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 – Thursday December 28, 1911 Blanck and Harris Found “Not Guilty” in Connection with Triangle Fire Deaths
-Verdict was delivered at 4:46 p. m., December 27th.
From the New York Tribune of December 28, 1911:
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David Weiner, whose sister, Rosie, perished in the fire, collapses after confronting Blanck and Harris.
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The wives of the two defendants in the Triangle fire trial threw their arms around their husbands’ necks as they left the courtroom.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 23, 1911 New York, New York – Blanck and Harris Indicted for Manslaughter
From The Outlook of April 22, 1911:
Indictments in the Asch Fire Case
Last week the Grand Jury of New York found indictments against the proprietors of the Triangle Waist Company, Issac Harris and Max Blanck. These two men constitute the firm who employed the factory operatives of whom 143 [146] lost their lives in the terrible disaster in Washington Place, New York, on March 25.The indictments against them are for manslaughter in the first and second degree, and they are based, so the District Attorney states, on what he believes to be strong evidence that some at least of the doors through which the girls might have escaped were habitually kept locked and were locked at the time of the fire.
The law requires that doors in such a factory shall open outwardly where practicable, and shall not be locked, bolted, or fastened during working hours. The evidence before the coroner’s jury has been conflicting on this point, but the Grand Jury, it is asserted, had before it a fragment of a tightly locked door. Meanwhile, Mr. Whitman, the District Attorney, laid before the Grand Jury the testimony of witnesses who stated that the doors on the Washington Place side of the building were kept locked, and the Italian Consul is reported to have taken affidavits of many Italian girls who swore that the Washington Place doors were locked and never used for exit.
It is further asserted that it is capable of proof that two girls in particular lost their lives directly because these doors were locked.
We need not point out that the men accused are entitled to a suspension of opinion until they are actually tried. Whatever may be the facts in this case, there is considerable evidence that it is deplorably common custom for doors in similar establishments to be locked.
Immediately after the fire The Outlook quoted from the report of a special committee made up from the Cloakmakers’ Union and the Cloak Manufacturers’ Association. It stated that they had found twenty-two shops in which the doors leading to the hall and stairways were locked during the day, while other provisions of law were constantly violated in a much larger number of shops.
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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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