Innovation & Wealth › The Gilded Age › Labor unions and the AFL
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
March 25, 1911· Event· Society: who gained, who lost
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
A fire at a New York garment factory killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women trapped behind locked doors.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
On March 25, 1911, near closing time, fire broke out on the eighth floor of Manhattan's Asch Building, where the Triangle Waist Company made blouses. A stairway door was locked, the single fire escape collapsed, and fire ladders reached only the sixth floor. Within about 20 minutes, 146 died; 62 jumped or fell. Most were Jewish and Italian immigrant women, some as young as 14. Owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were acquitted of manslaughter; a 1914 settlement paid suing families about $75 per victim.
Impact on society and the economy
It became the symbol of unsafe sweatshops. Within three years New York passed dozens of safety and labor laws, and its reformers later helped shape the New Deal.
How we know
Newspaper coverage, the trial transcript, fire and coroner records, and survivor testimony, collected at Cornell's Kheel Center. The building still stands, now New York University's Brown Building.
Still debated
The exact cause, probably a discarded match or cigarette in a scrap bin, is unproven. The last six victims were only identified by name in 2011.
Connections (2)
▸Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire galvanized Labor unions and the AFLMostly agreed
The connection
In the 1909–10 'Uprising of the 20,000,' New York shirtwaist workers struck for better pay and safer shops; Triangle's owners refused union terms. After the fire, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union led mass mourning and protest, and more than 100,000 people joined the funeral march. Organizer Rose Schneiderman's speech demanded worker power, and garment unions grew.
When and how
New York City, 1909–1913; the ILGWU, the Women's Trade Union League, Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman. The April 5, 1911 funeral procession drew huge crowds.
How sure are we?
Newspaper coverage, union records and published speeches document the protests; union membership records show the garment unions' growth in the following years.
Debates
The garment unions were already growing after the 1909–10 strikes; how much later growth came from the fire versus that earlier momentum is unclear.
▸Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire spurred the safety laws of Progressive Era reform and trust-bustingWell documented
The connection
Public outrage led New York to create a Factory Investigating Commission in June 1911. Its inspectors toured thousands of workplaces, and by 1914 the state passed about three dozen laws on fire exits, sprinklers, fire drills, sanitation and hours for women and children. Other states copied them, and the commission's leaders later carried these ideas into the New Deal.
When and how
New York State, 1911–1915; chair Robert F. Wagner, vice chair Al Smith, investigator Frances Perkins, who had watched the fire, and AFL leader Samuel Gompers.
How we know
The commission's published reports and the statutes themselves; Perkins later said the New Deal began on March 25, 1911.
Debates
Enforcement was uneven, and reform campaigns predated the fire; historians debate how much credit the tragedy deserves versus Tammany Hall's political turn toward reform.