Flesh and Blood So Cheap Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Text copyright © 2011 by Albert Marrin

  Main jacket photograph copyright © by FHP/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  Inset jacket art by Henry Glintenkamp, 1916

  Jacket photograph of flames © by Shutterstock

  For picture credits, please see this page.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Marrin, Albert.

  Flesh and blood so cheap : the Triangle fire and its legacy / Albert Marrin. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97660-4

  1. Triangle Shirtwaist Company—Fire, 1911. 2. Clothing factories—New York (State)—New York—Safety measures—History—20th century. 3. Industrial safety—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 4. New York (N.Y.)—History—1898–1951. I. Title.

  F128.5.M122 2011

  974.7′1041—dc22

  2010021533

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  to their memory

  The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources—because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.

  —President Lyndon B. Johnson

  at the Statue of Liberty,

  October 3, 1965

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prelude From the Ashes

  I. Huddled Masses

  II. Into the Magic Cauldron

  III. Flesh and Blood So Cheap

  IV. An Overflow of Suffering: The Uprising

  of the Twenty Thousand

  V. The Third Gate: Fire at the Triangle

  VI. A Stricken Conscience

  VII. The Price of Liberty

  Bibliography

  Notes

  Picture Credits

  PRELUDE

  From the ashes of the Triangle Company fire began to rise one of the most dramatic and far-reaching [changes] in American history—one that would … eventually redefine forever the role the government played in the lives of ordinary people.

  —Ric Burns and James Sanders, New York (1999)

  New York City, Saturday, March 25, 1911. One of those sparkling early-spring afternoons New Yorkers so enjoy after a cold, dreary winter. Under the cloudless blue sky, strong, bracing gusts of wind blew across Manhattan Island from the East River. The air smelled fresh and clean, and it felt good to be alive. It would also be a day of tragedy that would weigh on the hearts of witnesses and survivors for the rest of their days.

  People flocked to Washington Square, a ten-acre park named for our first president. A century earlier, the site was a wasteland on the city’s northern outskirts. Back then, it served as a cemetery for unclaimed bodies and the poorest when they died; even today, the bones of some twenty thousand people lie under its lawns and paths. After the cemetery closed in 1825, a group of elegant town houses called “the Row” rose on the north side of the square. This area lay in “the country,” and the rich spared no expense to escape there from the bustling city. Although the Row still exists, by 1911 Washington Square had become a green oasis amid grimy factories and immigrant neighborhoods.

  “The Row” along Washington Square in 1936. (picture credit fm1.1)

  On this Saturday, families from the tenements strolled the tree-lined paths. Children ran around, played on the grass, or stood on the playground swings and “flew to the moon.” Lovers walked hand in hand. Students from nearby New York University sat on the benches reading, thinking great thoughts, arguing, flirting.

  Miss Frances Perkins, thirty-one, was visiting a friend at her home in the Row. A social worker by profession, Perkins led the Consumers’ League, an organization devoted to improving working conditions in factories. The two women were about to have tea when they heard fire engines. Opening the front door, they saw smoke rising behind a New York University building across the street from the east side of the square. The top three floors of an adjoining ten-story building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street were ablaze. These floors housed the Triangle Waist Company, a manufacturer of shirtwaists, a kind of women’s blouse that was at the height of fashion.

  Hearts pounding, the friends ran across the square, joining the crowd racing toward the smoke. Moments later, they came upon a scene that seared itself into their souls. By twos and threes, workers, some with their hair and clothes on fire, were jumping from the windows. “We got there just as they started to jump,” Perkins recalled in 1961, the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster. “I shall never forget the frozen horror which came over us as we stood with our hands on our throats watching that horrible sight, knowing that there was no help.… The firemen kept shouting for them not to jump. But they had no choice; the flames were right behind them, for by this time the fire was far gone.”1

  Within minutes, 146 workers died, broken on the sidewalk, suffocated by smoke, or burnt in the flames. Most were young women ages fourteen to twenty-three, nearly all recent immigrants, Italians and Russian Jews. Dubbed the “Triangle Fire,” for ninety years it held the record as New York’s deadliest workplace fire. Only the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center took more lives.

  Frances Perkins, circa 1911. (picture credit fm1.2)

  Frances Perkins was shaken by what she saw that day. It was a life-changing experience. The sight of people jumping from windows affected her so deeply that she vowed such a horror could not, must not, be allowed to happen again. She would devote the rest of her life to making her vow a reality. Yet the Triangle Fire is more than a tragedy. It is part of a larger story, one woven into the very fabric of American life. Without understanding that larger story, we cannot fully understand the disaster and how it influences us today.

