American History Tellers - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - In America They Don’t Let You Burn | 4

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

In the wake of the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors of the Triangle fire and the families of the victims could only watch from the sidelines as the case against the Triangle bosses went to trial. The 146 deaths resulting from the fire had been sifted through the state’s legal machine and condensed into a single woman: a 24-year-old sewing machine operator named Margaret Schwartz. In December 1911, the general sessions court presided over by Judge Thomas Crain heard the People of New York vs. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. The prosecution had a strong piece of physical evidence and a compelling witness. But Harris and Blanck had a lawyer whose courtroom rhetoric might get his clients off scot-free. If you enjoyed American History Tellers, be sure to check out Lindsay Graham’s other shows, American Scandal and American Elections: Wicked Game. Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's a bright, late spring morning in 1905. You've come to City Hall to meet with Safety Commissioner Thomas Crane, who oversees the New York Tenement House Department. Normally, Crane's a nice enough fellow, but you work for the mayor's office. And today, the mayor has sent you to deliver some bad news. Good morning, Thomas. How much longer till this session starts?

Crane looks up at you from his bench in the hallway. He's clearly upset, like he knows what's coming. Still another half hour, and I suppose you know by now what you have to do. Crane looks up at you and his eyes narrow. You're gonna have to resign, Thomas. It wasn't my fault. You know that as well as anyone. I did the best I could. My inspectors kept those fire escapes clear, but as soon as they left, the tenants just moved their mattresses right back onto them. You know what he's saying is true. It's impossible to truly enforce anything in those slum districts.

But a month ago, a fire in a tenement building on Allen Street killed 10 young children, burning them alive under a lock skylight. 20 more residents were badly injured. And now a coroner's jury is blaming the fire on the building inspectors. Inspectors in Crane's department. Thomas, my hands are tied. I'm telling you, my inspectors were hamstrung. Those tenants had no regard for their own safety. They were trying to stay cool in the summer. Crane stands and points his finger in your face. This is a personal injustice against me, and you know it. People in the hallway. Crane stands and points his finger in your face. This is a personal injustice against

me, and you know it. People in the hallway are starting to stare. Thomas, just resign quietly, and I'm sure you'll find work in no time. How dare you? Someone has to take the fall for this, and frankly, better you than me. The mayor sent me personally to make sure you walk in there and do the right thing. So are in there and do the right thing. So are you going to do the right thing, Thomas? It doesn't seem as if I have any choice in the matter. Now does it? Everyone has a choice, Thomas.

Yours just happens to be clearly laid out for you. Good luck. Do remember what the mayor wants. You turn and head towards the great doors leading out to the street. You do feel for the guy, but there's a lesson to be learned here. Someone always has to pay the price. From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House.

Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid

early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. Thomas Crane, the building commissioner who lost his job over a fire and a locked skylight, did manage to find other work as a New York County judge. And six years later, in the winter of 1911, he would preside over a trial eerily similar to his own, the people of New York versus Max Blank and Isaac Harris. The fire at the Triangle Factory had claimed the lives of 146 workers. Some of the victims, only two years before, had been part of a citywide strike that spread to more than 400 shirtwaist factories.

But in the months leading up to the fire, the frenetic energy of the picket lines had faded away, replaced by a return to familiar workday routines. Sewing machine operators, sleeve setters, and cuffmakers settled back into their former workstations. The same lunch bell rang, and the same purse checks occurred at the end of their shift. They had gained better pay and shorter hours, but their lives had returned to normal. The fire in March 1911 changed all of that. Now, struggling for answers, struggling to find some sense of closure in the biggest workplace catastrophe in the city of New York, the survivors could only watch helplessly from the sidelines as the case against their bosses went to trial. Was the fire a terrible accident, or had the Triangle owners put

their workers directly in harm's way by failing to take safety precautions? Any sense of justice, of resolution, lay in the hands of the judiciary and with a pair of lawyers. This is Episode 4, In America, They Don't Let You Burn. In March 1911, the district attorney for the city of New York was a man named Charles Whitman. He was 43 years old, and depending on which side of his face you saw, resembled either an academic or a boxer. Charismatic and calculating, he kept reporters close by and fed with stories. Whitman was entertaining reporters at the Hotel Iroquois on the afternoon of March 25th, when an associate burst in and told him about the fire that was currently burning at the Triangle

