Lives Cut Short
The Astrology & History of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
March 25, 1911. It is 4:45pm, and the 430 textile workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City are preparing to leave for the day. These mostly poor immigrant women and girls have just spent their 9+ hour shift working in the congested and poorly ventilated workrooms on the 8th and 9th floors of the Asch Building next to Washington Square Park. The 10th floor was reserved for 50 or so executives, administrative employees, managers, and the owners.
Before leaving, the 180 workers on the 9th floor had to navigate massive cutting tables, mountainous piles of fabric scraps, and gas-lit irons and lamps. Meanwhile, the 250 workers on the 10th floor must extract themselves from the closely spaced 280 industrial sewing machines that run 52+ hours per week, churning out the popular shirtwaist blouses that had become the fashion symbol of the “New Woman”. Garments in various stages of completion were hung from every available space, including the gas lamps above their machines.
Selling for around $3 per garment, the shirtwaists were reasonably priced for the time, but still out of financial reach for these women who labored under the exploitative “sweating system” of low wages and abusive managers. Legally paid less than their male counterparts, most of these women would never even open the pay envelope they had just received at the end of the workweek. They would instead go home and turn it over to their parents to help support their family, hopefully receiving a small allowance in return.
Before doing that, the women had to exit through the single unlocked workroom door, where their purses (and sometimes themselves) were searched to ensure they didn’t steal any of those precious fabric scraps. They would then descend flights and flights of intentionally narrow stairs, single file, until they reached the ground floor below and the bustling street outside.
However, many of these women would not reach the ground floor. They would not walk home to hand over their pay envelope. They would never again see their families, nor receive another paltry allowance for their exploited labor.
Just as they began to head towards the single exit, a small fire ignited in one of the fabric scrap piles on the 8th floor. With so much flammable material available, it quickly engulfed the workroom. Workers tried to flee through other exits and stairwells, but they were all locked to prevent theft and unauthorized breaks. Office workers on the 10th floor were told of the fire thanks to a phone call, allowing many of them to safely escape via the elevator, which bypassed the 8th and 9th workroom floors.
Workers on the 9th floor were left unaware of the danger as all calls had to go through the 10th floor switchboard. By the time the flames reached them, they had few options. Some were able to escape to the roof, where remaining executives had fled. Others tried to access the elevator shaft, but there was no car to carry them to safety. Still others climbed out onto window ledges, now having to choose between the raging fire behind them or jumping to the sidewalk below.
Although the fire brigade responded quickly, their ladders only reached the 6th floor, and the hoses could only reach the 7th. Built in 1901, the Asch Building was considered fireproof, but that was of little help to the workers trapped on the floors already engulfed in flames. The fire was contained within 30 minutes, but by then, 146 workers - 123 women and girls, and 23 men - had perished in the deadliest industrial accident in NYC.
How did this tragic fire become so deadly? Was it just bad luck that these workers were there at the wrong time? Was something more sinister behind the event? Could the cosmos give us a clue to why there were so many lives cut short? Today, we look at the astrology and history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and how this tragedy was the “fire that changed America.”
The Rise of Industry
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was the deadliest workplace event in New York prior to 9/11 and one of the deadliest in the U.S., but it was not merely an unfortunate accident. The dangerous conditions that facilitated this devastating event were well known to both politicians and company owners, yet they had done nothing to ameliorate them nor to create a safer working space. To understand how it got to be this way, we need to dial things back a few decades.
The Industrial Revolution arrived in America around 1840, with the textile industry leading modernization. From weaving looms to electric fabric cutting knives to mechanical sewing machines, production of garments and fashion that had once relied on tedious hand-sewing now accelerated at an unprecedented pace. This allowed garments to be produced at a lower cost and sold at a higher volume. It was the perfect recipe for massive profits.
Although this economic progress was halted during the Civil War, it quickly resumed in the post-war Reconstruction Era. The newly reunited U.S. saw booming investments in the latest technology to revolutionize manufacturing and distribution - the railroad.
Of course, not all of those investments paid off. Many investors went broke when the oversaturated railroad market failed to yield the expected returns, resulting in a number of financial panics, bank failures, recessions, and depressions throughout the mid- to late-19th century. Instead of breeding caution, this economic instability only fueled the drive to increase mechanization.
