Triangle.qxd

T THE TIME

, it was the worst

work-place fire in the history of
New York City, and it retained
that record for 90 years — until
September 11, 2001.

On 25 March 1911, on a warm

spring Saturday afternoon, just
before quitting time, a fire broke
out on the 8th floor of the Asch
Building, off Washington Square
in lower Manhattan. The fire was
at the Triangle Waist Company, a
large factory occupying the eighth,
ninth and tenth floors. Triangle
manufactured some ten to twelve
thousand shirtwaists, or ladies’
blouses, each week. The factory
had large waste bins under the
long work benches, filled with
loose scraps of thin cotton mater-
ial and paper patterns. Someone
must have thrown a cigarette butt
or match into a bin. Because
loosely packed cotton is explosive,
the fire spread rapidly, upward to
the ninth and tenth floors. Due to
confusion within the factory, fac-
tory personnel were slow to report
the fire to the Fire Department.
But a passerby on the street used
the fire callbox to alert the fire-
men, whose horse-pulled fire
truck arrived on the scene in
under five minutes. The fire was

extinguished within half an hour
of its start. But that half hour was
deadly.

There were only a few ways

out of the building: a staircase and
elevator at each end of the build-
ing, a fire escape and, on the tenth
floor, a ladder to the roof. The fire
escape was partially blocked. It
was rickety, and it collapsed
killing two dozen workers. One
stairway became blocked by
smoke and fire. That left one stair-
way, the elevators, and the sky-
light to the roof. The elevator
operators were heroes, especially
Joseph Zito. They repeatedly went
up for more people as the fire
raged. The losses wouldn’t have
been so bad if the door to the
stairwell on the ninth floor hadn’t
been locked. Some on the ninth
floor succumbed to smoke inhala-
tion, some were burned, some
were pushed back against the win-
dows and exited that way. Horri-
fied passersby watched the bodies
fall.

In those few minutes, 146 peo-

ple died. Six of the victims were
never identified. Shortly after the
fire, 100,000 mourners marched in
a funeral procession in the cold
rain through the streets of Man-
hattan as 250,000 people watched
in silence.

That 146 people met a grue-

some death was shocking. But, the
fact that an exit door was locked
to prevent employees from steal-
ing — that was appalling. And
possibly criminal. The socialist
newspaper Call indicted the own-
ers, saying “It was these two
bosses who made haste to save
their own precious hides by escap-
ing to the roof while the human
beings who piled up profits for
them died in burned, crushed and
mutilated heaps.” The district
attorney, Charles Whitman,
charged the owners — Max Blanck
and Isaac Harris — with
manslaughter.

Blank and Harris had a top-

notch — even legendary —
1awyer named Max Steuer. Steuer
needed to find a way to counter a
star witness for the prosecution, a
level-headed, serious young
woman named Kate Alterman,
who testified she saw her friend
trying to leave, being stopped by
the locked door, and succumbing
to the fire. She was in tears when
she finished testifying, and the
jury was clearly moved. Steuer
had to counter this devastating
testimony. In a brilliant, if desper-
ate, move he had her repeat her
testimony again and again, then
pointed out she used the same
phrases each time. He thus made
it look like her testimony was
memorized and coached, and
insinuated the unions were behind
it. The lock from the infamous
locked door was produced as evi-
dence. But, it hadn’t been found
until 16 days after the fire. The
prosecution was able to prove it
came from the allegedly locked
door on the ninth floor. But Steuer
raised the question of whether
someone could have tampered
with it in the 16 days it took to
retrieve it from the fire site, again
insinuating the unions were
behind a conspiracy. [FIGURE 7]

SOCIAL CHANGES

The Triangle Fire of 1911

John M. Hoenig, Ph.D. describes one of the most notorious fires in US history that

resulted in major political and economic changes

History Magazine April/May 2005 — xx

The fire at the Triangle

Waist Company.

— History Magazine April/May 2005

Joseph Zito, an elevator operator,

made heroic efforts to rescue workers.

SOCIAL CHANGES

In the end, Blanck and Harris

were acquitted. They avoided the
angry crowd at the courthouse by
ducking into the subway to make
their escape.

