Triangle: The Fire That Changed America By David Von Drehle

In his book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David Von Drehle successfully argues that factory conditions during the Second Industrial Revolution were extremely dangerous and unfair. To argue this, Von Drehle uses the events leading up to as well as the consequences the Triangle Waist Company fire. The book is divided into 17 contents. The first is the prologue, in which the author gives a brief summary of the Triangle Waist Company fire and introduces some key players who show up later in the book. Chapters 1 through 9 describe the events surrounding the catastrophic factory fire at the Triangle Waist Company. This disaster resulted in 146 dead due to the lack of workplace safety precautions, which Von Drehle described as very frequent during the time period. The beginning chapters focus on describing the unfair treatment of factory workers, mostly females, children, and immigrants, in America during the early 20th century, as well as the workers' unions formed as a way to protest the unfair work conditions. The later chapters …show more content…
Von Drehle’s outstanding use of primary sources and other sources give a very detailed idea of what it was like to be a factory worker during the Second Industrial Revolution. The tragedy of the Triangle fire gives a small but telling look into how unfairly factory workers were treated. There were more measures taken to ensure that workers didn’t protest than there were safety measures, considering how many workers died because they were locked in the building and couldn’t escape. The aspects of the book that described factory “safety” precautions in detail provided the most convincing aspect of the book, for reading first-hand accounts of how dangerous workplaces were in the 20th century supplies the reader with an inarguable fact that proves Drehle’s main