The machines that replaced or greatly reduced manual labor were designed for efficiency, not safety. They operated at a faster pace and even experienced operators could be severely hurt or worse. An average of 500,000 workers per year were injured on the job, and 30,000 were killed as a result of workplace accidents.
The hours were also long and grueling, with many shifts lasting 12 to 14 hours, 6 days a week. During peak production season, workers would labor 7 days a week until the company’s needs were met. Then they could face lay-offs or reductions in hours. Unemployment insurance did not exist.
There was also no overtime pay, no limit on the number of hours they could be demanded to work, and no sick time. With poor nutrition, questionable (at best) sanitation, little medical care, and both crowded working and living conditions, disease was easily spread. Although not included in the official tolls, this exhausting schedule certainly led to additional illness, injury, and early death.
The garment industry was one of the main employers of women, who had few other respectable employment options beyond domestic work. Although dangerous, the textile factories provided many women with a sense of community outside of their restrictive family life. They were also the ideal workers for garment factory owners, as women could legally be paid less than their male counterparts. Good times.
To keep some distance and “plausible deniability” between themselves and the workers, garment factory owners hired contractors to manage the individual production stages. Each manager then hired their own team of workers, setting their hours and wages. The managers were paid a lump sum to deliver a set number of pieces, and the workers would be paid out of that money, keeping the factory owners far removed from the daily laborers.
Of course, there was always a catch. The more that the workers earned, the less the contracted manager would be able to keep, so the workers were required to pay for their own supplies, such as needles and thread, which would then be deducted from their pay. They were also fined for a variety of offenses, such as talking, singing, taking too many breaks, or producing “inferior work”. This was known as the “sweating system”. Yes, as in “sweatshops”.
After all of those shenanigans, workers earned around $7 to $12 per week, which would be equivalent to $236 to $405 per week in today’s currency. This was not enough to live on independently, had they even been allowed to do so, but it was enough to keep their families afloat.
Most of the women never saw their paychecks, as they relinquished them to their parents to supplement the wages of any male relatives who were not in school, or to support family members still living overseas. This wasn’t optional. It was expected for women to prioritize their family’s needs - and certainly the education of their male relatives - over their own well-being.
This was a cultural belief that was deeply ingrained in these communities and when we talk about inherited generational mindsets and Money Wounds, this is what we mean. While the exact expression of this financial abuse may have changed, women are still expected to do the often-uncompensated labor of caring for everyone else except themselves. From bosses to family members, people feel entitled to their resources and to them as a resource. Yes, these practices still haunt us today - three guesses how I know.
Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
By the early 20th century, millions of poor, mostly European immigrants were continually finding their way to these American shores in search of opportunity and freedom. They were the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that had fled famine, revolution, invasion, and religious persecution, daring to cross the Atlantic believing the American Dream awaited their arrival. Instead, they found overt discrimination, squalid living conditions, and exploitative workplaces that cut their lives short by decades.
Still, these immigrants came, and they stayed, toiling night and day for a future they’d likely never see. While they might suffer, their children and their children’s children would have opportunities to succeed and that made their sacrifice worthwhile, or so they told themselves. However, that struggle to give their children better lives would also be a powerful catalyst in the labor movements that began to gain traction during this time, starting with numerous strikes in the Great Upheaval of the late 1870s.
We looked at how this wave had an explosive start in 1886 with Haymarket Was a Riot, and how women successfully fought back against mill owners during the Bread & Roses Strike that followed in 1912, but there were numerous other strikes and unionization efforts in between. It is interesting to note that all of this took place during Pluto in Gemini (approximately 1884 to 1914), when people literally found their voice and wouldn’t shut up in the fight for change as they became the unexpected opposition to Money Culture and its abuse of power, but we’re getting a bit ahead!
One garment that helped expand the fashion industry was the shirtwaist, a high-necked button-down blouse with collar and cuffs often worn by women in the late 19th- and early 20th-century. The shirtwaist was made from lightweight linen or cotton, often unlined, and decorated with lace, ribbons, or embroidery.
The elegant simplicity of the garment allowed for more freedom of movement than traditional Victorian fashion, and it was often paired with a simple A-line skirt for shopping or going to work in factories. As such, it was seen as the symbol of the “New Woman” and became a staple of the suffragette movement. You’ve likely seen countless images of the iconic shirtwaist without realizing its significance in women’s liberation!
