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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Debline, a Chark reboarding, and I'm fair down. And

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Speaker 1: chances are if you've ever worked outside of the home,

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Speaker 1: you've probably been introduced to the idea of workplace safety

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Speaker 1: at one time or another, whether it's been through one

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Speaker 1: of those workplace safety videos that we all know and love,

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Speaker 1: or a basic fire drill. We had one just last week.

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Speaker 1: Yes we did, and we did very well, I think,

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Speaker 1: I hope so yeah, me too. We're on the fifteenth

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Speaker 1: floor here, so we need to know to be up

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Speaker 1: on our fire safety. But it's not a perfect system.

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Speaker 1: I think most people probably think that, and we saw

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Speaker 1: that also in a food safety podcast that we did

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Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. But there's at least some

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Speaker 1: emphasis on safety regulation at most reputable corporations. But that

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Speaker 1: wasn't always the case, not at all. About a hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago, it wasn't really unusual at all for worker

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Speaker 1: to die on the job. There's actually a stat you

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Speaker 1: see a lot from that period that says that about

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Speaker 1: one hundred u S workers on average used to die

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Speaker 1: every single day in minds on ships, trains, and factories. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so when you start to think about facts like that

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Speaker 1: or statistics like that, it's not too difficult to see

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Speaker 1: how a terrible event like the Triangle Shirtwat factory fire

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Speaker 1: could occur. It was a fire that spread through three

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Speaker 1: floors of New York's ash building in Washington Square, and

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Speaker 1: it really stands out not just because it's a tragic

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Speaker 1: event a lot of people died, it's one of the

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Speaker 1: worst US workplace disasters, but also because it instigated a

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Speaker 1: lot of reforms that were very much needed at the

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Speaker 1: time in workplace safety standards and led to some real

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Speaker 1: positive changes in labor unions and women's rights too. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and especially since it's the one anniversary of the fire

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Speaker 1: this year and a frequent listener request. Yeah, people have

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Speaker 1: really been requesting this topic as long as I've worked

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Speaker 1: on the podcast. We want to take a look at

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Speaker 1: what happened on that fateful day Mars nineteen eleven, the

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Speaker 1: trial that ensued, and the whole events after effects. What happened,

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Speaker 1: How did it influence workplace safety? Yeah, definitely, But first

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Speaker 1: we want to take a look at the conditions that

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Speaker 1: made the fire possible and around this time in the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, there were hundreds of blouse factories in

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Speaker 1: New York City and they employed mostly immigrants, thousands of immigrants,

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Speaker 1: and the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory was one of the

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Speaker 1: largest of these garment operations that employed more than five

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Speaker 1: hundred people, most of them were Jewish and Italian immigrants,

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Speaker 1: and most were young women. And it took up the

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Speaker 1: top three floors of a ten story building, the Ash Building,

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Speaker 1: which was located on the corner of Green Street and

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Speaker 1: Washington Place on the northern corner of Washington Square. So

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Speaker 1: if you've visited that area today, it's now ny US

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Speaker 1: Brown Building. Yeah. And they made, as we mentioned, shirt

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Speaker 1: way s, which were women's blouses that were loosely based

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Speaker 1: on a man's fitted shirt, and they were popularized by

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Speaker 1: commercial artist Charles Dana Gibson. So he created this image

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Speaker 1: of the Gibson girl, right, and it was kind of

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Speaker 1: an iconic twentieth century woman, and she wore shortwaist, so

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Speaker 1: stylish but practical at the same time, right, And this

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Speaker 1: became all the rage. So it was big business at

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Speaker 1: the time for the Triangle Factory owners Max Blanc and

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Speaker 1: Isaac Harris, who were getting rich off the concept. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the conditions of the factory did not reflect the

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Speaker 1: wealth in any way. There were long hours, there was

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Speaker 1: low pay. They're pretty much no breaks for the workers.

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Speaker 1: Lunch breaks were often shorted so you wouldn't even get

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Speaker 1: paid for that. The female workers were followed to the

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Speaker 1: bathroom and then sort of rushed back to work. And

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Speaker 1: then the factory itself was just a terrible place to work.

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Speaker 1: It was airless, it was crowded with people and supplies.

