Gripping account of a horrific and completely preventable event

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	• The Triangle Fire Leon Stein ILR Press, 2001 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Half-Baked

The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 young women, mostly immigrant girls, in one of the worst factory fire disasters in American history. (Of course, as the book points out, this sort of thing still occurs all the time, it just happens in Thailand, China, Korea, Hong Kong, etc. and we don't care about it.) Anyway, this book was okay... The first part, about the actual fire itself and how the design of the building (with exit doors that pushed inward, locked exits, one inferior fire escape, and narrow stairways) created a firetrap that resulted in numerous women (and some men too) plunging to their deaths onto the New York sidewalk below, is a compelling read. However, I just couldn't get in to the second section of the book at all, which deals with the prosecution of the company owner's for contributing to the deaths through their negligence, the protests and unions that formed in the aftermath, and the new laws that were enacted to protect others. That part had me yawning nearly non-stop. But that's just me... Perhaps you might find all that very interesting as well.

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This book takes you "into" the fire!! Great!

A must read for those that like to read about true U.S., non-military history. This fire was HOORRIFIC! The death of so MANY young girls is sickening - how the city officials handled this case will make you mad!

Must read book, I have kept mine for many more readings.

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Gripping account of a horrific and completely preventable event

This book is a very personal and gripping account of the fire on March 25, 1911, at the Triangle Shirtwaist company located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch building in New York adjacent to Washington Square Park, where 146 young immigrant women were either burned to death or leapt from the ledges of the building. The author had a personal involvement in this event, as he joined the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union in 1928 as a garment cutter before joining the staff of their publication Justice. The book is based primarily on newspaper accounts and interviews of many who experienced that horrific event.

The book is written as if the author was there. The horror of sixty-some people jumping, sometimes in twos. The messiness at the bottom. What befell those caught on the overloaded fire escape as it ripped from the building. He captures the anguish of those identifying bodies at the improvised morgue, those continually walking in the streets - some silently, some crying out - at the scene of the disaster trying to make sense of it all, the huge funeral processions, etc. He tells the remarkable story of the aid rendered by the Red Cross to surviving family members, many of whom as recent arrivees had no place to turn.

He tells the dismal story of ineffectual building code standards and enforcement. The strident efforts of all to avoid blame, especially the factory owners. He tells of the ineffectualness of the shirtwaist makers themselves in trying to improve their working conditions, especially safety concerns, which included a huge city-wide strike at the end of 1909. And then there was the courtroom fiasco - where a shrewd attorney representing the owners implanted the notion that the irrational behavior of the girls during the fire had more to do with their deaths than the narrow escape stairways, the locked doors blocking access, the lack of properly constructed fire escapes, and most importantly the lack of a sprinkler system - a sad day for American justice. Both the insurance industry and owners preferred a system whereby high premiums were paid instead of requiring safety provisions and paying lower premiums. The Triangle owners did collect a large sum of money from the fire.

This book and the notes of the author were also prime material for a book written forty years later, Triangle, The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle. That book is better organized and puts the fire into the context of the times, including overall living conditions of immigrants, the political dominance of Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine, and reform efforts in the New York legislature. But that book lacks the emotional appeal of this work. It was moving to read of the Fiftieth Anniversary Memorial Meeting sponsored by the ILGWU, NYU, and the NYFD on March 25, 1961, with special guests Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins (FDR's Sec of Labor), and Rose Schneiderman (labor activist at the time of the fire), where 14 survivors attended including three who saved themselves by leaping down an elevator shaft on that fateful day, but had not seen each other since then. The author dedicated his book to the unidentified in coffins numbered 46, 50, 61, 95, 103, 115, and 127.

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Great historical account of a true American disaster

As a Professor of Fire Science I am constantly seeking out books having to do with great historical fires in American. These books are to be used as course research papers by my students and typically are not available via the library network. I trust many of my students are buying their copies from Amazon.com a name that can be trusted.

Life changing book

I read an older edition of this book when I was in college. Of all the books I have ever read, this one had the most profound impact on my life...and political views. (In fact, roughly 15 years after first reading this book, I spent a lot of time searching hard-to-find titles on the internet for a copy to own.)

I still remember reading this in the college library, with tears of utter horror and sadness streaming down my face. We are quite fortunate to have the kinds of labor laws and fire safety regulations we have today.

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