This trendy garment was also a major business booster. The NYC garment industry doubled in size from 1900 to 1910, growing to house more than 500 shirtwaist factories that employed more than 40,000 workers. The majority of these workers were Jewish women from Russia or Poland, and Italian women. They were hard workers, but spoke little to no English, were poorly educated, and often could not read. In other words, they were easily exploitable and replaceable.
This was great news for the wealthy business owners. The garment industry was highly competitive but could be equally lucrative for those who could accurately predict trends and keep their costs down. In NYC alone, the industry generated around $100 million per year, which would be $3.2 billion in 2025. NYC produced 10 times the volume of fashion as the next largest manufacturing center, and even into the 21st century, the Garment District was unparalleled as a resource for artists, designers, and creatives the world over.
A little aside: This is an area I knew well from my time in theater. It was a very regular practice for a design team to hop a bus or train to New York with an empty suitcase or two and shop an entire show from the Garment District. I made several of these trips, knowing exactly which stores carried the best quality, selection, and price of fabrics, notions, and trims for my needs. Over the years, I watched it wither in size as owners retired, neighborhoods gentrified, and rent hikes made business unsustainable. CoVID was the final nail for many of the shops I and others loved and relied upon for our creative tools. Perhaps that’s why the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire has always felt so personal to me. Despite the dramatic improvements in workplace safety and labor laws, theater somehow missed the memo. I think my own laborious years in the industry had far more in common with these textile workers than with any modern corporate desk jockey. It’s vitally important to me that their story - and their role in labor history - does not fade away like the vibrant Garment District they once worked so hard to bring to life.
The Shirtwaist Kings
At the forefront of this industry were Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the “Shirtwaist Kings” brothers-in-law who co-owned the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Founded in 1901, they had made millions from operating the largest shirtwaist factory in New York, but much of that profit was earned at the expense of safety.
In 1902, after just one year in business, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was deemed a “high risk” by insurance companies after 2 major fires led to a payout of $32,000. Blanck and Harris then took out larger policies from multiple companies, which was an expensive investment. By the time of the fire in 1911, they held policies from 41 different insurance companies that totaled well above the actual value of their business.
An insurance inspection in 1909 identified numerous safety hazards, including locked exit doors and workers who were not trained in fire drills and spoke no English, thus could not follow evacuation orders. Despite the warnings, Blanck and Harris did nothing to correct the problems, but they may have had their mind on other matters.
Remember the economic volatility of the Reconstruction Era? Well, the early 20th century was not immune to such troubles. The Financial Panic of 1907, AKA: “Banker’s Panic” or “Knickerbocker Crisis”, was a 3-week panic that saw the stock market drop a whopping 50% from its peak the previous year.
Fun Fact: The U.S. had been without a central bank since Andrew Jackson (our 2nd least favorite president) let it expire in 1836, and this is the crisis that helped change that. The 1907 Panic itself was triggered by several stressors on banks, including economic devastation from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, higher interest rates from the Bank of England, and heavy borrowing and speculation in trading based on overleveraged railroad and coal stocks, which then collapsed.
This was also the era of “trust-busting”, where antitrust legislation was gaining ground under President Theodore Roosevelt. Some companies had become monopolies and were fined or broken up to create competition within a sector. While this was good in the long-term, it did have a negative immediate financial impact.
To end the 1907 panic, JP Morgan and other financiers put up their own money to secure loans and restore public confidence. They had done this during previous financial crises, but this practice was becoming unsustainable. The US economy was simply growing too large and too fast for private individuals to keep bailing it out. They petitioned Congress to create a central bank, and the Federal Reserve System was then established “to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable financial and monetary system”.
Remember this when a certain someone starts talking about privatizing the government!
The Great Uprising
It was against this backdrop of economic volatility that factory workers were becoming more exploited and more agitated. They were the ones hit hardest when banks failed and businesses closed. They began to demand more labor rights, safer workplaces, better wages, and some simple damn respect. While many workers still remained suspicious of unions, the power of collective bargaining certainly had its appeal.
In September 1909, workers were fed up with the mistreatment (including sexual harassment) by business owners and their contracted managers. They secretly met with representatives of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). Just attending this meeting could be enough to get them fired and as we saw with the Bread & Roses Strike, unionization efforts were often met with violence.
