Contents History > The Evolution of a Garment
-- How the Sweatshop System Worked > Roles within the Tenement
Sweatshop > Seasonality in the Garment Industry > Contemporary
Sweatshops > Triangle Shirtwaist FactoryTriangle Shirtwaist Factory On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out
in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, occupying the top three floors
of 19 Washington Place. The managers had locked the doors to the
stairways (they claimed it prevented theft and absenteeism) shutting
off escape for the workers. Because the top floors of the ten-story
building were too high for the firemen to reach, some women began
jumping from the windows and fire escapes. Within minutes, 146 people
were dead, most of them young Jewish and Italian women.
The fire devastated the immigrants on the Lower East Side, many
of whom worked in the garment industry and were then attempting
to unionize its factories (the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was not
unionized and wouldn't have been opened on a Saturday if it had
been). Reformers, survivors, families of the deceased, and other
neighborhood residents organized mass demonstrations, meetings,
and memorial services. The one positive aspect of the disaster was
that it propelled the movement for stricter factory safety laws
and their enforcement in the garment industry.
Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire (New York 1975)
