Public Employee Press

Reform rose from the ashes of the Triangle Fire
1911 deaths save lives today



It took the deaths of 146 sweatshop workers - mostly young immigrant women - 100 years ago. It took a funeral procession of 100,000 New Yorkers with 400,000 looking on. It took six unidentified victims, burnt beyond recognition in the padlocked ninth floor of the building near Washington Square. It took public revulsion at the acquittal of the owners of the Triangle dress factory on criminal charges.

It took a progressive political climate, a young labor movement and a campaign by activists to improve New York State's labor and safety laws. But ultimately, out of the ashes of the tragedy on March 25, 1911, the deaths of the martyrs made a difference.

In "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America," author David Von Drehle describes the progressive organizations and outsized personalities that collaborated to enact the reforms. Frances Perkins, destined to become the first female U.S. labor secretary in the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, worked as an investigator for the Factory Investigating Commission that the state Legislature created three months after the tragedy.

Early on, she noted, the mood of guilt hardened into steadfast resolve, "a feeling that we've got to turn this into some kind of victory."

The commission had unprecedented powers to subpoena witnesses and employ experts to study fire hazards, dangerous working conditions, occupational disease and tenement labor. The lead investigator sent his team of 10 into over 3,000 factories in 20 industries.

Their findings led to 20 new laws unmatched to that time in American history. The acts "entirely recast the labor law of the nation's largest state," wrote Von Drehle. They required automatic sprinklers in tall buildings, fire drills and unlocked doors in large workplaces and stronger protections for women and children, and they restricted manufacturing by poor families in tenements. To enforce these laws, the state completely reorganized its Labor Dept.

American workers no longer labor in a progressive age. Today battle rages as right-wing Republicans, funded by business, seek to weaken safety and consumer protection regulations and let violators escape culpability. The legacy of the Triangle Fire victims lives on.

—Jane LaTour