People, especially in the fledg-

ling garment workers unions,
swore the victims of the fire at the
Triangle Waist Factory would
never be forgotten, but forgotten
they nearly were. The newspapers
of the day made no systematic
effort to list the victims. The coro-
ner’s report on the fire was not
saved by the city of New York.
And the court transcript of the

criminal trial against the factory’s
owners was lost by the city’s
Municipal Archives. The defense
lawyer for Blanck and Harris
saved his copy of the transcript
and donated it to a law society’s
library — but the society lost or
misplaced one of the three vol-
umes. It wasn’t until 2003 that
writer David von Drehle finally
combed through period newspa-
pers and other documents match-
ing records with individuals and
published an almost complete list
of victims (six people were never
identified).

Blanck and Harris in the
Aftermath
With historical hindsight, we can
see that Blanck and Harris were
not decent businessmen. They
were dishonest, vicious, cheap and
unrepentant. To begin, one can ask
why Triangle didn’t have fire
sprinklers. In the 1880s, cotton
mills in New England installed
sprinklers, firewalls, and fireproof
doors. But in New York City, such
were nearly nonexistent. The pre-
miums charged by insurance com-
panies were linked to insurance
risks. Lower risks didn’t necessar-
ily imply higher profits because
premiums were lower. Blanck and
Harris were rotten risks and paid
high premiums. Insurance agents

made commissions based on the
premiums so Blanck and Harris
were valuable customers. The
agents distributed the risk across
several companies; the insurance
companies accepted pieces of risky
policies in order to avoid being
precluded from obtaining better
policies from the agents.

Why were Blanck and Harris

rotten risks? They repeatedly had
early morning fires when no one
was in the factory. There were two
fires at their Triangle factory in
1901 (shortly after it opened) and
two at their new factory, the Dia-
mond Waist Factory, in 1907. The
shirtwaist business had two peak
periods in the year. Having a large
inventory at the end of the peak
period was not good business.
Blanck and Harris were able to get
rid of the leftover inventory and
be reimbursed by the insurance
company. Their policies covered
all of their losses, or more.

Although Blanck and Harris

were never charged with arson or
insurance fraud, the circumstantial
evidence of repeated early morn-
ing fires at the end of the busy sea-
sons with full reimbursement from
the insurance companies speaks
for itself. Too bad this did not
come out during their trial.

Blanck and Harris were lead-

ers of the anti-union struggle. Dur-

Headlines and a cartoon from the March 28, 1911, extra edition of

the New York Evening Journal. The demand to determine

responsibility for the fire was growing, especially as reports

of the locked door emerged.

History Magazine April/May 2005 — xx

— History Magazine April/May 2005

Max D. Steuer was a legendary legal

talent who got Blanck and Harris

acquitted of manslaughter charges

stemming from the Triangle fire. He

also helped them to profit from the

fire by defending insurance claims

in excess of known losses.

Max Blanck (left) and Isaac Harris

(right), the owners of the Triangle

Waist Company, were tried and

acquitted of manslaughter.

ing the general gar-
ment-workers strike of
1909, when over
20,000 workers walked
off the job, Blanck and
Harris responded
viciously, paying
hoodlums to attack
workers and pushing
the police to arrest
picketers. They hired
prostitutes as replace-
ment workers to show
their contempt for the
strikers. The prosti-
tutes attacked the
strikers and their
pimps joined in. After
the strike, and before
the fire, the Jewish
daily Forward wrote
about the Triangle
Waist Company on
January 10, 1910:

“With blood this name will be
written in the history of the
American workers’ movement,
and with feeling will this history
recall the names of the strikers of
this shop — of the crusaders.”

During the manslaughter trial,

Isaac Harris was asked why it was
important for all the employees to
leave the factory each day by the
Greene Street exit (rather than
through the Washington Street
exit, which is the exit which was
locked on the day of the fire). Har-
ris replied it was to avoid employ-
ee theft and proceeded to describe
how they had caught six workers
stealing two or three
dozen waists apiece in
1908. Furthermore,
shortly before the fire,
they caught a woman
with two shirtwaists
hidden in her hair
which was piled up
on top of her head.
The prosecutor asked
Harris the magnitude
of the losses and in a
quiet voice he admit-
ted it would not
exceed $25 in a year.

One would hope

that Blanck and Harris
would have been mor-
tified by what had
happened, not to men-
tion by what they had

done. But in the summer of 1913,
Max Blanck was arrested once
again. He was charged with lock-
ing a door during working hours
at his factory on Fifth Avenue. At
his trial, Blanck admitted locking
the door and said his workers’
thefts would ruin him if he didn’t.
But, in the end, Blanck was found
guilty and the judge, apologeti-
cally, fined him $20, the minimum
amount.