Factory. Whitman arrived at the corner of Washington Place and Green Street to find police, clubs drawn, holding back crowds of people. Police had just arrested elevator operator Joseph Zito as a material witness. Zito and his fellow operator, Gaspar Mortialo, had been unquestionable heroes rescuing up to 150 Triangle workers that day. Whitman immediately ordered Zito freed. In the weeks that followed, it became clear to Whitman that the burned bodies on the sidewalks were not victims of some unavoidable tragedy. The fire had its roots in the enormous general strike of 1909.

The dead workers, the police, even the Triangle factory itself had all played a role. The women who'd successfully campaigned for better working conditions two years earlier were the same women who'd thrown themselves from a burning building that city inspectors had declared safe. As the city mourned openly for the victims, Whitman knew someone would have to be held accountable for the tragedy. Fingers pointed in every conceivable direction. City Fire Chief Edward Croker mistakenly suggested that the fire was caused by an explosion of gasoline irons on the 8th floor.

The State Labor Commissioner referred all questions to the office of the City Building Department. The head of the City Building Department, however, was on vacation at the time, and he suggested the blame for the fire lay with the Fire Department and Chief Croker. While city officials deflected responsibility, District Attorney Whitman convened a grand jury. Witnesses gave startling testimony about locked doors inside the factory. The state of New York forbade locking doors in the workplace. The law was difficult to enforce, but it was on the books. To make matters more difficult, Triangle manager Samuel Bernstein

had been lurking around the grand jury courthouse, approaching survivors as they arrived to testify. Whether he was trying to bribe or intimidate, it took a formal complaint to get Bernstein removed from the building. But by then, Whitman had presented his key piece of evidence. In front of the grand jury,

Whitman dramatically held up a charred locking mechanism pulled from the rubble of the Ash Building. Undoing the mechanism, he showed how the shot bolt inside, with smooth and shiny metallic, unburned because the door had remained locked during the fire. Failure to keep a factory door unlocked during business hours was just a misdemeanor. But a misdemeanor that resulted in death would become a charge of manslaughter, carrying a sentence up to 20 years in prison. With witnesses from the factory and the charred locking mechanism, Whitman had everything he needed to indict Max Blank and Isaac Harris.

In the weeks after the fire, the Triangle owners hid from public view. Isaac Harris retreated to his Upper West Side home, but gave one very short press conference wearing a bandage on his head. Max Blank stood nearby, silent and looking mournful. Harris denied any responsibility, claiming the doors of his factory were never locked during working hours. But on April 12th, Blank and Harris were arrested and charged with seven counts of first and second degree manslaughter, resulting from

the deaths of 24-year-old sewing machine operator Margaret Schwartz and 16-year-old Rosie Grasso, two of the 146 victims. The owners were unfazed, immediately posting their $25,000 bail. Much like during the general strike, when they posted advertisements for scab workers, they this time also did not hesitate to place ads again in the newspaper that Triangle was still open for business. The new address, in reality another Blank and Harris factory already in operation, was published in large print. But the two men knew they needed the best lawyer their money could buy. Max Stoyer was only 41 years old and stood only five and a half feet tall, but he had much in common with both the victims and the accused. A Jewish immigrant like Blank

and Harris, he'd come of age in the same Lower East Side tenements as many of the Triangle workers. But by the time Blank and Harris came calling, Stoyer enjoyed a reputation as one of the most dogged and successful defense lawyers in the city. But he did not come cheap. His fee for the Triangle owners was at least $20,000, more than half a million today. On December 5th, 1911, eight months after the grand jury indictment,

a trial jury was selected. Since women were not allowed to serve, it comprised of 12 men. The presiding judge was Thomas Crane. Now 51 years old, he'd maneuvered himself back into the city's good graces after his public expulsion from the Tenement Committee in 1905. His Tammany Hall connections had helped him quickly vault from city commissioner to the judge's bench. In the courtroom, Crane instructed the jurors not to be swayed by the open weeping of grieving relatives in the hallways. Family members of the deceased attended every day of

