STANDARDS

Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.5, RH.6-8.7, WHST.6-8.4, WHST.6-8.9, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.3, RI.6-8.4, RI.6-8.7, W.6-8.4, W.6-8.9, SL.6-8.1

NCSS: Time, Continuity, and Change • Individual Development and Identity • Individuals, Groups, and Institutions • Power, Authority, and Governance • Production, Distribution, and Consumption

Illustration of a worker from early 1900s running away from factory on fire

Illustration by The Red Dress

U.S. HISTORY

True Teens of History

The Fire That Changed America

In 1911, a deadly blaze led to a new era of workers’ rights and fire safety laws. This is the story of a teen who was there.

Question: How did this event, which happened more than a century ago, shape the world that we live in today?

Keystone/Getty Images

New York City firefighters try to put out the blaze from the street below.

It all happened so quickly. One minute, 16-year-old Ethel Monick was packing up to go home from her job at the Triangle Waist Company factory. The next, flames and hot choking smoke were everywhere.

It was Saturday, March 25, 1911an ordinary spring day in New York City. The Triangle factory whirred with activity. Its 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women like Ethel, made shirtwaistsa popular style of women’s blouse

Triangle was located on the top three floors of a 10-story building. Ethel worked on the ninth floor, where most of the sewing was done. Workers sat at eight long tables lined with sewing machines. Ethel’s job was to rush unfinished garments from one sewer to another

At 4:45 p.m., the ending bell rang. Like the others, Ethel had labored about 52 hours through six days that week. She was looking forward to the next daySundayher only day off.  

Then Ethel caught sight of flames streaming in through the windows lining one side of the room. “I screamed fire!, and almost as soon as I did that, the flames were all around on the inside,” she would later say

Ethel was caught in the middle of one of the worst workplace disasters in U.S. history. More than half of the people on her floor would not survive. In all, 146 Triangle workers would die in the blaze

Yet out of this horror would come sweeping reforms in workers’ rights and in fire safety rules. Those advances have saved countless lives in the generations since.

Image showing a sewn blouse next to an old sewing machine

Shirtwaists (left) were hugely popular with women in 1911—including factory workers themselves; This Singer sewing machine (right) was salvaged from the Triangle factory.

Unsafe Workspaces

At the beginning of the 20th century, New York City was home to a booming garment industry. More than 40 percent of all clothing sold in U.S. stores was made there. But the work was grueling for the men, women, and children who sewed those garments

Hundreds of thousands of them were recent immigrants (see "A Changing Population," below). Many pieced together clothes in their own cramped homes. Even in large workplaces, such as Triangle, people labored long hours for low pay. If workers were out sick or got injured, they often lost their jobs.

Compared with many factories, Triangle was a big improvement. Located in a new high-rise building, its workspaces were bright and airy. “[It] was considered a state-of-the-art building,” says Triangle historian Michael Hirsch

However, like most high-rises in New York City at the time, it was not fire safe. The stairs were narrow and twisting, making it impossible for large numbers of people to evacuate quickly. It had only one rickety fire escape. And there was no law requiring buildings to have sprinklerseven though experts knew they could save lives. What’s more, few factories held fire drills because doing so would have interfered with production. That meant that when the fire broke out, people didn’t know how to escape.

Sepia tone image of people walking down a crowded busy street in early 1900s

The Art Archive/Shutterstock

New York City’s Lower East Side in 1908

A Changing Population

In the 19th century, millions of people left their homelands, fleeing hunger, poverty, or violence. They traveled to a new land with a strange language and customs: the United States. Between 1880 and 1920, historians say, about 18 million new immigrants entered the U.S. Millions of them arrived by boat in New York Cityand stayed there. Many settled into a neighborhood called the Lower East Side

By one estimate, about half a million people lived in that area of roughly 1.5 square miles. Families squashed into tiny, dark rooms in often run-down apartment buildings called tenements. Hundreds of thousands of those immigrants labored in New York’s garment industry

And yet the neighborhood buzzed with life. People speaking multiple languages mixed on the streets. Countless pushcarts lined the sidewalks, filled with eggs, cloth, chicken wings, candles, butteryou name it. “Every conceivable thing is for sale,” said a 1901 state government report. The immigrants were changing the cityand American life

A Raging Inferno

The trouble started on the eighth floor, at about 4:40 p.m. Workers there cut big sheets of cotton into pieces and tossed the leftover material into bins. An employee likely threw a smoldering match or cigarette butt into one of those bins

In an instant, the fabric scraps ignited. Flames spread from bin to bin. Managers and workers rushed to put the fire out with buckets of water, but it was too intense. Flames began pouring out the windows, racing toward the upper two floors of the factory.

The phone operator on the eighth floor called to alert the tenth floor. That warning allowed the people there to escape up to the roof. But in the chaos, no one warned the ninth floor, where Ethel and her coworkers were finishing for the day

By the time they saw the fire, it had exploded into a raging inferno. Frantically, they tried to climb over the long tables away from the flames

But where could they go?

