Their courage stiffened strikers’ resolve, winning more allies. Race prejudice, we recall, all but barred African American women from the garment industry. The strike, however, gave them a chance to work in large numbers—as scabs. That set off a debate within the black community. Black women owed white strikers nothing, many said. Yet many more admired the strikers’ grit and willingness to stand up for their rights. A mass meeting held in a black church had the last word on strikebreaking. It voted to urge “the colored girl” to “refrain from injuring other working women, and whenever possible, to ally herself with the cause of union labor.” Black women honored the picket lines.16
An illustration of the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, 1866. (picture credit 4.12)
Enter the Mink Coat Brigade
Still others saw the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand as more than a struggle over wages and working conditions. Called “feminists,” they believed the Chinese proverb “Women hold up half the sky”—that women are just as important to the world as men. It followed that women should have equality with men and the same rights as they did, especially the vote. Women could not vote because, opponents said, politics would take away their charm, making them unfit wives and mothers. (In 1922, the United States adopted the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote.)
Alva Belmont disagreed. She was the widow of a millionaire banker, and her family owned New York City’s major subway lines. An ardent feminist, too, she urged women: “Pray to God. She will help you.” Belmont wanted women priests, women judges, women athletes—women everything. But none of that could happen unless women won the right to vote. A feminist poem titled “Why?” explained her reasoning.
Why are you paid less than a man?
Why do you work in a fire-trap?
Why are your hours so long? …
BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN AND HAVE NO VOTE.
VOTES MAKE THE LAW.
VOTES ENFORCE THE LAW.
THE LAW CONTROLS CONDITIONS.
WOMEN WHO WANT BETTER CONDITIONS MUST VOTE.17
Alva Belmont. (picture credit 4.13)
In the 1950s and 1960s, the same reasoning, that votes mean power, drove the civil rights movement in its campaign for equality for African Americans. Alva Belmont supported the strike as a battle in the wider war for the vote. Doing so, she believed, educated strikers and the public about the link between working conditions and the ballot. She spent night after night in the Jefferson Market Court with her lawyer. When the police brought in strikers, often at 3:00 a.m., she posted their bail. “Mrs. Belmont has enough money,” said an admirer. One night, however, she ran out of cash. Would Judge Butts, please, accept her Madison Avenue mansion as security? He would, and the strikers went home.18
Alva Belmont’s example inspired the “Mink Coat Brigade,” a group of wealthy women, to aid the strikers. Among them was Anne Morgan, thirty-six, the youngest child of banker J. Pierpont Morgan, among the richest men on the planet. The strike touched her deeply. For her, it was as much about human decency as votes for women. Strikers, she said, worked under such dreadful conditions that “we can’t live our lives without doing something to help them.” She joined the WTUL.19
Anything the Mink Coat Brigade did automatically made headlines. The idea was to barrage the public with dramatic events to win sympathy for the strikers—and eventually votes for women. In one event after another, strikers, WTUL members, college students, champions of the vote for women, and clergy joined to focus attention on the strike. These events featured speeches by community leaders, followed by emotional “human interest” stories told in broken English with Yiddish and Italian accents. Reporters gobbled them up.
Alva Belmont began by sponsoring the largest meeting in New York labor history at the Hippodrome, an enormous arena used for sports events and circus performances. On December 6, speakers linked low wages to prostitution and both to women’s lack of the vote. Yetta Ruth, seventeen, then told how arresting police officers called her things “a girl is ashamed to talk about.”20
Next, Anne Morgan held a meeting at the Colony Club, a lavish social club she had founded. On December 15, some 150 ladies, the highest of high society, heard ten strikers tell their life stories. A girl explained that she had to quit school to support her parents and three small children on $3.50 a week. “My mother can’t see good out of her eyes. That’s all I’ve got to say. I am fifteen years old.” The audience gasped when an Italian girl, who earned six dollars a week as a finisher, said her employer got a priest to denounce the strike. “A priest came to our shop and told us girls that if we struck we should go—excuse me, please, ladies—to hell.” After the meeting, the ladies took their guests to tea and gave $1,300, a fortune, to the Local 25 strike fund.21
On December 21, the Mink Coat Brigade held a “motor parade.” A line of fifteen chauffeur-driven automobiles moved down Fifth Avenue and through the Lower East Side. Alva Belmont and Anne Morgan rode in the lead autos. Each auto was decked with posters saying THE WORKHOUSE IS NO ANSWER TO THE DEMANDS FOR JUSTICE and VOTES FOR WOMEN. Strikers sat next to socialites. Since immigrant factory workers did not get to ride in an auto often, if ever, this was a thrilling experience. As they drove past the picket lines, Rose Perr and other workhouse veterans smiled and waved, while strikers cheered.22
Anne Morgan. (picture credit 4.14)
