Triangle Factory Fire

15 Facts on the Triangle Factory Fire

1. Russian immigrants, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck arrived in America with little money but quickly prospered. Within 20 years, they owned one of the most well-known clothing factories in New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. 2. Here, factory workers made clothing, working 13 hour days for a paltry 13 cents per hour. Most of the workers were teenage girls, immigrants from Italy, and Russia. 3. In 1910, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory joined forces with hundreds of small factories, striking for better work conditions and higher pay. This was the largest strike of women workers the country had seen. 4. The owners, Harris and Blanck, struck back, hiring policemen to beat the women. Anne Morgan, daughter of a banker, J.P. Morgan, was appalled by their treatment and organized protests with other wealthy New York women. The owners eventually agreed to shorter hours and better pay, but they did not improve working conditions. 5. On March 25, 1911, a fire started on the eighth floor of the factory. The owners escaped, but the workers on the ninth floor were unaware of the fire and kept working until smoke began billowing into their workspace. 6. A few workers were able to reach an elevator. Some of the workers climbed onto a fire escape, which crumpled under their weight, falling 100 feet to the ground below. The only other door was locked. As the fire engulfed the workroom, factory workers jumped out the windows to their deaths. 7. Of the 240 workers on the ninth floor, 146 perished. Over half of them were teenagers. 8. Question: What happened to the factories after the fire? 9. Answer: After the fire, the public demanded safer factory conditions. The state of New York was among the first to pass legislation requiring that factory owners follow safety guidelines. 10. Deaths: 146 people 11. Nonfatal injuries: 78 12. The triangle shirtWaist Fire of 1911 took the lives of 146 garment workers because of the lack of adequate safety precautions in the factory in which they worked in New York City. The fire led to reforms, and many new laws have been enacted since then to better protect the safety and health of workers. 13. Who was responsible? - Two weeks after the fire, a grand jury indicted Triangle Shirtwaist owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck on charges of manslaughter. The trial of Harris and Blanck began on December 4, 1911, in the courtroom of Judge Thomas Crain. 14. On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The girls who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the windows to escape it. 15. Date: March 25, 1911 on a Sunday After Noon