Iconic Photos

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company always kept its doors locked to ensure that the young immigrant women stayed stooped over their machines and didn’t steal anything. When a fire broke out on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the eighth floor of the New York City factory, the locks sealed the workers’ fate. In just 30 minutes, 146 were killed. Witnesses thought the owners were tossing their best fabric out the windows to save it, then realized workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss in an eerie precursor to the World Trade Center events of September, 11, 2001, only a mile and a half south. Incidentally, the fire was the worst workplace disaster in New York until 9/11. On the building’s east side were 40 bodies of those who jumped.

The Triangle disaster spurred a national crusade for workplace safety. From the unions’ perspective, the disaster could have been prevented if only the employers had given in to union demands the previous year.

The company’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building’s roof when the fire began and survived. They were put on trial, but were acquitted when that the prosecution had failed to prove that the owners knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question. They had to compensate $75 per deceased victim, but the insurance company paid the owners about $400 per casualty. To this day, no one knows whether the fire was accidental or was started to claim this insurance money.

[Photo by Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pennsylvania.]