Ashes of Roses

by Mary Jane Auch

“This is the street Klein lived on.”

  “Do ye want to look for her family?”

  A picture of Klein’s laughin’ face ran through my mind. “No. There’s too much sadness here.”

  When we neared Washington Square, the streets were crowded. “What are all these people doin’ here?” Maureen asked.

  “I don’t know.” Though I hadn’t been thinkin’ about it, it was obvious that I was headin’ to the scene of the fire. I didn’t know why. Maybe I needed to see the building to know that the fire had really happened.

  “Look,” Maureen shouted, pointin’ to a figure in the crowd. “It’s Jacob!”

  Hearin’ his name, Jacob turned, then ran toward us.

  “Rose! Maureen! You’re alive!” He hugged both of us, and though I thought I had no tears left, I sobbed with him. He finally led us over to a park bench where we could sit together. “Did you see the newspapers? A hundred and forty-six people died.”

  “Oh, Jacob, how did you get out?”

  “I was the first one out at the quitting bell. The fire must have started just after I left.” He ran his hands through his hair, lookin’ distraught, then broke down again. “I ran back when I heard the fire sirens. By the time I got here, the girls were jumping.” He covered his eyes for a second or two, then looked up at me. “Did you see Gussie, Rose? Was she one of the ones…”

  “No, Jacob. Gussie didn’t jump.”

  He took in a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. “That thought haunted me all night. If she was one of the girls I saw jumping. If I could have run out and broken her fall…”

  “No one could catch them,” I said. “Not even the firemen with safety nets. It was hopeless.”

  His eyes teared up again. “Did you see? Do you know how she … what happened to her?”

  He looked so pained, I put my hand on his arm. “Gussie saved me, Jacob. Without her, I would have burned. Last I saw of her, she went back to rescue an old woman.”

  He shook his head. “Why did she always put others before herself?” He noticed the bandage on my hand. “You were hurt, Rose? How did you get out?”

  I pulled my hand away. “It’s nothin’. I took the elevator.” That wasn’t really a lie. I didn’t want to relive the escape by talkin’ about it. “Jacob, I have somethin’ terrible to confess. It was my fault that Gussie died. I was responsible for her bein’ moved to the ninth floor. I made her late for work that day and…”

  “Rose, Gussie never did anything she didn’t want to do. She could have asked Bernstein for her old job back. You had nothing to do with her death.”

  “But why didn’t she go back downstairs?”

  “Who knows?” Jacob looked away, and I could see he was strugglin’ not to cry. “Did Gussie tell you I asked her to marry me?”

  “No. I had no idea.”

  He looked at me, his eyes filled with tears again. “She wouldn’t even let me talk to her father about it. She just kept saying, ‘Not yet,’ whatever that meant. Gussie had a mind of her own.”

  “I’m sorry, Jacob,” Maureen said, takin’ his hand. “I didn’t know about you and Gussie.”

  “Nobody did.” Jacob lifted his chin and tried to smile, but his face crumpled again. “I can’t imagine life without her.”

  I stood up and took his other hand. “Maybe you’ll feel better if we walk.” There were no words to help Jacob’s pain, but I couldn’t sit still any longer. I felt so helpless. I needed to be doin’ somethin’, even if it was only walkin’.

  The three of us started across Washington Square. A procession of Fifth Avenue stage buses were bringin’ people to the park. Their open tops were filled with young couples laughin’ and chattin’ as they went to view the tragedy. The women were dressed to the nines, with bright feathered and flowered hats. They were doin’ this as a lark—just a little entertainment for a Sunday mornin’. I could feel a rage risin’ up in me.

  A man at the edge of Washington Square sold candy apples from a cart, glad for the extra customers. He held one out to me, but I pushed past him without a word.

  It was the next vendor who set me off. He shoved a tray of small envelopes and matchboxes in front of me. “Buy a dead girl’s earrings? How about a ring from a dead girl’s finger?”

  I knocked the tray out of his hands. The boxes fell open when they hit the sidewalk, and their contents were scooped up by eager sightseers. It wasn’t real jewelry at all, just cheap glass and paste imitations. I was sure not one of these fakes had belonged to a Triangle worker. I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse.

  The man raised his hand to strike me. “Thief!”

