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Garment Industry
Contents
History > Composition
of the Garment Industry > Dressmaking
> Dressmaking in the 1870s > Women's
Fashions in the 1890s > Department
Stores and Changing Fashion > Garment
Industry in NYC Today > Garment
Labeling > Sweatshops >
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory > Sewing
Machine
Triangle 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).
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