The Triangle Fire A Brief History with Documents

Explore the important political and economic roles held by these factory girls, during the Triangle Fire of 1911 as Triangle Fire presents sources that help you think critically about the demands industrialization placed upon urban working women, their fight to unionize, and the fires significance in the greater scope of labor reform.

Jo Ann E. Argersinger (PhD, George Washington University) is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University, where she teaches courses on World War II, the Cold War, and labor in the United States, including a history of women and work.  She is the author of Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry (1999) and Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression (1988).  She is the coauthor of Twentieth-Century America: A Social and Political History (2005) and of The American Journey (Sixth Edition, 2010).  She is currently writing a book on public housing and transnational perspectives, and her article entitled "Contested Visions of American Democracy: Citizenship, Public Housing, and the International Arena" is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History.  She will appear in a PBS documentary on the Triangle Fire, scheduled to air in March 2011, marking the hundredth anniversary of the fire.

Foreword
Preface
Illustrations

PART ONE
INTRODUCTION: The Fire That Changed America
The Garment Industry and Its Workers
Triangle and the Uprising of Twenty Thousand
The Triangle Tragedy: Grief and Outrage
The Fire That Lit the Nation: Investigations and Reform

PART TWO
THE DOCUMENTS
1. The Garment Industry and Its Workers
1. Arthur E. McFarlane, Fire and the Skyscraper: The Problem of Protecting
Workers in New York’s Tower Factories, September 1911
2. Pearl Goodman and Elsa Ueland, The Shirtwaist Trade, December 1910
3. Louise C. Odencrantz, Italian Women in Industry: A Study of Conditions in New York City, 1919
4. Sadie Frowne, The Story of a Sweatshop Girl, September 25, 1902
5. Clara Lemlich, Life in the Shop, November 26, 1909

2. Triangle and the Uprising of Twenty Thousand
6. The New York Times, Arrest Strikers for Being Assaulted, November 5, 1909
7. Allan L. Benson, Women in a Labor War: How the Working Girls of New York East Side Have Learned to Use Men’s Weapons in a Struggle for Better Conditions, April 1910
8. The New York Times, Church to the Aid of Girl Strikers, December 20, 1909
9. Constance D. Leupp, The Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike, December 18, 1909
10. The Uprising of the Twenty Thousands (Dedicated to the Waistmakers of 1909), 1910

3. The Triangle Tragedy: Grief and Outrage
11. The New York World, The Triangle Fire, March 27, 1911
12. The New York Times, Partners’ Account of the Disaster, March 26, 1911
13. Rosey Safran, The Washington Place Fire, April 20, 1911
14. Miriam Finn Scott, The Factory Girl’s Danger, April 15, 1911
15. The New York Times, 120,000 Pay Tribute to the Fire Victims, April 6, 1911
16. Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee of the Charity Organization of the Society of the City of New York, Emergency Relief after the Washington Place Fire: New York, March 25, 1911, 1912
17. Elizabeth Dutcher, Budgets of the Triangle Fire Victims, September 1912
18. Martha Bensley Bruere, The Triangle Fire, May 1911
19. Rose Schneiderman, All for One, 1967

4. The Fire That Lit the Nation: Investigations and Reform
20. The Outlook, Indictments in the Asch Fire Case, April 22, 1911
21. The New York Times, Triangle Witnesses Got Increased Pay, December 22, 1911
22. The Literary Digest, 147 Dead, Nobody Guilty, January 6, 1912
23. Chicago Daily Tribune, What the Grave Covers, September 30, 1913
24. State of New York, Preliminary Report of the Factory Investigating Commission, 1912
25. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 1946

APPENDIXES
A Chronology of the Triangle Fire (1900-2001)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index