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Speaker 1: Obviously it was the fire trap. There were open bands,

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Speaker 1: piled of shirt scraps all around, and that's a really

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Speaker 1: important thing to remember during this podcast. The whole workspace

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Speaker 1: is filled with cotton scraps. Yeah, it was a full

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Speaker 1: on sweatshop. And to make matters worse, Block Inhari stood

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Speaker 1: a few things that weren't exactly up to fire code.

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Speaker 1: Even at the time, they really feared their employees stealing

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Speaker 1: from them, so they limited access to the exits and

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Speaker 1: made the workers take a specific exited closing and that

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Speaker 1: was the exit that was on the Green Street side

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Speaker 1: of the building. So there they set up partitions so

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Speaker 1: that they could funnel one worker through at a time

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Speaker 1: and have her search for stolen tools, fabric, shirtwaists. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: obviously this would create a problem if there were a

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Speaker 1: lot of people trying to get out that one exit

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Speaker 1: at one time. But there was another stairway. There was

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Speaker 1: a passenger elevator too, or several passenger elevators on the

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Speaker 1: other side of the building, but they were reserved for

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Speaker 1: management and for the public. There was also a third

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Speaker 1: stairway that was legally required by the city, but unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: corrupt officials had let the owners count this flimsy fire

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Speaker 1: escape on the back side of the building as the

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Speaker 1: third set of stairs. It wasn't really a realistic escape route, right.

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Speaker 1: So women finally unionized and they participated in a strike

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Speaker 1: led by the Women's Trade Union League in late nineteen

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Speaker 1: o nine. They were fed up with these conditions. They

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Speaker 1: knew they weren't working in a safe environment, and so

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Speaker 1: they wanted to fight back a little bit. The owners

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Speaker 1: that were stubborn, they had the backing of Tammany Hall,

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Speaker 1: and so they were able to get strike breakers from

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Speaker 1: street gangs and they got thugs to break up the strike. Eventually, though,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, Blanc and Harris finally relented and they

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Speaker 1: agreed to some minor concessions, higher wages, shorter hours, but

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Speaker 1: still after that not really much changed. Factory conditions were

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Speaker 1: still deplorable. Yeah, so they were still in a bad spot.

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Speaker 1: And Saturday March nineteen eleven, a cutter on the eighth

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Speaker 1: floor named Isidore abrama Witz noticed flames coming up from

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Speaker 1: his scrap bin. And this was around four or forty

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Speaker 1: at night, so it was right before closing. I think

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Speaker 1: he mentioned earlier he had put on his coat when

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Speaker 1: he he saw these flames. He was ready to go.

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Speaker 1: He was ready to get out of there, but then

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Speaker 1: he noticed this fire. And just as a side note,

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Speaker 1: nobody really knows exactly how the fire started. He says

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Speaker 1: he just noticed it spontaneously. It may have been a

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Speaker 1: match or smoldering cigarette or cigar thrown into the bend,

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Speaker 1: maybe by him, maybe by someone else, we don't know.

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Speaker 1: But the fire marshal thought later that that was probably

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Speaker 1: how it started, as from a cigarette. But yeah, but cotton,

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Speaker 1: of course as very flammable, as we've already mentioned. So

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Speaker 1: the fire, which seemed pretty small at first, was blazing

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Speaker 1: within just a few seconds, and so bram Woods grabbed

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Speaker 1: a red fire pail and dumped it on the flames,

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Speaker 1: trying to quench this thing quickly, and others did the same,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't do any good. The fire was just

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Speaker 1: too strong already, and so the flames started to just

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Speaker 1: spread all over the factory floor, and the factory manager,

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Speaker 1: Samuel Bernstein, told the workers to get out the fire hoses.

