Time Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire example essay topic

As the United States started its economic growth towards becoming the world's largest industrial power, the working conditions in the industries became increasingly worse. 1 Workers were being exposed to dreadful conditions like bad ventilation, poor safety precautions, dirty work areas, etc. It is around the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire that Americans are just starting to realize the poor working conditions in the factories. 2 After the fire, labor reforms would sweep the industry as people and the government took firm action.

In America Firsthand, numerous accounts are given of the working conditions in the factories and firsthand accounts from people in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. These accounts give insight into what the conditions were truly like and paint vivid visual pictures of the times. There is also excerpts from newspaper articles written about the fire that show us how the media represented the tragedy to the public. Despite the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire and the other misfortunes of the industrial workers, they stimulated labor reforms that would improve the quality of industries forever.

Pauline Newman was a worker in these industrial factories around the time of the fire. In a firsthand account of these conditions, she illustrates what life was like in these shops and industries. She says, It was a world of greed; the human being didn t mean anything. 3 This seems to be fairly evident by the conditions they were forced to work in. They worked long hours with no over time, no ventilation in the summer, no heat in the winter, no clean drinking water, and dirty floors.

4 When asked why how she survived she responded, What alternative did we have You stayed and you survived, that's all. 5 And this was fairly evident in the signs in the elevators saying, If you don t come in on Sunday, you needn t come in on Monday 6 There were always more people, more immigrants willing to work Everyone was replaceable. On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor ofthe Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York. 7 Fortunately the first seven floors had already left when the fire began or the casualties would have been even worse.

The majority of the people who survived got out of the building by elevator. But there were 146 people who leaped to their deaths or died of smoke inhalation in the first half hour. The building was completely unequipped with fire exits and sufficient means of escape. Besides the two elevators, there was a single fire escape, and one stairway. 8 Kate Alterman, Anna Gull o, and Ida Nelson worked in the factories and gave the accounts ofthe fire. All these women recall people frantically trying to find means of escape.

Many were jumping from the eighth story windows, accounting for approximately a third of the deaths. 9 Others climbed out the fire escape intothe courtyard where they were trapped. They went into the cellar where iron shutters kept them from moving away from the fire until firemen eventually arrived to cut the iron... 10 Fire ladders could not reach onto the eighth floor to rescue the workers.

And nets were of no use to catch jumping workers at that height. Because of the lack of fire escapes approximately 154 people died in that fire. 11 William Gunn Shepard, a reporter for a newspaper, was in the vicinity when the fire broke out. His article was in the papers with pictures, diagrams, and a list of the dead. 12 His account of the of the tragedy shows how the people of the times viewed the situation.

He says, Men and women, boys and girls were of the dead that littered the street; that is actually the condition- the streets were littered. 13 The idea that the streets were littered with people makes the dead workers sound like garbage that is cluttering the streets and needs to be quickly disposed of. He goes on to say: They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed up of flame as they leaped. Thud after thud sounded on the pavements. It is the ghastly fact that on both the Greene street and the Washington place sides of the building there grew mounds of the dead and dying.

And the worst horror of all was that in this heap of the dead now and then stirred a limb or sounded a moan. 14 The gruesome details the reporter gave in his article suggest that he was intending to give the reader a very sickly image. In modern times such an emotional and horrid account would not be given but instead a very indifferent article of the basic details. This article actually sounds like it was intended to sicken people rather than make people aware of the stunning tragedy of it all. After the fire, 120,000 people attended the funeral for the unclaimed dead. 15 This was the start of the public's role in the labor reforms.

Directly after the fire a group of women progressives led by Florence Kelley and Frances Perkins of the National Consumers League joined with Tammany Hal leaders Al smith, Robert Wagner, and Big Tim Sullivan to create a NewYork State Factory Investigation Committee. 16 This committee eventually led to a series of state laws that improved safety conditions and limited the amount of hours a child could work. One of the major problems with the factory jobs was that workers hadn o control over anything. They were so easily replaceable that the foremen or owners had total control to do whatever they wanted. If they wanted to lower their wages, he did. What could the workers do If they complained they would be fired.

In Rose Pastor Stokes account of her life as part of the working class, she said, The stogie-rollers were getting fourteen cents a hundred. Now it would be thirteen. We took the cut in silence. We were for most part poor little child slaves, timid and unorganized. The thought of union never occurred to us.

There was no strength in us or behind us. It was each on by his lone self. 17 This was the general attitude of the workers. If the owner wanted them to work an extra couple hours, they had to. They could not say no or they would lose their jobs.

But strikes were becoming more and more common at this time period. Indeed strikes were a common trend in the country at this time. The combined effects of the strikes and the labor reforms led to improved conditions in the work place. The battle for improved conditions in the industries was one of those most necessary fights in politics. Children were being taken advantage of in sweatshops. There were no safety precautions in the factories.

People constantly were injured from machines and sickened by the lack of heat or ventilation, dirty water, and long hours. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire killed a lot of people, but that is what it took for labor reforms to come about. That fire inspired people to help reconstruct the industries and improve the working conditions. It also gave the workers some new hope for better wages and better all around treatment. These changes would have never came about unless these tragedies occurred. So although they were horrible events and many people died and suffered, the effect lived on in every worker in the new reformed industries..