Labor Day Throwback: A Fire That Changed America

Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire_on_March_25_-_1911
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, one of the deadliest in US history, killed 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23. Even the corrupt Tammany Hall politicians understood that reforms were necessary, investigated the catastrophe and inspected other factories, leading to unprecedented regulations of worker conditions that eventually spread nationwide and inspired the New Deal itself.

FDR Labor Secretary Frances Perkins (the first woman Cabinet member in U.S. history): “The New Deal began on March 25, 1911, the day the Triangle Factory burned. We banded ourselves together, moved by a sense of stricken guilt to prevent this from ever happening again. “

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

59 thoughts on “Labor Day Throwback: A Fire That Changed America”

  1. Excellent Post. How many people think Labor Day is just another long weekend wrapped up in super sales involving cars & cheap furniture ( ironically assembled overseas )? The reality of bodies on fire hitting the NYC pavement doesn’t quite fit into “the last weekend of summer.” Guess ignorance maintains bliss.

  2. “Guess ignorance maintains bliss”

    sjwny, funny you should mention that given the current state of the electorate.  coincidentally came upon reading about a nifty explanation for the drumpf…. the dunning-kruger effect. that is “if you’re incompetent you can’t know you’re incompetent” which means inept people overestimate their skills. [got this gem of wisdom from the  2016 old farmer’s almanac].

    wiki: dunning-kruger effect

    Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

    fail to recognize their own lack of skill
    fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
    fail to accurately gauge skill in others
    recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill

  3. a little bit of history from dept of labor: The Job Safety Law of 1970: Its Passage Was Perilous

    On December 29, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act, which gave the Federal Government the authority to set and enforce safety and health standards for most of the country’s workers.  This act was the result of a hard fought legislative battle which began in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson unsuccessfully sought a similar measure. However, the roots of government regulation of workplace hazards date back to the late 19th century.

    [….]

    The Progressive Era and the growth of mass circulation newspapers and national magazines helped forge a national movement for workers’ safety and health. In 1907, 362 coal miners were killed at Monongah, W. Va., in the worst U.S. mine disaster. This widely publicized tragedy shocked the Nation and led to the creation in 1910 of the U.S. Bureau of Mines to promote mine safety.
    That same year William B. Hard, a muckraking journalist, published an article in Everybody’s Magazine titled, “Making Steel and Killing Men,” based on his firsthand investigations of a Chicago mill. Hard estimated that every year, out of a work force of 10,000 workers, 1,200 were killed or seriously injured. He urged the steel industry to use its technical knowledge to reduce this casualty rate.
    workers in many fields are still dying. yet there are many in the conservative and libertarian ranks that detest osha regs.
     

  4. read this as either a “don’t countout  your chick before she hatches” story or a shout out of “the sky is falling! the sky is falling!” .

    raw story: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit as he consolidated support among his party’s likely voters in recent weeks, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released Friday.

    The poll showed 40 percent of likely voters supporting Trump and 39 percent backing Clinton for the week of Aug. 26 to Sept. 1. Clinton’s support has dropped steadily in the weekly tracking poll since Aug. 25, eliminating what had been a eight-point lead for her.

  5. carl Hiaasen: Can Trump fan Rubio hold on to that last shred of dignity?
    Oh God, what do we do if Donald calls?
    Dodge him, of course, unless his poll numbers improve substantially. Even then, Rubio and McCain must proceed with caution.
    Option One is your basic dull photo, a snapshot with Trump backstage somewhere. No hugs from the senators — just a chilly handshake, a stiff smile and a speedy exit.
    Option Two would be a more painful cave-in, actually stepping on the same stage with Trump. If he is within five points of Hillary Clinton in the polls, Rubio or McCain might just grit their teeth and give him half a hug.
    Option Three, the most extreme, would be taking the microphone and speaking at a Trump campaign rally, while he stands there beaming. There would be full hugs, handshakes and agonizing fake camaraderie – in other words, the ultimate abandonment of self-respect by Rubio and McCain.
    [….]
    Because of Trump’s tendency to spontaneously offend large segments of voters, public contact with him remains risky for any politician. Ask Enrique Peña Nieto, the president of Mexico, who’s being pummeled from all sides for meeting with the man nicknamed El Payaso (the clown).

  6. For those not familiar with the musical Ragtime, it is all about the clash of races and cultures in a changing America at the turn of the century. Throughout the show real historical characters are used to advance the story and develop character.  There are two that fit in with today’s topic.

