Isaac Harris and the Triangle Factory Fire Isaac Harris was one of the owners of the triangle factory building, the one that caught fire in 1911. Nobody really knows who started the fire but harris didn't get charged for murder. Should he have been charged? Maybe Harris was not the one that started the fire, Despite the fact that he owned the building, doesn't mean the fire was his fault. If there was more safety laws included and more interaction with each other and trying to escape and stop the fire, the fire could've been easily prevented or stopped before causing the death of many young women that worked there. They weren't forced into having fire safety laws or fire drills so that didn't help either. So why was Isaac Harris charged with murder? The Triangle Factory had a few errors in …show more content…
There was no fire safety rules implied and forced and also there was doors that opened inwards so when they were all crammed in a small space trying to escape they couldn't open the door because there was to many people in the way of the door. There was one stairway they had but it lead down into a fenced in yard and the door to the yard was wooden so it would feed the fire even more. Those are some reasons why he could be responsible for the factory fire like the inadequate safety laws, but in contrast, the fire department could be also. The fire department didn't get there fast enough and they're ladders were too short. Also the nets they used to try and save the people jumping from windows weren't strong enough so they didn't work but with safety codes they wouldn't have had that many people jumping at once or maybe even at all. The worst thing about the Triangle Factory building is that there was no fire escapes in the
This is how the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire starts a movement for safety rules and regulations in the
One of the most remembered and most infamous incidents in American industrial history was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory burned, which killed 145 workers in New York City. The incident was always remembered and studied for years as in this case the deaths of these 145 employees could be prevented. Most of the employees died due to neglect of occupational safety features and also due to locked doors within the factory building.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 was the deadliest workplace accident in New York history. Most of the workers in the factory were immigrants who came to America for a better future. Their dream was economic security, which they saw in America. Getting a job in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a desired position, even if the job consisted of fourteen hour work days, six days a week. At most, the workers would take home $2 a day.
Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist fire Disaster hit March 25, 1911 at 4:40 pm at the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory when it caught on fire by a cigarette bud or burning match. The employees were mainly young women and girls of Italian and Jewish decent and 146 died that day. The workers wanted out of the building but one of the doors was locked in the stairwell. Speculation was that Isaac Harris locked the door. Some of the women and girls jumped off the building and out the windows to trying to survive which was interfering with the firemen trying to put out the fire.
They were rich men, and considered as the Shirtwaist Kings. David Von Drehle, journalist, and author of Triangle- The Fire That Put Out America, argues that the fire could have been preventable. Unfortunately, the fire burned for about five minutes before the alarm was sounded. The manager of the factory, Samuel Bernstien, was on the eighth floor when the fire broke out.
The formation of stronger labor unions was a direct result of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Following the major strike, the 1909 Uprising of Twenty Thousand, the Triangle Factory was able to avoid joining the ILGWU, or the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (Greenwald, 2002). They were one of very few who did not join the ILGWE at the time because they were so successful, strikes did not matter to them from a business perspective. This meant that even if the employees joined the union, it was fruitless if the business did not recognize or join as well. The workers then had to come back to work without anything changed.
There's a high probability the extra three minutes would've allowed the workers to reach the roof before the blaze took their lives. This speculation points to the perplexing reasons as to why the owners didn't take the fire as seriously as they should've (Drehle 160). The fire in 1911 was not the owners' first, not long after they opened the factory in 1902, their was a fire one morning before the workers got there. And again a half a year later, another Triangle factory fire occurred at the very same time of day in an eerily similar fashion. The owners collected over thirty-two thousand dollars in damages from the insurance company, and oddly enough, both fires occurred at the end of the busy season which for business owners usually meant an excess of inventory (Drehle 161-62).
A fire started in a rag bin on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building in Manhattan, New York on Saturday, March 25, 1911. There were six hundred people working in the factory at the time of the fire, and almost all of them were poor, immigrant, teenage women. A total of one hundred forty-five people died as a result of the unsafe building: the fire extinguishers had hoses that were rusted shut, the doors at the bottom of the stairwell were locked, the stairwell was not fireproof, and the workers panicked and had no idea what to do because there had never been any fire drills. Fire trucks responded quickly, but their equipment was inadequate: their ladders were too short and their safety nets ripped easily. The fire was
The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire case addressed the legitimacy of government intervention of sweatshop working conditions. The court ruling was that the two factory owners, Max Blanck and Issac Harris, were acquitted of the manslaughter charge at the first trial. (DOC 2 Reader, 72) I believe that the casualties were not only victims of the fire, but also victims of the bad influences of the progressive era. From my perspective, the outcome was an unjust judgment in the US history.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire proved to be tragic because
In April 2013, Matthew Yglesias, an American Economics Journalist proposed the people of Bangladesh would not appreciate having stronger safety standards in their country because it would cause undue harm economically. He asserts Bangladesh should have different lower standards for safety because they are a poorer country. Most of the people involved in the New York tragedy of 1911 also known as the Triangle Fire, would not agree with Matthew Yglesias on his assertion that lower economic status would be an indication of lower safety standards in factories. Namely, the workers, the union leaders, the progressive reformers and the political leaders would all vote for higher standards commiserate with the United States. The only ones who would not argue with Yglesias are the owners of the Triangle Factory with their vested interest, their own problems of multiple fires and accusations of safety neglect.
They had flammable things strung out everywhere. Scraps hanging from the rafters, the material they were working with was really flammable, they had containers full of oil. Yet, the workers didn’t
Could the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory have been prevented? I am not going to answer that question just yet. Without assessing all of the information to prevent the making of unfounded accusations. First things first you may be asking yourself what a Triangle Shirtwaist is. A triangle shirtwaist is a type of blouse that many women wore in the early 1900's.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a devastating fire that killed 146 girls in New York City (Leap for Life, Leap for Death). At this time, citizens of New York were furious and demanded that the government do something to prevent future tragedies. The government responded and the reforms that the government made, it changed the future of New York industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, one of history’s deadliest fires, came as a result of outrageously unsafe working conditions, led to a high death toll and injury total, but, ultimately resulted in reforms that helped safeguard future factory workers.
The detrimental Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is considered to be one of the most tragic disasters in history. On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out and killed 146 garment workers who were mostly women. These women worked countless hours with low wages and inhumane working conditions in a factory. Even though this event was tragic, the triangle shirtwaist fire helped to shape the new world for the better. The multitude of workers trapped within the inferno to their demise was the final straw for the mistreatment of America’s workers.