the trial. When Max Blank and Isaac Harris arrived, they hissed and shouted at them, calling them murderers and killers. They waved photographs of dead family members. People even followed the Triangle owners down the street during lunch recess, heckling them. The court soon assigned security escorts for Blank and Harris to and from the courthouse. For the prosecution, the lead attorney was Charles Bostwick. He was 45 years old with a heavy mustache and a serious demeanor. His goal was to prove that the locked Washington Place exit door on the 9th floor led directly to the death of Margaret Schwartz. During the eight months since the indictment,

a flurry of appeals by Stoyer had forced Boswick to drop the death of Rosie Grasso from the list of charges. But it didn't really matter. A 20-year jail sentence would be the maximum criminal penalty for the Triangle owners, no matter how many counts the prosecution could prove. The 146 deaths resulting from the Triangle fire had been sifted through the legal machine of New York State and condensed into a single woman. On December 6th, Bostwick began calling his first witnesses. Fire Chief Ed Worth, who had personally directed

the fire hoses on the burning factory windows, testified to the carnage and chaos of bodies falling nine stories to the streets below. From his table directly across the room, Max Stoyer objected. He argued that descriptions of falling bodies were emotional appeals to the jury and had nothing to do with the matter at hand, specifically the death of Margaret Schwartz. Judge Crane sustained the objection and further instructed the prosecution not to mention the gory details surrounding the fire. This trial was about facts, not morbid illustrations. With this ruling, Stoyer's defense scored an early advantage. Still, the witnesses Bostwick brought forward recalled panicked and dreadful scenes

on the ninth floor of the Triangle factory, how the locked Washington Place door forced them to find exits elsewhere. Mary Buccelli described how the fire escape in the air shaft had collapsed. Triangle forewoman Anna Gullo testified how the fire spread within minutes, cutting off avenues of escape

at the Green Street exit and the elevators. Gullo recalled her surprise that the fire was even happening at all. By the day's standards, the factory building was considered state-of-the-art. Conditions had been much worse in her home country of Italy. When they emigrated to America 12 years prior, Gullo recalled her mother had promised, in America, they don't let you promised, Those words hung in the air of the courtroom. Defense attorney Max Stoyer again objected. Testimony such as this, he said, was incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. Those words became Stoyer's repeated refrain. Later in his opening statement for the defense,

Stoyer would blatantly call the prosecution witnesses liars, out for personal vengeance. Many of them, he claimed, because they lost their dearest relatives, are not telling the truth here. But during cross-examination of the Triangle survivors, Stoyer was even craftier. He spent hours asking questions and clarifying small details of each person's testimony. Where was one operator's table in relation to the others? Yes, exactly how many feet away? How many steps did you take across the floor? He resisted requests for witnesses to testify through a Yiddish interpreter. He tried repeatedly to plant the idea that triangle survivors had been coached. All he had to do was ask if a worker consulted

with union officials before the trial. Even if the worker replied no, Stoyer's question stirred doubt. Stoyer cross-examined every prosecution witness about the locked Washington Place door. He even disputed the lock itself. The shot bolt and charred locking mechanism was brought into the courtroom

in a velvet-lined box with a glass lid. How could it be proved, Stoyer asked, that this was the actual lock? Boswick reposted, calling detectives who traced the lock's history from the factory that manufactured it to the hardware store that sold it, even down to the handyman who'd installed it on the ninth floor of the Ash Building. The job was back in 1902, the handyman testified. He'd installed a new lock to replace one that had been damaged in a fire. Bostwick called over 100 witnesses to testify. He traced the origins of the lock and showed the door couldn't have been opened. Finally, he moved to call his last witness. there was one more tragic story to be told. Imagine it's December 1911. You used to work as a shirtwaist maker on the ninth floor of the Triangle Factory, but you couldn't return after the fire. Instead, you took another job on Worcester

Street. You were homesick the day of the fire. It saved your life, but you feel your fate is still linked to those women who died in the fire and those who survived. So you've been coming to the courthouse on your days off. This morning, the hallway is as silent as a tomb. Everyone is inside, watching the trial. You're looking for a bathroom when you run into your old co-worker, Kate Alterman. Kate, where have you been? I went by your apartment, but they say you moved away. My family's all in Philadelphia.

