This Day in History

March 25, 1911

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Approximately 500 workers were sewing shirtwaists at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company's sweatshop near Washington Square in Manhattan when a fire broke out on March 25, 1911.

The building lacked adequate fire escapes, firefighting equipment was unable to reach the top floors, and—most tragically—exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized work breaks. Some women, unable to reach an exit, jumped from ninth- and tenth-floor windows in a vain effort to save themselves. The fire did its work within twenty minutes. In the end, 146 died and many more were injured. Most of the dead were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women between the ages of 16 and 23.

Just two years before, the Jewish owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company had been among the targets of the strike known as the uprising of the 20,000, which had sought union recognition through the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Although the strike forced some firms to settle with their workers, Triangle fired many of its union members and remained an anti-union shop.

In the wake of the fire, the Jewish community and leading women in the labor movement sprang into action. The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), a cross-class coalition that worked as an ally of the ILGWU, organized a public meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2. There, Rose Schneiderman, one of the leaders of the 1909 strike, called upon all working people to take action. Three days later, 500,000 people turned out for the funerals of seven unidentified victims of the fire.

Under pressure from the ILGWU, the WTUL, and others, New York State established a Committee on Safety in the wake of the fire. In addition, the state legislature set up a Factory Investigating Committee, which drafted new legislation designed to protect workers. Their recommendations included automatic sprinkler systems and occupancy limits tied to the dimensions of exit staircases. 36 labor and safety laws were passed in the three years after the fire, thanks to the agitation of working people.

Even as these regulations went into effect, the site of the Triangle fire remained a rallying point for labor organizing. Some survivors, galvanized by their experience, went on to lifetimes of labor activism. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the fire, later became Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. She said that the Triangle Fire was what motivated her to devote her career to helping workers. The last survivor of the fire, Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, died in 2001 at age 107.

See also: This Week in History entry for November 22, 1909.

Sources: Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, pp. 1409-1412; Dave von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (New York, 2003); www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/; Jacqueline Jones et al., Created Equal (New York, 2003).