  Jacob had the man on the ground in the flash of an eye. “You’re lower than a worm,” he growled. He pulled the man to his feet by his jacket collar and shoved him into the crowd. Jacob was still shakin’ from anger as he came back to us.

  “Why would anybody do such a thing?” I sputtered. I turned to a group of fancy couples who were starin’ at us. One of the girls was laughin’ behind her fan and pointin’ at Jacob. My anger spilled over. I went right up to her. “Did ye know that fancy shirtwaist ye’re wearin’ was made at the Triangle? So ye have yer precious souvenir from the fire. Ye can go home now and tell all yer snooty friends that ye’re wearin’ a waist made by a dead girl’s hands.”

  The girl put her gloved hand to her throat, and her boyfriend rushed her away from me. The rest of their group retreated toward Fifth Avenue.

  “Gussie would have been impressed by that little speech,” Jacob said with a sad smile.

  “It didn’t do any good,” Maureen said. “There are thousands of people still goin’ to gawk.”

  “Yes,” Jacob agreed, “but Rose gave a few of them something to think about. Gussie always said you win people over one at a time.”

  “Is Gussie’s union hall near here?” I asked.

  Jacob nodded. “The Waistmakers Local 25 on Clinton Street.”

  “I want to see it.”

  When we reached Clinton Street, it wasn’t hard tellin’ which building housed the union. It was draped in black from top to bottom.

  “I’d like to stay here alone for a while,” I said.

  Maureen touched my arm. “Are ye all right, Rose?”

  I nodded. I could feel the tears fillin’ my eyes.

  “I’ll go back with Maureen,” Jacob said. “I want to pay my respects to Mr. Garoff.” He started to move away, then stopped to look at me. “I just can’t believe…” He choked on the words and shook his head.

  Maureen took his hand. “I know, Jacob. I know.” She turned to me. “Take as long as you need, Rose.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, feelin’ empty inside. I went to stand across the street from the union hall. So this was where Gussie had spent so much of her time—this sad place dressed in black like a widow. I watched people goin’ in and out. I could tell that many of them were families of the girls who had died.

  I started thinkin’ about what lay ahead for me. First of all, Maureen and I would have to find another place to stay, now that Mr. Garoff was goin’ back to Russia. Later today we would go to Uncle Patrick to let him know what had happened. We’d need to send a telegram to Da and Ma right away. Even if they hadn’t received my letter yet, they would in the next few days, and they’d be sick with worry, knowin’ that I worked at the Triangle. Word of the fire had probably reached Europe already.

  As I watched the heavy black fabric flap in the wind, I remembered the day Gussie made me stand up to Moscovitz. We won that battle, but it was only a small one. Moscovitz might have cheated his girls out of a few dollars and stolen a few kisses, but the owners of the Triangle stole the lives of one hundred forty-six people. I had never seen those men or heard their names, but they had held my fate in their hands without me even knowin’ it. And they had let my friends die.

  This time when I got a job, I’d join the union and work in a union shop, where somebody would be lookin’ out for me. Gussie had been right abou
t that. And Maureen wouldn’t be workin’ at all. She’d stay in school until she was sixteen. I wouldn’t let her talk me out of it again.

  I’d save up for visits back to Limerick. I couldn’t bear the thought of never seein’ my family again. Da and Ma would always be in my heart, but I was a grown woman now, not somebody’s little girl. The fire had changed me. Like a piece of iron in a blacksmith’s forge, I had come out reshaped, stronger. I no longer feared foolish things like walkin’ Thomond Bridge alone at night, for I had faced somethin’ far more terrible than a ghost, and I had survived.

  I had the same feelin’ as when I first jumped for the swingin’ rope at Boys Sandy. It had taken courage to fling myself out on the air, prayin’ I’d be able to grab hold. That same courage had saved me in the fire, and it would save me now. I was goin’ to reach out and grab this new life in America with all my strength, because I was brought here for a purpose. Gussie Garoff, Rose Klein, Rose Bellini, and all the others were silent now, so it was up to girls like me to make sure they weren’t forgotten. There was a lot that needed to be said about what had happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

  And I was goin’ to tell everybody who would listen.

