Essay On Triangle Shirtwaist Labor

Acclaimed playwright, actor, and poet William Shakespeare portrayed human conflict and impoverishment in many of his distinguished plays. In the play “Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare provided a glimpse into human misfortune through a character named Claudio, “The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope” (Act III, Scene II). The excerpt correlates to the thoughts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company workers. Inhumane conditions of sweatshops, disregard of safety regulations, and inadequate laws created by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were the origin of the horrendous fire in 1911. Inhumane conditions of sweatshops caused the inevitable Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire and death of the 146 immigrant women workers. Sweatshops were infamous for their unsanitary and dangerous working conditions; furthermore, many sweatshop owners subcontracted and did not know the pay rate of their workers or how many employees their companies hired. In the company, piles of garbage were strewn about, buckets were misplaced, and the building was never cleaned. Owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, subcontracted their company and on the day of the fire chained the doors to prevent employee theft. Harris and Blanck’s inexcusable behavior and negligence of the …show more content…
The only fire escape in the building collapsed during the fire and the locked doors trapped the workers in the building. There were very few buckets of water to douse the fire and the firefighters’ ladders were too short to reach the top floors of the building. The company builders and owners did not provide any means to extinguish a fire; as a consequence, in trying to escape the spreading fire, women jumped out the windows to their death. To the owners, the workers’ safety was the last priority compared to producing products and creating