Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 21, 1913 Arthur E. McFarlane Tells the Story of “Rotten Risk” and the Triangle Fire
From Collier’s National Weekly of May 17, 1913:
MORE than two years ago [March 25, 1911], in New York, 146 factory workers, most of them girls, were burned to death on the upper floors of the Asch Building. It will seem that every possible story of that fire has long ago been told. But the insurance story has never been told. And in the end it may be held to be the one vital story. I am going to tell it now.
COLLIER’S has been charged with saying much of fires due to crime and intention, and little of those due to carelessness and negligence. This, then, is the story of a fire which may well have been due to carelessness and negligence. But there are different kinds of carelessness and negligence. If a man can obtain $100,000 of insurance upon a value of $50,000, he will very naturally be careless and negligent.If a fire means not loss but gain to him, what more natural than that he should leave even the most dangerous of conditions uncorrected? And if behind such an insurer we have an insurance system which permits and encourages over-insurance, which feels no obligation to inspect, remove dangers, or to do anything whatever other than make the insurance rate proportionate to the risk, the fire will follow almost as certainly as if kindled with matches and gasoline…
The Perfect Fire Trap
BUT I can best begin with the physical conditions in the Triangle factory-Messrs. Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, proprietors-as they were before the fire.
The 550 girls and the 50 men on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building were employed, all of them, at least 100 feet above the street. The floors of their workrooms were covered with wicker baskets, which, like the shelves above them, were filled with the most inflammable of muslin fabrics. On the eighth floor there were two barrels of oil, on the ninth two more.Beneath every sewing machine the floor was soaked with oil. Great bins beneath the cutters’ tables were filled with rags. Oil-soaked rags and lint lay about the banks of motorsand the high-speed floor-way gearing which supplied the power for the machines. And, so long as they did not do it openly, the men who worked in the Triangle factory were allowed to smoke.
The 550 girls were packed so closely together that their chairs dovetailed. They had the use of only one narrow door on each floor. And they could reach it only through a single circuitous passageway not two feet wide. On each floor one window opened upon a single fire escape. According to the New York Fire Commissioner, it would have taken them three hours to escape by it. “If you could visit one of those twelve- and fourteen-story workshops”-the Triangle factory was only one of hundreds-testified Fire Chief Croker before a New York Insurance Commission three months before the fire, “you would find it very interesting to see all those people with absolutely no protection whatever-without any means of escape of any kind, in case of fire.”
We Never Forget: April 24, 2013 Rana Plaza Factory Collapse
-Savar Upazila, Dhaka District, Bangladesh -1,134 killed, 2,500 injured -Suspect: Sohel Rana, Charge: Murder -“The search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll of 1,134.”
Photograph by Sharat Chowdhury [edited] Rana Plaza Factory Collapse of April 24, 2013, at Dhaka, Bangladesh -Board of the Missing, taken April 27, 2013
From Warehouse Workers United – Statement from Kalpona Akter on Rana Plaza Factory Collapse of April 24, 2013
Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of workers lost in this tragic event.It must be said, these tragedies can be prevented by multinational corporations like Walmart and the Gap that operate in Bangladesh. Because of these companies’ negligence and willful ignorance, garment workers are in danger every day because of the unsafe working conditions.
As we learn more details, we will better understand the brands that were manufactured in these factories, but we already know that the largest retailers in the world hold tremendous power to transform conditions for garment workers – mostly young women – in Bangladesh.
Today’s news is yet another reminder that Walmart and the Gap must immediately adopt the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, a transparent and legally binding agreement that includes worker representation, independent building inspections, worker rights training, public disclosure and a long-overdue review of safety standards. The safety agreement is the first step toward ensuring no more lives are lost.
More from Warehouse Workers United:
Kalpona is the Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. She is a former garment worker and is currently in the United States calling on retailers like Walmart, the Gap and Disney to lead on improving working conditions and adopting fires safety standards in Bangladesh.Today, international worker rights groups are calling for immediate action from international corporations and brands following the horrific news of a deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, in Dhaka Bangladesh. The collapse of the eight story building that housed five factories and a mall, has reportedly killed at least 80 people and injured over 800[*]. For the last month Kalpona has been touring the United States with Sumi Abedin, a young garment worker who jumped out of a third story window to save her life as the Tazreen factory burned killing on 112.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 6, 1912 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: “God Did It” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of February 1912:
A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
Harris & Blanck, the two bosses, were tried only for the death of one girl worker, according to the crooked ways of capitalist courts, and since “it couldn’t be proved” that they were responsible for this one girl’s death, they were freed.
A member of the jury afterward expressed himself as follows:
“I can’t see that anyone was responsible for the loss of life, and it seems to me that it must have been AN ACT OF GOD.”
Poor God! The capitalists have got him just where they have the working class-cornered! They tell us He can do all things. But there is one thing God can’t do, it seems-He can’t answer back. Else the moment this pitiful squirt uttered these words He would have rent the sky open, would have hurled His scepter aside, thrown off His robe, stepped down from His awful throne, taken this petty capitalist croaker by the throat, and rammed his statement back down him again.
Hasn’t God any manhood at all? How long will He continue to allow Himself to be made the goat for capitalist crimes? Or is His eternal silence a confession of guilt? If so, then it is time we were knowing. Is it God who has been up to the deviltry of all these years? Is it God who traps the worker in blazing factory or buries him in tomblike mine, without providing him with even one means of escape? Is it God who sends the sailor abroad in a rotten hulk of a ship and drowns him before he can leap from his foul bunk? Is it God who hurls the iron worker from his lofty perch a thousand feet to the stones below and mangles the brakeman and the machine hand into an unrecognizable mass, telling the weeping wives and children that He is very sorry but the dead men were guilty of contributory negligence? Is it God who takes into His tender care all that the worker produces and hands him back just enough to live on?
The capitalists say so. Their priests and preachers, their professors and editors, their teachers and other kept men, say so.
But we have begun to suspect. We have begun to see that the capitalists have created God in their own image. And He is running up a terrible account which some day He will have to settle with the working class of the world.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 29, 1921 Slaughter of Workers in Mines, Quarries and Metallurgical Plants Continues
From the Duluth Labor World of November 26, 1921:
2,973 KILLED, 206,000 HURT WORKING MINERALS IN 1920 ————-
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24.-Accidents in mines, quarries and metallurgical plants in 1920, exclusive of blasts furnaces in the United States, caused the death of 2,973 employes and the injury of 206,000, according to the bureau of mines.
Based on a standard of 300 working days per man, the statement said: “For every 1000 employes, 3.19 were killed and 221.25 were injured.”
The figures do not indicate the large number of slight injuries causing loss of time of less than one day. In these industries 1,088,000 were employed last year, with an average of 257 working days per man.
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Note: The deadliest month in mining history was December 1907:
The Monongah W. V. Mine Disaster of December 6, 1907 killed 362 miners. The Darr (Pa.) Mine Disaster of December 19, 1907 killed 239 miners.
The Cherry Mine Disaster, follows only the Monongah Mine Disaster and the Dawson Mine Disaster (263 killed, Oct. 22, 1913) for number of men and boys who perished:
The Cherry Ill. Mine Disaster of November 13, 1909 killed 259 miners.
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—————A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
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