The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Focus Question: The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire highlighted problems in workplace safety, building code enforcement, and women's labor. What changes were made to federal and state occupational safety laws as a result of the fire?

On March 25, 1911 fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the Manhattan Borough of The City of New York. It was a catastrophic, public spectacle of tragedy which cost 146 people their lives, and became the catalyst needed to set in motion some the most significant changes in labor laws in history. The factory was one of many in the rapidly growing industrial city which had been facing growing concern about the ongoing battles between business owners and laborers. The streets of New York had seen
Before the first engines had arrived young girls had begun leaping from the ninth floor windows, crashing through glass overhangs or wires and were crushed to death on the sidewalk below. Fireman struggled to set up the vehicles and work around an increasing number of bodies filling the sidewalks and streets. Horrified crowds looked on screaming as more girls appeared at the windows of the ninth floor and one after another leaped, landing in heaps on top of each other. Despite desperate efforts to raise ladders and spread nets there was little the firefighters could do to help the terrified woman lining the windows of the ninth floor. The longest ladders only reached the seventh and the fire nets were useless to the girls who were falling from over 100 feet above. Several of the girls jumping were already on fire demonstrating that there was only the choice to jump or burn to death. Thousands continued to watch as firefighters poured water on the building and entered to find even more girls. The elevator shaft was clogged with at least thirty more bodies, almost all teenage girls; in the ninth floor workroom there were more than fifty more. In total the fire lasted only about thirty minutes. It was confined to the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors, and barely damaged the fireproof building itself at all . What was lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire were the lives of 146 innocent people, almost all teenage girls. Suffocated, burned to death, or crushed on the pavement after leaping to their certain death. The fire happened in broad daylight, on a busy, public corner in one of the most advanced, and largest industrial cities in the nation. The fire happened in front of a crowd of thousands, men and woman, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, newer and longstanding immigrants. This happened in front of a crowd of