46 pages • 1 hour read
David Von DrehleTriangle: The Fire That Changed America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 9-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Trial”
In his final chapter, Von Drehle focuses on the trial of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. After hearing testimonies from survivors, District Attorney Charles Whitman was certain that the Washington Place doors in the factory had been locked during the fire. He instructed Barney Flood, his chief detective, to find the lock in the debris, ash, and char. Sixteen days after the fire, investigators found a portion of the door with a shot bolt still intact, proving what Whitman suspected. Von Drehle points out that “the law said that factory doors could not be kept locked during working hours. But the bolt spoke for itself” (220). Whitman and the lawyers he appointed to try the case, Charles Bostwick and J. Robert Rubin, further planned to show that the owners purposely kept the doors locked because they wanted all employees to leave through the Greene Street exit so they could be searched. The author also explains that having the door locked was a misdemeanor, but that the resulting loss of life elevated it to manslaughter—a felony carrying up to a 20-year prison sentence.
Blanck and Harris were soon indicted, arrested, and arraigned, charged with manslaughter. Once the owners realized they were to be indicted, they set out to get “the best lawyer money could buy” (221). That man was Max D. Steuer, a Tammany Hall-affiliated lawyer and the personal attorney of Big Tim Sullivan, a New York politician and prominent leader in Tammany Hall. Steuer’s reputation was legendary, with one jurist even saying that he was “the greatest trial lawyer of our time” (222-23). The trial began on December 4, 1911, and was heard by Justice Thomas C. T. Crain. While Bostwick and Rubin wanted to present the horrifying details about workers jumping to their deaths, Crain gave Steuer an early victory when he allowed almost no mention of any details from outside the building, specifically about the faulty fire escape or those who jumped from the windows (235). The heart of the prosecution’s case was the locked door, and the jury heard countless witnesses describing it. Steuer’s strategy was to argue that the fire in the stairwell outside the Washington Place exit kept the employees from leaving that way—not a locked door.
Steuer also wanted to plant the idea in the mind of the jury that the witnesses had been coached. While Steuer did not want to be seen as confrontational to a weeping survivor, he was especially forceful when cross-examining survivor Kate Alterman, asking her to repeat her story over and over again, wanting the jury to believe that she had been coached. Von Drehle argues that because her story was so precise in each retelling, “Kate Alterman was undone by the very sort of details that normally give credibility to a story” (249). In calling 51 witnesses of his own to the stand, Steuer wanted to accomplish three things: to prove that the Washington Place exit could not have been locked all the time in such a busy factory; to humanize the owners and explain how they had helped various employees; and to prove through an expert’s testimony that such a fire would have melted the lock in question.
In his instructions to the jury, Judge Crain told them that they must vote not on whether the door was locked, but on whether the owners knew that the door was locked. These instructions were very favorable for the defense, and after deliberating for less than two hours—during which time some jurors were persuaded to change their original votes—the jury of 12 men voted to acquit Blanck and Harris. In closing his final chapter, Von Drehle points out that rediscovering an earlier incident from Crain’s life “casts [his] handling of the Triangle trial in a new light” (256). As a jurist with a bright political future in 1905, Crain was also “forced to bear the blame for a deadly fire” (256). After a tenement housing at least 150 people went up in flames, and 20 failed to make it out, the blame fell on the city’s Tenement House Department, with Thomas C. T. Crain as commissioner. Despite his arguments that panic, carelessness, and a lack of discipline and common sense brought on the tragedy, Crain’s department was censured and he was forced to resign.
Epilogue Summary
In the Epilogue to Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, Von Drehle makes the case that the development of American liberalism can be traced back to the Triangle fire, and more specifically the reform efforts that took place after the tragedy. He points to the change in Tammany Hall under Charles Murphy as an example of this, arguing that “by blessing the Factory Investigating Commission and endorsing the vote for women, Murphy helped chart the future of American liberalism” (259). He also argues that the Triangle legacy directly gave rise to urban liberalism, which “became the dominant politics of the left, absorbing progressivism and supplanting socialism” (260). District Attorney Charles Whitman was elected governor in 1914 but was defeated after one term by another Tammany man, Al Smith, in 1918. As governor, Smith surrounded himself with Factory Investigating Commission alumni and became “one of the most popular figures in New York history” (262). Smith won the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1928 but was defeated by Herbert Hoover.