On January 2, 1910, strikers and their allies held an all-out rally in Carnegie Hall, the city’s most famous concert hall, built by steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie. The rally’s theme was the abuse of power by police and courts. In the front row of the stage, beside the speakers, sat twenty ex-workhouse inmates, and behind them 350 women who had been arrested, hauled into court, and fined. Each wore a sash with the message WORKHOUSE PRISONER or ARRESTED. Overhead, banners declared THE WORKHOUSE IS NO ANSWER TO A DEMAND FOR JUSTICE and PEACEFUL PICKETING IS THE RIGHT OF EVERY WORKER.23
The January 2 rally at Carnegie Hall, with strikers and their allies protesting the abuse of power. (picture credit 4.15)
Rose Perr moved the audience to tears, telling how she had been sent to Blackwell’s Island because she had asked non-union workers “not to take the bread out of their sisters’ mouths.”24
Morris Hillquit gave the main speech. A prominent lawyer, Hillquit was also a leader of the Socialist Party. Socialists believed that society should own all factories, railroads, power plants, and banks, running them not for the benefit of the wealthy few, but for everyone. Hillquit stressed the importance of unions and the closed shop. Then he denounced greedy owners, brutal police officers, and corrupt judges. “Be of good cheer, sisters,” he said, pointing to the workhouse veterans. “You are not alone in your fight. Your victory will be glorious.”25
Anne Morgan was not pleased; she was, after all, a banker’s daughter. Next morning, she blasted Hillquit for trying to turn strikers into fanatical socialists. Apparently, she did not realize that socialism was deeply ingrained on the Lower East Side; many had brought the idea with them from Russia and Italy. Democratic socialists, the majority, wanted to bring change peacefully, through the ballot box. While Anne Morgan and Alva Belmont still supported the strikers’ cause, objections to socialism made some of their wealthy friends lose interest in the strike.
Morris Hillquit. (picture credit 4.16)
Strikers taking a break from the picket line. (picture credit 4.17)
End
The strike dragged on. Both sides suffered. Unable to fill customers’ orders for shirtwaists, owners of smaller shops could not pay their bills. Several closed their doors. As many as 350 other firms accepted the union’s terms, took back their workers, and resumed production. The dozen largest firms, led by the Triangle Waist Company, held fast. Although willing to raise wages and reduce hours, they rejected the closed shop because they feared that having to hire only union members would make them lose control of their factories.
Meanwhile, it grew harder for the remaining strikers to
keep going. Help from their allies could only go so far. Beyond that, they must make do as best they could. That was a lot to expect in the dead of winter. Wind-driven rain chilled pickets to the bone. Snow fell, then melted to slush. Many got sick but could not afford to see a doctor. Landlords evicted strikers for missing rent payments, tossing their belongings into the street. Credit at neighborhood grocery stores ran out. On December 25, the New York Times published an article titled “Facing Starvation to Keep Up the Strike,” because it had come to that—starvation. “In this charitable city,” the author said, “every homeless man may have turkey on Christmas Day, but there will be no turkey tomorrow for most of the striking shirtwaist makers. There is no charitable organization to provide a Christmas meal for poor women.… The girl who was [evicted] had only an apple for breakfast, she said, but she is still doing picket duty.” She and others walked the picket line in lightweight overcoats and shoes with holes in their thin soles.26
Should they go back on their oaths, abandoning the strike? Some did, out of misery and concern for their families. Most did not. When, for example, Sarah Rozner thought she ought to return to work, her mother would not hear of it. Strikebreaking, she insisted, was a sin. “Sarah, we’ll all die before [I will let] you go back to work.”27
Nobody died. On February 15, 1910, the strike ended after more than twelve weeks. A day or two earlier, Max Blanck, of the Triangle Waist Company, met secretly with strike leaders. Mary Dreier recalled that he pleaded with them, saying “that he didn’t want it to seem that we had beaten him into making changes.” He added that if “we would only help him save his face and let the girls go back,” he would meet their demands.28
Women discussing the strike on the Bowery, 1910. What do you suppose the woman pointing her finger is saying? (picture credit 4.18)
Blanck’s cave-in allowed both sides to claim victory. Local 25 and the holdout firms agreed on a 12 percent pay raise, a fifty-two-hour workweek, and an end to petty abuses like charging for needles and chairs. Although the major firms “accepted” the union, they agreed only not to dismiss workers who joined, but rejected the closed shop.
The ordeal proved that immigrant women could, and would, stand up for their rights. By the strike’s end, 85 percent of all shirtwaist makers in New York had joined the ILGWU. Local 25 grew from a hundred members before the strike to at least twenty thousand after it. Most of all, said Morris Hillquit, it touched the conscience of New Yorkers. “The people of this city began to realize that society owes some duties” to those who struggle for a living. Yet the people’s conscience would soon face another test. This time by fire.29
V
Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.
—Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Lord, Hindu holy book (c 200 BCE)
An Evil Omen
On the evening of Friday, March 24, 1911, two sisters, Becky and Gussie Kappelman, ages eighteen and twenty-two, came home from work at the Triangle Waist Company. Exhausted from their long day, they sat at a table in the three-room tenement apartment where they boarded. They sat silently, picking at their food, clearly upset. Finally, their landlady asked what was wrong. “Oh,” Becky cried, “I wish we could quit the shop! This place is going to kill us someday.”