The aftermath of the fire was

unpleasant for Blanck and Harris,
as they surely didn’t enjoy being
tried for manslaughter. They
claimed financial ruin although

they were able to
afford high priced
legal help. Their
lawyer Steuer not only
got them acquitted of
the manslaughter
charges, he also
helped them realize a
profit from the fire.
Blanck and Harris
filed insurance claims
far exceeding their
losses. Faced with a
fight with Steuer, the
insurance companies
caved in and paid out
$60,000 above the doc-
umented losses. That
amounted to a profit
of $400 per fire victim.
The good fortune of
Blanck and Harris did
not lead to generosity
towards the victims’

families. Steuer prevented anyone
from collecting anything from
Blanck and Harris. So much for
having regrets about the 146 work-
ers.

Although Blanck and Harris

would be considered loathsome by
today’s standards, and certainly
workers around 1911 felt that way,
it’s clear that vicious union-bust-
ing, hazardous working condi-
tions, and even fire insurance
fraud and arson were common-
place at the time.

Industrial Reform in the Wake
of the Triangle Fire

Cynics of the day
thought this tragedy,
like so many others,
would bring a series of
consequences: shock,
grief, anger, resolve
and posturing, exhaus-
tion, business as usual,
and faded memories.
[FIGURES 8 AND 9
NEAR HERE] But
change did occur. To
begin with, the labor
movement had
momentum and union
ranks swelled from
30,000 in 1909 to
250,000 in 1913. The
socialist political
movement was also
gaining strength. The

History Magazine April/May 2005 — xx

— History Magazine April/May 2005

The ninth floor of the Asch Building after the fire. The building was

fireproof and was subsequently renovated. The contents, however,

were not fireproof. The remains of two of Triangle’s long work

benches can be seen, revealing how closely the workers were packed

together on the shop floor. The long drive shaft that simultaneously

powered all the sewing machines on the bench can be seen under

the closer bench.

Expressions of mourning for the victims were followed by protests

against working conditions and demands for fundamental change in

business practices.

SOCIAL CHANGES

Triangle fire was an opportunity
for District Attorney Charles Whit-
man. It was his “big break” case
and afterwards he successfully ran
for Governor of New York. The fire
was also an opportunity for
William Randolph Hearst, the pub-
lisher of the American, who also
had political ambitions. Hearst
used the pages of the American to
campaign for new laws, and even
commissioned his own experts to
propose such legislation. The
wealthy activists in the progressive
movement in New York created a
blue-ribbon panel called the Com-
mittee on Safety to develop and
lobby for new legislation to
improve working conditions.

In the end, however, it was the

entrenched political machine that
orchestrated change. After the
Democratic wins in the 1910 elec-
tion, Tammany Hall’s Charles
Murphy picked Al Smith and
Robert Wagner to be the leaders of
the State Assembly and State Sen-
ate. With Murphy’s approval,
Smith and Wagner established a
legislative commission under their
direction called the Factory Inves-
tigating Commission and gave it
broad, long-term powers. Tam-
many Hall had, for years, used
patronage and other means to gar-
ner support from workers as well
as factory owners. Now, Murphy

sensed the future lay with the
rapidly growing working class
which was also rapidly organizing
and gaining political strength. The
Factory Investigating Commission
spearheaded the revamping of the
state’s labor laws and this served
as the model for the rest of the
nation.

Although the names of the vic-

tims slipped from the public con-
sciousness, the fire was not
forgotten and had a major influ-
ence on American politics, policy,
law, and economics. In the after-
math of the fire, one might imag-
ine the socialist movement would
have gotten a tremendous boost.
But, it was time for change, and
the ruling Tammany Hall machine
recognized this. Thus, the socialist
agenda was co-opted by the domi-
nant political party.

Further Reading:

Von Drehle, David. Triangle —

the fire that changed America (New
York: Grove Press, 2003).

Stein, Louis. The Triangle Fire

(New York: J.R. Lipincott & Co.,
1962)

The Kheel Center at Cornell Uni-

versity’s School of Industrial and
Labor Relations has put extensive
materials pertaining to the fire on
its website www.ilr.cornell.edu/
trianglefire/

History Magazine April/May 2005 — xx

— History Magazine April/May 2005

One of a set of lantern slides discovered recently in a museum in British

Columbia. The slides clearly pertain to the Triangle Fire but their history is

unknown. This slide shows the makeshift morgue that was set up on the

Charities Pier on the East River. Some 100,000 people lined up to view the bod-

ies. They passed by the two rows of coffins at a rate of 6,000 people per hour.