  Fifth Avenue, an area of wealth and luxury in New York City, circa 1900. (picture credit fm1.3)

  The Triangle Fire occurred during the greatest mass movement of people in history. People leave their homeland for various reasons, or “pushes,” as historians call them. Pushes include natural disasters, crop failures, poverty, war, persecution, or simply the desire for change. Those who leave go to places they think will offer a better, happier, more interesting future. We call such reasons “pulls.” Thus, in the years 1870 to 1900, about twelve million immigrants arrived in the United States, nearly all from Europe. During the next decade, 1901–10, another nine million—75 percent of the total of the previous three decades—reached our shores. Most of these entered through New York City.

  By the start of the twentieth century, America’s growing industries had made the nation into a world power. Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. Automobile maker Henry Ford. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie. Inventor Thomas A. Edison. These and hundreds of others rose from humble backgrounds. Through hard work, ambition, and knowledge, they became fabulously wealthy. But these were the lucky few.

  The problem: life for most Americans was an endless grind, a harsh struggle for existence. Men and women, old and young, native-born and immigrant, worked long hours for little pay. Experts calculated that a family of four needed between $650 and $800 a year for its basic needs: food, clothing, housing,
medical care. Yet in the year 1900, three out of four lived in poverty, defined as a family income of $553 a year or less.

  To make matters worse, work was often dangerous, even deadly. In 1911, for example, over 50,000 people died on the job—that is, about 1,000 each week, or 140 a day, every day. This figure includes boys and girls who worked in every major industry from coal mining to textile manufacturing. (In 2008, by contrast, 5,071 American adults died of work-related injuries and diseases.)

  If you were hurt or killed at work, that was too bad. The “safety net” we now take for granted did not exist. No health insurance or Medicare. No old-age pensions or Social Security. No unemployment benefits. No laws regulating hours and wages, safety and sanitation.

  A cramped Lower East Side street. (picture credit fm1.4)

  The Triangle Fire shocked Americans as no other job-related tragedy ever had. For many, it became a powerful emotional symbol of what seemed wrong about America. In doing so, it raised big questions in a way that gave force to a moral crusade. Was labor a product, something bought and sold like a stick of chewing gum or a newspaper? Or was labor something different—something human? What was our country coming to when workers, often young children, died so horribly? Must things go on this way? What changes were needed to realize the promise of America? How should these changes come about? Who should lead the drive for change?

  School textbooks usually focus on “famous” names—kings, presidents, politicians, generals—as the shapers of history. Yet these are only part of the picture. The names of others, often equally important, seldom get the recognition they deserve. American history textbooks may, for example, mention Frances Perkins in a few sentences. For in the 1930s, she became secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. We look in vain for other names—Jacob Riis, Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneiderman, Mary Dreier, Alfred E. Smith, Alva Belmont, and Anne Morgan, to mention a few. It is as if they had never existed or done anything worth remembering. Still, each in their own way, they helped create the America we know today.

  I

  Give me your tired, your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

  —Emma Lazarus,

  “The New Colossus” (1883), inscription on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty

  Immigration Old and New

  In the spring of 1903, Sadie Frowne, age thirteen, and her mother sailed into New York Harbor aboard a steamship crowded with immigrants from Europe. Finally, their voyage had ended. As the passengers gathered on deck, Sadie recalled, they marveled at a giant green figure that seemed to rise out of the water. She never forgot “the big woman with the spikes on her head and the lamp that is lighted at night in her hand.” Thus, the Statue of Liberty welcomed the newcomers to the United States and, they prayed, to a better life.1

  Although America has always been a land of hope, immigrants have come from different places, at different times, for different reasons. This has led historians to divide immigration into two phases: old and new. The old immigration began in colonial times, more than a century before the United States existed as an independent nation. Over the generations, immigrants came from western and northern Europe: England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark. Except for Irish Catholics, most “old” immigrants were of the Protestant faith and could read and write their native language. Despite hardships, these people soon found their place in America.

  The shift from the old to the new immigration began in the 1880s. While immigrants continued to arrive from the familiar places, a flood of humanity also came from southern and eastern Europe: Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Russia. By 1910, people from these countries made up seven out of ten immigrants entering the United States, chiefly through New York City. Of these, the vast majority were Italians (mainly Catholic) and Jews from Russia. Because nearly all the victims of the Triangle Fire were from these two groups, we must look at them closely.

  The Land Time Forgot

  Educated Americans had always admired Italy as a land of beauty and culture. Each year, thousands of tourists visited its ancient cities—Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice—to see their splendid churches, museums, and art galleries. Music lovers filled the opera houses and concert halls. Yet few Americans realized that Italy was really two countries.

  Northern Italy, the area tourists favored, was more advanced economically than the southern areas. The nation’s industries, banks, and major businesses were based in the north. Since the government was in Rome, the capital, northerners made the laws, controlled the courts, and commanded the police. For them, the south was little more than an uncivilized colony, an extension of Africa.

