Cold Open

It’s March 25th, 1911 at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City.

Sixteen-year-old garment worker Ethel Monick sits at her station on the ninth floor gazing out the window. It’s 4:45, and she’s about to go home after a grueling ten-hour shift. But she notices something odd… smoke rising in front of the window. She leans out and sees flames below her, erupting from the eighth floor. Recoiling she turns and shouts “Fire!” to the other women, who are all still sitting at their machines.

Ethel runs for the staircase leading down to Greene Street. But too many other workers have done the same. There’s no way for Ethel to push through. Instead, she turns to the elevator, where another desperate crowd has formed.

Over screams and cries, Ethel hears someone say that the elevator is broken. Ducking under the thickening smoke, Ethel runs for the second staircase leading to Washington Street… she pulls on the door but it’s locked.

She pulls again, frantically, hoping it’s only stuck. But it won’t budge. Other women join her heaving and pushing at the door… and pounding their fists against it in a futile effort to break it down. The flames are now everywhere. Some of the women’s dresses are beginning to catch fire, some women's hair have already caught.

Finally, Ethel looks to the fire escape, which is on the opposite side of the room. But like the Greene Street staircase, it’s too packed with people for anyone to get through.

Ethel turns to the nearest window and looks down at a gathering crowd of shocked spectators below. With nowhere else to turn, Ethel considers jumping out. But the thought of tumbling down and hitting the pavement is too much, and so she hesitates. Then someone grabs her shoulder and pulls her away and into the elevator… which is operational after all.

As Ethel descends slowly to safety, she tears at her hair and face, hoping to wake up from a nightmare. But it’s not a dream. And once Ethel makes it out of the building and onto the street, she sees the horrifying reality of what’s happening, looking up to watch helplessly as dozens of women leap from the windows, as Ethel considered doing herself, burning as they fall, and crumpling on the pavement.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers in less than thirty minutes. It was the worst industrial accident in New York’s history, caused by a confluence of unsafe working conditions common to the city’s hundreds of sweatshops.

A labor movement was already stirring in New York City before that day. Workers of all industries were organizing, forming unions, and striking for rights. But they had met stiff resistance from police, politicians, and factory owners, until the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire galvanized the movement, and its leaders called for legislation to prevent another tragedy like the fire which killed so many on March 25th, 1911.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is March 25th, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Act One: Outrage

It’s April 2nd, 1911 at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, at a memorial gathering held eight days after the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Rose Schneiderman, a tiny, redheaded, 29-year-old stands before a large audience of union leaders and politicians, calling for their attention.

Rose is a Polish immigrant. Her family moved to New York when she was eight years old then she started working in garment factories at sixteen, making caps in a dim, crowded building on the Lower East Side. A fire broke out soon after she began working there, which terrified her. She asked management to address safety concerns like blocked exits. When she was ignored, she organized the first all-women chapter in the United Cloth, Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers Union, traditionally a male organization. After that, she realized she had a knack for organizing, and decided to dedicate her life to workers’ rights.

At 23, Rose made a name for herself delivering speeches during the New York cap makers' strike of 1905. Four years later, during the shirtwaist worker strike of 1909, Rose took on a leadership role, rising to the Vice Presidency of the powerful Women’s Trade Union League.

The shirtwaist worker strike was the largest all-women strike in US history and ground the garment industry to a halt. The organizers demanded reforms to their 70-hour work week; increased wages from four dollars per day to five – still half that of what men earned; and improved safety conditions. Factory fire escapes were commonly old and rusted, and factory owners often locked their workers inside to prevent them from taking unapproved breaks or stealing merchandise. 

Out of the city’s 600 garment factories and shops, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was the first to strike. The factory’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, refused their workers' demands. They did not trust unions, and when the workers ceased production and began demonstrating on the street, they hired baggers and sex workers to attack the protesters, hoping to scare them into dispersing. They also bribed the police to watch on and arrest any strikers who defended themselves.

Two months later, a general strike was called in solidarity with the Triangle Factory workers. Led by Rose, thirty thousand garment workers all over the city stopped working and started demonstrating. Like Rose, nearly half of the city’s garment workers were Yiddish-speaking Jews and recent immigrants from Poland or Russia. Back in Europe, many were active in a socialist reformer party known as the Bund. So they knew how to organize, provide for one another, and how to withstand pressure.

