'Groups of Women, Three or Four at a Time, Grabbed Each Other by Their Hands, and Plunged off the Building'

In his poem "Shirt," which is the best poem about shirts I know, Robert Pinsky is going about the business of buying one when he remembers the scene of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which took place in New York on March 25, 1911:

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

The fire, at the building that sits at 23-29 Washington Place, consumed 146 workers whose shoddy working conditions already offered little and gave them no means of escape. Lit perhaps by a cigarette butt, the blaze broke out as the women of the factory were getting ready to go home after a long day of making clothes for classes of people who, up until then, had mostly known about them for their efforts the previous year to strike for better working conditions.

"They hit the pavement just like rain," a stunned fire chief would later testify. The city and factory work wouldn't be the same.

I just discovered Cornell's excellent archive on the fire, which includes photos of the era, from the labor strikes organized by factory workers in the preceding years to the grizzly scene that day, of falling bodies and helpless firefighters.

The following captions are from the Cornell archive: Dark cramped shops made exhausting work still more difficult and dangerous. Children hired in violation of child labor laws were helped to hide in large boxes of cloth on the rare occasion when inspectors checked working conditions.

Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the large Triangle Shirtwaist factory were known as the "Shirtwaist Kings." They immigrated to the United States from Russia and had made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson girl" style blouses. To secure their profits when margins were slim, they successfully fended off the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union's attempts to organize their factory during the shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910.

Samuel Gompers and other political activists and labor leaders addressed Shirtwaist workers at Cooper Union November 22, 1909. Many wondered if women were up to the hardships a strike entails, including police brutality against those on the picket lines. After two hours of presentations, Clara Lemlich interrupted Jacob Panken and asked to be allowed to speak. She had already been beaten by police and arrested 17 times while on strike for nearly three months. Tired of long speeches urging caution, and worried that both momentum and support was being lost, Lemlich recounted in Yiddish the intolerable conditions in the shops and called for a general strike.

On November 23, more than 15,000 shirtwaist makers walked out of 500 factories, effectively bringing production to a halt. Within the first two days of the strike, more than 70 small shops agreed to the union's demands.

In November 1909, women raise their hands, pledging to support the shirtwaist strike and walk the picket lines for its success. This action brought risks of violence from police and hired thugs, as well as putting the women in conflict with judges, lawyers, employers, and sometimes with their families and other workers. 

During the first days of the shirtwaist strike, men and women carry signs that read “Strike… 30,000 Shirt Waist Makers… Higher Wages and Shorter Hours.” Demands for shorter hours, better pay, and closed shops were met with scorn by the Triangle Waist Company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who felt that recognizing the union and agreeing to collective bargaining would limit the owners' ability to run a profitable business as they saw fit.

A Yiddish and English language sign in a shop window asks people to “Help the garment workers in their fight for bread and freedom.” 

Shirtwaist strikers march in snowy streets, often without warm clothes or sturdy shoes. 

In December 1909, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 25 began the strike with $10 in their treasury. A special edition of the city's Socialist paper, The New York Call, told the story of the strike in English, Italian and Yiddish. Copies were donated to local 25 by the publisher and sold by union members to raise money for strike expenses. 

Shirtwaist strikers “Going out for Better Conditions” march through cold winter streets, waving and cheering, demonstrating courage and tenacity that surprised and impressed many who saw or read about their struggle. 

Women who were arrested on the picket lines and sent to Blackwell’s Island wear “Workhouse Prisoner” signs claiming their service with pride, and were cheered by other strikers and supporters. 

On March 25, 1911, fire fighters struggle to extinguish the burning Asch Building. Fire-quenching sprinkler systems, though proven effective, were considered too costly by many factory owners and were not installed in the Asch Building. Still the fire was quickly controlled and was essentially put out in little over half an hour. 

Unrecognizable bodies lay on the sidewalk along Greene Street, together with hoses, fire rescue nets, and part of a wagon. All were drenched by the tons of water used to contain and extinguish the fire.

Fire fighters and police officers collected jewelry, handbags, money, pay envelopes and other personal objects from victims at the Asch Building and carried them to the 26th Street Pier morgue where they were used to help identify the dead.

The fire helped to kickstart the international labor movement, a movement that is still struggling to protect the people who make shirts and phones and tablets under the partial auspices of companies like Walmart and Apple, for people like you and me.

Last December, a fire at Tazreen Fashions, a garment factory just outside Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, killed over 120 workers. "They died in the some of the most gruesome ways imaginable, either asphyxiated by smoke, being burned alive, or leaping to their deaths in a vain attempt to save themselves. Of the dead, 53 were charred beyond recognition," Zafar Sobhan wrote at Vice. Working in a factory is widely seen a life advancement from working in the fields. "But burning to death is not an improvement over starving to death… there can be no excuse for factories housing thousands of workers without fire escapes."

"The real tragedy," Sobhan wrote, "is the utterly unnecessary greed that leads to such misery. The garment trade is so profitable that there is enough to go around for everyone. The factory owners can easily afford to ensure that their factories are not death-traps, the Bangladesh government can easily enforce laws for the protection of workers without hurting the industry, and the buyers can easily afford to pay the few pennies more per item that such measures might necessitate, as well as use their bargaining power to follow through and demand compliance, in accordance with US law."

An officer stands at the Asch Building’s 9th floor window after the Triangle fire. Sewing machines, drive shafts, and other wreckage of the Triangle factory fire are piled in the center of the blaze-scoured room. 

For more on factory workers:

Foxconn's Other Dirty Secret: The World's Largest 'Internship' Program

Apple is All the Rage in China

What's Wrong With Robots Making Our iPhones?