Blanck and Harris learned about the meeting and threatened their workers the next day: anyone who joined a union would lose their job. They followed through on their words by firing over 100 workers and locking out the remainder. They expected this lock-out would force the women into submission, but they were so wrong. Instead, the entire factory went on strike.
As the largest shirtwaist factory in New York, this strike gained a considerable amount of attention. The women showed up daily in their finest outfits to protest their mistreatment and strikes at other garment factories soon followed. Of course, the protests frequently turned violent, with workers being attacked by police and arrested. They were dragged into court bloody and bruised, where they were then chastised for their unladylike behaviour. One judge had the audacity to claim the women were “on strike against God and nature.” How very Gilead of him.
This only emboldened them to keep pushing back. On November 22, thousands of workers met at the nearby Great Hall of Cooper Union to hear union organizers speak, but it was a young petite worker named Clara Lemlich who galvanized the attendees with her words: “I have no further patience for talk… I move that we go on a general strike.”
The next morning, what had begun as a strike at a few factories had now ballooned to a strike of 15,000 women, with an additional 5,000 joining them on a walk-out the next day. The “Great Uprising of Twenty Thousand” ground the bustling garment industry to a halt. This was the first major strike for women, by women. It united different ethnicities and disparate classes, with wealthy women bailing out and paying the fines of arrested workers, then joining them in their protests. They realized they were indeed stronger together.
Mutable Mayhem
This is a good time to pause and look at the astrology side of things before we see how this “Great Uprising” turned out. This event has a 17° Virgo ASC - details mattered. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire would spark one of the most detailed investigations into workplace safety of the time, which would in turn lead to major national labor law improvements 27 years later.
Chart ruler Mercury, our feisty planet of communications, news, and public speaking, is sitting at 9° Aries in the 7th House of “other parties” and victims. The Sun is in the sign of its exaltation at 4° Aries, applying to Mercury and making a loose (5°) conjunction. Folks, there’s your big fast fire energy!
There are two clusters worth noting. Venus (02° Taurus), Saturn (05°), and the North Node (11° Taurus Rx) are all in the 8th House of oppression and power conflicts. This house also governs death rates, disasters, and what type of victim might perish. Venus rules women and is in the sign of her domicile, but when conjunct restrictive Saturn, which also rules death, she is not at her best. The astrology could not be any more literal here.
The North Node gives us some hope that better days will come as a result of this event, but at what cost? Our Scorpio South Node is conjunct Jupiter Rx at 13°Scorpio. Scorpio is also associated with death, and with Jupiter’s expansive energy, this was indeed an enormous loss. They are sitting in the 2nd House of finances and 3rd House of the press, respectively. This tragedy dominated the news for months to come and money would play a huge role in how this played out.
The second cluster is the 5th house stellium of Uranus (28° Capricorn), the Moon (06° Aquarius), and Mars (8° Aquarius). Uranus is our unconventional planet of “expect the unexpected” and sudden changes, be they good or bad. The Moon is our luminary of the People, and in collective-minded Aquarius, this event did manage to unite the masses for the common good. However, Mars can also be a harbinger of violence and conjunct the Moon, it also amplifies the scale of “common people” lives lost.
The 5th House rules children and many of these workers were barely even teens with the youngest victim only 14 years old. Child labor laws of the time were few and barely enforced. Many of these workers brought home their paychecks to support their aging parents and families. They were children with the responsibilities of adults and none of the privileges.
These clusters are squaring one another, bringing intense challenging energy:
Capricorn Uranus square Taurus Venus - sudden and shocking events about women involving government or corporate structure, values, and resources
Aquarius Moon and Mars square Taurus Venus, Saturn, and North Node - the collective masses are challenged by the death of women to move society forward
The Scorpio South Node/Jupiter conjunction turns this last one into a T-square. How do we deal with a T-square? Look for the missing leg. In this case, that is the 11th House of legislative affairs. The laws simply did not exist to protect these workers, but that would begin to change.
One interesting fact is that many of the social and outer planets (Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) and Chiron (04° Pisces) are all in the same signs as during the 1912 Bread & Roses Strike, where women were also the major agents of reform. All of our angles are also in mutable signs (17° Virgo ASC, 15° Sagittarius IC, 17° Pisces DSC, and 15° Gemini MC), and this inferno would be the catalyst for national change.