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Speaker 1: So they were still working on trying to contain this

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Speaker 1: thing before abandoning ship. But that didn't help either, and

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Speaker 1: that's because the hoses, which hadn't been inspected, turned out

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Speaker 1: to just be completely useless. They didn't have any water pressure,

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Speaker 1: so it was just wasted precious seconds in what turned

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Speaker 1: out to be a really fast paced disaster. Right at

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Speaker 1: that point, there was really nothing for them to do

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Speaker 1: but try and find a way out, and people went

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Speaker 1: about that in different ways, but basically a lot of

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Speaker 1: it came down to luck of the draw. How close

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Speaker 1: was your station to an exit, which direction did you

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Speaker 1: choose to run in? It was all these split second

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Speaker 1: decision There weren't second chances either, right, whatever you decided

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Speaker 1: in that moment would determine your faith. So we're just

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Speaker 1: going to go through a few different scenarios. Decisions that

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Speaker 1: people made places they went to try to escape. So

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Speaker 1: in a panic, many of the workers ran to the

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Speaker 1: doors on the Washington Street side, but the doors were

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Speaker 1: inward opening because the stairway landings were supposedly too narrow

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Speaker 1: to accommodate outward opening doors. So with the mob pressing

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Speaker 1: up against these swinging doors, they wouldn't open, and every

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Speaker 1: one was just sort of crushing the people on the

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Speaker 1: front because they were trying so frantically to get out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so other workers tried to get out on the Green

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Speaker 1: Street side, and they were slowed down by that security

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Speaker 1: check funneling partition that we mentioned earlier, And besides the

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Speaker 1: stairway and the elevators were jammed, so not much luck

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Speaker 1: there either. So some other people also tried to escape

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Speaker 1: by the passenger elevators. According to an article by Charles

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Speaker 1: Phillips in American History, elevator operators Joseph Cito and Gaspou

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Speaker 1: Mortillo risked their lives by making trips to get some

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Speaker 1: of the workers. But it's still unclear exactly which floors

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Speaker 1: they visited and when they visited them. So what people

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Speaker 1: have determined is that it's likely that they visited the

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Speaker 1: eighth and the tenth floors. Zero later guessed that they

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Speaker 1: went up to the tenth floor twice actually, but the

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Speaker 1: second time they went up the floor was empty. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And the tenth floor is pretty key here too, because

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Speaker 1: it's where management was working. So Blanc and a couple

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Speaker 1: of his daughters and Harris were on the tenth floor

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Speaker 1: at the time of the fire, and they and all

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Speaker 1: of the seventy workers who were on that floor managed

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Speaker 1: to escape, and some of them got out by the

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Speaker 1: elevator and some took stairs to the roof and from

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Speaker 1: there they were helped by n y U law students

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Speaker 1: who extended ladders from adjacent buildings, which sounds absolutely terrifying

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Speaker 1: climbing over ladders ten floors up between buildings. And some

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Speaker 1: people also tried to take the fire escape, which is

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Speaker 1: probably even more terrifying than that because it was so rickety,

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Speaker 1: and then only went from the tenth floor to the

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Speaker 1: second floor and stopped above a courtyard. At that point,

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Speaker 1: it was so flimsy. Apparently the architect had promised to

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Speaker 1: fix it previously but never did so when people tried

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Speaker 1: to take it, it detached and fell I think exactly.

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Speaker 1: I think too A few people fell down at first,

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Speaker 1: and then finally the whole thing gave way and just

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Speaker 1: kind of crumpled. But of all of the floors, the

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Speaker 1: ninth floor definitely did the worst. The doors to the

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Speaker 1: Washington Place stairwell were found to be locked, or at

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Speaker 1: least we're going to talk about that a little more.

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Speaker 1: Survivors claimed that several of the doors were locked, and

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Speaker 1: that turned out to be pretty cruise in the after

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Speaker 1: effects of this fire. But aside from the doors potentially

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Speaker 1: being locked, the elevator was packed with those tenth floor folks,

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Speaker 1: so it would come down to the ninth floor and open,

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Speaker 1: but nobody else could get on, and then the Green

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Speaker 1: Street exit was jammed, so there was just hardly any

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Speaker 1: way out of the building if you were stuck on

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Speaker 1: the ninth floor right. Some escaped by making it to

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Speaker 1: the Green Street stairs and getting to the roof. A

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Speaker 1: few others slid down elevator cables, some more successfully than others.

