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A Century After Triangle, Unions Battle New Fires

By Tom Robbins

Labor leader Stuart Appelbaum believes the battle in Wisconsin over union rights will galvanize support for organized labor — much the way the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire did 100 years ago.Read More

Why the Triangle Fire Matters Still

By David Von Drehle

The spirit of the early 20th century was, simply put, the spirit of Progress. New Yorkers who, as children, read by the light of whale oil lamps and crossed the East River by wooden ferryboat now crossed over bridges aglow with electric lights, as if riveted with diamonds. A generation earlier, the tallest structure in the city was a church steeple; now new skyscrapers were topping out at the rate of one every five days. Humans could fly and pictures could move.Read More

A Bridge Between Two Worlds

By Lillian Swanson

On these pages you will find translated into English for the first time the original coverage of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire from the pages of the Yiddish-language Forverts. In these pieces, the emotions run raw and the writing is evocative and as visual as any of the images that accompany the articles.Read More

Poetry Contest Winners

The Forverts’s coverage of the fire and public outcry was graced by poet Morris Rosenfeld. In honor of the centenary and Rosenfeld’s writing about it, the Forward Association ran a prize poetry contest for original poems in English and Yiddish.Read More

Heroes and Villains, Key Players Who Made a Difference

By Jo-Ann Mort

In November 1909, thousands of New York City garment workers convened a mass meeting at Cooper Union to protest sweatshop conditions. The norm in the burgeoning garment industry included 60- to 80-hour work weeks, flammable scraps strewn around the shops, child labor and providing your own supplies, such as scissors and thread.Read More

The Jewish Bosses Were Exploiters — and Role Models

By Hasia R. Diner

The circumstances surrounding the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the conflagration of 1911 that figures so prominently in shared narratives of American women’s history, labor history and Jewish history, forces us to acknowledge a “dirty little secret” that tends to get glossed over in the retelling of the history of that event.Read More

For Bangladeshi Garment Workers, It Is Still 1911

By Gal Beckerman

The details sound eerily familiar. A fire on the ninth floor of a garment factory. Workers trapped behind exits locked by their employers. Cornered by flames that began raging after a pile of clothes caught on fire. And the horrific choice: jump to their death or be burned alive.Read More

Around the Nation, a Rebirth of Jewish Social Justice

By Amy B. Dean and Simon Greer

Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the most pre-eminent rabbis and theologians of the 20th century, was a Jewish leader who insisted that our faith be linked to the struggle for social justice in America.Read More

A Guide to the Forverts Archival Coverage of the Triangle Fire

Forward.com provides a chronological guide to the Forverts coverage of the Triangle fire, and links to the stories.Read More

What Would Ab. Do?

By Jane Eisner

What would the legendary newspaper editor do in journalism today, when the business model that served him — and all of us — so well for so long has been completely upended? When readership is fragmented, attention spans have shrunk, and anyone with a blog address and an opinion can call himself a journalist?Read More


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