Triangle Factory Fire Essay

Owners Of The Triangle Factory Fire: Corruption At It's Finest The Triangle Factory fire, one of the most horrific disasters before 9/11, killed a total of 146 people. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who escaped the building through the roof when the fire happened, were charged with second-degree manslaughter and went on trial on December 4, 1911. This trial did not go any further, as they were later released because of the lack of evidence the investigators had found during their investigation to prove that the fire was their fault. The insurance company paid Max and Isaac about $400 per casualty in the fire, making big money (Wikipedia “Consequences and Legacy”). But how did the fire start? Was it an accident, or was it an act

To determine this, many sources and ideas must be recognized and appointed. One of the ideas that has come to mind was that a cigarette butt from the workers who had secretly been smoking had made it's way into the cloth bin and, because of the highly flammable material the blouses were made of, it set the bin and the building ablaze. Another idea that has come to mind is that maybe the owners of the establishment, Max and Isaac, burned the building down on purpose, making this an even more interesting topic. Some of the evidence that has risen up from the possible dark truth below is that the doors leading out of the building on the ninth floor, where the doors were supposedly locked and/ or were designed to be pushed outwards instead of inwards. Max and Isaac claim that this was because of a theft concern, and that this would keep minimal thefts happening (Martin par 8). But in reality, the thefts they had totaled up to being less than $25 (Linder “The Trial”). Also, their fire escape was old and rusty, and even fell off of the hinges before the fire was over. These and other unsafe properties to the buildings safety were more reasons that the 146 workers died that day. Maybe this was an accident, or maybe it was planned. For now, however, it will be continued to be known as an

Well, first of all, almost all of their employees were either Italian or Jewish women (Ephemeral par 5), working at least six of every seven days in a week for low wages. Secondly, you have to take into consideration that Max and Isaac themselves were also Jewish, so they had some of the same rules and beliefs as some of the other people who worked there, such as “To try and make the world a better place”, but that doesn't mean they weren't greedy. Some of the people who died in the fire were their relatives, which because of family, makes it a little bit harder to blame them for the fire. But, Blanck and Harris were not the gooey-gumdrops they may seem. They hired prostitutes to fight off some of the strikers in their business, so that they could get the strikers jailed. With all of this information, I think it's safe to say that Max and Isaac may have had something against Italians or other Jewish people, but that is just a possibility. Either way, all we know is what they did in their establishments, not what they did to