  Southern Italy forms the heel and toe of the Italian “boot.” The boot, in turn, “kicks” Sicily, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. Known as “the land time forgot,” the south was a region of small farms and villages that lagged behind the industrial north in all things but la miseria—misery.

  Misery ruled southern Italy. The majority of its people were among the poorest in Europe. Peasants, or farmers, did not own the land, but worked tiny parcels rented from wealthy landlords, chiefly nobles and northern businessmen. Landlords demanded high rents, so peasants could not afford to buy fertilizer or machinery. Instead, they tilled the soil with hand plows and hoes that were old when their grandparents were children. Peasant families were large and worked together, including children, who were given small chores nearly from the moment they could walk. Youngsters attended school briefly if at all, for they had to help in the fields. Large families lived in tiny, cramped cottages, merely shacks with earthen floors, typically shared with a prized goat or rooster.

  A map of Italy. Most immigrants came from the southern regions. (picture credit 1.1)

  A street macaroni restaurant in Naples, in southern Italy. (picture credit 1.2)

  Northerners had little respect for southerners, nicknamed “Black Italians” in a racist epithet meant to show their “inferiority”; they called Sicilians “Africans.” The government in Rome cheated the south in countless ways. It built no modern roads or bridges there. Instead, it acted like a gigantic straw, sucking out whatever money it could. Heavy taxes collected in the south were spent in the north. Worse, justice was a cruel farce. If wronged by a landlord, a peasant was out of luck. Courts and police served the landlord. This, in turn, made peasants cynical, convinced others acted only for selfish reasons. Proverbs expressed their outrage: “The gallows is for the poor man, the law courts for the fool,” “The law works against people,” “The fat pig pays no taxes.” If one person killed another, the victim’s family took justice into its own hands, vowing to “wash blood with blood.”2

  Mother Nature herself seemed to turn against the land time forgot. Massive cutting down of forests for firewood and building materials harmed the environment. Without tree roots to hold the soil in place, rain washed away fertile soil, causing crop failure and hunger. Elsewhere, swamps formed. Mosquitoes breed in swamps. If a certain species of mosquito bites a person, it may inject a microscopic organism that causes malaria. This disease has killed more people than all history’s wars, famines, and natural disasters combined. By the 1880s, malaria had become epidemic in southern Italy.

  Disasters burst from within the earth, too. In 1905, earthquakes shook the region, collapsing buildings and burying their inhabitants under the rubble. The next year, Mount Vesuvius erupted. Located just east of Naples, this volcano had a fearsome history. An eruption in the year AD 79 buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing all their inhabitants. The 1906 eruption sent “explosions of red-hot stones” a half mile into the air. “The end of the world has come!” people cried in panic. “The inhabitants of the villages in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius are in a
condition of terror,” said the New York Times. “Many homes have been abandoned for the open air, although there has been a thick fog all day and the atmosphere has been dense with volcanic ashes and the fumes of subterranean fires.” Hundeds died, and over 150,000 fled, often struggling through knee-deep ash drifts.3

  An earthquake that began miles under the bed of the Mediterranean Sea caused the worst disaster. In June 1908, it sent a tidal wave, or tsunami, roaring through the Strait of Messina, a narrow passage between Sicily and the Italian mainland. The wall of water reached back forty miles on the mainland and thirty miles in Sicily. It leveled the mainland city of Reggio di Calabria and Messina in Sicily. “Both places,” said the New York Times, “are today vast morgues of the dead, and the air for many miles out to sea is polluted. Vultures are congregating to prey upon the dead.” The tsunami also washed away hundreds of villages. In all, it killed some one hundred thousand people, leaving countless others homeless.4

  Mount Vesuvius. The volcano erupted in 1906, displacing more than 150,000 people. (picture credit 1.3)

  Extreme poverty and natural disasters pushed Italians out of their country. Between 1880 and 1921, about 4.5 million, chiefly southerners, reached the United States. Only Jews from Russia came in numbers anywhere near those of the land time forgot.5

  No Place for Jews

  Like Italians, Russian Jews fled poverty. Unlike Italians, however, nature did not torment them with flood and fire. Their greatest threat was religious hatred.

  Ever since the ancient Romans had driven Jews from their homeland in Palestine, most had lived in the countries of western Europe: England, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German lands. Good citizens, they obeyed the laws, paid their taxes, and prospered as merchants, traders, and artisans. Yet Christians often resented Jews because they held different religious beliefs. Resentment easily turned to hatred, and hatred to violence. In the early 1100s, Jews began to flee eastward in large numbers to Poland. Its kings welcomed them not only from kindness, but because they had skills needed to develop the country.