Triangle

Bit feeble to post this as an entry, I suppose, but here's my Amazon review of it...

PS up to 134195th most useful Amazon reviewer!

David von Drehle's "Triangle" brings alive the world of the early 20th century. New York climbs ever higher; the tallest building is 700 ft, and new ten-storey skyscrapers seem to go up every day. Yet another wave of immigrants crashes ashore. Yet another generation of Tammany politicians take them under their wing. The garment industry industrialises. The process moves from piecework in apartments and basements to factory floors, stuck, improbably, on the eighth and ninth and tenth floors of newly-opened fireproof buildings. Factory owners block the 54-hour week. Women strikers are beaten up by hired muscle; the police arrest the strikers (the owners pay Tammany too much for them to do anything else); wealthy socialites bail the women out.

In the spring of 1911, a fire took hold in the cut-off fabric in the bins of the Triangle shirtwaist (blouse) company. The company was scientifically organized, with open floors for easier movement of materials from one point to another on the production line (although they didn't yet use that term). Not a square inch of space was wasted, as the useless area under the tables was boarded on either side and turned into bins for wasted scraps of cloth. This scientific approach was what made it possible for the fire to take hold and spread so quickly. It crossed the eighth floor in five minutes and leapt up the airshaft. Within ten minutes, more than 140 ninth-floor workers had died. Almost everyone on both the eighth and the tenth floors survived.

Von Drehle describes those fifteen minutes vividly and evocatively. Split-second decisions and luck made the difference between life and death. He brings out the individuality of the victims and how lucky many of them felt to be working in such a relatively well-run factory. And he brings out the horror of those who were unable to save them.

The subsequent reaction to the fire and the pressure that finally got laws passed in 1913 to improve workplace safety are both well described. However, the perspective is entirely a New York one. It would have been interesting to have this put in the context of the nationwide Progressive movement, its peak in 1912 (the 1912 Presidential election isn't even mentioned) and its gradual decline.

The description of the trial is gripping. Just as in the fire itself, minor strokes of luck made all the difference to the outcome. Von Drehle points out the tragic mistakes made by the defence, and the previous and subsequent history of the Triangle owners with fires, particularly fires at the end of the season in March that conveniently destroyed unwanted inventory. He points out how the insurance system did little to encourage fire prevention, and leaves the impression of the owners as people who looked on fire as just another commercial risk (and not necessarily a bad risk at that) as opposed to something life-threatening and to be taken seriously.

For me, though, perhaps the most striking image was the description of the investigating police going up to the burnt-out factory after the fire and finding the floors and walls and fixtures still intact. The building was fireproof as advertised. The contents, and tragically the people who worked there, weren't.