Significance Of The Triangle Fire

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The Triangle fire of 1911 sparked controversy throughout the United States of America. The thirty minute incineration of the well known New York shirtwaist factory “Triangle” brought attention to the problems that had been ignored and overlooked for many years. David Von Drehle’s Triangle: The Fire That Changed America delivers truth about the fire that revolutionized the labor movement in early industrial America. The significance of the Triangle fire does not emphasis the complete death toll, but impacts the events that occurred shortly after. Worker’s rights and their safety in the workplace endured fundamental reforms because of the series of events that took place before, during and after the Triangle fire. The industrial era of the early1990s …show more content…

The devouring embers that came from the lower levels of the factory caused a frenzy above. The scraps of cotton in the air and all around the floor aided to the flames eating at the oxygen. The struggle to find a way out of the building became the ultimate task of life and death. The women of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company sought to find their way of escape. There were minimal options to get out one of which was a “partition [that] was designed in such a way that only one employee could pass through at a time” as well as a small fright elevator and the fire scape (Von Drehle 119). Women were fighting for their life trying to escape the fire and in some cases lost it in the process.Having no exits readily available for the workers to use to escape the building, women would throw themselves from the windows and down the elevator shaft in hopes of escaping the …show more content…

The State’s commissions would hold public hearings as well as send agents to inspect factories to prevent danger or inhumane working conditions among workers by holding requirements for the place of work so that laborers safely and affectively do their job. By 1913 twenty-five of the twenty-eight proposed bills are passed and are now endorsed by legislature and the government, giving power to enforce the laws. These laws protect the rights of women and children working as well as the regulation of the working environment. Triangle factory owners Blank and Harris are put on trial for the fire of 1911 and are found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter however they were indicted of the crime but got off due to a good lawyer. Later on in 1913 they are found guilty of locking their doors during a work day while women are inside working, violating new laws that are set in

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