American History Tellers - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Wildcat | 1

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan, claiming the lives of 146 garment workers — mostly women and girls. It was one of the deadliest workplace disasters in American history. Caused by a combination of carelessness and poor safety measures, the fire eventually set off a wave of workplace reforms that changed industry in America and sent New York party politics in a totally different direction.But in the years before the fire, the workers of the Triangle factory were focused on a different issue — advocating for higher pay. Facing long hours and unsympathetic bosses unwilling to implement change, the women decided they had only one option left. It was time to go on strike.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 4.30 on March 25th, 1911. You just got off a bit early from your shift at a boutique in Lower Manhattan, selling perfume and giving samples to female shoppers. You're on your way to Washington Square Park to meet your friend, Winston. He's usually loafing around the game tables this time of day, and you're hoping to surprise him. As you approach the park, a performer in a tuxedo passes you on stilts.

Women in wide-brimmed hats glide by in pairs. You carefully step around the horse droppings near the entrance and look around for Winston. You spot him by the chocolate ice cart and wave. Winston! Sarah! What a nice surprise. He's beaming. He's asked you to go steady,

but you haven't yet made a decision about what comes next. In spite of the long hours, you like working. You're not sure you're ready to settle down yet. You have great timing, because guess what? I'm buying a motor car. Really? You're kidding. Winston comes from old money. He grew up in the city, unlike yourself.

And he's always got some new scheme going. It's a Ford Model T. None of this imported German business. Gotta buy American. Come on, they're gonna let me test drive it. Winston takes your hand and leads you out of the park toward Broadway to catch the uptown trolley. Where do you even park a motor car? His brow furrows. He clearly hasn't thought that far ahead. I suppose I'll park it on the street. Sure, right between the butcher's cart and the carriage. What was that? Sounded like an explosion. The two of you look up and see smoke billowing from a window about eight stories up.

Tiny bits of broken glass sprinkle the pavement like drops of rain. Oh my god, I think that building's on fire. I hope no one's up there. Well, someone is. Look. The owner, maybe? They're throwing fabric out the window. The two of you watch as a bundle of fabric falls eight stories to the sidewalk. It lands with a flat thud. People around you have stopped what they are doing. They're all pointing and looking up. We should get going.

But you're not going anywhere. You've let go of Winston's hand and are staring up at the building. Smoke is billowing out of the windows. But there's something else. A person, no, two people, two women, are climbing out onto the ledge. Then someone on the sidewalk near the building screams. A crowd rushes across the street. You follow them, even though you have a sickening feeling. The parcel that fell from the window isn't a bundle of fabric. It's a woman's body. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen.

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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. On March 25th, 1911, the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, mostly women and girls.

It was one of the deadliest workplace disasters in American history. Though it was likely sparked by an unextinguished cigarette, the fire was caused by a combination of carelessness and poor safety measures. The flames quickly engulfed the top three floors of the building, forcing dozens of workers to jump over 90 feet to their deaths. The shock of the fire would eventually set off a wave of workplace reforms that changed industry in America and sent New York party politics in a totally different direction. During the first decade of the 20th century, female garment workers fought strenuously for workplace safety and better working conditions. But in the years leading up to the fire, the women working in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were focused on a different issue, higher pay. After years of struggling,

they realized there was only one way to get what they wanted. They would have to go on strike. Their labor movement would electrify the city and lead to a chain of strikes across New York City, shutting down almost 450 garment factories. But the movement would eventually find itself struggling with a crisis of identity. Was this a cause for workers' rights or women's rights? And could the two be reconciled? This is Episode 1, Wildcat. In 1902, Max Blank and his business partner Isaac Harris leased the ninth floor of the Ash Building. It was a brand new 10-story commercial development on the corner of Washington Place and Green Street in Manhattan.

Max Blank was 37 years old, a garrulous man shaped like a domino, tall with broad, square shoulders. He was the factory's outside man. He could talk and spin stories to charm merchandisers and distributors. Isaac Harris, a few years older, was the inside man. Short, with a pinched face, he had a head for numbers and knew the production line intimately. He could tally exactly how much fabric was needed for their orders and how quickly they could turn out the product. The Ash Building itself mirrored both men's personalities. Max Blank enjoyed the commanding view of the city below them, as well as the prime location. On one side, Washington Square Park and the stately residences of old New York.