Elected president in 1932 during the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt “brought urban liberalism to its full powers,” redefining the scope and role of the federal government (263). Roosevelt’s secretary of labor was Frances Perkins, the first woman to ever hold a cabinet post, and his right-hand man in the US Senate was Robert F. Wagner, “the author of more important progressive laws than any figure in history” (263). Max Blanck and Isaac Harris claimed to be broke when they were found liable in a wrongful death suit, but the partners filed insurance claims after the fire approached their maximum coverage, which in turn resulted in roughly $60,000 above any provable losses, or “more than four hundred dollars per dead worker” (264). The partners attempted to remove themselves from public view and keep their shirtwaist business alive after the fire, but the tragedy proved to be “a slow death for the company” (266). In 1914, the company was caught sewing fraudulent Consumer’s League labels into the garments (266). The Consumer’s League labels were the official seal given to factories with “decent workplace conditions” (266). In the summer of 1913, less than two years after his acquittal, Blanck was again arrested and charged with locking the doors of his Fifth Avenue factory during working hours (265). He was found guilty and fined $20 by the judge.
Chapter 9-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapter of his work, Von Drehle discusses the trial of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris after the pair were charged with manslaughter in the aftermath of the Triangle fire. The acquittal of these men—who, as Von Drehle’s evidence makes clear, were directly responsible for the deaths of so many of their employees—presents a counterpoint to the celebratory tone of the book’s final chapters. Many important reforms occurred as a result of the passionate organizing that followed the fire, but the legal system remained inequitable enough to let these wealthy and well-connected men escape consequences. District Attorney Charles Whitman appointed prosecutors Charles Bostwick and J. Robert Rubin to prove not only that the Washington Place door was locked during working hours, but also that the owners knew it was locked. Blanck and Harris hired Max Steuer, reputed to be “the best lawyer money could buy” (221). Despite witness after witness testifying that the doors had indeed been locked, Steuer’s strategy of convincing the all-male jury that the witnesses had been coached on what to say paid off, and the owners were acquitted.
Throughout Chapter 9, Von Drehle provides a historical summary of the trial but adds context to the puzzling verdict. He writes that because of the compelling testimonies that the Washington Place door was locked, “Steuer needed a whole bag of tricks to limit the damage” (237). One of those tricks was to resist all requests by witnesses to be allowed to testify in Yiddish through an interpreter. Steuer hoped not only that this tactic would trip up witnesses on cross-examination, but also that jurors would equate poor English with poor intelligence, attributing the deaths to negligence from the employees rather than the owners. As with the factory owners who tried to pit Catholic and Jewish workers against each other, this defense strategy illustrates another facet of The Role of Immigrant Labor in American Economic Development: Industrialists and authorities often tried to use anti-immigrant prejudice as a means to further exploit immigrant workers.
Von Drehle also adds context to the verdict by illustrating that the judge, Thomas C. T. Crain, had clear sympathies toward Blanck and Harris. Crain’s instructions to the jury when they were sent to deliberate were that it was not enough to find that the door was locked; they must find that the owners knew the door was locked. At the end of the chapter, Von Drehle explains that Crain’s handling of the trial, and his clear bias, should be seen in a new light because of his personal history. Six years earlier as commissioner of the Tenement House Department, Crain himself had been blamed for a deadly fire. In his Epilogue, Von Drehle touches on another of his primary themes, The Relationship Between Tragedy and Social Reform, as he takes a sweeping look at the legacy of the Triangle fire and how the reform movement that grew from it became a central component of urban liberalism, what he describes as “the dominant politics of the left” (260).
