LA Times: Remembering labor's martyred heroes

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hoffman-triangle-fire-20110320,0,4177130.story

100 years ago, the Triangle fire and the deaths of 146 garment workers helped spark a new labor movement.

By Alice Hoffman

March 20, 2011

The Triangle fire, a garment factory blaze that killed 146 people 100 years ago this week, was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until the fall of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Yet despite the fire's place in history, many Americans know nothing about it.

Those who died in the March 25, 1911, fire were mostly young Jewish and Italian women and girls, new immigrants who risked their safety in horrendous sweatshop conditions making women's garments. Foremen frequently locked workers into their workrooms to make certain they didn't take breaks or pilfer cloth; this ensured that for many trapped inside, there was virtually no escape when the blaze began.

The victims either burned alive or leapt from window ledges, some with their hair and clothes on fire as they fell to the sidewalk below. Most of the dead were women, but almost 30 were men. One of the young men was seen kissing a woman at the window before they both jumped to their deaths.

Witnesses reported that best friends looped their arms around each other's waists, jumping en masse, holding tight to one another as they leapt. Those who escaped reported the terror of being locked in by their bosses, watching in horror as their sisters and mothers and best friends fell through the air like cinders.


FULL story includes the names of every victim at link.

[abq e streeter]

1. Thank you---posted the story link on facebook

and sent a copy to a young friend who is politically naive; raised in a republican home but now questioning all that , and has asked about why there are unions etc.