Their efforts worked because, in early 1910, factory owners and union organizers reached an agreement: wages would increase by twenty percent, and weekly hours would decrease by ten. The Triangle Factory owners Blanck and Harris refused to address the safety concerns at their factory. A year later, when the fire broke out, the locked doors and the rusted fire escape – which collapsed under the weight of fleeing workers – caused a massive death toll.

Now, eight days after that inferno, Rose Schneiderman addresses an audience of influential elites gathered at the Metropolitan Opera. She condemns them for their inaction, comparing the industrial machinery the city’s poor work at every day to torture devices used in the Spanish Inquisition. Rose asks why the lives of working women are so expendable, and why property and profit are so sacred. Then, she calls for immediate legislative action.

Three days later, in pouring rain, Rose leads a funeral parade of 140,000 workers. Six horses pull an empty hearse down Fifth Avenue, followed by a procession of survivors. 250,000 more, stand in solidarity with the marchers and pay their respects as spectators.

This massive demonstration attracts the attention of lawmakers in Albany, who heed Rose’s demands. In June, they pass a law creating the Factory Investigating Commission.

Taking advice from consultants like Rose, this Commission investigates the working conditions at over 3,000 factories in New York State, from meatpacking plants and bakeries to garment factories and chemical manufacturers. They hold 59 hearings and collect testimony from nearly 500 witnesses, mostly workers who attest to unsafe conditions. They interview union leaders and safety experts, expanding the scope of the investigation to stop the spread of infectious diseases, which are all too common in factories. 

Then thirteen of the seventeen bills submitted by the Commission to the New York state legislature eventually become law, forcing factory owners to abide by stricter safety and sanitation measures. Locked factory doors are outlawed, and fire escapes are routinely inspected. Buildings are modified for greater ventilation, and machines are equipped with safety guards.

Beyond improving conditions for hundreds of thousands of industrial workers in New York, the Commission will also bring workers’ rights and safety into the national consciousness. Many other states will soon establish their own safety commissions. But reforms don’t heal the anger that Rose and others feel in the wake of the tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The survivors of the fire want justice, and they will soon have their chance, as factory owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris are about to stand trial.

Act Two: On Trial

It’s December 4th, 1911, nine months after the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The factory’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, known as the “Shirtwaist Kings” of New York, walk up the stairs into a Manhattan courthouse. An angry crowd of relatives of the victims are waiting for them, jeering the men as they enter the building.

Immediately after the fire, Blanck and Harris were asked by the press for comments. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, the two men claimed that their factory was fireproof and had just recently been inspected and approved by the Department of Buildings. The District Attorney dismissed these claims and indicted both men on charges of manslaughter.

Now, the prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Charles Bostwick, seeks to prove that Blanck and Harris knowingly violated a labor code which prevents doors from being locked during business hours. The defense, led by the notoriously skilled trial lawyer Max Steuer, intends to prove that Blanck and Harris didn’t know that the door was locked.

DA Bostwick focuses his attention on the ninth floor, where most of the deaths occurred. Over several days he calls 103 witnesses to the stand. The workers, arriving in their Sunday best, confirm that while one exit door leading to Greene Street was unlocked, it was soon blocked by flames. The other door leading to Washington Street was locked all day and remained so, under most circumstances. This allowed Blanck and Harris to easily search every worker’s bags as they left each day via the Greene Street exit. Though there was very little evidence that their workers were stealing from them, Blanck and Harris still fixated on the idea. 

Bostwick argues that this locked door contributed directly to dozens of deaths. He calls Kate Alterman to the stand, who says she watched her friend, Margaret Schwartz, die right in front of the door. Kate initially joined Margaret in trying to break it down, but then Margaret’s dress caught fire. She fell to the floor and burned to death in seconds. Kate goes on to provide a shocking account of her own escape, detailing how she turned her coat inside out so the flammable fur was not exposed, covered her hair with scrap cloth, and sprinted into the flames filling the Greene Street staircase. Instead of trying to run down to the street, she climbed to the roof, where she waited for firemen to rescue her.

