Did The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Change The Relationship Between Labor And Industry?

On a crisp spring morning on March 25th, 1911, young girls and women gathered together to start their normal work routine. Little did the young women know that their lives would be changed forever. Alex Blanck and Isaac Harris, who were tailors from Europe that immigrated to America, were the proprietors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, New York City. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a tragedy that changed the relationship between labor and industry. First of all, the unsafe working conditions was an important aspect of the fire. Overall, because of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was extremely popular and involved making the most profit possible, without spending very much on the material. So, as a result

According to Wignot, the director of the PBS video concerning the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, all 146 lives were lost all because of the drop of one cigarette. In this way, the locked doors and blocked exits was a monumental factor of why the girls had to quickly choose their fate by jumping out windows onto Washington and Greene Street or ultimately burning alive (Cornell). These young girls and women chose their own destruction rather than facing the morbid factor of burning to death. Katie Marsico, the author of the book, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Its Legacy of Labor Rights, stated that “...the fire would become a catalyst for national grief, public outrage, and eventually efforts to improve working conditions and safety standards…” (9). The fire was a very detrimental occurrence within itself overall, but the fire forced the realization that actions needed to be taken to help prevent another devastation like

In today’s society, building regulations have made the buildings themselves better equipped for the possibility of a fire. Jonathan Fowler, a level three local firefighter volunteer in Cave City, Arkansas for the past nine years, said the fire of 1911 burned the whole building in a total of eighteen minutes. As a result, each room in a standard government building can help contain a fire for fifteen minutes and keep the flames from spreading further and causing even more destruction. Another example of a positive result from the fire is within two years of the tragedy, more than thirty laws had been passed to help prevent anything tragic that can be averted from happening again (Wignot). Another result of the fire was it made Americans realize that those women who burned were technically citizens of the United States of America, but because they were immigrants, they were discriminated against and not treated fairly (Cornell). That realization led to the fourteenth amendment being passed to address citizen rights and equal protection of the