Desperate to Escape

On the ninth floor, fire and smoke quickly blocked all but four paths to safety. One was the fire escape, but it was soon overcrowded with dozens of frantic workers and tore away from the building. Almost none of those people survived.

Now there were just three ways out of the ninth floortwo passenger elevators and a staircase. With a crowd of workers pressing in around her, Ethel ran to the staircase door and tried to yank it open. The door wouldn’t budge. It was locked, she was certain

The crowd pushed Ethel toward the elevators, the last route of escape. Heroically, Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo, the building’s elevator operators, kept making trips up through the flames. But only about two dozen workers could fit at a timeand Ethel could only watch as car after car left without her.

Those who did manage to get into the elevators looked back to witness a terrible sight: Desperate to escape the fire, some of their co-workers were jumping out the windows

The water pressure from the hydrants was too weak to subdue the flames.

A Horrified Crowd

Back at the elevators, Ethel was crushed between dozens of frantic workers. She thought for certain she was doomed. Then, miraculously, an empty elevator opened in front of her. The rush of women pushed her in, smashing her against the elevator’s back wall

After a ride down that felt like an eternity, Ethel found herself on the street. Overcome with emotion, she began scratching at her face and tearing her hair. “There were 150 girls up there who will never get out,” she told a newspaper reporter.

By now, a crowd had gathered, horrified at the scene unfolding above them. Firefighters had arrived quickly, but the water pressure from the hydrants on the street was too weak to subdue the flames. They set up a ladder to rescue the workers gathered on the ninth-floor ledge, but it only reached the sixth floor

Sepia tone photo of factory workers trying to unionize

UPI/Alamy Stock Photo

Thousands of New Yorkers attend a march for the unidentified victims of the fire.

Seeking Justice

Firefighters battled the flames floor by floor. Within half an hour, they had contained the fire. But in that brief period, 146 workers had died. Dozens of them had jumped.

New Yorkers were outraged. A week later, many of them held a meeting to protest conditions in the city’s factories. Speakers from labor unionsgroups organized to protect the rights of workersargued that business owners cared more about making money than keeping their employees safe

The life of men and women is so cheap,” Rose Schneiderman of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) proclaimed

About two weeks after the fire, seven unidentified Triangle victims were buried in a single grave. More than 120,000 people marched in a funeral procession in the rain while hundreds of thousands looked on

Many people blamed the Triangle factory owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, for the catastrophe. They were certain the men had locked the ninth-floor staircase door to keep employees from stealing fabric. That December, Blanck and Harris were tried on charges of manslaughter. Ethel and other workers testified against them. But the jury couldn’t agree on whether the door had been locked and, if it had, whether the owners knew about it. The men were acquitted, or released from the charges

A Defining Incident

Still, the Triangle fire led to profound change. Just two months after the disaster, New York State formed a commission to study the conditions in thousands of factories. That group’s recommendations resulted in dozens of laws that greatly improved conditions for factory workers (see "3 Ways Triangle Changes America," below).

Photo of a firefighter speaking to a classroom full of students

David Livingston/Getty Images

Students in Los Angeles, California, learn about fire safety—a legacy of the Triangle tragedy.

3 Ways Triangle Changed America

1. Fire safety. The Triangle fire prompted New York to pass some of the first fire safety laws. Other states followed suit. Measures such as sprinkler systems, fire drills, and fire escapes are now standard in most buildings, including schools.

2. Unions. The tragedy spurred the growth of labor unions. Millions of workers joined in search of an organization that would fight for their rights. Today an estimated 14.3 million workerssome 10 percent of the American workforceare represented by unions. They include laborers in the auto industry, health-care and hospital workers, and even teachers.

3. Working conditions. The fire helped kick off reforms to promote workers’ health and well-being, including protecting them from dangerous machinery. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act capped the workweek at 40 hours and required companies to pay employees at least a set minimum hourly wage. Today a government agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, oversees workplace safety

Some of the most important new rules revolutionized fire safety. For the first time, automatic sprinklers were mandatory in most buildings. Companies were also required to show workers where and how to evacuate in case of an emergency

New York’s reforms then spread to other states. “Triangle is the reason we have fire drills,” says Hirsch, “so that you know how to save yourself and your friends.”

Outrage over the disaster also prompted the rise of labor unions like the ILGWU, which became a powerful force for workers’ rights.

In the end, many Americans responded to the tragedy by making important changes in how workers were treated, says Peter Liebhold, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution. “Triangle became an iconic eventthat transformed the country for the better.

As for Ethel, surviving the Triangle fire remained a defining incident in her life. Nearly half a century later, a historian visited Ethel, who was surrounded by her grandchildren. The world of those young people was already so differentthey went to school, not work, each morning, and they didn’t have to worry about their safety as Ethel had. To them, her stories of the long-ago tragedy seemed almost impossible.

They have all listened to me politely,” Ethel said to the historian about the Triangle fire. “But, you know, I think not one of them has ever really believed me. Now you please tell them.” 

YOUR TURN

Find the Changes

How many examples of fire safety precautions can you find in your school? How might having such measures in place during the Triangle fire have helped save the lives of the people working there?

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