This book is a very personal and gripping account of the fire on March 25, 1911, at the Triangle Shirtwaist company located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch building in New York adjacent to Washington Square Park, where 146 young immigrant women were either burned to death or leapt from the ledges of the building. The author had a personal involvement in this event, as he joined the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union in 1928 as a garment cutter before joining the staff of their publication Justice. The book is based primarily on newspaper accounts and interviews of many who experienced that horrific event.
The book is written as if the author was there. The horror of sixty-some people jumping, sometimes in twos. The messiness at the bottom. What befell those caught on the overloaded fire escape as it ripped from the building. He captures the anguish of those identifying bodies at the improvised morgue, those continually walking in the streets - some silently, some crying out - at the scene of the disaster trying to make sense of it all, the huge funeral processions, etc. He tells the remarkable story of the aid rendered by the Red Cross to surviving family members, many of whom as recent arrivees had no place to turn.
He tells the dismal story of ineffectual building code standards and enforcement. The strident efforts of all to avoid blame, especially the factory owners. He tells of the ineffectualness of the shirtwaist makers themselves in trying to improve their working conditions, especially safety concerns, which included a huge city-wide strike at the end of 1909. And then there was the courtroom fiasco - where a shrewd attorney representing the owners implanted the notion that the irrational behavior of the girls during the fire had more to do with their deaths than the narrow escape stairways, the locked doors blocking access, the lack of properly constructed fire escapes, and most importantly the lack of a sprinkler system - a sad day for American justice. Both the insurance industry and owners preferred a system whereby high premiums were paid instead of requiring safety provisions and paying lower premiums. The Triangle owners did collect a large sum of money from the fire.
This book and the notes of the author were also prime material for a book written forty years later, Triangle, The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle. That book is better organized and puts the fire into the context of the times, including overall living conditions of immigrants, the political dominance of Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine, and reform efforts in the New York legislature. But that book lacks the emotional appeal of this work. It was moving to read of the Fiftieth Anniversary Memorial Meeting sponsored by the ILGWU, NYU, and the NYFD on March 25, 1961, with special guests Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins (FDR's Sec of Labor), and Rose Schneiderman (labor activist at the time of the fire), where 14 survivors attended including three who saved themselves by leaping down an elevator shaft on that fateful day, but had not seen each other since then. The author dedicated his book to the unidentified in coffins numbered 46, 50, 61, 95, 103, 115, and 127.
ISBN-13:
978-0801487149
ISBN-10:
0801487145
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