Gussie explained that things had gotten worse since the end of the great uprising. Not only at their company, but at most shops, employers had broken their agreement with Local 25. They still fined workers for petty offenses. Experienced workers (who were paid more) had to teach six others all they knew, then were dismissed and replaced by the learners. Strike leaders like Clara Lemlich were blacklisted, barred from working in the garment industry.
But what worried the sisters most was the threat of fire. Almost exactly four months earlier, on November 26, 1910, a blaze had trapped young immigrant women in a cotton underwear factory in nearby Newark, New Jersey. Next day, the lead article in the New York Times had these headlines:
23 DIE, 40 HURT IN NEWARK FIRE
———
Many Other Women and Girls Caught in a Flame-Swept Factory Missing
———
BUILDING WAS A FIRE TRAP
———
Two Fire Escapes on It Useless, and Victims, Ablaze, Leaped Out of High Windows
———
SOME IMPALED ON PICKETS
———
Firemen’s Nets Smashed to the Ground with the Weight of Plunging Women
The thought of dying in a fire made Becky tremble with fear. “Since that factory in Newark where so many girls were burnt up,” she said, “there’s not a day when I don’t wonder what would happen if a fire started in our shop.” Little did she know that history was about to repeat itself, and practically just as described in the New York Times article, only on a larger scale. By evening of the next day, she would be among the victims of a disaster known to history simply as the Triangle Fire.1
A Disaster Waiting to Happen
At first glance, the sisters’ fears did not seem reasonable. The Newark blaze happened in a rickety four-story wooden building dating back to the Civil War. The ten-story Asch Building, where they worked, was a modern, fireproof skyscraper. Built in 1901 of steel and concrete, nothing short of a powerful internal explosion could bring it down. Each stairway landing had a standpipe, a large, upright pipe connected to a 5,500-gallon water tank on the roof. The standpipe allowed a fire hose kept on a nearby rack to release water at high pressure. Every floor had buckets filled with water placed at key points. Should a fire break out, hallways also had an alarm box; pulling the lever in any box set bells clanging in firehouses across the Lower East Side.
The Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. (picture credit 5.1)
The Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) had a highly trained, professional force. Admired for their courage, firefighters would one day earn the nickname “New York’s Bravest.”
Their equipment was top-notch, by 1911 standards, but not perfect. Aerial ladders and portable towers lifted firefighters and water high above the ground. Unfortunately, no ladder could reach above the sixth floor of a building. (A modern ladder can reach the twelfth floor.) Horses drew firefighters and their equipment to the scene of a fire. While factories turned out automobiles and trucks in ever larger numbers, the FDNY did not get its first motorized vehicles until later in the year. (The FDNY retired its last horse-drawn vehicles in 1922.) Water came from a maze of pipes, called mains, buried under the city’s streets. Mains fed thousands of hydrants, large upright pipes with hose connections for drawing water. A system of cutoffs allowed area pumping stations to shut down certain mains to increase water pressure in hydrants along a selected street.
The science of fire prevention was as advanced as that of firefighting, proof that necessity is the mother of invention. New England’s cotton mills in the 1880s had been dangerous places. Spinning thread and weaving cloth filled the air with cotton dust. When inhaled over a long period, the dust irritated lung tissue, even destroyed it, causing a lingering death. Worse, dust built up like “snowdrifts” on mill floors and machinery. Any spark could ignite the particles, causing a terrific explosion. Hundreds died every year in cotton mill fires and explosions.
A diagram showing the ninth floor of the Asch Building, which had eight long tables that stretched across the length of the room. (picture credit 5.2)
By the 1890s, however, such disasters lay in the past for two reasons. First, the invention of the sprinkler made it possible to drown a fire in seconds. Sprinklers, attached to ceilings, had sensitive fuses. Heat rising from a fire triggered the fuses, which automatically released a deluge of water stored in overhead sprinkler pipes. Second, cotton mills adopted fire drills. In these, employees rehearsed what to do at the sound of an alarm or the sight of fire. Thus, if a fire broke out, they could reach safety quickly and without panic, a major cause of death in fires. Schools adopted fire drills, too. Each year, depending on the state, every s
chool had to have a set number of fire drills.
These precautions, though well known, were almost totally absent in New York City, because fire safety did not “pay.” It did not pay the insurance industry, since safer buildings lowered insurance costs, reducing the earnings of insurance sellers, called brokers. They made their living by keeping a percentage of the cost of a policy sold to a client. High-risk clients paid higher rates, raising agents’ incomes.2
Safety did not “pay” factory owners, either. Let’s say an owner had many unsold garments at the end of the summer season. A fire might be a good business move, ridding him of extra stock while allowing him to collect its value from his insurance company. Arson was a big business in New York. Certain gangsters specialized in torching garment shops—for a price. The insurance companies seldom made a fuss, because their total profits were still greater than the claims they paid to individual owners. Owners did not install sprinklers because that cost money; they also thought they might have to burn their shops later. Fire drills, owners feared, might raise suspicions about their intentions. Besides, time spent on a fire drill took away from work time. No laws required owners to have sprinklers or hold fire drills.3
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