After the fire, I thought it'd be good to be with them. Seeing her brings back all the old memories. You don't miss Triangle, but you miss the other girls, the camaraderie. You give each other a hug. Kate is shaking slightly. What's wrong? The lawyer, Boswick, tells me I'm a very important person for this trial. He says that my story is the most compelling.

Kate, are you testifying? Yes. You want to ask her about it. You want to know. There are so many things you haven't been able to talk about with anyone. I feel like there's so much pressure on me to speak well, to give a full account. Kate, you speak very well. You have hardly any accent at all. No, I want to speak truthfully. Now you start to shake. Whether it's rage or sadness, you can't tell. You have your own story. The doors between floors were always locked. The managers would search you like a criminal at the end of every workday. Why didn't the prosecution call you? You want nothing more to tell your story, to look those two men in the eye and make them understand. But you stop yourself. It's not time for selfishness. So you look Kate in the eye. You've got the truth behind you, okay? So tell it. Let's send those monsters to jail. Kate almost smiles.

Yes, I would like that. Very much. Kate Alterman was an important witness. After the fire and her grand jury testimony, Alterman retreated to her parents' home in Philadelphia. At the beginning of the trial, two weeks before she would testify, Boswick had her brought in and sequestered in the city so that the prosecution could prepare. This young immigrant in her late teens or early twenties was so important that Boswick had saved her testimony for last. Her story would tie together all the facets of the prosecution's case.

Just as the legal system had narrowed down the many horrors of the Triangle Fire to a single victim, for the survivors, justice would hinge on the testimony of this single woman. Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming. Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of

the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next?

Maybe you're at the grocery store. Or maybe you're with your secret lover. Or maybe you're robbing a bank. Based on the real-life false alarm that terrified Hawaii in 2018, Incoming, a brand-new fiction podcast exclusively on Wondery Plus, follows the journey of a variety of characters as they confront the unimaginable. The missiles are coming. What am I supposed to do?

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that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free and Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Taking her seat at the witness stand, Kate Alterman wore a wide-brimmed hat and a dark coat in which she carried handkerchiefs. She spoke in a Yiddish accent, as many of the prosecution's witnesses had,

but her English was well-spoken and understandable, at times even poetic. She recounted how she tried to escape through the Washington Place door, but found it locked. How one of the triangle foremen struggled with the door handle, but couldn't open it,

jumping around in his frustration like a wildcat, she said. Then she told how she watched Margaret Schwartz's clothes catch fire, consuming the girl in flames as she waited helplessly near an exit door that would never open. As Alterman fled, she gathered the muff of her coat to shield her face from the flames at the Green Street door. The fire, she said, was like a red curtain. She told her story uninterrupted, in a continuous monologue, and when she was done, there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom. As she spoke, Max Stoyer sharpened his rhetorical knife. He knew how important Alterman was and knew also that the prosecution had her sequestered.

He waited for Alterman to finish. Then he turned to the teary young woman, asking a simple but confusing question. Could you, Miss Alterman, tell us your story again? Once again, Alterman recounted her story, but she changed a few words. This time, she picked up dresses to cover her head instead of her jacket muff.

This time, the green street door was, quote, a wall of flame. This time, Stoyer reminded her gently, she'd left out the part about the wildcat. Stoyer had Kate Alterman repeat her story again, and after a lunch recess, he asked her to repeat it a fourth time. At the end of each repetition, he would ask her to clarify, pointing out that she'd used different words or the exact same words as before. Stoyer knew that English was not Alterman's first language. She became flustered after repeated questioning of her choice to use specific words like wildcat and wall of flame. While never saying it out loud, Stoyer managed to undermine the credibility of the prosecution's best witness.

His questions implied that she'd been coached on what to say and how to say it, that her testimony was fabricated. Stoyer finally asked about conspicuous phrases like wildcat and wall of flame. You never studied those words, did you? Alterman said she had not. And with that, Stoyer had no further questions. Alterman retreated from the stand. with that, Stoyer had no further questions. Alterman retreated from the stand. Bostwick and the prosecution were worried. It was hard to tell who won that round and who knew what kind of tricks Max Stoyer would try next.

