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.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Uprising”
In 1909, nearly three months after Lemlich led a strike against the shop where she worked, Local 25 of the ILGWU convened a meeting to discuss a general strike against all the shirtwaist factories and shops (55). While many of the national labor leaders present urged caution, Lemlich took control of the meeting and called for an immediate general strike, inspiring the workers into approval. The following day, an estimated 15,000 workers walked out of their jobs across the garment district (59). Although the great majority of strikers were Jewish immigrants, many were Italian immigrants and many were American-born women, leading some strike organizers to worry that “factory owners would find a way to incite ‘race warfare’” (60), weakening the movement by turning the various ethnic groups against each other. By the second day, the number of strikers swelled to 20,000, and some owners of smaller shops began caving in to the strikers’ demands. A pivotal moment came when the cutter’s union joined the strike, because cutters were primarily men, among the most well-paid workers, and difficult to replace.
According to Von Drehle, “roughly five hundred shops were hit by the waist maker’s strike” and nearly one out of seven owners surrendered in the first 48 hours (62). The size of the strike and the fact that so many owners quickly capitulated horrified Blanck and Harris, owners of the Triangle factory. Blanck and Harris and several other owners of large shops met and determined that “the union must be crushed” (62). As a result, they formed the Allied Waist and Dress Manufacturers Association. Because the owners had allies with the police and the magistrates, many young women were arrested and sentenced to workhouse imprisonment among true criminals. Another pivotal moment came when wealthy progressive women—who had previously been concerned primarily with the women’s suffrage movement—began to show strong support for the strikers. Von Drehle argues that some of the wealthy society women and wealthy pro-suffrage progressives sought to “turn the labor uprising into a broader feminist revolt” (68).
The enthusiastic support of society women such as Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont and Anne Morgan, the daughter of tycoon J. P. Morgan, represented “an unprecedented coalition and a genuine threat to the familiar order” (70). Their financial support allowed the strikers to resist the pressure to give in, but many of the radical strike leaders began to resent the attention they were getting and resist the notion of any broader feminist goals. By Christmas, more owners were settling with the union every day and many of the original strikers had returned to work, but the manufacturers association still refused to discuss one of the striker’s primary demands: the “closed shop”—an arrangement in which manufacturers agree to hire only union members (80). While the strikers had received good publicity and widespread support, many saw their demand for closed shops as unreasonable, including many progressives. By March of 2010, four months after the strike started, the owners agreed to higher wages, shorter hours, and to recognize the union and no longer prohibit union membership, thus ending the “Uprising of the 20,000.”
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Golden Land”
Throughout Chapter 4, Von Drehle examines the lives of some of the Triangle workers who died in the tragedy. He points out that “in the city’s shock and horror at what befell those workers and many others, no one paused to piece together their stories. Newspapers reported the names of the dead but scarcely anything else about them” (88). Among those was Rosie Freedman, who was born in Russian-occupied Poland in 1892. In the 1880s, discrimination against Russian Jews turned to outright violence as pogroms began taking place in various cities. Approximately 1 million Jews were forced to move to a stretch of land known as the Pale of Settlement. This was when the first wave of immigration to the United States began taking place. During the decade, over 200,000 Eastern Europeans came to New York alone. Freedman and her family stayed in the “Pale,” but pogroms against Jews became even more violent in the early years of the 20th century.
In 1906, following a brutal pogrom in her hometown of Bialystok in which 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded, Freedman’s parents sent her to live with relatives in New York. According to Von Drehle, “[S]he joined the greatest surge of immigrants the United States had ever seen—one million arrivals in 1907” (95). Living in a tenement with her aunt and uncle, Freedman’s culture shock was lessened by the thriving Jewish neighborhood and community, which included the Bialystoker Synagogue, the Educational Alliance, and popular dance halls. Many of the young girls in Freedman’s neighborhood also worked at the Triangle, where they sat facing each other at long sewing tables on the ninth floor. Once the sewers finished their job, everything fell to the cutters, who Von Drehle describes as “confident, swaggering men, the divas of the garment district” (107). He also explains that the Triangle factory, like most others, had a no-smoking policy with signs posted, “but the cutters behaved like they were exempt and no one called them on it” (107).
While about 60% of the Triangle workers and management were Jews from Eastern Europe, most of the rest came from Italy, “part of a migration even larger than the Jewish exodus” (108). Von Drehle points out that in the first decade of the 20th century, more than 2 million Italians entered the United States, and that by 1910 there were more Italians living in New York than there had been in the entire country 10 years earlier. Most of the early Italian immigrants were men, but girls and women came later. Like many others, Triangle worker Michela Marciano came following the environmental disaster resulting from the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Unlike the young Jewish women, Italian women were commonly illiterate because they were expected only to be wives and mothers. Marciano’s home life was unconventional, however, as she went to work and even joined the union while her husband stayed home.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In Chapters 3 and 4, Von Drehle examines the period just before the deadly Triangle fire. This includes the widespread labor strike in the garment district that came to be known as the Uprising of the 20,000, which took place in late 1909 and early 1910. Organized by Clara Lemlich and other members of Local 25 of the ILGWU, the uprising gained widespread support when wealthy progressive women joined the cause, forming an unprecedented coalition with the working class that truly threatened factory owners such as Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. In all, “roughly 500 shops were hit by the waist makers’ strike,” and nearly one out of seven owners caved to the workers’ demands during the first 48 hours (62). Immigrant workers like Clara Lemlich formed the majority of the strikers. In Chapter 3, Von Drehle alludes to the fact that union leaders translated strike instructions into Yiddish and that one union leader said, “[T]he strikebreakers are all Italians and the strikers are ‘Jewesses” (60). The prevalence of immigrant workers in the labor movement demonstrates that The Role of Immigrant Labor in American Economic Development was complex: Immigrants transformed the US economy not just by supplying labor and skills, but also by demanding fairer wages and working conditions.
Von Drehle explains that in the city’s shock and horror after the Triangle fire, no one paused to piece together the stories of those who died. The author sets out to do this in Chapter 4, providing a backstory for only a few of the workers, but stories that were likely similar to the stories of countless other young Jewish and Italian immigrant workers. The purpose of these anecdotes is to humanize those who lost their lives in the disaster and to emphasize the lived experiences that are often lost among the statistics. Von Drehle narrates the life of Rosie Freedman, who immigrated to live with relatives in New York after a series of violent pogroms that killed hundreds of Jews in Russian-occupied Poland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Von Drehle, “[S]he joined the greatest surge of immigrants the United States had ever seen—one million arrivals in 1907” (95). While 6% of the Triangle workforce were Eastern European Jews, most of the rest came from Italy (108). Another backstory highlighted by the author is that of Michela Marciano, who fled environmental disaster and political corruption in Southern Italy.
Throughout Chapters 3 and 4, Von Drehle uses foreshadowing to describe the period before the disaster. While the workers’ strike that took place in late 1909 and early 1910 was less about workplace safety than about wages, hours, and the recognition of the union, it provides an example of the tension that existed between the workers and owners. It also highlights the owners’ uncompromising attitudes when lower profit and productivity were at stake. This attitude illustrates The Impact of Industrialization on Labor Conditions: The industrialization of the garment industry incentivized owners to wring maximum profit from each worker, extracting the greatest possible volume of work for the least possible cost. This cost-cutting occurred not only in the form of low wages but also in the form of harsh and unsafe working conditions. Blanck and Harris were far from alone in their willingness to risk their workers’ lives for the sake of greater profit margins.