Adding to that mutable mayhem is 25° Pluto in Gemini. Pluto is our tiny planet of massive transformation, challenging established systems to tear down power structures that no longer serve. This is amplified by the mutable energy of Gemini, a sign of polarity and duality who likes to do things twice and take pictures to prove it. Gemini is also a very social sign, so it is no surprise that we see groups with seemingly nothing in common come together during this transit to effect tremendous social reform.
Gemini is ruled by Mercury, and it makes sense that this tragedy occurred as Mercury was transiting fiery Aries. Mercury also rules news, media, and communications. This fire dominated the news and elevated the plight of garment workers to a level that could no longer be ignored.
I honestly expected to see a true Yod here, but instead we have another Almost Yod, which is Totally Not a Real Astrological Aspect™, but it is a configuration we also saw appear in the Reichstag Fire chart. As I said there, seeing two quincunx aspects crossed at the apex gives a very Ghostbusters “Don’t cross the streams!” vibe. It’s interesting that both were present in large fires that produced transformative laws.
In this case, the Scorpio Jupiter/SN conjunction is quincunx our Gemini MC, and Gemini Pluto is quincunx Capricorn Uranus. A quincunx brings uncomfortable energy that sits between an opposition and a trine. It often asks us to face something we’ve been avoiding, but from an intentionally awkward perspective.
Whenever Pluto and Uranus get together for a cosmic kegger, there is always pain and regret to follow. These planets have no sense of boundaries or self-control. They’re the ultimate “dude, hold my beer” energy and the rest of us pay the price for their shenanigans. This fire demanded that those who held the power (Pluto) be held accountable for how they exploited literal children (5H) to build their business (Capricorn).
So, how did this all work out? Were the Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the millionaire owners of the dangerous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, actually punished for the 146 lives lost?
Pointing Fingers
At first, neither NYC Mayor Gaynor, nor NY Governor John Dix, wanted anything to do with the fire. The Fire Department blamed the Building Department, claiming the Asch Building was unsuitable for factory work. Meanwhile, over 100,000 people made their way through a makeshift morgue on the 26th Street Pier in a desperate attempt to find their missing family members. Through it all, the cries for accountability grew ever louder even as the dead were being identified, a task that would not remain complete for 100 years, when historian Michael Hirsch finally identified the remaining unnamed victims.
Attorney General Charles Whitman had seen the fire for himself and began to investigate. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory had already suffered 2 major, although non-lethal, fires in 1902, and they had been warned of dangerous conditions during the insurance inspection in 1909. Remember those 41 insurance policies they held? They paid out nearly $200,000 after the 1911 blaze. Blanck and Harris immediately tried to open up a new factory that was found to have the exact same safety concerns.
On April 11, Whitman issued indictments for Blanck and Harris on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter because of the locked exits and stairwell. When the case finally went to trial in December, hundreds of angry mourners, many of them mothers and sisters of the deceased, were at the courthouse to vocalize their rage.
The trial lasted for 3 weeks, and many of the fire survivors testified to what they experienced both on and prior to that terrible day. They were subjected to dehumanizing cross-examination by renowned defense attorney Max Stauer, who accused them of falsifying their accounts. When they would not relent, he then shifted to implying the fire was only deadly because the women had panicked, thus preventing their safe escape. Ah, yes… the “emotional female” defense.
It got worse. In further efforts to discredit the witnesses, Stauer focused on their lack of education and immigrant status, portraying them as “un-American”. He accused one woman who remained steadfast in her testimony of “liking to argue.” When another shared her harrowing story of escaping the blaze, Stauer literally asked her what she was wearing at the time: “Was your skirt about as tight as the one you’ve got on now?” The fucking audacity of this man.
The jury deliberated for a mere hour and 45 minutes before returning their verdict. Blanck and Harris were acquitted on all counts. Eventually, they were found liable for wrongful death in subsequent civil suits and paid $75 per victim to settle the claims.
However, this paled in comparison to the over $400 per victim they had received from the multiple insurance policies. Yes, Blanck and Harris actually turned a profit on this deadly inferno. Although there was an attempt to indict them a second time, jeopardy had already attached, and they were unable to be prosecuted.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory did finally cease operations in 1918, but Blanck and Harris were still wealthy and went on to pursue new business endeavors.
Passing Laws
But where the law of the courts had failed the workers and fire victims, the law of the legislative chamber would champion their cause. On April 2, the Metropolitan Opera House overflowed as thousands of workers and their supporters met to call for reform. Another young fire survivor named Rose Schneiderman took the stage and gave voice to the now voiceless:
“I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the fire-proof structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.
