The Story of the Triangle Fire

6/21/2006

Joe Otto II

In 1911 there was a great tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Reformers like Franklin D. Roosevelt helped to prevent that tragedy from happening again. The laws that they passed in the 1900s were good. They made working conditions a lot better, and they are still in effect to this day.

From 1909-1910 there was a strike against working for the Triangle Factory which was a sweatshop. The reason for the strike is the workers did not like the poor working conditions. The Women’s Trade Union League, also called the WTUL, was a group that organized the strike and got the reformers involved so they would take action against sweatshops.

In 1911 there was a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Lots of people died in the fire, and some people were jumping out the 8th floor windows and falling to their death even when the fire department was holding nets. But the nets were breaking. The images of these people dying helped to get the ball rolling on the 60 new bills for improving the poor working conditions.

This is based on a true story about a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Reformers controlled the Triangle Commission. They recommended many laws, and the New York state legislature passed 60 of them. These laws were about health and safety in the work place. Later on in the 1900s Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president, and the whole country had to obey the new laws that were made for the work place.