    The Night That Emma Goldman Spoke at Union Square & Henry Ford

     

  7. hope you get a chance to read the entire Hiaasen link above. he really has some zingers re Rubio/McCain dilemma, for example:

    The “bone spurs” that spared Trump from military service didn’t keep him off his preferred field of battle, the tennis court. He was courageously working on his backhand while McCain was being tortured in a rat-hole prison camp in North Vietnam.

    Now we’re subjected to the sorry spectacle of a true war hero who is so scared of losing a few votes that he allows himself — and other POWs — to be insulted by a tender-footed phony who never saw a day of combat.

  8. we learned about the triangle fire in religious school

    must be from the LA times or Fox poll  better check to see the pollsters rating before you start yelling the sky is falling

    state by state polls show her substantially ahead
    trump isn’t ahead in either of his home states
     

  9. good for them. muchos kudos.

    new Yorker: Introducing a New Series: Trump and the Truth

    Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, does not so much struggle with the truth as strangle it altogether. He lies to avoid. He lies to inflame. He lies to promote and to preen. Sometimes he seems to lie just for the hell of it. He traffics in conspiracy theories that he cannot possibly believe and in grotesque promises that he cannot possibly fulfill. When found out, he changes the subject—or lies larger.
    We are not alone in noticing this characteristic of Trump’s. It has been the central preoccupation of much of the decent journalism produced in the past year. Trump’s capacity for lying inspires equal parts awe and revulsion. Even journalists raised in the Nixon era cannot but be impressed. The accounting is revealing and requires updating on a daily basis. Fact-checking sites such as Politifact have focussed an intelligent lens on Trump, and so have many excellent reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times.
    Trump himself is perfectly aware of his habits of mind. In “The Art of the Deal,” a book he claims to have written but did not, he cops to being a master of “truthful hyperbole”:

    You have to understand where I was coming from. While there are certainly honorable people in the real-estate business, I was more accustomed to the sort of people with whom you don’t want to waste the effort of a handshake because you know it’s meaningless.

    Those sentences, like all the other sentences in “The Art of the Deal,” were ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, who recently, in these pages, denounced Trump as pathologically unfamiliar with the notion of truth. “Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz told Jane Mayer. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”
    In recent weeks, reporters and the fact-checking department at The New Yorker have put their efforts into a series of reported essays about Trump and lying. No one here is suggesting that Trump is the only politician ever to unleash a whopper. In fact, Hillary Clinton has had her bald-faced moments—moments that are too kindly described as “lawyerly.” But, in the scale and in the depth of his lying, Donald Trump is in another category; this effort, which begins with Eyal Press’s essay on Trump and immigration and will continue every week through the election, is by way of keeping track of a record that appears to know no bounds, and certainly no shame.

  10. nytimes Strong Oklahoma Earthquake Felt From Nebraska to Texas
    PAWNEE, Okla. — One of Oklahoma’s largest earthquakes on record rattled other parts of the Midwest on Saturday from Nebraska to North Texas, and likely will turn new attention to the practice of disposing oil and gas field wastewater deep underground.
    The United States Geological Survey said a 5.6 magnitude earthquake happened at 7:02 a.m. Saturday in north-central Oklahoma, a key energy-producing region. That matches a November 2011 quake in the same region.

  11. There are some things that shouldn’t change.  I think school should start the Wednesday after Labor Day

  12. KGC – I think school should be year round.  The idea that our kids need to be loose in the world for the summer is outdated.  There are no crops to plant.  Our educational ratings are abysmal given the wealth of our society.

    And there still is a path for Trump to win this thing.  The polls are starting to tighten a bit – RCP has the aggregate favoring Clinton by 4.1 now.  The Repubs that I know who attend their committee meetings tell me that the push is that they are obligated to support Trump since he’s the nominee.  When they leave the meeting they find that someone has slapped Trump bumper stickers on their bumper, or even worse, on the back window of their pickup, right over the decal of a stick figure holding a fishing pole while peeing over the side of a boat.

    We know the Trump party is willing to say or do anything to get their man elected.  I’m looking for an October surprise – a big one.  It most likely will not be true, but it will be creative and timed to shift the polls just enough so recovery before the election will be difficult.  The Clinton camp is suffering from an extreme case of “groupthink”.  She’s not coming out enough and definitely not being aggressive enough.  The picture of him standing next to the Mexican President, looking presidential, made me ill.  The Democrats have a flawed candidate – and the American people are not all that smart.

    And of course, we could have a major terrorist attack – which would kick the anti-Muslim sentiment through the roof – and punch Trumps ticket.

  13. “The picture of him standing next to the Mexican President, looking presidential, made me ill.  The Democrats have a flawed candidate – and the American people are not all that smart.”