On the other, the bustling Broadway shopping district. Isaac Harris admired the building's economical use of space. He could fit 240 sewing machines across nearly 9,000 square feet. The Triangle owners had emigrated from Russia during the 1890s. They arrived to find America crippled by an economic depression. The garment industry, however, was largely unaffected, and Blank and Harris went into business together. It was the heyday of the sweatshop era. Gone were the days of stitching by hand, shattered by the sound and speed of the pedal-pump Singer sewing machine, which churned out 300 stitches per minute. The invention of the cutter's knife allowed skilled craftsmen to slice through

16 layers of cloth at a time. Workers cramped into stifling, windowless tenement apartments were sweated, meaning they had more work squeezed out of them at a time. Workers cramped into stifling, windowless tenement apartments were sweated, meaning they had more work squeezed out of them for less pay. At night, they would sleep in the next room over, only a few feet from the machines, and they were paid a pittance. If a worker got sick or was injured on the job, he or she was simply replaced. A garment contractor had only to venture down to the Hester Street pig market on the Lower East Side and hire new workers immediately. No one thought much about these abysmal working conditions, not even the workers. It was just the way it was, because everyone was desperate.

Workers considered themselves lucky to have a job at all. But Blank and Harris were building something different, a sleek, new, state-of-the-art factory. They paid a decent wage and hired their own kind, Eastern European immigrants like themselves. They made modern clothes for modern women, and their product, the shirtwaist, was all the rage. Long-sleeved with a high neck in a plain buttoned-up front, the shirtwaist was worn tucked into a long skirt.

It could be pleated, embroidered, or embellished with lace and trimmings. No more bustles and hoops and ridiculous conventions that imprisoned women in their own clothes. A shirtwaist could be worn on the street, at the college, for lunch, even for tennis and boating expeditions. Famed fashion magazine illustrator Charles Gibson loved the shirtwaist look so much it became the uniform of his signature female archetype, the classy, hourglass-shaped Gibson girl. Over the next six years, the Triangle owners would do a brisk business, so brisk that they leased two more floors in the Ash Building,

moving their offices to the 10th and highest floor. Eventually, Isaac Harris married the cousin of Max Blank's wife. Both Blank and Harris family relatives and in-laws were given comfortable positions in lower management. The two families saw Triangle as an honest, hard-working family affair. Pauline Newman was like many of the young female workers who came to New York in the early 20th century looking for a better life. She arrived in Manhattan with her mother in 1901, fleeing the deadly Russian pogroms that were devastating Lithuania's Jewish communities. When she started working at the

Triangle factory, she was only 12 years old. Newman was put in an area called the kindergarten, where she would trim threads from finished garments alongside other children her age, though some were as young as eight or nine years old. Over the deafening noise of factory machines, she would often hear the foreman rebuking older machine operators from being too slow or wasting a needle or thread. She worked from 7.30 in the morning until 9 at night. If business was slow, sometimes she could leave early, around 6.30 in the evening.

She earned $1.50 a week. To ease the tedium at work, the children sang songs and made up games. When city inspectors came around, floor workers would shout, into the boxes, and Newman and the other children would quickly climb into crates of merchandise to hide under a pile of finished shirts. For factory owners like Blank and Harris, young girls were considered desirable employees. They worked for lower pay and were thought less likely

to be drawn into labor arguments than their male counterparts. Girls, the belief went, would not argue. They would do what they were told. As Newman grew up at Triangle, she was assigned to more strenuous work

and eventually was moved to a machine. At 15, she was no longer a child. She was intellectually curious and noticed the imbalances around her, how she faced the same petty humiliations as her co-workers, how managers followed employees on bathroom breaks, short-changed them on pay, even rejiggered the factory clocks to make the workday longer. Despite this oppressive atmosphere, Newman became fast friends with her co-workers. Like normal schoolgirls, these young women became teenage confidants,

sharing stories and secrets. In the world outside the factory, New York City was vast and brightly lit, and most importantly, unchaperoned, a new world flush with new things. Western culture was everywhere. Nickelodeons played films with titles like Water Lilies and The Redeemed Criminal. There were dance halls and trips to Coney Island. There were boys. And there were opportunities for education, night classes in socialism and philosophy.

