Von Drehle's Triangle: Response

680 Words2 Pages

Rebecca Mehlin
September 22, 2014
Triangle Response Paper On March 25, 1911, the deadliest industrial fire in Manhattan, New York City history occurred, forever changing the view Americans held regarding factory workers and safety. One-hundred and forty-six workers, primarily young women immigrants, perished when flames overtook the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village. Especially on the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors of the Asch building, one would find overcrowded rooms with rows of sewing machines, workers, and their materials. As panicked workers scrambled to find safety from the rising flames, they would soon discover that only one exit door was unlocked; a fire escape apparatus reaching only to the sixth floor. …show more content…

He starts the novel with characters such as Clara Lemlich, “a draper at Louis Leiserson’s waist factory” (page 7). As the story continues to progress, Von Drehle uses character development to aid in the representation of perseverance. For example, the workers were treated extremely poorly but had to push through the hard times in order to survive, “at the end of each day, the factory workers had to line up at a single unlocked exit to be searched like thieves” (page 7). Although the workers endured more hardships and unfair treatment at the workplace than many people today could find imaginable, they were able to push through and reach the light at the end of the long dark …show more content…

Women, such as Alva Belmont, we from the upper class of New York City and could have very easily watched without intervening. Rather that remain silent, women such as Belmont stepped in to help push for change for the working class. Von Drehle highlights the fact that people began to understand the problems plaguing America went far beyond unsatisfied workers and would require group efforts in order to accomplish social reform. Von Drehle’s emphasis on women’s role regarding the efforts and successes of women during the time period represents to most important theme of women in the early twentieth

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