It’s moving testimony, and seemingly damning for Blanck and Harris. But while cross-examining Kate, Attorney Steuer unveils the defense’s devious strategy. He asks Kate to repeat her story about watching Margaret die again and again. Kate repeats certain phrases with each rendition, and Steuer points this out to the jury, claiming that the witnesses have been coached by the prosecution. When it’s again Bostwick's turn to question the witness, he points out that Kate Alterman only repeated answers when asked repeated questions, but the damage is done.

After that, it’s Steuer's turn to call witnesses. He calls mostly men: clerks, salesmen, engineers, painters, and security guards to recall occasions on which they passed through the supposedly locked Washington Street door. His star witness is May Levantini, a factory worker who claims the key to the lock, hung next to the door on a piece of string. She recalls opening the door and finding flames on the other side, closing the door, and running for the elevator. District Attorney Bostwick accuses her of lying pointing out that dozens of other women reported to escaping down the Washington Street steps from other levels, and none recalled flames in the stairway. But May sticks to her story.

And after three weeks of testimony, both sides rest their cases. The jury deliberates for just two hours and returns with a verdict: not guilty. The jurors believe that the door was locked, but that Blanck and Harris did not know about it.

Upon hearing this verdict, the gallery erupts in anger as the victorious factory owners flee the courtroom surrounded by police. They are escorted to safety while a mob chases them down the street demanding justice.

But less than two years later, Blanck and Harris will again face charges over unsafe conditions in their factory. They’re accused of locking another vital exit door. And what’s more, it’s found that they allow scraps of highly flammable cloth to be piled six feet high in wicker baskets, practically inviting another fire to start under their watch. This time they will be found guilty and fined $20 for the infractions.

The year after this, the families of the fire victims will finally win a civil suit against the factory owners, who will be forced to pay 75 dollars to every family. Ultimately, though, Blanck and Harris will profit from the tragedy. Their insurance company pays them $400 per victim.

While reformers like Rose Schneiderman succeeded in bringing about change in the fire’s aftermath, the titans of industry seem untouchable. It will take greater influence to win justice for workers, which will finally come when a witness to the fire is appointed to the presidential cabinet.

Act Three: The New Deal

It’s March 4th, 1933, in Washington, D.C., 22 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. President Franklin Roosevelt has just arrived in the Oval Office after delivering his inaugural address to the nation. The Great Depression is devastating the country, and Americans are desperate for relief.

Frances Perkins stands before Roosevelt. She is about to be sworn in as the president’s Labor Secretary, making her the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo stands ready to administer her oath.

Frances was working to help the poor long before the Great Depression ravaged the nation, making her uniquely qualified for the cabinet position. Her college thesis at Columbia University was a paper studying malnutrition in New York City children. And when she graduated in 1910, she went to work for the city, inspecting sanitation conditions in bakeries. 

On the day of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Frances was having tea with friends in nearby Washington Square Park. Following the sound of sirens, she arrived on the scene in time to see women leaping from the windows. Frances was horrified and immediately went to work for the newly formed Factory Investigating Commission. She rose to become the Commission’s Executive Secretary.

Then in 1928, under then-governor Roosevelt, she was appointed New York State Industrial Commissioner. And when Roosevelt won the presidency in 1932, he asked Frances to serve as his Secretary of Labor. She agreed… under several conditions: first, that he pass a Social Security act establishing old age pensions, unemployment payments, workers’ compensation, and aid to the disabled; second, that he establish a minimum wage and a forty-hour work week; and third, that he ban child labor.

Roosevelt agreed to Frances’ demands. And now he sits at his desk while Justice Cardozo asks Frances to lay her left hand on the Bible. She does and raises her right hand.

By the time president Roosevelt dies in 1945, Frances Perkins will have helped the president accomplish all of the goals she set for the nation twelve years earlier. Her programs will become part of what's known as the New Deal.

And though Roosevelt now receives most of the credit for guiding the nation through the Great Depression, it was Frances Perkins’ experiences fighting for the poor in New York City which informed her policies. She later claimed that the New Deal was born the day 146 garment workers died, perishing in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25th, 1911.

Outro

Next on History Daily. March 26th, 1971. Under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh declares its independence from Pakistan.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Long.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.