  Author’s Note

  I was first drawn to the story of the Triangle fire by the PBS New York documentary. The pictures from the fire haunted me for several months before I decided to write about it. I started out with the common misconception that many of the Triangle workers were Irish. Since my grandmother Margaret Nolan Springer had sailed to New York from Ireland in the late nineteenth century, I gave her maiden name to the mother of the main character. My grandmother had come to this country to work as a maid for a German family, later marrying one of the sons. So I wrote the early chapters of the book, bringing the Nolan family through Ellis Island to settle with Uncle Patrick’s German family in New York.

  Then I found the victim list from the fire. As I read through the Russian, Polish, and Italian names, I was ready to discard my first chapters and have the main characters be one of those nationalities. When I discovered “Dorrity, Anna—Irish immigrant” on the list, I knew I could keep my Irish Rose, for her isolation would be more poignant if she were living outside of her culture. In studying the victim list, I found that “Rose” was the most common name.

  There Is an Isle, by Criostoir O’Flynn, gave me wonderful details of a Limerick childhood on the Island Parish. This book, along with the photographs in Through Irish Eyes, published by Smithmark, allowed me to picture the life Rose had left behind in Ireland.

  I read many accounts of Ellis Island, but it was a visit to the restored landmark that helped me to experience how it must have been when the Nolan family saw America for the first time. One thing not described in any of the books was the semicircular window in the registry room, which frames New York as if the city were a huge painting.

  During the course of my research, I visited the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, where assistant archivist Joseph Struble showed me the Lewis W. Hine photo collection. Here I was able to see faces of factory workers from the period and even a flower-making sweatshop that became the model for Moscovitz’s shop in the book.

  There are many resources available about the fire itself, but I found The Triangle Fire, by Leon Stein, to be the most complete. Through newspaper articles from the days following the fire and interviews with survivors, he gives a minute-by-minute account of the fire and a vivid picture of a stunned and grieving city. Though out of print for a number of years, the book has been newly released in paperback.

  I also located a wealth of information and devastating photographs on the comprehensive Web site presented by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University. The Historical Atlas of New York City, by Eric Homberger, was valuable in showing me the location of subways, tenements, and ethnic neighborhoods from the period.

  In piecing together what Rose’s life might have been like, I found Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, by Nan Enstad, to be a fascinating resource, telling about the dime novels, the nickelodeons, and the political implications of fashions popular with working girls of the period. This, along with some accounts from survivors, led me to believe that, though the hours were long, the work was tedious, and the building was unsafe, many of the Triangle girls probably had enjoyed the camaraderie with fellow workers, unaware of the devastation that awaited them.

  In April 1911, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the owners of the Triangle Waist Company, were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter on the grounds that the locked doors had trapped their workers. They were later acquitted of those charges, because the jury couldn’t determine that they had ordered the doors to be locked. Blanck and Harris, known as the “shirtwaist kings,” continued in the garment industry, ignoring the welfare of their workers. But from the ashes of the Triangle fire rose a stronger labor movement. Some of the first worker-safety laws were a direct result of the anger generated by the fire and the acquittal of the owners, as legislators vowed not to let such a tragedy happen again.

  On the day I delivered this manuscript to my editor, the last survivor of the Triangle fire died. Her name was Rose—Rose Rosenfeld Freedman. She was not quite eighteen at the time of the fire and lived to the age of 107. Throughout her life she crusaded for worker safety, telling the story of the fire again and again at labor rallies. A year before her death, Rose Freedman said this in the PBS documentary The Living Century: “To me, 106 is a number. I lived that long, not only on account of my genes, but on account of my attitude. You’ve got to stand up for yourself. Am I right?”

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC, Publishers since 1866

  115 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011

  www.henryholt.com

  Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Copyright © 2002 by Mary Jane Auch. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Auch, Mary Jane.

  Ashes of roses / Mary Jane Auch.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died.

  1. Triangle Shirtwaist Company—Fire, 1911—Juvenile fiction. [1. Triangle Shirtwaist Company—Fire, 1911—Fiction. 2. Immigrants—New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 3. Irish Americans—Fiction. 4. Emigration and immigration—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—History—1898–1951—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A898 As 2002 [Fic]—dc21 2001051896

  ISBN 0-8050-6686-1 / First Edition—2002

  eISBN 9781466852228

  First eBook edition: August 2013