Hellraisers Journal: Women’s Trade Union League Joins Mass March for the Unidentified Victims of the Triangle Fire

8th April 20218th April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Rose S, Triangle Fire Mourners March, Girls at Top of Buildings, NY Tb p2, Apr 6, 1911 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 8, 1911
Women March in Cold Rain for Unidentified Victims of Triangle Fire

From the New York Tribune of April 6, 1911:

There was majestic silence and sullen rain. But it was a silence that spoke. Their fellow workers to the number 145 had been launched into eternity as the result of the Asch Building fire on March 25. And so [thousands] marched in murmurless protest through the principal streets of the city yesterday.

The steady downpour did not divert girls who were without umbrellas, without hats, without overshoes and rubber coats from their determination to show public honor to fellow workers who had perished…..

If the day had been filled with sunshine the funeral procession would have been impressive. Perhaps, however, there would then have been the chance to minimize the intensity of feeling existing among the marching members of the sympathizing unions. Only a high devotion and sense of duty could be responsible for yesterday’s protest.

Low hanging clouds and fog shrouded the tops of buildings. The Metropolitan tower was invisible above its clock. There was the suggestion of smoke in the atmosphere. The streets were filled with puddles of water. Women in lamb’s wool coats, accustomed to ride in automobiles, were splashed by passing vehicles as they trudged along in the beating rain, anxious to demonstrate the sympathy felt by the Woman Suffrage party. Hundreds of thousands stood on the sidewalks, their umbrellas appropriately indicating unbroken borders of black. Policemen, mounted and afoot, wore regulation black raincoats.

There was no playing of plaintive music, no muffled drum beat. The spectacle was without ostentation, flourish or display. Banners bore the legend “We mourn our loss” in black and white. There was a solemn expression on the faces of those who marched and those who watched from office buildings, stores and private houses. Flags on public buildings were at half-mast; thousands of other structures were draped in funeral decorations.

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Hellraisers Journal: One Hundred Thousand Mourners March for Unidentified Victims of Triangle Fire

7th April 20218th April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ruth Rubin, Ballad Triangle Fire, 1968 —————-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 7, 1911
New York City – 100,000 Parade in Tribute to the Unidentified Dead

From the New York Evening World of April 5, 1911:

The funeral of the unidentified victims of the Washington place disaster this afternoon was made memorable by parades of mourning in which probably 100,000 members of labor unions took part in Manhattan, and 5,000 in Brownsville and East New York. Owing to the confusion attending the formation of the Manhattan parade it was late in starting. Once it got under way business generally came to a halt in the district between Washington Square and Thirty-fourth street in and adjacent to Fifth avenue….

The great massing of men and women preparatory to the start of the parade, the many mourning emblems, the evident depth of the sorrow of the marchers, the silent determination of the moving throngs would have been impressive enough on a bright, cheerful New York spring day. In the gloom of fog, with a misty rain falling and the streets sticky and slippery, the slowly passing columns, sombre in black garments and partially concealed from the view of those above by black, shining umbrellas, took on a sullen aspect almost awe-inspiring…..

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The New York Call: “We are slain on the altar of Greed, and burned to the image of Graft.”

6th April 20216th April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Irwin Tucker Poem Triangle Fire Sacrifice, NY Cl p1, Apr 5, 1911 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 6, 1911
New York, New York – “The Sacrifice” by Irwin Tucker and Gordon Nye

From The New York Call of April 5, 1911:

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Hellraisers Journal: Metropolitan Opera House: Rose Schneiderman Speaks to Public: “We Have Found You Wanting”

4th April 20214th April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Hellraisers Journal: Metropolitan Opera House: Rose Schneiderman Speaks to Public: “We Have Found You Wanting” ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 4, 1911
New York, New York – Rose Schneiderman Speaks at Metropolitan Opera House

From The New York Times of April 3, 1911:

MASS MEETING CALLS FOR NEW FIRE LAWS
———-
Metropolitan Opera House Gathering Decides to
Name a Standing Committee on Protection.
———-

WORKERS NOT IN ACCORD
———-
Woman Union Leader Says They Have Lost Faith
In the Public and Must Rely on Themselves.
———-

More people went to the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday to participate in the council on the Asch Building fire disaster than could find seats in the grand tier, where the boxes were reserved, or in the orchestra and galleries, where they were open to all. Those in the grand tier came in automobiles, and were admitted at a special side entrance opened thirty minutes before the other doors. Those in the orchestra floor for the main part were from the upper west side, while the east siders overflowed one gallery after another until they had packed the house.