Newman attended study groups where women bonded over readings and discussion. Like Newman, her co-workers from Eastern Europe carried labor traditions across the ocean. Only now, the late-night study groups that sprung up over the East Side were about Karl Marx, collective bargaining, and workers' rights. But Newman only had one day off a week. Monday through Saturday was filled with drudgery and danger at the factory. She watched girls her age become sullen and withdrawn, unable to bear the brutal pace, unable to visualize themselves anywhere but in a bellowing factory day after day for the rest of their lives. By 1908, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was producing just under a million dollars in shirtwaists per year. The average unskilled worker was earning $5 to $7 a week.

For comparison, that same worker's rent was about $4 a week. Meals and groceries were another $3. A paycheck not spent wisely would quickly vanish. Skilled machine operators and trimmers could earn between $10 and $15 a week, but often if a single worker was earning too much, the managers would cut his or her hours. The bosses might have believed the old days of sweatshops were past, but for the seamstresses and the collar makers, the shirt setters and the sewing machine operators, things were just as bad as they'd ever been.

On their lunch breaks, in the dressing rooms, walking home across the park, the women workers, exhausted and overrun, whispered to each other. Something had to be done. They couldn't keep up this frenetic pace. Something had to give. Something had to shake the public awake.

Imagine it's a Saturday afternoon in 1908, right after lunch. You're a sewing machine operator at the Triangle Factory. Today is payday, and you're nervous because you've broken another needle. Earlier this week, you went to your group contractor, Jacob Klein, to explain how the broken needle last week wasn't your fault. It was defective. Other girls had the same problem. Still, they docked you for the needle and for excess thread. But your contractor, Jacob, didn't get angry. He said he'd see what he could do, and he's doing something now. As over the din of your machine, you hear men speaking angrily. He said he'd see what he could do, and he's doing something now. As over the

din of your machine, you hear men speaking angrily. You look up to see Jacob arguing with Mr. Bernstein, the floor manager. Mr. Bernstein, I'm sick of the slave driving here. You know and I know that you're not paying anywhere near enough to cover my operator's wages. It's the rate we agreed on. Yeah, we agreed on it two months ago. Things have changed since then. I took on two more operators who I have to pay, and you haven't increased the budget. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. Then get your operators to do better work. Our standards have to be maintained. My operators are doing their best. This isn't even about them. It's about me. After I pay them their wages, I barely have anything left over to pay myself.

Mr. Bernstein hisses between clenched teeth. Jacob, finish sewing your blouse and get out. The factory floor goes quiet as everyone watches. But Jacob doesn't move. He's just sitting at his work table, staring up defiantly at Bernstein. You ordered the bad needles, didn't you? At that, Bernstein reaches down and yanks the smaller man out of his seat. They're wrestling as Bernstein tries to push Jacob toward the exit.

But suddenly, Jacob twists away. He turns to the workers and starts shouting. Will you stand by your machines and see a fellow worker treated like this? Jacob's shirt is torn and his glass is broken. He breathes heavily as he looks at you and all the other workers up and down the rows of work tables. There's just a moment of silent confusion and indecision. Then, one by one, the women around you stand up. Some of the men, too.

They put down their tools and follow Jacob out the door. Before you can consider your options, your feet are already moving. You've never done anything like it, standing up for your fellow workers. You didn't know you had this courage. But just moments later, you're nervous all over again. After walking off the job, will you have a job on Monday? Will any of you? Jacob Klein was a contractor at the Triangle Factory.

