The Price of Liberty

Wendell Phillips once said that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and the events following the Triangle Fire and associated reforms give testimony to this observation. In the 1920s, radical elements which had taken control of unions were convinced that drastic changes were still needed in the workplace. They engineered a joint strike against manufacturers that was so large that it shut down businesses for twenty-six weeks and cost both sides hundreds of millions of dollars. There was nothing noble about this strike; violence was rampant, and both sides enlisted the help of the criminal underworld. When the strike finally ended, gangsters shrewdly retained their contacts with both the unions and the manufacturers. Through violent intimidation, their influence in both camps grew.

By the 1950s, the Mafia, a secret criminal society which originated in Italy, had become the most powerful force in the Garment District. Led by the Gambino crime "family," the group took over the trucking companies that served the industry, demanding kickbacks or a portion of the value of goods shipped. In the 1990s, the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched a massive offensive against the Mafia and succeeded in driving them from the Garment District. The industry had been irrevocably weakened, however, and its problems continue to this day.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, unions were successful in keeping wages high for laborers. Simultaneously, taxes on imported goods were increasingly lowered, resulting in a flood of foreign-made clothing that became available to American consumers. Labor costs in developing countries were extremely low, which allowed imported goods to be sold for comparatively little in the United States. Unable to compete, American companies either went out of business or moved their manufacturing operations overseas. Some small firms attempted to remain open by cutting costs and hiring workers who were willing to work under difficult conditions and accept wages below the minimum required by law. Ironically, these workers were again new immigrants, now largely Hispanic and Asian; history repeated itself as modern versions of the underground sweatshop were reborn. Although authorities attempted to find and close these illegal operations, their transient nature made them hard to eliminate. Fortunately, problems at these establishments have not yet proven to be as severe as those that resulted in the Triangle Fire.

On the other hand, sweatshop conditions in foreign countries are not much different from those that existed a century ago in the United States. Labor rights activists have tried to draw attention to potential dangers, and Congress has responded by passing laws against imports made "by low-paid workers in unsafe and unsanitary conditions." In Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, three hundred workers died in factory fires between 1990 and 2005. In 2006, ninety-one laborers were killed in a fire at a Chittagong textile mill—almost a mirror image of what happened in the Triangle disaster. Despite these realities, however, some economists argue that conditions in sweatshops in developing countries are far better than workers there have ever known. Factory jobs, poor and dangerous as they are, offer opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach to most laborers. The awful truth is that, in some places, factory workers who endure conditions similar to those that existed in America at the time of the Triangle Fire might otherwise have to live on the streets as beggars or literally scour garbage dumps in order to survive.

While there are no easy answers to these contemporary dilemmas, it is clear that there is much to be learned from the past. Pressures from overseas trading partners are gradually creating basic changes in developing countries to protect workers. If there are any lasting lessons to be drawn from the Triangle Fire, they are that "short memories and greed are a deadly mixture" and that "eternal vigilance truly is the price of liberty and safety."