Tag: ILGWU Local 25

Hellraisers Journal: “The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II -from Life and Labor, Official Organ of WTUL

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

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 6, 1911
“The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II

From Life and Labor of May 1911:

The Triangle Fire

By Martha Bensley Bruere

Well, the fire is over, the girls are dead, and as I write, the procession in honor of the unidentified dead is moving by under my windows. Now what is going to be done about it?

Triangle Fire, Mourning Procession, LnL p139, May 1911

Harris and Blanck, the Triangle Company, have offered to pay one week’s wages to the families of the dead girls-as though it were summer and they are giving them a vacation! Three days after the fire they inserted in the trade papers this notice:

NOTICE, THE TRIANGLE WAIST CO. beg to notify
their customers that they are in good working order.
HEADQUARTERS now at 9-11 University Place.

The day after they were installed in their new quarters, the Building Department of New York City discovered that 9-11 University Place was not even fireproof, and that the firm had already blocked the exit to the one fire escape by two rows of sewing machines, 75 in a row, and that at the same time repairs were begun on the old quarters in the burned building under a permit winch called for no improvements or alterations of any conditions existing before the fire. It called for repairs only, which means, it was generally conceded, that the place would be re-opened in the same condition it was in before the fire.

That is what the employers have done.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The Triangle Fire” by Martha Bensley Bruere, Part II -from Life and Labor, Official Organ of WTUL” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Murder of the Shirt Waist Makers” by Louis Duchez, Part II

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

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 4, 1911
Louis Duchez on Murder of Shirtwaist Makers in New York City, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

THE MURDER OF THE SHIRT WAIST MAKERS
IN NEW YORK CITY

BY LOUIS DUCHEZ

Photographs by American Press Ass’n.

[Part II of II.]

Triangle Fire, Fire Hose n Ladder, ISR p666, May 1911

Violations of the law? Yes, enough to hang half a dozen rich exploiters and politicians. But these men won’t hang.

The owner of the building claimed he lived up to the letter of the law. So did the owners of the shirtwaist concern, Blanck and Harris. They blame the city officials. The State Commission of Labor also blames the city officials. On the other hand, the city officials are hunting for someone to point to. One of these gentlemen divides the guilt between God and the “public conscience.”

The more important facts, however, are as follows: While the holocaust was taking place the superintendent of public buildings, Rudolph P. Miller, was on a pleasure trip to Panama. Under questioning conducted by Fire Marshal Beers he admitted that the Asch building, in which the fire took place, had not been inspected since it was built, ten years ago. He said he was not even sure that he passed on the building before it was occupied. Miller is not an architect; he is simply a civil engineer-with a “pull.” In his testimony he also admitted that he knew of “graft” from building owners being accepted by inspectors. Miller blamed the police department.

According to the state law, “fire-proof” buildings need not put up more than one fire escape. And that’s all the Asch building had. And this one was useless. When the flames heated the flimsy iron work. it bent like wire. Besides, the scaling ladders were not fit to use and the extension ladders reached only to the 6th floor. The hose, too, was rotten, and the fire apparatus was only so in name. Then iron shutters blocked the fire escape, such as it was.

The locked doors have been mentioned. There was no fire escape to the roof. The machines were so closely packed together, in order to save space. that a panic resulted when the fire first started. Large piles of combustible goods obstructed every aisle and opening, also, if the building and conditions had been deliberately planned for the cremation of human beings, it could not have been more perfect.

To look at the Asch building since the fire one could not tell from the outside that anything had happened to it, were it not for the broken windows. As a matter of fact, the damage only reached $5,000. Everything was insured-but the slaves.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Murder of the Shirt Waist Makers” by Louis Duchez, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap, NY Met Opera Hse, Apr 2, Survey p84, Apr 8, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 3, 1911
Louis Duchez on Murder of Shirtwaist Makers in New York City, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:

THE MURDER OF THE SHIRT WAIST MAKERS
IN NEW YORK CITY

BY LOUIS DUCHEZ

Photographs by American Press Ass’n.

[Part I of II.]

Triangle Fire, Fire Hose n Ladder, ISR p666, May 1911

TRUTH is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

As I write this story of the bold, brutal and cold-blooded murder of one hundred and twenty-five [129] girls, averaging nineteen years of age, and twenty [17] men, here in New York, I wonder if what I have seen and heard and felt is real.

It was Saturday evening, March 25. Only five minutes more and the slaves at the sewing machines would be hurrying to their “homes,” carrying their starvation wages for the week. More than 500 of them were employed by the Triangle Waist Company, the non-union concern which led the fight on the shirt waist girls more than a year ago. The slave pen was located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a “fire proof” building in the very heart of the congested section of the city.

In some corner unknown on the eighth floor highly inflammable materials caught fire. Before anyone had time to look around big tongues of flame were licking up everything in the room.

A general rush was made for the elevators and stairways. The elevators did their best, but during the few minutes in which the tragedy occurred only fifty girls were lowered.

The stairways were the principal ways of escape—and the doors leading to these stairways were locked. For it was the custom of this firm, as it is the custom in other shirtwaist factories in New York, to lock the doors after work begins in the morning and to keep them locked all day, so that the employes may be searched before going home for pieces of goods, thread or buttons, and so that they may be prevented from going out and “stealing time” during the day.

Everywhere throughout the three floors silk and cotton goods hung from racks or were piled up on tables, and the little blaze which started in the unknown corner was like a spark in a powder magazine. In ten minutes the three floors were all afire. Huge clouds of flame belched from nearly every window.

Finding the doors locked to the stairways, the girls rushed to the windows. With their hair and clothes afire, they leaped from the eighth, ninth and tenth story windows. Some were seen climbing upon the sills and deliberately plunging to the pavement. Others, it is said, were pushed out by the pressure behind. In one instance two girls came down from the ninth story in each other‘s arms. Others were seen embracing and kissing each other before making the fatal leap.

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

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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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:

Triangle Fire, March in Downpour for Unidentified Victims, NY Tb p1, Apr 6, 1911

Triangle Fire, Rose S re We Marched by Buildings, NY Tb p1, Apr 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.

Triangle Fire, We Mourn Our Loss, NYC Apr 5, ISR p670, May 1911

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

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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:

Triangle Fire, Some Girl Victims, NY Eve Wld p3, Mar 27, 1911

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Hellraisers Journal: New York’s Local 25 of Ladies Garment Workers Union Announces Victory for 12,000 Strikers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Raising Hell, NYT p1, Oct 6, 1916———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1919
New York, New York – Dress and Waist Makers Declare Victory

Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union declared total victory for 12,000 striking Dress and Waist Makers on April 7th (see article below from the New York Tribune).

From the Liberator of April 1919:

Strike by C Barns, re ILGWU L25, Liberator Cover, Apr 1919
“Strike!”
OUR cover design, drawn by Cornelia Barns, will carry to readers all over the country something of the spirit with which Local 25 of the International Garment Workers is conducting its strike for the 44-hour week in New York. Eighty-five per cent of the strikers are girls. Of the 35,000 who went out on January 21st, 23,000 have already won their terms and gone back to work. The rest are sticking it out magnificently.

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