Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 24, 1911 Stories from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
From The Outlook of April 15, 1911:
THE FACTORY GIRL’S DANGER
BY MIRIAM FINN SCOTT
On Friday evening, March 24, two young sisters walked down the stairways from the ninth floor where they were employed and joined the horde of workers that nightly surges homeward into New York’s East Side. Since eight o’clock they had been bending over shirt-waists of silk and lace, tensely guiding the valuable fabrics through their swift machines, with hundreds of power driven machines whirring madly about them; and now the two were very weary, and were filled with that despondency which comes after a day of exhausting routine, when the next day, and the next week, and the next year, hold promise of nothing better than just this same monotonous strain.
“Operators Wanted. Inquire Ninth Floor.”
They were moodily silent when they sat down to supper in the three-room tenement apartment where they boarded. At last their landlady (who told me of that evening’s talk, indelibly stamped upon her mind) inquired if they were feeling unwell.
“Oh, I wish we could quit the shop!” burst out Becky, the younger sister, aged eighteen. “That place is going to kill us some day.”
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