A Stricken Conscience

New Yorkers reacted to the Triangle Fire with shock and grief. Visions of the carnage scarred the psyches of survivors, rescue workers, and the public alike. After the blaze was extinguished, victims' remains were collected at a temporary morgue, dubbed "Misery Lane." There, family members filed through, searching among the charred bodies for loved ones. During the week after the fire, continual funeral processions wound through the streets of the Lower East Side and Little Italy. By April 5, 1911, a final tribute was held for the seven individuals whose unidentified bodies remained unclaimed; four-hundred-thousand mourners turned out to pay their respects.

In the aftermath of the Triangle Fire, civic and religious leaders, workers, and progressive reformers met to discuss the problem of fire safety in the workplace. A resolution calling for the city to establish a Bureau of Fire Prevention was proposed, then indignantly scrapped: circumstances dictated that something stronger was necessary than another agreement with Tammany Hall. Fueled by an impassioned speech by a diminutive union activist named Rose Schneiderman, it was resolved that a citizens' committee would take demands for reform, through Frances Perkins, directly to the state legislature.

In the state capital of Albany, the ideas Perkins communicated were initially received with condescension. Nothing was accomplished until her pleas were heard by Al Smith, the majority leader in the New York State Assembly. Smith was a brash individual who had himself grown up in the rough environs of the Lower East Side. Admired for his bold industriousness by "Tammany Hall bigwigs," he rose through the organization's ranks and eventually served four terms as governor of New York. Despite his connection with the corrupt Tammany establishment, Smith had a genuine sympathy for the poor. He had personally met with many of the families in his district who had lost loved ones in the Triangle Fire. He was determined that such a thing would never happen again.

Smith advised Perkins that in order to achieve real reform, the state legislature needed to be convinced to set up their own commission to investigate the matter. He worked to convince Charles F. Murphy, "Tammany's Supreme boss of bosses," that the votes of Italian and Jewish immigrants were essential to his group's survival. Motivated to reach out to these constituents, Murphy approved the creation of a factory-investigating commission.

Frances Perkins was named chief investigator of the New York Factory Investigating Commission, which carried out the most thorough study of worker health and safety conducted up to that time. Perkins took members of the team to visit actual work sites so that they could see for themselves the hardships and dangers faced by workers every day. In addition to fire hazards in the workplace, the commission examined sweatshops, unsanitary conditions in factories, and child labor. The organization was effective because the witnesses it called had to testify under oath and were subject to substantial penalties for lying. In addition, laws could be drafted to correct problems based on the commission's findings.

In response to the commission's reports, the legislature passed thirty-four laws mandating potentially lifesaving measures in factories, which included conducting regular fire drills, installing fire extinguishers and automatic sprinklers, and making it illegal for exit doors to be locked during the workday. During her tenure as head of the investigating committee, Perkins worked with a young senator named Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Roosevelt became president of the country more than twenty years later, he named Perkins to the position of Secretary of Labor; she was the first woman to serve in a cabinet post.

The work of the New York...