March 25 is the anniversary of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which happened in 1911. The basic facts are pretty well known. The company was among the staunchest opponents of unionization, and had taken on the ILGWU and avoided making even modest concessions on wages and working conditions. To prevent theft (they said), the owners locked every door but one on the floors where the production employees, mostly young immigrant women, worked.
When the fire started, the office staff and the managers got out safely, for the most part, but no one told the workers until it was too late. They were on the 9th floor, and the fire was between them and the only available stairway. The elevator saved some, but stopped working, and a fire escape soon became overloaded and collapsed. By the time it was over, 146 were dead.
The fire fighting equipment of the day was inadequate, with the hoses reaching only to the 6th floor. The most unforgettable images were of the workers who refused to burn to death, and instead jumped to their deaths.
It's obvious that, had the factory been unionized, and working conditions became the subject of bargaining, the tragedy wouldn't have happened, certainly not on that scale. But in one sense, these young women did not die in vain.
On that day, another young woman, originally from Boston, was having tea at a shop nearby. She came from a wealthy family, and was in New York working on a graduate degree from Columbia. Hearing the sirens, she went to the scene, and arrived in time to see the bodies falling. Frances Perkins was horrified, but unlike a lot of us, she acted.
She began to work for better conditions in factories, becoming executive secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York. In that capacity, she met the governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and when FDR became President, he appointed Ms. Perkins to become Secretary of Labor. She was the first woman to serve in the Cabinet in the history of the United States.
Secretary Perkins was a tireless advocate for employee rights, and of the broader New Deal programs which a lot of us think pretty much invented the middle class.
I could end there, but there a couple of other people involved in the aftermath of the fire whose story should be told.
After the fire, New York instituted the State Factory Investigation Committee. Among its members were State Assemblyman Alfred E. Smith and State Senator Robert F. Wagner, the majority leader (Ms. Perkins served as well). Al Smith, of course, went on to become Governor of New York and a champion of the people. He ran for President in 1928, but widespread prosperity (however short-lived) and vicious anti-Catholicism led to his defeat.
State Senator Wagner was later elected to the United States Senate in 1926. When FDR was elected in 1932, along with huge Democratic majorities in Congress, Robert Wagner sponsored what has come to be known as the "Wagner Act." Its formal title is the National Labor Relations Act, and it allowed labor to have a fair shot in organizing and bargaining with management.
Nothing can minimize the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, but it led to much that was good. Frances Perkins said that March 25, 1911, the day of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, was the day the New Deal started.