    Dvitale300

    Don’t we always have candidates that are flawed. Humans are flawed.. I refuse to buy 25 years of right wing nonsense regarding HRC.. I guess to some Trump looked Presidential

    because he didn’t say anything offense for his time in Mexico and yes sickening.. Also agree on the American people not being that smart.. How could we say otherwise after GWB and now Trump…

     

  14. dv, agree* with most of what you wrote. but the campaigning shouldn’t be completely heaped on her shoulders. high power surrogates need to show up if they care about this country and be positive in support of her.  too many have been too silent and “bad things happen when good people do nothing” as is said.  perhaps what may help is this item on the to-do list to be successfully addressed

    nbcnews: Here’s Hillary Clinton’s Back-to-School To-Do List

    Assemble the team: Democrats have yet to deploy the full firepower of their surrogate arsenal, but it’s coming, say Clinton aides. Bernie Sanders will hit the trail for Clinton in New Hampshire on Monday, Bill Clinton is coming back from Siberia on Tuesday to campaign in North Carolina, and President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden will be out again soon. As down ballot races pick up steam, almost every Democratic candidate in America will amplify Clinton’s message by using Trump as a cudgel against their Republican opponents.

    why aren’t all (not just those up for election this year) the democratic senators out on the trail… whether they like her or not, it’s to their and the country’s benefit to see that she’s elected.

    *do NOT agree about the “flawed” candidate tho unless you mean she has shows the dents and scars as a victim of media maiming.

  15. Nobody in California thought he looked presidential — the only people who thought that are people who already support him

    and he blew it pretty quickly by acting like himself just a few hours later  and the president of Mexico pretty much destroyed the

    idea of him as a tough negotiator

  16. Trump’s already been dumped by down ballot Republicans (everywhere except Texas)

    And if Texas wants to leave the union –I’m pretty sure no one would object

  17. Hillary Clinton, rarely seen, rarely heard
    The Democrat lets reporters trail her but tucks them away to keep them out of sight and herself out of reach. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-reporters-press-227700

    By Annie Karni

    Yep, for Annie and her fellow beltway journalists this is their way to put the heat on HRC to give them press conferences..

    I wish HRC would give press conferences more just to shut them down. Ah but it really wouldn’t so i have to go with HRC and the campaigns judgement.. Oh and this thing they do of highlighting all the fundraisers HRC does, sour grapes.. It’s the system and that’s what it takes to win..

  18. starting Tuesday they will be on the same plane and then the story will be she bowed to pressure

    the media sucks the reason we have Tump is because the so called journalists did not do their jobs

    still aren’t..all they do is work for ad revenues ..not the same as journalism

  19. how does one fight back years of media repeating that “people question her trustworthiness” and “people say she’s not likeable”

    Joseph Goebels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

  20. Let’s take a closer look at  the so called reporters who are working on the presidential campaigns

    the trump people seem to suffer from Stockholm syndrome

  21. Trump is making a political speech in a church and promising them to lift tax exempt status

    He makes me sick and I have to go to work

  22. Pat

    So true. We have witnessed this over and over with HRC.. HRC is the most investigated person in the world and i got to believe if there had been any there, there those Republican vultures would have found it.. Really or is the narrative the Clintons are “Super Hero” type criminals that have superhuman powers to bend their adversaries minds to their will… Ridiculous..

  23. KGC

    Just listening to the man let alone looking at him gives me indigestion.. I feel for you, really i do.. Love your commentary its so real and fun. ?

  24. nbc:

    At Great Faith International Ministries, security was tight, first turning away those without tickets. Black unmarked police cars followed behind a Detroit police Bearcat, a formidable armored vehicle, as security.

    Secret Service was heavy inside the lobby of the church and ordered people to go through metal detectors.

     

    guess drumpf believes in 2nd amdmt for whites only.  didn’t he brag off about allowing gun toters at his wild west political dos?

  25. “She understands that news media have certain leeway in a presidential campaign, but outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency,”

    guess whose lawyer said that.  nope not Hillary’s.

    from Atlantic’s Can Melania Trump Win Her Libel Lawsuit?
    The Republican presidential nominee’s wife has sued a blogger and a prominent British tabloid over stories alleging she was a sex worker.

  26. Watching Ohio State v Bowling Green. OSU is winning 14-7 towards the end of the first quarter. They look full of spirit and enthusiasm despite their lack of experience. I foresee a decent season for the Buckeyes.