By the trial's second week, when defense lawyer Max Stoyer called his first witnesses, the Triangle owners must have felt things were progressing well. They had certainly gotten their money's worth out of their intractable and argumentative lawyer. People still shouted at Max Blank and Isaac Harris when they walked the courtroom hallways and on the streets, but the Triangle owners could take small comfort in one thing. News coverage of the trial was limited. So far, not one story had appeared on the front page of any newspaper.

It seems, outside of the courthouse walls, the city of New York was moving on. Inside the courthouse, Max Stoyer was calling witnesses for the defense. Buyers and merchants who'd visited the Triangle Building regularly and testified the factory doors between floors were never kept locked. These first witnesses were businessmen and tradesmen who mirrored the composition of the jury themselves. Stoyer had called the prosecution's witnesses liars in his opening statement, and with each witness he called for the defense,

he sought to cast more doubt, not just on whether the Washington Place door had been locked, but also on whether other ways to escape had been ignored. Margaret Schwartz, Stoyer argued, but also on whether other ways to escape had been ignored. Margaret Schwartz, Stoyer argued, could have chosen some other exit instead of merely waiting to catch fire by a locked door. After all, the women workers of Triangle knew the best and proper way to exit, but in a moment of panic, he claimed, they lost their heads. In Stoyer's telling, the irrational, hysterical behavior of women was to blame for this tragedy, not a locked door.

Prosecutor Boswick fought back, showing that for the workers on the ninth floor, the fire quickly destroyed chances for escape through the Green Street door. This rendered the Washington Place door the only option, and it was locked. Stoyer parried, noting that plenty of women remained composed. One of the defense witnesses, bookkeeper Dinah Lipschitz, testified about calmly alerting the 10th floor after the factory's new teleautograph machine had failed to do so. Another defense witness, May Levantini, was called to explain that yes, on the rare occasions the factory doors were locked, you could always find a key nearby. Levantini, a mother of three, had escaped the fire by sliding down an elevator cable. She swore that she herself had turned the

key to unlock the Washington Place door, but couldn't use the stairs because they were already on fire. Boswick asked her what she did right after this. Levantini replied that she had closed the door again with the key still inside the lock. Ida and Anna Mittelman, two sisters who worked at the factory, were called to confirm Levantini's account. But Bostwick pressed harder, and their details began to crumble. Anna Mittelman admitted she'd forgotten the whole incident, until Levantini had reminded her. Ida Mittelman admitted to remembering only after she'd been told about it by her sister.

On December 20th, the 14th day of the trial, Stoyer called Triangle owner Max Blank to the stand. With a solemn expression, Blank explained how his two young daughters were on the factory floor the day of the fire. This testimony opened a dual opportunity for Stoyer. First, he could depict Blank as a loving family man, and second, it helped prove that there was no way the fire was an insurance scam gone horribly wrong, as some newspaper editorials had suggested. How could the triangle owner have knowingly caused a fire with his own two little daughters in the building? Blank also helped bolster the defense's position that the doors in his building couldn't have been locked. As he explained, there was too much foot traffic from floor to floor over the course of a routine workday.

Keeping the doors locked would have slowed down production. But Samuel Bernstein, Blank's cousin and a hero during the fire, admitted that keys to those doors were kept on pieces of cloth all around the factory. He described how the cloth attachments would sometimes snap, and then he would have to go searching for the key, presumably in order to unlock a door. But why have a system of keys like this? Triangle owner Isaac Harris explained from his seat in the witness box. We once locked up about six girls, and we found in the room of one girl about two dozen wastes, in the room of another about three dozen wastes. In every and we found in the room of one girl about two dozen wastes, in the room of another about three dozen wastes. In every house we found so many wastes, from two dozen to three dozen wastes,

that these girls had taken. Harris also described how his managers caught a girl on the factory floor trying to leave with a shirtwaist hidden inside her hair. But Boswick countered on cross-examination. Why was it so important, he wondered, that employees had to leave through the Green Street door to have their bags checked at the end of every workday? Surely it would be difficult to steal too much. With theatrical flair, Stoyer held up a purse for the jury to see. It was small, just like the ones the Triangle women carried. Without warning, he tossed the purse to the prosecution.

