Today is 100 years since the factory fire in NYC that claimed the lives of 146 people-mostly young women-working in what we know as a "sweatshop". The workers were on the 9th floor of the building and the city fire department lacked ladders high enough to reach. There was a fire escape but it did not reach the ground and collapsed after a few people got out. As we know one set of doors were locked from the outside-to keep workers from "making off with leftover scraps of cloth". There were elevators that made a number of runs to the 9th floor but became inoperable after the cables "stopped working". Some people jumped down the elevator shafts. There were no sprinklers. Most of the young women were Jewish and Italian and at least one was only 14. The owners of the factory were Max Blanck and Isaac Harris who had previously opposed a workers strike in the garment industry and "hired thugs to beat up their seamstresses when they picketed the plant". The ownere were charged with manslaughter "but acquitted in the absence of any laws that set workplace safety standards".
The political bosses-Tammany Hall-got behind a movement for change fearing that the Socialist Party in NYC would gain members by political inaction. Charlie Murphy was the Tammany boss, Al Smith was the Assembly Speaker and Robert Wagner was the state Senate president. Francis Perkins was on the street that day and saw workers jumping to their deaths from the building. "Over time...legislation..." was passed to correct some of the problems.
The business community then was opposed to any legislation to correct the problems. They said "the revolution had arrived", that "it would lead to the wiping out of industry in this state" and that the "best government is the least possible government". "Such complaints, of course, are with us still...mine operators after fatal explosions...bankers after they've crashed the economy...energy moguls after their rig explodes or their plant leaks radiation".
(Source: "A fire that still burns bright" by Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post. In The Virginian Pilot on 3/24/11).
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