His action was known as a wildcat strike, a single flare-up of tensions between a shop's workers and owners. The two parties would be forced into a quick negotiation, and either the workers would receive a raise or they would be fired. It's unknown if Klein's pay was increased, but none of the Triangle workers were fired. Klein and the workers who left with him that Saturday all returned to their positions Monday morning. By the summer of 1909, wildcat strikes like these were erupting in factories all over New York. The garment industry had doubled in size over the last decade, and with more workers

came increased tensions. Cloakmakers, tie makers, even workers at other shirtwaist factories were forming picket lines. In August of that year, 1,500 tailors walk off the job, and the men who ran the buttonhole machines staged a brief strike too. That summer had been long and hot. Most garment workers lived in stifling tenement apartments on the Lower East Side, with little relief from the heat. Blank and Harris, however, both enjoyed comfortable existences. They owned houses on the Upper West Side. They employed maids and governesses for their children. Blank entertained clients in his chauffeured automobile. But the Triangle owners had a problem on their hands that could affect that way of life. The shirtwaist fad was beginning to wane,

and so Triangle's owners pushed to produce as many as they could before demand evaporated. For the moment, sales were still climbing, but it was clear that just one bad season could dash their delicately balanced books. And making it worse for the Triangle owners, there were rumors of after-work meetings. There were sporadic flare-ups here and there over wages. Workers still hadn't set their course, but the path was becoming increasingly apparent. Blank and Harris watched and waited and listened.

This was their American dream, the new world of their own making, just like they'd been promised. That a person could start with nothing and shape their own destiny. They would not let their dream collapse. They would not let anyone tell them what to do, certainly not the workers. And to protect their interests, they would do whatever was necessary. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children defended. Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing

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or somebody doesn't testify correctly? In order to win at all costs. If Paul asked you to do something, it wasn't a request. It was an order. 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?

Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge in coming exclusively in ad-free and Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The first trade unions in America began to coalesce just after the Civil War ended in 1865. They formed in every industry,coal, steel, railroads—anywhere that men worked and felt they needed a united front to negotiate with their often stubborn and unbending employers. It was an uneasy balance. Any one owner was always more powerful than any one employee,

but with a union, members improved their lot by negotiating together for wages, hours, and working conditions of its members. This was known as collective bargaining. By 1881, Samuel Gompers helped found the American Federation of Labor, or the AFL. The idea was to have a union of unions under one roof to help members with publicity, fundraising, and employer negotiations. The AFL launched advertising campaigns urging customers to look for the union label when making a purchase.

Some shoppers did, some did not, as the union label often meant the item came with a slight markup in price. The sweatshop system of the 1890s had made it impossible to organize garment workers. Unregulated, under-the-table garment shops would emerge for a season and then disappear. There were too many new immigrants, too desperate for wages, to consider ever banding together. The AFL was no help. It didn't even bother with garment workers.

They were mostly women, and the AFL saw women as plainly unequal. The labor union believed women workers lacked a fighting spirit and were too emotional for the lengthy process of labor negotiations. But all that changed in 1900 with the formation of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Despite having the word ladies front and center in its title, the union was open to anyone who worked in the garment industry, male or female, and it divided itself into specialized shops, or locals. Local 25 was the shirtwaist makers' union in Manhattan. Its members were predominantly female, but because the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union executive board was mostly male, Local 25 got little support from its parent union.

By 1909, Local 25 had merely 100 or so members, and only about $4 in its accounts. But it was this small union that Triangle workers approached in September of that year. Since Jacob Klein's walkout, the women of Triangle had formed a secret strike committee

with a handful of male contractors. Years of indignities had piled up. Wages skimped, long punishing hours, emotional abuse from higher-ups, physical danger from the machines on the factory floors. These were just a few of the grievances discussed over lunch breaks or at after-work meetings. Joe Seinfeld, a young sewing machine operator, was elected as the Triangle

Strike Committee's leader. One evening after work, about 150 Triangle employees gathered in the back of a union hall on Clinton Street to meet with Local 25. The first women to arrive sat in chairs. When the chairs were filled, they stood or leaned against pillars. Excitement raced through the air of the packed room. Looking around, it was not hard to notice that most of those present were women, like the Triangle factory floor, where about 70% of the workers were female. And now in Clinton Hall, they had control, or at least the illusion of it. The union reps listened and nodded as women spoke up. They agreed a strike was necessary.

The optics of having women on the picket lines would help sway public opinion. The reps urged the workers, all of them, to join the union immediately. But there was a problem. Local 25 was broke. The local would absolutely support a walkout, but they couldn't sponsor it. Meanwhile, Blank and Harris were also trying to organize.

