Sunreet Kaur

Professor Hoffman

IDC 1011H

28 November 2017

Researchers at Harvard University began conducting a search of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Among the many documents, they discovered a first-hand account of Rose Rosenfeld Freedman describing her story of this event.

I was born on March 27, 1893, in a small town north of Vienna. My family ran a profitable business importing and exporting dried foods. After my father visited New York, my family and I started spending a lot of time in the United States. My father loved it in New York, and we emigrated in 1909 on the Mauretania. My mother ended up handling the business since my father was focusing more on his Jewish studies. She was often criticized for her lack of house cleaning abilities. I don’t blame her though, she did have a lot on her plate.

At the age of sixteen, I got a job operating a large machine which attached buttons to blouses or “shirtwaists” at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This factory was located on the corner of Washington Place and Greene, occupying the eighth, ninth, and tenth floor, and was located in the Asch Building. I worked on the ninth floor of this building. My great language skills landed me this so-called ‘prized job’ and I was eventually able to learn seven languages in total.

Now let’s refer to this factory as a sweatshop. This sweatshop was a cramped space lined with work stations. Workers were mostly poor immigrants or teenaged women who did not speak English. We were paid 15 dollars a week, regardless of the fact that we worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and less working hours. However, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris’, the owners of this factory, were one of the very few that refused. They hired police to imprison these protestors and paid off politicians from speaking of it.

Just two days before my 18th birthday, the unimaginable occurred. It was March 25, 1911, and I woke up believing that this day was just like any other day. The weather was beautiful and I went to work just like I would every day. Then all of a sudden at 4:40 p.m. a fire broke out. The fire started on the eighth floor in a scrap bin under one of the cutter’s tables at the northeast corner, where mostly men worked. It quickly spread to the ninth where women were working machines. Executives were up on the tenth floor.  There were 600 workers at this factory. Everyone began to panic.

The flammable fabric was everywhere. There were no sprinkles, since Blanck and Harris refused to install them in hopes that maybe they may need to burn the building down in hopes of gaining insurance. There had never been any fire drills so none of us were prepared for an event like this. The manager attempted to turn the fire hose on the scrap bin, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. With the four elevators with access to the factory floors, only one was fully operational. The elevator could only hold 12 people at a time, and after four trips, the elevator broke down. There were two staircases, one of which was locked from the outside to prevent theft by the workers. The other was soon opened inward only. The fire escape was poorly constructed, only supporting a few women at a time.

The reason for the fire was uncertain. The Fire Marshal believed that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished cigarette butt or match in the scrap bin, which held two months’ worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire. In the wooden bin under the table, there were hundreds of pounds of scraps left over from the several thousand shirtwaists that had been cut there. These scraps piled up from the last time the bin was emptied. There were hanging fabrics that surrounded it. The steel trim was the only thing that was not highly flammable.

At every exit all I saw was death, women losing all hope and jumping out of the building windows. This caused the firefighter’s hoses to be crushed by the falling bodies. The firefighters, unfortunately, could not get their ladders to the eighth floor, only up till the seventh. Their safety nets were futile. Girls in shirtwaists, which were aflame, went flying out of the building so that you saw these young women literally ablaze flying out of the windows. It was a sight everyone wishes to forget.

People on the ground were begging these women not to jump. These women realized that there was no hope for them. In a way, I guess, they wanted their families to be able to identify their bodies, at least it would give them some comfort. The families begged to walk down the streets. They made visits back and forth to the site and the morgue. Anyone could have been anywhere. They kept looking, hoping to find any sign that could lead them to their loved ones. It is heartbreaking to even imagine what they were going through. Having to look through burnt bodies must have been impossible to do. It requires a lot of will and courage to look for your dead, possibly burnt, loved one. People on the ground begged as a man assisted women off the ledge as if the air was an elevator car, sending them off and at last falling himself. But I did not want to die like this.

I, however, was one of the more fortunate ones. I was able to survive by running to the top floor where the executives worked. I figured that they would have a way to escape. And I was right. Instead of unlocking the doors on the other floors to save the dying women,  the executives left them for dead. They fled to the roof by taking a freight elevator, where they were lifted to safety by firefighters to an adjacent building. I followed.   

Blanck and Harris were able to escape when the fire broke out by doing the same,  climbing onto the roof and jumping onto a connected building. The fire was out within half an hour and 149 innocent lives were lost. 49 workers were killed by the fire and about 100 of them were either dead on the sidewalk or in the elevator shaft.

That’s the whole trouble of this fire. Nobody cares. Nobody. Hundred forty-six people (died) in half an hour. I have always tears in my eyes when I think. It should have never happened. The executives with a couple of steps could have opened the door. But they thought they were better than the working people. It’s not fair because money is more important here than everything.

As I walked down the adjacent building, I noticed myself stopping at every step to sit and cry. I couldn’t shake off what just happened. It was horrific. My best friend, a forewoman, died in this fire. She did not deserve this. She was always there for me, and in a time like this, I could not be there for her. I always had this guilt in me for not saving her and leaving her to suffer such a painful death. I would never wish this death on anyone, not even my worst enemy. When I made my way out to the street, I saw my father. He collapsed. He fainted. And I didn’t go back to work anymore. I went to college.

I remember, one of the owners trying to bribe me into saying that the doors were not locked. How could I do that? How would I let these self-absorbed, self-centered, greed-driven men get away with this unforgivable act? They put us through hell and they expect me to cover up their actions so that they could do this again? They questioned our integrity and put us all in danger and when the time comes for them to step up and take responsibility for their actions, they refuse? These men killed my friends. They took the lives of innocent people that were only trying to make a living with the little money that they received. Blanck and Harris deserved to be punished for their actions and it was my job to speak up for those who died. Their punishment would allow those murdered to rest in peace.

A march was organized by the workers’ union on April 5 to protest the horrible working conditions and was attended by 80,000 people. I was so shocked to hear that Blanck and Harris were able to go free of charge, even after trial for manslaughter. Even after committing such a terrible act, they were not convicted. The jury was unable to determine whether the doors were locked or not. Civil suits in 1914 brought by relatives of 23 victims ended with payments of $75 to each.

After this fire, I never returned, even though the factory relocated. I ended up getting a job at the Cunard Line, or the steamship line, and soon after, I married Henry, a man I met at the American Club in Vienna. I now have three children to support.

Till this day, I continue to tell this story to as many people as I could get it across to. I never forgot that the owners’ greed for profit by locking the door to the stairwell steps so workers couldn’t take a break was what inflamed the inferno. What the owners did to us was unforgivable. They were not concerned for the welfare of the workers, and their greed led to the death of so many people. They did not even have the decency to want to repent for their sins through punishment but rather wanted me to help them get away with it. I don’t know how they would look at themselves in the mirror, knowing that they were the cause of so many lives, and just not care.

This disastrous event horrified the nation. The image of girls and young women jumping out of windows was ingrained in each and every person’s brain, sparking the need for immediate reform. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire finally led to better safety standards and helped the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which fought for improved sweatshop conditions for workers. This industrial disaster transformed working conditions for Americans.

This factory fire has led me to have a deeper appreciation for life. I don’t pretend. I feel it. Still. Although I often hide my inner pain from this tragedy, I am able to create life-long memories with my family who has always tried to help me cope with it. I am constantly speaking out at labor rallies, in classrooms, or to reporters about this fire so that history will not erase. I want future generations to understand what labor conditions were like not so long ago and I hope for them to raise awareness if they see such issues today. People should take all means so that history doesn’t repeat itself.