Harris
Speaker 1: on the specifics and got him to admit that the
Speaker 1: total value of employee theft in the year before the
Speaker 1: fire had only been twenty five dollars. Steyer also found
Speaker 1: ways to question the narrative of the locked door from
Speaker 1: the prosecution witnesses. The jury had heard over and over
Speaker 1: again that the Washington placetoor was kept locked, but now
Speaker 1: Stowyer produced defense witnesses who made the jury question if
Speaker 1: this central claim was true. These witnesses, mainly Triangle employees
Speaker 1: and contractors, described how they had regularly used the Washington
Speaker 1: playstairs during the course of their business. The Triangle factory
Speaker 1: had been set up with different functions on different floors,
Speaker 1: cutting on the eighth, sewing on the ninth, packing and
Speaker 1: shipping on the tenth, and people needed away to carry
Speaker 1: goods from floor to floor. It would seem to be
Speaker 1: inefficient and therefore unlikely that the Washington Place store was
Speaker 1: always locked. That being said, a number of witnesses also
Speaker 1: testified that keys were kept attached to the Washington Place door.
Speaker 1: The keys were hung from thin strips of fabric that
Speaker 1: regularly broke and were also very flammable, explaining why the
Speaker 1: workers may not have been able to find them during
Speaker 1: the fire. Why were keys needed if the door was
Speaker 1: kept unlocked. The prosecution also had one more compelling piece
Speaker 1: of evidence to support their claim of a locked door,
Speaker 1: a smoking lock, so to speak. During the grand jury proceedings,
Speaker 1: the DA's office had sent an investigator to the Ash
Speaker 1: Building to search for the ninth floor Washington Place door lock,
Speaker 1: and the investigator had succeeded. Stoyer had fought hard to
Speaker 1: keep the lock from being admitted into evidence, questioning its
Speaker 1: provenance and claiming that it was unbelievable that the lock
Speaker 1: had been found more than two weeks after the fire.
Speaker 1: Bostwick was prepared for this argument. The District Attorney's investigators
Speaker 1: had shored up the discovery by tracing the lock in
Speaker 1: every step of its journey from fact to installation. They
Speaker 1: knew where the lock had been made, what store had
Speaker 1: sold it, who had bought it, and finally, who had
Speaker 1: installed it on the Washington Place door. Judge Crane allowed
Speaker 1: the lock to be admitted. The lock seemed damning. The
Speaker 1: heavy bolt was undamaged, while the visible part of the lock,
Speaker 1: which would have been exposed to the fire, was discolored.
Speaker 1: The prosecution suggested that this meant that the bolt had
Speaker 1: been protected by the door frame, something that only would
Speaker 1: have been possible if the door was locked. Of course,
Speaker 1: Stoyer had an explanation for this too. He brought in
Speaker 1: a lock expert of his own, who testified that the
Speaker 1: lock should have entirely melted in the fire if it
Speaker 1: had really been there. The expert also claimed that the
Speaker 1: lock was easy to tamper with. For every point the
Speaker 1: prosecution had made, Stoyer had a quick rebuttal. But would
Speaker 1: his clever lawyering be enough to counteract the powerful testimony
Speaker 1: of the survivors. On December twenty seventh, after nearly three
Speaker 1: weeks of testimony and more than one hundred and fifty witnesses,
Speaker 1: the case was handed over to the jury. In his
Speaker 1: instructions to the jurors, Judge Crane explained the charges in
Speaker 1: the same way that the prosecutors had It was against
Speaker 1: New York law for a factory door to be locked
Speaker 1: during working hours, and if someone had died because a
Speaker 1: door had been locked, then that was manslaughter. But he
Speaker 1: added another point, one that was favorable to the defense.
Speaker 1: He told jurors that to find Harris and Blink guilty,
Speaker 1: the jury must find that the men knew the door
Speaker 1: was locked at the time of the fire. If these
Speaker 1: men were charged with a misdemeanor, Crane explained, I might
Speaker 1: charge that they need have no so knowledge that the
Speaker 1: door was locked. But I think that in this case
Speaker 1: it is proper for me to charge that they must
Speaker 1: have had personal knowledge of the fact that it was locked.
Speaker 1: With that, the jury was sent out to deliberate. Two
Speaker 1: hours later, they returned with a verdict on the charges
Speaker 1: of manslaughter in the death of Triangle employee Margaret Schwartz.
Speaker 1: Max Blank, and Isaac Harris were found not guilty. Immediately
Speaker 1: after the not guilty verdict, reporters went looking for explanations.
