Triangle Fire Research Paper

When dealing with change and progress in the early portion of the twentieth century in America, one organization and one event come to mind. In 1911, the Triangle Waist Company building caught fire and several of workers in the building didn’t make it out alive. The majority of the workers were young females who worked long hours for little pay and ruthless conditions. Those who had the ability to fight for the women and victims did, pursuing ideas such as unions, for workers’ rights. The owners of the company would be pardoned eventually but their reputation tarnished by the public opinion of them. Many of the victims in the fire were young girls, particularly immigrants from Eastern Europe. Some of the key players pushing for more worker’s …show more content…
The business owners with a lot of money lobbied the state and got who they wanted in the senate elected. The big business owners bought the senate seats in short, and got policies they wanted pushed through and the senators who wanted to remain in Washington kept pushing those bills through and in turn, hurt the small, less important constituents. This ties to the Triangle Fire as many of the people who observed saw the federal government do nothing for the victims and make no law for working conditions. The federal government benefitted the side of big business by not doing …show more content…
Many of the workers in the shirtwaist factories were women, and especially young immigrant women. At the occurrence of the fire at the Triangle Factory, many of the workers couldn’t escape from their workplace, as their working quarters were very confined, for the ability of the owners to jam pack the floor with as many machines as possible to put out as much product as possible, therefore bringing in as much revenue that they could. Many of the workers found solace in their coworkers as they all disliked the conditions they were in but, the sisterhood kept them going. As the public’s attention was drawn to the magnitude of the incident and the violations that the owners of the factory continued to practice concerning the safety of workers like locking fire escapes and the close quarters of the machines. The public wanted justice for the victims.
The people got the attention of the state legislators, and eventually pieces of legislation were put into place, acknowledging working conditions and negotiation terms between owners and labor unions. When the fire broke out, the workers couldn’t escape as the tight quarters of the working areas didn’t allow them to move promptly. Also the fire escapes were locked, which the public found out about that made them agitated even more. As