    Pogo, I did watch the USC-Vandy game yesterday. SC won it fair and square. This morning’s paper said the players were really apprehensive when they walked through the tunnel for their half-time counseling. It went on to report that Coach Boom didn’t boom, but offered encouragement and used the dismal first quarter as a teaching example. (Buckeyes just got their third TD–3 minutes left in 1st qtr)

    I thought they did well in the second half for a ‘new’ team. There were lots of weather interruptions in my recording, but the last few minutes it appeared they were playing inspired ball. It was a win of which to be proud.

  27. PatD

    Wasn’t it Old Hickory’s missus who was publicly trashed/humiliated? I don’t blame Mr Jackson for reacting negatively.

  28. Flatus, didn’t know there was any controversy about SC’s comeback.   I was happy they did.

    I’m watching WVU Mizzou.   Don’t care much.  Doing quick check ins on Houst on OU.  OU has their hands full – down by 9 just past midway through the 3d and Houston is moving into fg range. Now Houston’s up by 16.

  29. pogo, ya gonna watch the tide come in tonight?  looks like they got a little shook up this a.m.

    al Alabama football players wake up to earthquake before USC game

  30. well, here’s something for bid and ping to get their juices flowing. be ready for some tirades.

    nytimes:
    At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”
    “I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.
    Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public. But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.
    And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.

  31. bink, thanks, the boat pic is a work of photographic artistry.  the miner ladies reminded me of a dutch painting.

  32. OU becomes the first top 10 victim this season.   Good on Houston.

    Congrats to OSU. Not much suspense or surprise there

  33. Hmm, I wonder if LSU will show up for the 2nd 1/4.  So far they may as well have stayed in the locker room.

  34. Patd, I also plan to do check ins on the Clemson – Auburn game this evening. Wish I could say that I’m pulling for Auburn but really that would be a lie.

  35. For entertainment I’m binge watching Midsomer Murders on Acorn.  Didn’t realize that all the seasons after number 11 hadn’t been shown on PBS so I now have six years worth of British mayhem in tiny respectable bucolic villages.

     

  36. Flatus,  77-10 is insane.  BGSU is just enjoying the revenue.  They sure couldn’t have been enjoying the game.

  37. I have this prediction – if her numbers are dropping these people are not going to trump they are going to Gary Johnson.

     

  38. Pogo

    I suspect OSU felt compelled to have an outlandish victory, even with new players, to show the early departees from last year that their success was because of the OSU model and that they don’t have possession of the model because they departed early. The proof of that is in the performance of the new and lesser experienced teammates. Coach is thinking that the departees will struggle during their pro careers, struggle more than they needed to if they had stayed. He’ll use that fact as a tool to stabilize his teams.

  39. Flatus,  that’s Prolly true.  Unfortunately, Alabama doesn’t seem compelled to do the same. They look like crap on offense.

  40. Trump Adviser Michele Bachmann Warns That ‘This Is The Last Election’
    Allegra Kirkland

    Former congresswoman and regular predictor of the impending apocalypse Michele Bachmann said in a Friday interview that the 2016 presidential race would be the country’s “last election.”

    “I don’t want to be melodramatic but I do want to be truthful,” the evangelical Christian said in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Brody File.” “I believe without a shadow of a doubt this is the last election. This is it. This is the last election.”
    Bachmann, who advises Donald Trump on religious issues and foreign policy, explained that demographic change in the United States posed a disadvantage to Republican candidates since the country’s growing share of minority voters were more inclined to vote for Democrats.
    “It’s a math problem of demographics and a changing United States,” she said. “If you look at the numbers of people who vote and who lives in the country and who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to bring in to the country, this is the last election when we even have a chance to vote for somebody who will stand up for godly moral principles. This is it.”
    Bachmann said that if Clinton were elected, she would offer “wholesale amnesty” to undocumented immigrants “so that Republicans will never again have the chance at winning Florida or Texas” and therefore be unable to secure the White House.
    “She’s going to change the demographics of the United States so that no Republican will ever win again,” Bachmann insisted.

  41. The Reason There Won’t Be a Great Wall of trumplandia

    The wall can be built in only one of 3 places.

    1. The Great Deadbeat could build the Wall on the US side of the river. This would give the Rio Grande to Mexico, end US irrigation in So Texas, and destroy the Texas cotton, citrus, and veg industries.

    2. The Great Deadbeat could try to build the wall in Mexico. Mexico would refuse to allow it. The Great negotiator could invade Mexico, and noKorea could put nuclear-tipped missiles in Monterey and Baja aimed at San Antonio and San Diego.

    3. The Great Deadbeat could place the $1,000,000,000,000.00 Great Wall of trump in the center of the Rio Grande. Human traffickers would then force ‘illegal immigrants’ to tunnel under the river at a total cost of $67.19 (the price of drinking water and day old tacos).

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