March 25, 2016 marks the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The 1911 fire killed 146 and injured dozens of the garment factory's employees—the majority of whom were female immigrants. Although the factory's owners avoided prosecution for their role in one of the worst industrial disasters in American history, the fire continues to influence labor relations and workplace safety regulations.
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris founded the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1900, and moved the factory to the newly built Asch Building, in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood in 1902. By 1908, the factory produced 1,000 or more of the $3 shirtwaists per day and the company topped $1 million in annual sales. However, while New York's "Shirtwaist Kings" enjoyed chauffeur service and employed servants at their tenth floor company offices, their 600 employees worked 12-hour days for meager wages and suffered harsh working conditions. The owners fired employees who agitated for improved pay and hired street thugs to beat employees who supported labor unions.
Triangle Shirtwaist Company employees first smelled smoke at the end of the workday on March 25, 1911. A fire that began in a pile of cloth beneath a fabric cutter's table quickly spread to the ninth and tenth floors. Employees scrambled to find unlocked exit doors and jammed themselves into elevators. Others—including Max Blanck and Isaac Harris—reached the Asch Building's roof and jumped to adjoining buildings. Twenty employees crowded onto the building's flimsy fire escape, which collapsed from their weight and heat from the fire. When the elevators stopped working and fire and smoke blocked escape, many fell or jumped from the windows. Firefighters watched helplessly as their ladders extended no higher than the sixth floor. Fueled by mounds of finished shirtwaists and cloth scraps, the tragedy was over in 30 minutes, claimed 146 lives, and remains the deadliest industrial disaster in New York City's history.
On April 11, 1911, a grand jury indicted Max Blanck and Isaac Harris on seven counts of manslaughter. During their three-week trial , the prosecution argued that locked exit doors resulted in many of the fire's deaths. Evidence and testimony from more than 100 witnesses failed to convince the jury that the owners knew the exits were locked, and acquitted the pair on December 27, 1911. Three years later, Blanck and Harris settled several civil lawsuits for approximately $75 per victim. An insurance policy paid the owners $60,000—$410 per victim—for their loss of revenue.
In October 1911, New York passed the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law in response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. It required factory owners to install sprinkler systems, established the New York City Fire Prevention Bureau, and expanded the powers of the fire commissioner. Additional regulations mandated improved building access and egress, established fireproofing guidelines, and required installation of fire extinguishers. The fire also highlighted the need for legislation that improved workers' eating and toilet facilities and limited the hours worked by women and children. Many states modeled their own employee health and safety laws after those enacted by New York after the Triangle Fire.
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris continued to operate the Triangle Shirtwaist Company until 1918. Inspections at the relocated factory resulted in numerous safety and labor violations. Violations included use of counterfeit garment labels claiming "safe workplace" certification and locked exit doors during work hours.
You can learn more about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and its victims, as well as the garment industry and its workers using census data and records. For example:
A "Shirtwaist" was a term for the blouses worn by American women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Magazines like Vogue and Collier's featuring Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girl" illustrations helped popularize the style.
Shirtwaists and long skirts—like those worn by Triangle employee and union activist Clara Lemlich (above)—could be worn by women in factories, offices, and around town.
At the height of their popularity, the manufacture of shirtwaists employed more than 60,000 garment workers in the United States, with the majority in New York and New Jersey.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor.
On March 5, 1885, former superintendent of the census Charles W. Seaton died at his home in Williston, VT.
In 1872, Seaton invented a machine to tally census
results from the 1870 Census. He also invented a matrix printing apparatus for census work. The agency used these inventions until replacing them with Herman Hollerith's electronic tabulation machine in 1890.
U.S. Marshals collected data from manufacturers for the first time in 1810 while conducting the decennial census.
In 1905, the Census of Manufactures collected data separately from the population count and included the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.
The Census Bureau conducted the first census of business (retail and wholesale trade) in 1930; transportation in 1963; construction in 1967; and finance, insurance, real estate, utilities, and communications in 1992. Today, the economic census covers all domestic nonfarm businesses other than those operated by governments.