The meeting, which lasted from 3 o’clock until 5:20, proved to be more cosmopolitan than harmonious. The men in the upper galleries, instead of applauding the programme brought forward by the leaders to obtain better fire protection laws, reserved their loudest cheers for those who dissented from the programme, on the ground that citizens’ committees were incapable of doing any real good and had always proved a failure.

The outcome of the meeting was the adoption of resolutions by a partial vote calling for the creation of a permanent committee to advocate new legislation and see that there is no official neglect to enforce such laws as now exist.

The dissenters from this programme held that there would be no improvement for the working classes until in class solidarity they demanded it at the polls and through committees of their own. They advocated the organization of working people into Assembly district committees and the giving of fire inspectorship privileges to labor union officials.

The Speakers Interrupted.

Every little while from the topmost gallery shouts from Socialists interrupted the speakers, and once the meeting got away from the Chairman’s control while those upstairs cheered for the interrupters and those below attempted to hiss them down. There was one moment when feeling grew tense to a snapping point, and the audience was held too closely by the speaker’s words to interrupt or applaud as the girl who had been speaking went back up the stage to her seat.

Rose Schneiderman, who led the workers out of the Triangle factory in their strike two years ago and bailed them out after being arrested, found words difficult when she tried to speak. She stood silent for a moment, and then began to speak hardly above a whisper. But the silence was such that everywhere they carried clearly……

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Hellraisers Journal: The Ladies’ Garment Worker: “We Mourn the Death of Our Members at the Triangle Waist Company”

3rd April 20213rd April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Morris Rosenfeld, Mayn Rue Plats, see Silverman, 2010 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 3, 1911
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in Mourning

From The Ladies Garment Worker of April 1911:

When ready to go to press we learn of the awful calamity at the Triangle Waist Company. While most of the garment manufacturing establishments in New York City are not any better as far as fire protection is concerned, it is significant that the worst calamity happened at the Triangle, known among the workpeople in the trade as the “prison.” The name is probably due the extraordinary discipline with poor earning for which the firm is famous.

It is not strange that in this most democratic of all countries in the world the employers can so easily use the arm of the law to protect themselves against any inconveniences which their workpeople may cause them, but the law is nowhere when the life and limb of the worker is to be protected.

The writer of these lines, when approaching the factory some two years ago in an attempt to organize the workpeople of that firm, was pounced upon by two plain clothed policemen and taken to the police cell. No one, however, knows whom to blame for this calamity.

It is evident that the worker can expect next to nothing in the way of protection from the legal authorities. Whether it is the Supreme Court or the good people who are interested in the architectural beauties of the city, nothing will be done until the workers will begin in earnest to attend to their own business. They must declare a strike at all such fire traps until adequate protection is provided.

Pickets should be posted at the entrance of such places with sign boards bearing the following inscription: Please do not go to work in this place until proper fire protection is provided for the workpeople.

Let the authorities find our action contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Laws or any other of the innumerable laws provide to safeguard the interest of the capitalists, and which the authorities are ever ready to guard jealousy. We will cheerfully go to prison but there will be no more fire traps. Such a strike will put an end to such a state of things within 48 hours.

———-

There are in the same building a number of cloak shops, who before the general strike, worked until 6 o’clock on Saturdays. Thanks to the change in hours all these left at 1 o’clock, otherwise the victims would have been more numerous.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the New York Evening World: “Some of the Girl Victims of Washington Place Fire Trap”

1st April 20211st April 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote William Shepherd, Triangle Fire, Shirtwaist Strikers of a Year Ago, Mlk Jr, Mar 27, 1911, Cornell —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 1, 1911
New York, New York – Some of the Many Girls Who Perished in Triangle Fire

From the New York Evening World of March 27, 1911:

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Tag: April 1911