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Speaker 1: If you see stories of some people who slid down

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Speaker 1: the elevator cables and they made it, and some people

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Speaker 1: when you mentioned a woman who woke up in the hospital, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I read an article from that time of a woman

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Speaker 1: recounting how she slid down the cables and she kind

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Speaker 1: of lost consciousness around the sixth floor and woke up

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Speaker 1: in the hospital. But she survived. That's amazing. But unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: about eighty of the people who were stuck on that

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Speaker 1: floor did the unthinkable, and they jumped out of the

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Speaker 1: window onto the street. And logically, we can assume that

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Speaker 1: the people who jumped didn't think that they were going

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Speaker 1: to make it. They were just desperate to escape the

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Speaker 1: burning building. But a lot of people by this time,

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Speaker 1: we're down on the streets below watching it all happen, yea.

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Speaker 1: And I mean, with our recent history in September eleventh,

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Speaker 1: I think we don't have to try too hard to

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Speaker 1: imagine how horrifying this was to watch. And some of

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Speaker 1: we mentioned, some of them were as young as fourteen

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Speaker 1: years old. They tried to prevent them from jumping, telling them, hey, wait,

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Speaker 1: the fire department's coming, don't jump. But even when the

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Speaker 1: fire department got there, their ladders would only reach the

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Speaker 1: sixth floor. Well in their nets didn't work either. They

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Speaker 1: put up a safety net about a hundred feet below

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Speaker 1: the windows, but the weight of the jumpers would just

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Speaker 1: tear right through the net. And we also have to

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Speaker 1: Some of them were just being pushed out by the

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Speaker 1: masses of people struggling inside the building. Um, just to

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Speaker 1: give you an idea of what this was like to

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Speaker 1: watch from street, William Shephard, a United Press reporter, happened

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Speaker 1: to be in the area, and he kind of described

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Speaker 1: the horror of watching this. He said, the first ten

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Speaker 1: shocked me. I looked up and saw that there were

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Speaker 1: scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the

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Speaker 1: floor below we're beating in their faces. Somehow I knew

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Speaker 1: that they too must come down, and something within me,

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Speaker 1: something I didn't know was there, stealed me. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: I think this is sort of the hardest part of

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Speaker 1: this podcast to take. And all of this happened in

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Speaker 1: only about fifteen minutes, which again that's just so you

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Speaker 1: have one second to make a decision about what you're

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Speaker 1: gonna do. That's a really scary part of this whole thing.

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Speaker 1: And then it's all over by about four or fifty

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Speaker 1: seven hundred and forty six of the five hundred Triangle

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Speaker 1: Factory employees were dead, and almost immediately after people started

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Speaker 1: looking for somebody to blame. If you have a tragedy

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Speaker 1: of this magnitude, somebody's got to get down for it, it

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Speaker 1: it seems. Yeah. One person who was really on the

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Speaker 1: warpath about this was District Attorney Charles Whitman, and he

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Speaker 1: was determined to find somebody to blame. He convinced a

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Speaker 1: grand jury to eventually charge Block and Harris with manslaughter

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Speaker 1: caused by willful negligence. And the trial of these two

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Speaker 1: owners started about nine months or so after the fire,

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Speaker 1: and it lasted for three weeks. Block and Harris were

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Speaker 1: represented by a guy named Max Steyer. He was a

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Speaker 1: renowned lawyer at the time. I think he was like

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Speaker 1: the premier trial lawyer in New York. And there were

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Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty five witnesses involved in the case.

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Speaker 1: So if you can imagine like all these survivors coming

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Speaker 1: forth and recounting the stories of their escape and just

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Speaker 1: the harring tale of what they had gone through so recently. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the whole case, the whole trial, hinged around whether

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Speaker 1: or not the owners knew that that Washington Place door

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Speaker 1: was locked, and they, of course, we're saying, no, it's

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Speaker 1: not locked during working hours, but even a fire prevention

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Speaker 1: expert testified to the contrary. So there were different opinions

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Speaker 1: going on here. But the judge had instructed the jury

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Speaker 1: that they must be convinced not only that the door

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Speaker 1: was locked and that the owners knew it was, but

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Speaker 1: the more people would have survived if it was unlocked,

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Speaker 1: which is a really hard thing to do. So the

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Speaker 1: jury acquitted the owners after less than two hours of

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Speaker 1: deliberation and they went free. So the two owners didn't

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Speaker 1: take the blame for the fire, but there were still

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Speaker 1: some major reforms that came out of the whole thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was a Factory Investigating Commission established and they looked

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Speaker 1: into the Triangle factory and they realized that there were

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Speaker 1: no sprinklers, no firewalls, no fire doors. Even though those

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Speaker 1: things were available at the time, the owners had just

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Speaker 1: chosen not to feature them in their own factory. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but in their defense, I guess um or to at

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Speaker 1: least give you the whole picture. Most factories didn't have them.