After Jacob Klein's walkout the year before, the owners knew they had to do something about the rising temperature of their workforce. So they formed the Triangle Employees Benevolent Association, an in-house union for the workers run by relatives of Blank and Harris. It was, of course, a farce. After the Clinton Hall meeting, word got back to the Triangle factory owners that workers had met with Local 25 in secret, and that was the final straw. On Friday, September 24th, Max Blank stopped all work on the floor to make an announcement. The noise of the sewing machine slowly died down. When there was silence, Blank said he was very upset and disappointed with the workers.

You wanted a union and I gave you one, he said. So why are you now looking for another one? The operators nearest him glanced surreptitiously at each other. There must have been Triangle spies at Clinton Hall. Blank put his workers on notice, telling them anyone found joining a competing union outside the Triangle factory would find themselves out of work immediately. The following Monday, workers arrived at the corner of Washington Place and Green Street, only to find the factory doors shuttered. Blank and Harris had fired the

pro-union employees preemptively, and they were not allowed back into the building. In the newspapers, Triangle ran ads seeking new employees. The suddenly unemployed Triangle workers now found their hand forced. They had wanted to strike. They had planned to strike, but would have preferred more time to marshal what little resources they had. But they weren't going without a fight. There was no other recourse.

The strike was on. Seeing trouble coming, the Triangle owners turned to Tammany Hall, New York's political machine. The Society of St. Tammany was originally formed during the Revolutionary War to fight British sympathizers and took its name from the Delaware tribal chief Taminand. Two centuries later, Tammany claimed it stood for the common people. But in reality, this political system primarily served to make business owners and politicians of New York City richer. Business owners with the right connections would ask a ward boss for help with new ventures. Corrupt Tammany leaders would then come to their rescue. Cash would end up in all the right pockets. The theater of graft repeated itself year after year.

The bizarre Tammany Code of Ethics worked like this. If a business helped fund a public project and skimmed a little off the top, that was honest graft. If a city employee actually stole money from a city or business treasury, that was dishonest graft. Despite its name, Tammany Hall had no fixed location, but it continued its Native American motif by referring to district leaders as sachems and their headquarters as the wigwam. In its first decade in the 1900s, the wigwam was a flat-fronted, nondescript building located at 14th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues. And inside it sat the Grand Sachem, 50-year-old Charles Murphy. Better than a mayor, Charles

Murphy was the man who got the mayor elected. Murphy was a plain-spoken man with endless curiosity. He was unique among the Tammany ward bosses for his tendency to keep his mouth shut. He preferred listening, and had earned the moniker Silent Charlie. A ward boss or politician or city millionaire who found himself meeting with Charles Murphy would often be dumbfounded by how few words Murphy actually spoke. But when Murphy did speak, everyone listened. After nearly two decades in Manhattan, the Triangle factory owners knew better than to go directly to Murphy. Instead, they would send word to bosses lower down to the Tammany food chase, hoping they would bring the case to Murphy.

Perhaps the owners would even go to the police station. Max Blank and Isaac Harris had no illusions about their position. A strike could be very bad for their bottom line. But the city of Manhattan had their back. After all, they were job creators. This was just another case of honest graft. Imagine it's late September, 1909, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. You've just arrived at the offices of the Greater New York Detective Agency,

but offices might be a bit of a stretch. You climb dark, rickety stairs up three floors. You've seen hundreds of these rank-smelling, ash-dark tenements. You're an ex-boxer. Muscle paid you in the ring, and now it pays you out. The math is pretty simple. Get the job. Do the job. Get paid.

Don't ask questions. You enter into a surprisingly large room with a desk and a grimy window. The secretary tends to a sickly-looking potted plant. Two other toughs you recognize from around are sitting in the only two seats, so you stand. Max Schlansky nods at you, and he starts in on his pitch. Gentlemen, I heard you work for the Pinkertons. Yeah, a little bit here and there.

