Triangle Waist Company: The Triangle Fire

“I, with a number of other girls, was in the dressing room on the eighth floor of the Asch Building, in Washington Place, at 4.40 o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, when I heard somebody cry ‘Fire!’” Unlike those on the ninth and tenth floors (the other two floors that our factory, the Triangle Waist Company, occupied), I did not climb out of exterior windows in desperation; I was kindly shown to a window in a crash door that I could fit through in order to climb downstairs. Instead of passing through the flames as many of my coworkers had to endure, I had the unique opportunity to run from the flames and to outrun the flames. Whereas many of my coworkers were jumping down from eighty and ninety feet in desperate need of a miracle,
The case of this fire and its possible nefarious origins were of great interest to many people. People wrote and conducted investigations on their own, and others wrote pieces criticizing and commenting on the event. In most circumstances, however, people were on our side, the side of the female laborers! This was something that unseen previously. One newspaper article a few days after the fire completely abandoned the words “fire” and “accident”, and instead, they labeled the Triangle Fire a “Holocaust That Wiped Out One Hundred and Fifty Lives.” Amond the “six different agencies (that) initiated separate investigations of the Triangle tragedy,” Charles Whitman immediately began collecting evidence in order to answer public “demand for punishment of the owners.” In fact, the reason that Blanck and Harris ever faced any repercussions at all for not having up-to-date safety features is not as much because of the workers as because of the public support of the workers and the public outrage directed at the owners. The public was on our side and as frustrated about the tragedy as the workers who experienced it so it seemed. From the people on our side sprung forth one of the biggest changes for New York, the Committee of Safety; this was brought about by Henry Morgenthau after the Opera House meeting, where Rose Schneiderman gave her lovely speech. This meant so much more than the safety changes though. For the first time I can recall, “Morgenthau, represent(ing) the city’s financial elite” were supporting the lower-level workers. This was an incredible step for us as ladies and especially for us as workers in New York