THE UNIONS
Mourners from the ILGWU and the United Hebrew Trades march in the streets after the fire (see fig. 1)
Before the fire, many women union leaders were already frustrated by typical union approaches. The solution to workers’ strife, they believed, could not be found only through union organizing. Following the fire, leaders of the ILGWU and the WTUL worked together to simultaneously advocate for union organizing and for legislative reform.
Rose Schneiderman, a prominent member of the WTUL, gave a speech at a memorial for the victims in which she called for action. "I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship," she said. "The only way [the working people] can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement."
In the days after the fire, the ILGWU organized relief efforts for the survivors and the victims’ families. They brought several progressive organizations together to spearhead the relief work, including the WTUL, the Workmen’s Circle, the Jewish Daily Forward, and the United Hebrew Trades. Together, they formed the Joint Relief Committee, which did a great number of things. From the general public, they collected $30,000. They distributed weekly pensions, cared for young workers as they recovered from their injuries, and found work and living arrangements for workers who suddenly found themselves without them after the fire.
Under pressure from the Citizens’ Committee for Public Safety and other reformers, the New York City government was forced to take some sort of action in response. The political cartoons shown above and at right highlight how the public refused to forget about the fire. In October 1911, the city government passed an act that formally created the Bureau of Fire Prevention. Over the next several years, the Bureau passed a number of reforms. They also made changes to the Municipal Building Code. This mandated that factories have a number of safety devices on hand, including fireproof materials and stairwells, fire alarms, extinguishers, and hoses.
The WTUL took immediate action to address the outrage felt across the entire city after the fire. They published a questionnaire about working conditions in factories in the newspaper, from which they collected hundreds of responses. The response came from workers in a variety of industries, not just the garment industry. Through this, they documented the unsafe conditions under which many were forced to work. This evidence motivated them to form the Citizens’ Committee for Public Safety led by 25 well known citizens. They immediately called for a mass meeting. Thousands attended this meeting, from factory workers to prominent politicians. Together, they approved a resolution demanding that the state legislature form a Bureau of Fire Prevention, which was to work for as long as the city felt it was needed. They also called for a permanent citizens' committee dedicated to creating labor legislation.
A political cartoon depicting a factory owner holding the door shut as workers struggle to escape the flames, 1911 (see fig. 4)
Frances Perkins, who would later serve as the Secretary of Labor for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, witnessed the Triangle fire from the street, along with thousands of others. She was working in public service at the time, and like many others working for the city government, felt personally responsible for the fire. In the following weeks, the poor working conditions found in many factories were put on display in newspapers and public speeches. The tragedy was all anyone could talk about. Perkins believed that she was in a position to help create change, and so she led the Committee on Public Safety in investigating the problems that contributed to the conditions that created the fire and lobby for legislation. Her work gained the support of New York state politicians, who passed a resolution calling for the creation of a formal investigative commission.
In June 1911, the New York State Legislature established the Factory Investigative Commission in response to Perkins' work. Their mission was to investigate factory conditions in an effort to prevent another tragedy like the Triangle fire. They hired field agents to conduct investigations and sent them across the state. The commission investigated more than 200 factories whose conditions made a fire like the Triangle fire possible. They produced over 3,000 pages of testimony, including the one at right. After four years of work, they had passed 36 laws regulating labor, which would serve as a model for other states and the federal government.
