Question:
How did The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 impact New York City at the time and to what extent did it influence the safety regulations and laws passed later on?
Causes and preventions:
Groups such as the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Womens' Trade Union League (WTUL) fought for better working conditions and protective legislation. Fire inspections and precautions were woefully inadequate at the time. The Triangle Fire tragically illustrated these inadequacies.
Facts and Regulations:
Asch building
Blanck and Harris, the factory owners
killed 131 women and 15 men in twenty minutes
No regulations - accusations were not supported by any laws
Representatives from the Women's Trade Union League, the Workmen's Circle (Arbeiter Ring), the Jewish Daily Forward, and the United Hebrew Trades formed the Joint Relief Committee, which allotted lump sums, often to be remitted abroad, to Russia or Italy.
Its Executive Committee distributed weekly pensions, supervised and cared for the young workers and children placed in institutions of various kinds, and secured work and proper living arrangements for the workers after they recuperated from their injuries.
The Garment Worker (see FUR for more details)
English: Horse-drawn fire engines in street, on th...
English: People and horses draped in black walk in...The Joint Relief Committee worked together with the American Red Cross, which also collected funds from the general public. Estimates indicate that the Joint Relief Committee alone admnistered about $30,000.
Wagner, a German immigrant who had become active in Tammany Hall politics on the state level, established the New York State Commission to Improve Factory Safety for which Perkins worked as an investigator.
The Commission?s shocking findings, gleaned from crawling through the rooms and cellars of factories and tenement houses across the state, resulted in passage of 36 new labor laws by 1914, forming the foundation of New York State?s Industrial Code, a model for the nation. As Roosevelt?s legislative whip, Senator Wanger two decades later led the...