Inside were four shirtwaists. Bostwick conceded, but before Isaac Harris stepped down from the witness box, Bostwick asked a Triangles co-owner and main numbers man one final question. What was the value, in Harris's estimation, of all the fabric they'd found stolen by employees in a single year? Stoyer exploded, objecting on his usual grounds. The question was incompetent and immaterial, but Judge Crane wanted an answer. Would it be $25, Boswick asked? No, Harris replied. It would not exceed that much. Boswick's point was clear. The Triangle owners believe first and foremost in protecting all of their property, no matter how insignificant.

The safety of their workers was not even a close second. But in this run of testimony, Boswick seemingly missed a crucial opportunity. If Blank was telling the truth and doors between floors were left unlocked during normal business hours, why did his cousin Bernstein testify the factory had a system of keys for those doors? It was a line of questioning that was never pursued. After closing arguments, Judge Thomas Crane left the jury with some explicit parting instructions. He stressed that, after testimony from some 150 witnesses, the jury's focus should be on just one question. Did the Triangle owners personally know the Washington Place door was locked on the afternoon of March 25th? He went on, clarifying,

Because they are charged with a felony, I charge that before you find the defendants guilty of manslaughter in the first degree, you must find that this door was locked. If it was locked, and locked with the knowledge of the defendants, you must also find beyond a reasonable doubt that such locking caused the death of Margaret Schwartz. Two days after a recess for Christmas, the jury began deliberations. Imagine it's December 1911. An hour and a half ago, Judge Crane sent you and 11 other men to this wood panel jury room to reach a verdict in the case of the people of New York versus Harrison Blank. The verdict seems

pretty clear, at least to you, but after three ballot votes, the room is on the verge of deadlock. To your shock, nearly all the other men want to acquit. You and a cigar maker named Anton are the last two holdouts, but Anton's been little help persuading the room. The man has an infection on his tongue and can barely speak. You rub your temples and try to make your case. General, the door was locked. They showed us the lock. The foreman, a real estate man named Leo, leans towards you impatiently.

We've been over this. The city lawyers bought that lock in a hardware store and gussied it up and paid the detectives to lie about it. Well, you know, all those women testified that they couldn't get the door open. People will say whatever they want to make some quick money. They're all union sympathizers. This plays right into their hands. What about the ones who got pay raises just before this trial? The women the defense called. You think they're not operating out of self-interest? That's not the point. Listen, Judge Crane specifically told us how to frame this. The judge had instructed you to disregard all the excruciating stories of lives lost and families destroyed. The question is

simple. Did the factory owners know the doors were locked? I have a right to reach whatever conclusion I want based on the facts. Then show us the facts. Tell us what proof you have that either of these men knew the door was locked. The face of every man in that room is turned to you. Working at a shirtwaist factory yourself, you understand the stakes at play

better than any of these men. Those dead women at the Triangle factory could have been your co-workers. You believe the prosecution's witnesses. You know the door was locked. There's not a doubt in your mind the owners knew it too, but you can't prove it. After two hours of deliberations, the jury voted a fourth and final time. They filed back out into the courtroom and took their seats in the jury box. They found Max Blank and Isaac Harris not guilty of manslaughter.

As Blank and Harris sank back into their seats with relief, cries and shouts of outrage filled the courtroom. Josephine Nicolosi, a trimmer on Triangle's eighth floor who testified during the trial, recalled the scene in the courthouse. We waited, then they came out. The people began to scream and cry, give me back my daughter, give me back my son. Justice, where is justice? All the doors on that long hallway suddenly opened up and the judges stuck their heads out from their private chambers. They stood there in their black robes in the doorway, looking. Blank and Harris didn't dare brave the throngs in the courthouse halls or the street. They left another way, through the prisoner's jail below the courthouse, taking a little use back door.

On the street, a young man named David Weiner saw them exit. His sister Rose had burned to death in their factory. So he led a crowd of people, chasing the owners toward the subway station. As the factory owners fled down the subway stairs, he shouted after them. He called them murderers, as he had done on the first day of the trial. But he couldn't catch up to them. He collapsed on the cobblestones in grief.

