Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Reflection

This paper made me read a lot. Reading a trial can be tedious, however, it made me realize how hard life was for the victims and the immediate impact this tragedy had in 1911. Also, I learned about Margaret Schwartz, a 24 year old victim who died in the fire, it sure helped me to take more personal after I learned about her life.

Inequality is the Key

Nothing can be recognized. Ashes and the smell of burned wood and flesh can be perceived at the mere glance of it. But the tragedy behind the fire is more than the fire itself. The tenth floor is a disaster, but only two out of the 70 employees of the floor were killed. One Key made the difference, in other words, inequality is the “Key.”

I selected the picture number 19 that shows the 10^th floor after the fire. I decided to write about this picture because, even though other pictures were far more graphic, this picture reflects to me a greater tragedy, inequality, and just the absence of bodies and the high rate of survival for the floor where executives and supervisors were is disgusting to me.

Definitively, an event that shocked the public and was a “whistle-blower” to lawmakers about the inequality and lack of regulations in American Factories. The one inference I can make after looking at the picture is that regular workers were treated different than their executives, the tenth floor housed “company executives, the switchboard, 40 garment pressers, inspectors, and the packing and shipping room”. Not a single body was found on this floor. A very sharp contrast with the 9^th floor were many of the workers, mostly women, who were there that Saturday night to make some overtime. They either burned to death or jumped to avoid the flames because of “management locking the emergency exits to malingering” (Brinkley 2010, 532). Some of them were melted while holding the lock of the emergency exit.

From the picture, nothing is clearly recognizable between the ashes and tangled shapes, nothing was left standing. The only object I can somehow resemble to be an object is a bucket in the bottom-center of the picture, everything else is a déjà-vu of an after picture of an atomic-bomb attack or 9/11. My biggest emotion triggered by the image is anger. The lack of bodies in this picture is such a contrast with other shots where bodies are photographed, and this made me think that the “The Captain sinks with his Boat” rule sure didn’t apply here.

The article I chose in order to gain a broader perspective on the facts was the Transcript of the Trial which I downloaded from Cornell University’s website as a PDF. I read the closing arguments of the trial where I gained a better understanding of the facts. I learned about a woman named Margaret Schwartz, who, at the time of the fire was twenty four years-of-age and in good health, she died from Asphyxiation that night. It made it a lot more real to me to get acquainted with a personal story. The transcript exposes the last minutes of her life trying to get out of the 9^th floor where the doors opened inwardly and were locked, making it impossible to get out. Reflecting back to my picture of choice, it is clear that Margaret didn’t have a chance, not because of the company where she worked, but because she worked on the 9^th floor, not on the 10^th. It was also very touching to me the arguments presented by the attorney who was presenting the case as he quoted regulations that are laughable by today’s standards to show the worker’s rights.

The photograph adds a lot to the account of the Textbook due to the devastation that it showed. Also because it supports the textbook claim that management was somehow responsible for the deaths of the locked-in workers as the picture shows a completely burnt floor but no bodies. “Management had locked the emergency exits to prevent malingering”( Brinkley 2010, 532). The concept alone is pathetic, I learned there were not very many regulations, but just the fact that people were being locked down to improve production is shocking.