Apparently I grew up with a very abnormal childhood. I think I was about 7 or 8 the first time I heard of Rose Schneiderman and her fiery speech condemning the public of New York in a eulogy to the 147 lives lost in the Triangle Waist Factory fire of March 25th, 1911. Workers’ strikes were something that I read quite a few books on. My idols were Mary Jones, Rose Schneiderman, Emma Goldman. And then I read this book, and I discover that someone who grew up in the suburbs of Colorado had never heard of the Triangle Waist Factory; in fact, it is one of the most unknown events in American History. Something that helped push through quite a few labor laws, with several people involved in those laws later going on to help FDR draft the New Deal. It was odd to say the least.
David von Drehle however decided to correct his ignorance and researched the Triangle fire, and has written a rather well-researched book about it. He goes into detail setting up what life and politics were like in New York at the time, with the continued influx of Eastern European immigrants flocking to New York for better lives, and Tammany Hall and its’ “honest graft” politics being simultaneously the best and the worst thing for them. He takes you through horrific 30 minutes that resulted in the deaths of 146 people, the youngest 14 the oldest 43. And how very little was actually in the end done to put the blame on the owners’ shoulders. He also has compiled the full list of the identified dead; something that was possibly never before done in history. And discovered a copy of the trial’s transcript, something that had been lost since the 1960’s, when it was supposed to be transferred to microfiche and disappeared. It’s nice to know that the workers were remembered and cared about in death about as much as they were in life.
It has been 114 years and now for the most part, the victims are remembered almost solely on a plaque on the former Asch building, now a dormitory and science lab for NYU. Hopefully this book will go a part of the way in changing that.