The Triangle owners had been exonerated, leaving the shattered families of the victims to grieve alone. For them, the world was hollowed out, without color. Seeing the deaths of 146 workers, their sisters and daughters and mothers would serve no purpose. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in

the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that defined their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something

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Oh my God. Are we excited for this moment? Ah! I cannot believe it. Woo! Buy it now. Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. As 1911 rolled over into the cold and blustering January of 1912, it would have been hard to imagine any comfort or solace for the families of the Triangle victims.

The newspapers had reported on the sensationalism of the trial's final day, but then the story faded away. There were calls for another trial, on charges pertaining to negligence, but in March, the New York State Superior Court quietly dismissed all remaining indictments on the basis of double jeopardy. pertaining to negligence, but in March, the New York State Superior Court quietly dismissed all remaining indictments on the basis of double jeopardy. All across the Lower East Side, families had lost not only relatives, but desperately needed sources of income. Many workers had been sending their checks across the Atlantic to relatives in the old countries.

The labor union stepped in to do their part. From the days just after the fire, well through the following years, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and Local 25 both raised money and donated funds locally and internationally. But of course, these resources had a limit. Imagine it's a fall afternoon in 1914. You're a tailor closing up your small shop on the Lower East Side. The sun is setting and you're returning to your home on Delancey Street. You're not a young man anymore, but you can still make the steps up to the third floor, two at a time. You enter your apartment a little out of breath to find your wife standing by the kitchen window.

She's holding a letter. What's that? It's from the insurance company. The insurance company. It's about the Triangle Fire. Your daughter was burned alive in that building. After the trial, you saw an ad in the back of the newspaper. You went down to the insurance broker's office

and filed a claim on the life of your daughter. You wrote her name in pen and showed them a copy of her death certificate. Your face mirrors your wife. Open it. You look at your wife. She's about to cry. Fumbling for a knife in the kitchen drawer, you slice open the envelope.

For a moment, you don't speak. What does it say? It's from the insurance company. I already knew that. They sent us a check for $75. Many families of the deceased filed lawsuits against Blank and Harris, but Max Stoyer, once again representing the owners in these matters, litigated until he tired most of them out.

Only 23 families received payouts from the Triangle Factories insurance company. None amounted to more than $75 per claim, not even $2,000 today. The Triangle owners, however, were paid much, much more. In 1913, a Collier's Magazine exposé on the commercial arson industry presented compelling evidence that Triangle, as well as shirtwaist factories in other cities, had used their insurance policies for profit. Between 1902 and 1909, four small fires broke out at Blank and Harris's two factories. They took place during off hours, when there were no employees inside. Each of the fires occurred

at the end of the shirtwaist trade's busy season, helpfully consuming unsold and over-insured product. The Triangle owners paid extremely high rates for their insurance, and after every fire they received a check with a substantial insurance payout. No questions asked. By the time of the 1911 fire, the Triangle owners carried a fire insurance policy totaling just under a quarter million dollars, $80,000 higher than the estimated worth of their inventory and equipment. After the fire, the factory's insurer, the Royal Insurance Company, finally balked at such a high indemnity. They refused to pay out. But in the months before their trial for manslaughter began,

Blank and Harris enlisted Max Stoyer to sue the Royal Insurance Company for non-payment of their claim. And they won. The Triangle factory owners received $65,000 of the $80,000 surplus they were claiming, about $1.7 million in today's value. During the trial and all through 1912, Frances Perkins and her factory investigative Commission were making startling discoveries. With the full faith and credit of the Albany Statehouse and a newly progressive Tammany Hall, the Commission spent two years reporting on substandard conditions

in thousands of warehouses and factories across 45 cities. They held weekly hearings on the findings that were open to the public. A shrewd woman, Perkins was initially skeptical of the commission's ability to accomplish anything. She was only 32 years old, but was no stranger to conservative officials simply waiting out legislation that didn't suit the interests of the business community. Perkins wanted some real wins, and she was shocked as anyone when she discovered the Factory Investigating Commission would actually have both power and reach. It was given the go-ahead by a Tammany governor and steered by Al Smith and Robert Wagner, two young politicians known as the Tammany Twins.

