Triangle: The Fire That Changed America [Hardcover]

David Von Drehle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0871138743 | ISBN-13: 978-0871138743 | Edition: First Edition

On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. 146 people died — 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in the city's history. Not only a chronicle of the fire, but also a vibrant portrait of an entire age, this book follows the waves of Jewish and Italian immigration that inundated New York in the early century, filling its slums and supplying its garment factories with cheap labor. It portrays the work conditions that led to a massive waist-workers' strike in which an unlikely coalition of socialists, socialites, and suffragettes took on bosses, police, and magistrates. Von Drehle puts a human face on those who died in the fire, and shows how popular revulsion at the Triangle catastrophe led to an unprecedented alliance between idealistic labor reformers and the supremely pragmatic politicians of the Tammany machine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It was a profitable business in a modern fireproof building heralded as a model of efficiency. Yet the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City became the deadliest workplace in American history when fire broke out on the premises on March 25, 1911. Within about 15 minutes the blaze killed 146 workers-most of them immigrant Jewish and Italian women in their teens and early 20s. Though most workers on the eighth and 10th floors escaped, those on the ninth floor were trapped behind a locked exit door. As the inferno spread, the trapped workers either burned to death inside the building or jumped to their deaths on the sidewalk below. Journalist Von Drehle (Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row and Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election) recounts the disaster-the worst in New York City until September 11, 2001-in passionate detail. He explains the sociopolitical context in which the fire occurred and the subsequent successful push for industry reforms, but is at his best in his moment-by-moment account of the fire. He describes heaps of bodies on the sidewalk, rows of coffins at the makeshift morgue where relatives identified charred bodies by jewelry or other items, and the scandalous manslaughter trial at which the Triangle owners were acquitted of all charges stemming from the deaths. Von Drehle's engrossing account, which emphasizes the humanity of the victims and the theme of social justice, brings one of the pivotal and most shocking episodes of American labor history to life. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Von Drehle has embedded the intense, moving tale of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in a fascinating, meticulously documented account of a crucial period in U.S. history. In addition to using an impressive list of secondary sources, the author has drawn heavily on newspaper articles, author Leon Stine's interviews with survivors, and trial transcripts. In a short prologue, he provides a poignant account of stunned, grieving relatives trying to identify burned bodies. To show why the tragedy occurred, he then goes back two years to the beginning of the 1909 general strike. The stifling, dingy tenements and the horrific conditions of the factories where immigrant workers toiled for 84-hour workweeks are described in evocative detail. Stories of the hardships they left behind in Italy and Eastern Europe contribute to the portraits of the victims and villains. Readers unfamiliar with Tammany Hall, the Progressive movement, or the rise of trade unions benefit from clear, concise background information. The account of the fire, the investigation, and the trial are both heartbreaking and enraging. The courtroom drama of defense attorney Max Steuer brazenly defending the factory owners overshadows any modern comparison. After concluding with the announcement of the trial verdict, the author provides an epilogue covering the final years of the key figures. An appendix gives the first complete list of victims. Eight black-and-white photos are included.
Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; First Edition edition (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871138743
• ISBN-13: 978-0871138743
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #347,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the author, December 22, 2003

By 

David Von Drehle (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (Hardcover)

Richard Peladeau has leapt to a mistaken conclusion in his review of my book.

The young woman he mentions in his review, Rosie Freedman, did, in fact, die in the fire, and her life story is an important part of "Triangle." She was born in Bialystok, Poland, in the early 1890s. In 1906--as a young teenager--she survived one of the deadliest pogroms in Russian history. Her family then sent her, alone, across Europe to board a steamship for the crossing to New York. After clearing Ellis Island, she went to live with an aunt and uncle who were already in New York. It's likely she had never met them.

At age 14, Rosie managed to earn enough in the garment factories to pay her room and board, cover her expenses, and send money home to support the family she left behind.

Rosie Freedman died in the Triangle fire, on March 25, 1911.

About 350 workers survived that fire. One was a teenager named Rose Rosenfeld. Years later, she married a man named Freedman, and Rose Rosenfeld became Rose Freedman. Mr. Peladeau is correct that Rose Rosenfeld-Freedman lived to the age of 107, and was the longest-lived survivor of the fire.

This is all explained in the end notes of "Triangle." Mr. Peladeau is wrong. These are two entirely different people. This is not a major mistake--in fact, as other reviewers have noted, "Triangle" contains more information about the lives of the Triangle factory workers than any previous book on this subject.