Speaker 1: One juror explained that he believed that the victim's panic,
Speaker 1: not the locked door, was to blame for her death.
Speaker 1: I think the girls, who undoubtedly have not as much
Speaker 1: intelligence as others might have in other walks of life,
Speaker 1: were inclined to fly into a panic, he said. Stowyer's
Speaker 1: tactics had clearly worked. Another juror stated that it was
Speaker 1: Crane's instructions that had sealed the decision for him. I
Speaker 1: believed that the door was locked at the time of
Speaker 1: the fire, the juror said. But we couldn't find them
Speaker 1: guilty unless we believed they knew the door was locked.
Speaker 1: Crane's instructions had raised concerns when they were issued. Lawyers
Speaker 1: speaking to The New York Times were surprised that Crane's
Speaker 1: instructions had not mentioned the large number of lives lost
Speaker 1: at the factory, or the fact that several of the
Speaker 1: defense witnesses had made sworn statements to the da that
Speaker 1: the door had been locked, but then testified to the
Speaker 1: opposite on the stand. Some felt that Crane's conduct throughout
Speaker 1: the trial had favored the defense. He had been strict
Speaker 1: about what the prosecution was allowed to mention about the fire, excluding,
Speaker 1: for instance, any testimony about victims jumping from the building,
Speaker 1: on the basis that it was irrelevant. Crane may very
Speaker 1: well have been biased. He had, it turns out, a
Speaker 1: shockingly relevant past experience. Six years earlier, in March nineteen
Speaker 1: o five, a tenement building on the Lower East Side
Speaker 1: of Manhattan had gone up in flames, killing twenty people.
Speaker 1: Many of the deaths were due to the unsafe conditions
Speaker 1: of the building, which had a blocked fire escape. At
Speaker 1: the time. The tenement house commissioner was Thomas Crane. Crane
Speaker 1: claimed that his inspectors had done everything they could to
Speaker 1: keep the building safe and blamed the residence of the
Speaker 1: building for the fire, but the city government blamed Crane.
Speaker 1: He lost his job and was maligned in the press. Crane,
Speaker 1: a man who felt he had been unfairly blamed for
Speaker 1: a fire related tragedy, was the judge for a trial
Speaker 1: of two men who were being blamed for a fire
Speaker 1: related tragedy. He should have recused himself. But while Crane's
Speaker 1: bias did no doubt cause issues for the prosecution, the
Speaker 1: verdict was in many ways the District attorney's own fault.
Speaker 1: An editorial in The New York Times on December twenty
Speaker 1: ninth opined that Whitman's office had mischarged Blank and Harris,
Speaker 1: saying the acquittal does not mean that nobody was to
Speaker 1: blame for this hideous disaster. What the verdict really means
Speaker 1: is that Harris and Blank were not guilty as charged.
Speaker 1: Between this and not guilty at all, there is much
Speaker 1: more than a technical difference. The DA, the editorial continued,
Speaker 1: should have simply Chown charged Harris and Blank with violating
Speaker 1: factory laws, something they unequivocally did. That way quote, either
Speaker 1: they would have been sent to jail or heavily fined,
Speaker 1: or else the inadequacy of those laws to serve their
Speaker 1: intended purpose would have been so plainly demonstrated as to
Speaker 1: have brought about an immediate reform. This last point is
Speaker 1: the key one. The law at the time was inadequate
Speaker 1: to address a tragedy like the Triangle Fire. There were
Speaker 1: very very few worker protections in existence in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: There were very few ways for the legal system to
Speaker 1: hold employers liable for harm done in the workplace. After
Speaker 1: the Triangle Fire and the acquittal of Blank and Harris,
Speaker 1: many realized that in order for justice to be done,
Speaker 1: the law would have to check. And it's here that
Speaker 1: we see the true legacy of the Triangle tragedy play out.