The commission and its findings would manage to reshape not only regulations and factory conditions, but the Democratic Party itself. Perkins led a scouting group through rope factories in Auburn, New York, candy factories in Buffalo, and canneries in Cataraugus. They found children passing out from exhaustion, and husbands and wives separated into day and night shifts by management. Perkins also made sure that elected officials got a first-hand understanding of worker safety. She said, We made sure Robert Wagner personally crawled through the tiny hole in the wall that gave exit to a stepladder covered with ice and ending 12 feet from the ground.

This hole had been euphemistically labeled Fire Escape. And then a real win came in 1913. Goated by the Tammany Twins and Perkins Commission, the New York State House overhauled the state's safety codes. Automatic sprinklers and fire escapes were now required. Occupancy limitations were set to prevent overcrowding. Factories had to provide washing and bathroom facilities. Child laborers would need to provide doctor certification that they were 14 years old or older.

Regular fire drills became mandatory. Business owners complained bitterly about the additional costs they would have to assume under the weight of these new reforms. But the New York State Department of Labor was also overhauled to make sure these new laws would be enforced. That year also saw the passage of the 54-hour workweek bill that Perkins had been working for for years. So next, she set her sights on establishing the first minimum wage. Overseeing these events from his plush backroom at Delmonico's restaurant, Charles Murphy, the man who silently ran Tammany in the city of New York, was pleased. He was even more pleased when Tammany and the Democratic Party

swept the November 1913 elections. Murphy's shift towards progressive policies brought in votes and paid serious political dividends. For the first time in America, the concerns of the working class proved to be an electable issue. The graft-ridden back channels of Tammany Hall had embraced the philosophy of reform. That same year, Max Blank was arrested again, this time for keeping the doors locked at his Fifth Avenue shirtwaist factory. Again, Max Stoyer represented Blank in court. But this time, Blank was found guilty. The fine was $20, the absolute minimum. The judge even apologized for Blank's trouble. In 1914, Blank's company was caught sewing counterfeit Consumer League labels onto

their garments. The labels, instilled by the American Federation of Labor, showed a consumer that he or she was buying a product that complied with fair practices set up by the unions. During his defense, Blank explained that his company's reputation had been unfairly tarnished. He couldn't get the official seals of a safe working environment that he needed to do business, so he faked them. Though Max Blank and Isaac Harris continued other shirtwaist enterprises until 1925, the name Triangle disappears from records around 1918. Charles Murphy and his Tammany machine both faded away as well,

replaced by left-leaning politicians who didn't need anyone's help to get out the vote among the working classes. In 1943, Tammany Hall sold their headquarters, the Wigwam, to a new tenant, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union Kate Alterman, along with the rest of the survivors of the Triangle Fire, retreated into private life. As the years passed, the women were largely forgotten by the public as individuals and only dimly remembered as a group unified by trauma. But many of the women who fought for change among factory workers did not stop with the end of the trial. Some were galvanized by trauma. But many of the women who fought for change among factory workers did not stop with the end of the trial. Some were galvanized by it. Mary Dreyer continued to work for the Women's Trade Union League, campaigning for women's suffrage and the rights of women workers

domestically and internationally. Clara Lemlich, who worked briefly as a factory investigator for the Perkins Commission, led protests and boycotts into the 1930s, all the while advocating for the Communist Party. After a 1951 trip to Russia, she publicly embraced the tenets of Stalinism. Years later, she would apologize for this. Frankens Perkins was nominated as President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor in 1933, becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet position. She helped craft the policies of the New Deal, specifically pushing for minimum wage laws. On March 25, 1961, Perkins helped dedicate a memorial plaque at the old Ash Building, which had been bought by New York University. Fifty years had passed, and the Triangle Fire had taken its place in the history of American labor.

Unlike the Slocum disaster, or even the sinking of the Titanic, the victims of Triangle were finally becoming more than simply tragic figures. Activists like Mary Dreyer, Clara Lemlich, and Francis Perkins, who carried torches for the victims, created real and lasting change both for workers and in politics. That Saturday afternoon in 1961, 14 survivors of the Triangle Fire turned their attentions to the 81-year-old Perkins, who spoke briefly from the podium. We can look with affection and respect upon those who died in this great fire, and we

can still say that these dead have not died in vain, and we will never forget them. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by George Ducker, edited by Karen Lowe, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman.

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