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. “Sometimes it takes a tragedy like Triangle to energize the community,” said Appelbaum, national president of the Jewish Labor Committee and head…
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…
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. They have…
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. The winner of the Yiddish section was Alec (“Leyzer”) Burko of New York City. In…
Clara Lemlich 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. During…
Amid the hundreds of commemorations of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that are taking place this month in New York City alone, there is something worth pondering before it gets lost: The Triangle fire turned what was considered “a Jewish problem” into a national symbol of reform, and helped move Jews from the margins of…
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. Indeed, this widely known but…
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. The only big difference was the…
Originally published in the Forverts, December 29, 1911 Even a child could understand the lesson of the Triangle trial. It’s so clear—clearly detailed from top to bottom. It’s this: the workers under current conditions cannot be helped other than through their unions, meaning, through their own means. The city, in the Triangle case, went as…
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. He lived this conviction by actively supporting causes such as the Civil Rights Movement and serving as an adviser to the…
Originally published in the Forverts, December 29, 1911 The Triangle Bosses Are Freed—Jury Deliberates For One and A Half Hours—Over One Hundred Relatives Of The Victims Gather On The Street—But Dozens Of Police And Detectives Don’t Permit Demonstrations—“You’re Murderers” Shouts Out One Brother Of An Immolated Girl, Racing Over To The Triangle Bosses With Clenched…
אַנאַ שטערנשיס האָט געזאַמלט הונדערטער בעל־פּהיִקע גבֿית־עדותן פֿון מענער און פֿרױען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָציאַלע שיכטן.