Speaker 1: For months after the Triangle Fire, people were skeptical that
Speaker 1: workplace safety reform would happen. After all, industrial accidents were
Speaker 1: extremely common. Thousands of workers died due to workplace accidents
Speaker 1: every year, and thousands more were injured. Injured workers had
Speaker 1: little legal recourse. Judicial precedent stood firmly on the side
Speaker 1: of employers. In a key case called Farewell v. Boston
Speaker 1: and Worcester Railroad, the Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in
Speaker 1: essence that when employees took a job, they assumed the
Speaker 1: risk for workplace injuries. Following this eighteen forty two decision,
Speaker 1: it became very difficult for workers to prove that their
Speaker 1: employers were legally rect responsible for workplace injuries or for
Speaker 1: workers to receive compensation for such injuries. This common law
Speaker 1: environment matched public opinion. Many people believed that workplace injuries
Speaker 1: were mainly caused by the inattention or negligence of individual workers,
Speaker 1: but in the early twentieth century, labor reformers began conducting
Speaker 1: surveys about the actual causes of workplace accidents. One seminal
Speaker 1: study run by Crystal Eastman for the New York State
Speaker 1: Employer's Liability Commission and published in nineteen ten, revealed that
Speaker 1: many workplace injuries were caused not by worker negligence, but
Speaker 1: were instead attributable to systemic issues caused by employer mismanagement. Eastman,
Speaker 1: who went on to co found the American Civil Liberties Union,
Speaker 1: had collected heaps of data to support her conclusions. Raw
Speaker 1: data alone was not enough to change public sentiment or
Speaker 1: the law. People needed something more visible, something more visceral,
Speaker 1: to convince them of the need for change. The Triangle
Speaker 1: Fire was just such an event, as the legal scholar
Speaker 1: Arthur F. McAvoy writes, quote, so graphic were the Triangle
Speaker 1: deaths and so clear their systemic causes that the law
Speaker 1: could no longer contain them within the category accident. The
Speaker 1: Triangle Fire inscribed the law of turn of the century
Speaker 1: labor relations on its victims' bodies, so that its meaning
Speaker 1: at last became clear. At the same time as the
Speaker 1: need for reform was becoming evident, politicians were taking note
Speaker 1: of the voting power of the people who most needed
Speaker 1: workplace protectives. In New York, the powerful political machine known
Speaker 1: as Tammany Hall, which had usually sided with wealthy industrialists
Speaker 1: in opposing workplace reform, realized that their new path to
Speaker 1: electoral victory was courting the votes of the working class.
Speaker 1: The combination of popular pressure and political will finally combined
Speaker 1: in the months after the Triangle Fire to create real change.
Speaker 1: On June thirtieth, nineteen eleven, New York Governor John Dix
Speaker 1: signed a law creating the Factory Investigating Commission. The Commission's
Speaker 1: members worked tirelessly collecting data, touring factories, and holding frequent
Speaker 1: public hearings. Soon the Commission began proposing reforms, many of
Speaker 1: which the New York State Legislature enacted as law. Over
Speaker 1: the next four years. The Commission's work in spired dozens
Speaker 1: of workplace safety and worker protection laws. These laws included
Speaker 1: crucial reforms such as the banning of child labor and
Speaker 1: the requirement that employers provide workers with clean drinking water
Speaker 1: and bathrooms. Other laws focused on fire prevention and protection measures,
Speaker 1: such as mandatory fire drills, automatic sprinklers, fireproof stairways, and
Speaker 1: fire escapes. Unfortunately, these laws came too late to protect
Speaker 1: the Triangle workers. In the years after the trial, the
Speaker 1: fire's survivors and its victims relatives struggled to get justice
Speaker 1: or even compensation for what they'd endured. Max Steyer represented
Speaker 1: Blank and Harris in the civil suits against them, all
Speaker 1: of which seemed to have failed or fizzled out. The
Speaker 1: only suits that succeeded were those filed against the app
Speaker 1: USh building's owner. In early nineteen fourteen, twenty three relatives
Speaker 1: of victims received a measly seventy five dollars each in
Speaker 1: a settlement of these suits. Even more disturbing, that paltry
Speaker 1: sum paled in comparison to the amount that Blank and
Speaker 1: Harris earned from the fire. The two men had received
Speaker 1: a two hundred thousand dollars payout from their insurance companies
Speaker 1: in the wake of the disaster, But in nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: investigation by Arthur McFarlane for Collier's Magazine revealed that Blank
Speaker 1: and Harris had only been able to document one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty four thousand and seventy five dollars in losses,
Speaker 1: meaning that they were for some reason overpaid by more
Speaker 1: than sixty thousand dollars. Despite this windfall, the Triangle company
Speaker 1: did not survive much longer. The DA's office had tried
Speaker 1: to pursue additional manslaughter cases against Harris and Blank, but
Speaker 1: a judge ruled that this would be unconstitutional double jeopardy.