--David Von Drehle

54 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Caused the Fire, and What the Fire Caused, September 22, 2003

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (Hardcover)

Before 11 September 2001, the worst workplace disaster in New York City was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village on 25 March 1911. As recounted in a riveting history, _Triangle: The Fire That Changed America_ (Atlantic Monthly Press) by David Von Drehle, the fire was caused not just by a careless cigarette, but by social, industrial, and labor forces summed to that point, and true to the subtitle, it changed those forces ever afterward. Anyone studying the economics and history of twentieth century America needs to know the prominence of the sweatshops, but as Von Drehle points out, we are now once again concerned about the sweatshops from where our clothes issue (they just don't happen to predominate in New York anymore). And though after Triangle there were important safety laws imposed in New York, there are still factory disasters happening in the equivalent of sweatshops in other parts of the world.

Ironically, the Triangle factory made shirtwaists, which were the women's blouses of the time, and they were something of a sartorial liberation for women. It was a practical garment, with no hoops or corsets, and yet it was fashionable enough for the Gibson Girl. The book covers the lengthy strike at Triangle of 1909, but the strike was not about safety, just hours and pay. Von Drehle shows that there had already been factory buildings successfully protected from fire. Automatic sprinklers, firewalls, and fireproof doors and stairways were, from the 1880s, standard in some factories. The Triangle owners paid lots for insurance, and little for safety. The building itself was promoted as fireproof, and it proved essentially to be, but the contents were certainly not. There were about 250 workers in the building, and as they attempted to escape, each fire hazard took its toll. A door to the rear stairway was locked, for instance, because the owners insisted that workers use only one stairway. This ensured that before leaving the building, everyone could be checked for goods smuggled out. Crowds mobbed shut other doors which opened inwards. The account of the fire is vivid and scary. 140 people died in the fire, 123 of them women. About a hundred of the deaths were those who fell or jumped.

The owners were tried for manslaughter. Van Drehle has uncovered a lost transcript of the trial, which focused on the locked doors. On the stand, one of the owners stressed the importance of having the door locked to prevent theft, but when pressed to state how much loss there had been to theft, he admitted that it was less than $25 a year. The owners were deemed not guilty, and gained $60,000 in insurance payments. The resulting public outcry provided a new impetus for workplace safety, creating rules that are in force even today, like the ones requiring outward swinging doors. Van Drehle shows that even more importantly, it began to be taken for granted that a progressive government ought to be regulating such matters. Tammany Hall came around to protecting the workers, and from this change grew such philosophies as the New Deal. _Triangle_ compellingly tells the story of the building's fire, but even better, it covers the stories of the women workers involved in the disaster, and the changes the fire brought. The fire lasted a horrific ten minutes in 1911, but it has not finished burning yet.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Fire to Reform, October 24, 2003

By 

Rocco Dormarunno (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (Hardcover)

I normally avoid books that focus on horrific events in history because they mostly exploit and sensationalize the disaster for their authors' obvious motive: profit. David Von Drehle has no interest in exploiting this exceptionally terrible moment in New York's--and even America's--history. His compassion for the victims, his admiration for the reformers, and his loathing for those who caused and profited from the fire is obvious on every page, and in every word.

Framed by the scorn and indifference toward laborers before the fire, and the realization of guilt that led to the rush to reform after it, the events of March 25, 1911 are heartbreakingly described by Mr. Von Drehle's vivid prose. But the description of the actual fire is only part of the book. He doesn't linger over the gruesome details to satisfy some cruel, voyeuristic hunger that some readers might have expected. There's just enough narrative to convey the chaos, terror and sadness of the event. To prevent the story from getting too morbid, the author diligently included the many individual acts of heroism by police, firemen, passersby and neighboring NYU students.

The main purpose of the book, as the subtitle explains, is to demonstrate how the Triangle catastrophe profoundly affected Tammany Hall, New York City and State government, the federal governemt, the labor union movement, socialists, and Democrats. The dedication of the reformers and labor leaders like Al Smith, Frances Perkins, Robert Wagner, Sr., Clara Lemlich, and so on, is also highlighted. The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, receive the vilification they deserve. And somewhere in the moral gray area are the two most enigmatic figures: Tammany leader Charles Murphy and the attorney for Blanck and Harris, Max Steuer.

One last note: the book is a fascinating history of the history of the disaster. By that I mean that Mr. Von Drehle reports how others before him--the newspapers, Attorney Steuer, Clara Lemlich, and Leon Stein--recounted the events of that dark day, and how frighteningly close we came to losing these records (especially Steuer's). It represents the debt we owe to Mr. Von Drehle's dogged research, as well as the debt he owes his predecessors. Amazing.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points