This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap, and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job that it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.
We have tried you, citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and daughters and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning to us - warning that we must be intensely orderly and must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse [prison] just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back when we rise into the conditions that make life bearable.
I can’t talk of fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”
Schneiderman’s words moved the crowd deeply, but they were given further weight just 3 days later when the ILGWU held a funeral for the 7 remaining unidentified victims. Despite the cold April rain, 400,000 New Yorkers lined the streets to silently pay their final respects. Adding insult to injury, officials had refused to release the victims’ bodies to the union. 120,000 mourners, including women of all classes and workers who managed to escape the blaze, silently walked the entire route behind empty hearses.
This is about the time that the Democratic party as we know it began to take shape, moving from the side of industrialists and big business towards supporting workers’ rights, unions, and more progressive workplace reforms. At the legislative forefront were State Senator Robert Wagner and Assemblyman Alfred Smith. When Governor Dix finally created the Factory Investigating Commission on June 30, they were named chair and vice-chair respectively.
The FIC was given broad investigatory powers to develop meaningful legislation to improve workplace safety. Another member of the FIC was a young woman named Frances Perkins, who had also been a witness to the fire. Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, and Pauline Newman (another fire survivor) were also FIC members.
Together they gave Wagner and Smith a brutally honest education about the working conditions of the day. They were taken on unscheduled visits to garment factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where they navigated cramped workspaces and narrow stairs. They crawled out onto so-called fire escapes covered in ice that stopped well above the ground. They saw the deadly looms, cutters, and other machines in action. They were woken up before dawn to see canneries employing 5-year-old children to shell peas and dragged out late at night to see thousands of women workers finally coming off their long shift.
Women get shit done.
All of this had the desired impact. In the first year alone, the FIC inspected more than a thousand factories and interviewed hundreds of witnesses. As their findings became clear during the weekly public hearings, the long-sought reforms turned into legislation. Over the next few years, nearly 3 dozen laws would be passed regarding workplace safety standards, worker’s compensation, and child labor. They served as a model for reform in other states and eventually, the nation.
Laws were also passed that limited the number of hours women could work and also forbade them from working at night. This is one of those tricky spots in the labor rights cause. While some still see this as a win for protecting women, it was also a gender-based financial restriction that kept an already lower-earning population even more marginalized. These types of laws also sparked the Bread & Roses Strike, so there can be unintended harmful consequences in even the best-meaning of efforts.
A Legacy of Labor
Frances Perkins called the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire “a turning point” that changed “American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility” and her work did not stop with the FIC. She continued her advocacy within the labor movement including an appointment as the first woman industrial commissioner when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1928.
Perkins then became the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt upon his inauguration in 1933, holding that position until his death in 1945. She was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and thus in the presidential line of succession. Perkins actually refused to accept this position until she knew the president would support her mission of improving worker protections.
FDR kept his word, signing the Fair Labor Standards Act into law on June 25, 1938. As part of the New Deal, the FLSA established many workers’ rights including minimum wage, an 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek, and overtime at time-and-a-half for hours over 40. It also eliminated or reduced child labor in many dangerous sectors. Perkins was involved in the creation of the FLSA and also helped design the Social Security Act of 1935.
The FLSA has been expanded many times over the years to further protect workers, but those advancements are now in danger of being gutted by Project 2025. Child labor laws, the recognition of unions, overtime pay, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and more are all in the crosshairs of this administration.
Why? For the same reason that Blanck and Harris ignored the insurance company’s safety recommendations: workers are disposable, but profits are not.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is a painful reminder that every single labor law and workplace protection we have today has been written in blood. Reformers were continual grains of sand clogging up the system they were unwillingly part of to secure the rights we have today.
They faced violence, intimidation, and financial restriction. For many, they had everything to lose by speaking out, but at the same time, they were so oppressed that they had nothing left to lose. The “sweating system” was killing them anyway, so they might as well go out swinging.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire truly was the “fire that changed America”. As we remember the 146 garment workers killed that day, ask yourself: What can I do to prevent the efforts and sacrifices made by these labor rights advocates from going down the ultraconservative drain?
We owe them not simply our thanks and recognition, but our own willingness to defend the rights they sacrificed to secure.