"The Fire That Lit the Nation": Investigations and Reform Summary and Analysis
The Outlook, “Indictments in the Asch Fire Case”
The Outlook magazine published “Indictments in the Asch Fire Case” on April 22, 1911. The article describes the Grand Jury indictments against Triangle owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck for first- and second-degree manslaughter resulting from locked doors that prevented workers from escaping the burning factory. The prosecution presented a fragment of a door that still showed its bolt in locked position and a set of witnesses who testified that the doors were indeed locked regularly, including during the fire. The article also quotes findings from a committee report of the Cloakmaker’s Union and Cloak Manufacturers’ Association that found locked doors in twenty-two factories.
The New York Times, “Triangle Witnesses Got Increased Pay”
On December 22, 1911, The New York Times printed an article entitled “Triangle Witnesses Got Increased Pay” about the trial of Harris and Blanck. The story asserts that just before the trial, several witnesses working at Triangle received a pay raise and decided to testify for the defense. The witnesses involved now maintain that factory doors were unlocked or at least had their keys in their locks. These witnesses admitted that their wages had increased but also denied previous testimony about locked doors. One witness, William Greenspan, even went so far as to deny his own signed statement and sworn affidavit.
The Literary Digest, “147 Dead, Nobody Guilty”
Upon the acquittal of Harris and Blanck, The Literary Digest published “147 Dead, Nobody Guilty” on January 6, 1912. The owners, the article explains, were acquitted on the jury’s third ballot after a deliberation of only one hour and forty-five minutes. Many believe, the article continues, that “justice has in fact been balked,” and they are stunned that no one has been judged responsible for the deaths of 147 people. Some question why the legal system seems to make convictions too difficult and why factory owners are not accountable to their workers and the public. Others feel like owners “can commit no crime” in the pursuit of profit and reflect on the thousands of lives lost every year in workplace accidents that could have been avoided.
Chicago Daily Tribune, “What the Grave Covers”
On September 30, 1913, over two years after the Triangle tragedy, the Chicago Daily Tribune printed “What the Grave Covers.” The article begins with a reminder of the fire and the acquittal of Harris and Blanck despite an abundance of evidence that the factory’s doors were locked doors. It then goes on to remark that Max Blanck has once again been arrested and found guilty of locking the doors in his factory. He was fined a mere twenty dollars. The author asserts that Triangle victims should never be forgotten and that owners who endanger workers’ lives should be given prison terms and high fines as a warning to other manufacturers.
State of New York, Preliminary Report of the Factory Investigating Commission
The state of New York released the Preliminary Report of the Factory Investigating Commission in 1912. Part of the report features interviews with female workers. Fifteen-year-old Rose Ferrigno testifies that she was born in New York and that her father does not work because he has been sick for four years. Ferrigno’s mother works at home making garments, and Ferrigno herself works at the Shay Bros. shirtwaist factory as a floor girl. She makes five dollars a week and works from eight in the morning to five in the evening.
Ferrigno has four sisters and one brother, who sometimes help their mother with her work, but they do not work otherwise. Ferrigno’s mother...
(This entire section contains 1329 words.)
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makes five or six dollars a week, and she and her daughter are the family’s only sources of income.
Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew
Reformer Frances Perkins, who served as an investigator on the Factory Investigating Commission, published her memoir The Roosevelt I Knew in 1946. In this excerpt, she describes her investigative work for the FIC. Working with future “great leaders” Alfred E. Smith and Robert Wagner, Perkins got a “firsthand look” at working conditions in factories. They visited canneries where small children worked long hours. They saw machines that could maim workers in an instant. They noticed how exhausted workers became after their long days.
The investigators also met with manufacturers and business owners who were attempting to improve conditions for their employees and were still making a good profit. These men and their efforts especially convinced the FIC that working conditions could be “correctable by practical means,” and the commission therefore recommended new laws about shorter working hours, limits on child labor, worker compensation for accidents, and other health and safety measures. The New York legislature passed many of these laws.
Analysis
The documents in this section present a variety of viewpoints and attitudes with regard to the consequences of the Triangle tragedy. The article in The Outlook about the indictments of Harris and Blanck is both hopeful that justice may be done and disgusted that so many factories are still locking workers inside. The New York Times article about the trial, however, assumes the role of an exposé, informing the public of increases in pay for witnesses for the defense. The writer is clearly appalled by this turn of events and does not hesitate to state names and show how witnesses changed their testimony, allegedly in response to monetary gain. The corruption is clear.
The writer of The Literary Digest’s “147 Dead, Nobody Guilty” seems both troubled and outraged by the failure of justice in the Triangle owners’ trial. He refrains, however, from saying so directly, instead quoting other press accounts and public opinion, including a long invective from the New-York Tribune that tasks everyone from the owners to inspectors to planning and licensing personnel with the failure to protect the lives of Triangle workers while lamenting that there is “little hope” that anyone will take responsibility for the tragedy. The trial came to a “monstrous conclusion,” according to the Tribune quotation, and the Literary Digest writer certainly agrees.
Even two years after the fire, a Chicago Daily Tribune reporter is still outraged by both the fire and the miscarriage of justice that followed it. His words openly reveal his anger as he speaks of the trial: “Evidence was heaped mountain high to prove that the girls in the Triangle shop were always locked in like cattle throughout the day.” If that had not been the case, he concludes, if the doors had been open, “most of the victims, if not all, might have saved themselves.” Further, the writer is furious that Max Blanck has been arrested once again for locking the doors of his factory and that employers tend to look upon their workers as “rats.”
The Factory Investigating Commission’s report, at least in this excerpt, is more objective in tone, consisting primarily of interview questions and the interviewees’ responses. The choice of questions, however, does suggest an underlying opinion about Rose Ferrigno’s situation. There are several questions about Ferrigno’s father and his illness, and the interviewer returns to the topic again later, asking, “What is the matter with your father?” The interviewer tries to get more information out of Ferrigno, but she either cannot or will not answer further. The interviewer seems to wonder how and why a forty-seven-year-old man is too sick to support his family, instead letting his wife and daughter work long hours for low wages.
Finally, Frances Perkins adopts a tone of nostalgia and satisfaction in her memoir. She wrote long after the events of the fire and can look back with a view to how much has changed and how much working conditions have improved. The investigations, which taught investigators so much about the reality of working life, did lead to new laws to better support and protect workers, and Perkins seems proud of her role in the process.
