Triangle Fire response

[Grace McGrath]

The documentary was really interesting because of how much context it provided for the fire. If I recall correctly, at least half of the documentary was spent detailing the rise of the garment/shirtwaist industry and the mounting tensions between workers and factory owners/government institutions before even really talking about the fire itself. Having all that context about the massive strikes and overall adoption of unions in other factories really underscored the horror of the tragedy and connected some sense of human suffering to it (because sometimes in history classes it can feel like a fact that we learn related to the rise of union labor and government labor laws). Oddly enough, I felt similarly when I read The Museum of Extraordinary Things, which takes place in New York City at this time and partly revolves around one young garment worker’s disappearance following the fire. Though it was a fictional representation of the fire, the agony of the character’s family and the emotion at the dramatized retelling of the scene shifted my perspective towards seeing a heart-wrenching, and completely avoidable, tragedy and away from the standard textbook narrative.

I also think the reading from Triangle put into perspective some of the political tensions that prevented progress from happening. I know that most of the reading talked about the political climate after the fire, but the fact that so many used this as leverage for more power or for any cause other than seeking justice for all laborers is pretty telling. Even the documentary discussed how big the garment strikes, especially with the endorsement of many wealthy women, became before the fire. Somehow, the attention they garnered didn’t ultimately do much for the women and men in the Triangle shirtwaist factory. Having read about the political reactions to the fire, I would guess that the strikes were only taken as seriously as the public cared to see. And even those allies like Anne Morgan abandoned the cause once the strikers started focusing on long term societal change over their immediate needs for safety and stability; it almost seems like everyone thought that the poor were only rightfully entitled to basic necessities, and anything beyond that which might disrupt the distribution of power and wealth would be unfair to those who “earned” their power (this isn’t any different from today, though). I wonder what the middle and upper class Anne Morgan reformer types thought an ideal society was, considering their activism came with conditions.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Grace McGrath.

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