Speaker 1: Harris and Blank continued their partnership for nine years, operating
Speaker 1: shirtwaist manufacturers across New York City, before eventually going their
Speaker 1: separate ways in nineteen twenty. The men do not seem
Speaker 1: to have learned any lessons from the nineteen eleven tragedy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirteen, Max Blank was arrested for locking doors
Speaker 1: at one of his factories. At his trial, he defended
Speaker 1: himself by saying that his employees would rob him if
Speaker 1: he didn't lock the doors, the same argument he had
Speaker 1: used at the Triangle trial. He was found guilty and
Speaker 1: fined twenty dollars. The legacy of the Triangle Fires victims
Speaker 1: with long outline. Blank and Harris the reform work that
Speaker 1: New York did in the wake of the fire would
Speaker 1: become a national model for workplace regulation. Worker protection reforms
Speaker 1: continued throughout the twentieth century. Nearly sixty years after the
Speaker 1: Triangle Fire, in nineteen seventy, Congress passed the Occupational Safety
Speaker 1: and Health Act, which, among other things, created the Occupational
Speaker 1: Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, an agency that can
Speaker 1: set and enforce workplace safety standards. Though workplace safety standards
Speaker 1: and worker protections are not perfect, they are fathoms beyond
Speaker 1: what they were on March twenty fifth, nineteen eleven, the
Speaker 1: day that a fire blazed the Triangle Factory and changed
Speaker 1: our understanding of workplace safety forever. That's the story of
Speaker 1: New York via Isaac Harris and Max Blanky with Me
Speaker 1: after the Break to learn about how the Triangle Fire
Speaker 1: led to the breaking of a political glass ceiling. Today,
Speaker 1: the site of the Triangle Fire, the Ash Building, is
Speaker 1: known as the Brown Building and houses New York University's
Speaker 1: Biology and chemistry departments. The building was designated as a
Speaker 1: National Historic Landmark in nineteen ninety one, eighty years after
Speaker 1: the fire. Thirty years before this designation, on the fire's
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary, a plaque was placed on the building to
Speaker 1: memorialize the victims. A woman named Francis Perkins was invited
Speaker 1: to give the dedication. On the day of the Triangle fire,
Speaker 1: Francis Perkins was having tea at a friend's hoone nearby
Speaker 1: when they heard the sirens. Perkins and her friend follow
Speaker 1: the sound to the sight of the fire. They arrived
Speaker 1: just as people began to jump. Perkins, then thirty years old,
Speaker 1: was horrified by what she saw, but not entirely surprised.
Speaker 1: She worked for the Consumers League, a nonprofit focused on
Speaker 1: documenting and improving workplace conditions, and she was intimately familiar
Speaker 1: with the many ways that people could be harmed in
Speaker 1: the workplace. Still, what she saw on March twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, haunted her. After the fire, Perkins doubled down
Speaker 1: on her commitment to protecting workers. She became the primary
Speaker 1: investigator for the New York Factory Investigating Commission and was
Speaker 1: crucial in shaping the reform laws that the Commission proposed.
Speaker 1: Over the next two decades, Perkins served in increasingly prominent
Speaker 1: statewide organizations, including the Count's on Immigrant Education and the
Speaker 1: New York State Industrial Board. Along the way, she became
Speaker 1: allies and good friends with a politician named Franklin and Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, now President Roosevelt appointed Perkins to
Speaker 1: her biggest job yet, United States Secretary of Labor. She
Speaker 1: was the first woman to ever serve in a presidential cabinet.
Speaker 1: Francis Perkins was the Secretary of Labor for twelve years.
Speaker 1: During that time, she helped the country recover from the
Speaker 1: Great Depression and guided the passage of laws that still
Speaker 1: shape American life today, including the Social Security Act and
Speaker 1: the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the rights to
Speaker 1: a minimum wage and overtime pay. Her impact is hard
Speaker 1: to overstate. Perkins never forgot the Triangle Fire about the
Speaker 1: events of that day. In nineteen sixty four, fifty three
Speaker 1: years after the fire and a year before her death,
Speaker 1: Perkins told the audience that her reform work could be
Speaker 1: seen as a type of atonement. The progress made, she said,
Speaker 1: seems in some way to have paid the debt society
Speaker 1: owe to those children, those young people who lost their
Speaker 1: lives in the Triangle Fire. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: History on Trial. My main sources for this episode were
Speaker 1: the trial transcript, David von Dreley's book Triangle, The Fire
Speaker 1: That Changed America, and Arthur F. McAvoy's article The Triangle
Speaker 1: Shirtwaist Factory Fire of nineteen eleven, Social change, Industrial accidents,
Speaker 1: and the evolution of common sense causality. For a full bibliography,
Speaker 1: as well as a transcript of this episode with citations,
Speaker 1: please visit our website History on Trial podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: History on Trial is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward.
Speaker 1: The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with
Speaker 1: supervising producer Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show
Speaker 1: at History on Trial podcast dot com and follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at History on Trial and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Underscore History on Trial. Find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by
Speaker 1: visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.