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Speaker 1: So over the next few years, there were many new

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Speaker 1: laws concerning the labor environment and labor protection for women

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Speaker 1: and children that came into play. Yeah, and reforms like

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Speaker 1: these also became a major part of the platform for

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Speaker 1: a lot of progressive politicians, including Francis Perkins, who later

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Speaker 1: famously went on to become the first female cabinet member

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Speaker 1: UM under FDR. And she actually had seen the fire firsthand. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she was there in the neighborhood with a friend having

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Speaker 1: tea or something, I think, and she saw it and

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Speaker 1: she later pointed to that day as the birth of

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Speaker 1: the New Deal. So it's interesting, I think to see

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Speaker 1: kind of how her story played out after having seen

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Speaker 1: the fire Phoenix situation, I guess. And throughout the years,

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Speaker 1: people have continued to follow the stories of people who

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Speaker 1: were there, people who witnessed the fire, and people who

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Speaker 1: were a part of it, who were part of that

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Speaker 1: terrible experience. Rose Friedman, the last living survivor, died in

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Speaker 1: two thousand one at the age of one seven, and

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Speaker 1: there were a lot of stories about her at the time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, her account is really interesting to read to

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Speaker 1: and it kind of gives you a sense of what

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Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier, that you had that one split

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Speaker 1: second decision to make. She had she knew the management

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Speaker 1: was going to get out, or that they had the

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Speaker 1: best chances, and had decided to go up instead of down. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she went up to the tenth floor and it turned

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Speaker 1: out to be a great choice. She went up to

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Speaker 1: the roof and she survived. Unfortunately, not everyone did, as

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Speaker 1: we know, and a lot of the people who died

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Speaker 1: were identified by their family members. Later. They set up

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Speaker 1: this temporary morgue and family members would come by and

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Speaker 1: identify their kin and that's how they came up with

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Speaker 1: this long list of the deceased. But there were six

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Speaker 1: people who weren't identified um in those years immediately following

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Speaker 1: and just this year, researcher Michael Hirsch finally identified those

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Speaker 1: six unclaimed people who were burned so badly that they

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Speaker 1: couldn't be recognized after the fire. So at the centennial

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Speaker 1: commemoration outside of the building this year on March, the

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Speaker 1: names of all one forty six people were read for

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Speaker 1: the first time. So it's I guess it's good that

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Speaker 1: they're finally all recognized and can be memorialized. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you can still find out a lot about them and

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Speaker 1: kind of read about their stories. There are lots of

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Speaker 1: articles out there, I think that you can look into

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Speaker 1: and we didn't get to go too much into them today,

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Speaker 1: which I know I was kind of complaining about that

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Speaker 1: to say earlier, I was like, I wish we had

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Speaker 1: tons and tons of time to just talk about some

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Speaker 1: of these personal stories and you know, not just the victims,

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Speaker 1: but the survivors and how they got out and um

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Speaker 1: lifts a tale to tale and all this influence the

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Speaker 1: rest of their lives too. Yeah. And so I guess

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Speaker 1: if you guys have any stories out there that you

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Speaker 1: know of the Triangle Fire or some of the survivors

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Speaker 1: that you want to share with us, UM, maybe a

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Speaker 1: personal connection or a little known story that's not really

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Speaker 1: out there, please send it to us. You can write

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Speaker 1: us at history podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: or you can hit us up on Facebook or on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at Myston History. Yeah. And if you want to

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Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about labor unions, we have

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Speaker 1: an article on that. You can find it by going

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Speaker 1: to our homepage and searching for labor unions at www

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Speaker 1: dot com, step works dot com, m h H. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com to learn more. About the podcast,

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Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner

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