Did some job for the Baldwins, too. I used to live in Spokane. Spokane? Sounds fancy. Not especially, no. I wouldn't call it a fancy place. Well, good. This isn't fancy work we're discussing. This is strike-breaking, plain and simple. You boys and a few others will meet at a proposed time and a proposed place, and together you'll break up the picket line, cut and dry. Sounds like it. Where's the picket? Triangle Factory. Bunch of working girls wearing pretty sashes and trying to halt the wheels of honest production in this city. Isn't that right, boys? The toughs in the chairs grunt through assent. You could do without the carnival barker spiel, but then something strikes you. These are women strikers? Already ahead of you? I know you wouldn't want to besmirch

your notions of chivalry by beating a woman. Well, yeah, you're right, I don't. Well, I've already thought of that. Did you meet Betsy on your way in? He gestures at what you thought was his secretary. Takes you one extra second to take in what he means. Betsy is a prostitute, applying her trade downtown just like yourself, but in a different way. Max, if you don't water the plants, they're not going to grow. Well, that's not a false statement, Betsy. He turns back to you. I figured the working girls could handle the working girls, if you follow my meaning. Do the job however you see fit, but just worry about the men, okay?

Betsy and her crew will do the rest. On October 4th, picket lines had formed outside of the Ash building. Triangle workers would arrive early in the morning, before the first bell, to stand out front and canvas. They held signs and exhorted passersby to take notice of the situation. When the scabs, the replacement workers Blank and Harris had hired to fill the empty spots on the production line arrived, the Triangle strikers would try to bring to fill the empty spots on the production line arrived, the triangle strikers would try to bring them on board. This is a non-union factory, they would tell the SCABs. Your rights are not being protected.

The triangle strikers would plead with the SCABs to join their cause, to join the strike. It was a method that worked in theory. If the SCABs could be turned at the picket lines, then production could be halted, even just for a while. But in practice, the method rarely worked. The replacement workers would just keep their heads down and brush past the strikers and head inside the building. For them, it was about a paycheck, not politics. But on this morning, something was different. As the scabs approached the front door of the Ash Building, they were escorted by a battalion of Bowery prostitutes. Tough and formidable, the prostitutes attacked the female strikers as their replacement workers ducked

inside the factory. They tore at the women's hair. There was kicking and punching and jabbing with hat pins. Pimps kept tabs on the affair, but eventually joined in to fight the male strikers. Then came the Mercer Street police, and just in time to break up the fight, they arrested the strikers as the Bowery thugs and streetwalkers slunk away. When a young triangle worker named Ida Yanowitz asked why she was being arrested, the police accused her of assaulting scabs. When another worker tried simply to find out what was going on, she was arrested too and hauled off to the magistrates at Jefferson Market Court. Still, day after day, the strike wore on. Triangle workers hit the picket lines in shifts,

and out would come either a phalanx of hired strongmen or a swarm of Mercer Street police, eager to lock up the strikers for, if nothing else, disturbing the peace. The Triangle strikers were now living day to day with no wages. They faced the threat of arrest and imprisonment, putting their physical well-being on the line too. All this with only the barest support from Local 25. To make matters worse, a few weeks later, Joe Seinfeld was attacked on a street near the Picketts and beaten to a pulp by a downtown gang leader. Seinfeld required more than 30 stitches on his face alone. The Triangle owners had money, political connection, and muscle on their side,

and a beat cop would happily look the other way for a box of cigars with a $100 bill underneath. Replacement workers could easily be recruited. Their factory was up and running again, seemingly unaffected by the strike. With all of this in place, Blank and Harris's plan was a simple one. They would sit back and wait it out. But the unions didn't have the luxury of waiting. They had everything on the line. They were pressing ahead and gathering strength. Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London. Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes.

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best-selling video game of all time, how'd they do it? Nintendo never fires anyone. Ever. Follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. The fall of 1909 brought a whiff of agitation as leaves turned crimson and gold.

Triangle workers picketed through October. Workers at other factories in town were also striking. Wildcat strikes had blossomed into full-blown picket lines at Leiserson's Waste Factory and at the Bijou Shirtwaist Factory, among others. The challenge for triangle strikers was to make the city understand at Leiserson's Waste Factory and at the Bijou Shirtwaist Factory, among others. The challenge for Triangle Strikers was to make the city understand how immigrant workers like them were mistreated in the workplace. They wanted the public to side with them against the wealthy factory owners, and that was a tall order. But by early November, the Strikers had gained an important ally.

The Women's Trade Union League, the WTUL, had taken notice of the situation and stepped in to help. Unlike Local 25, the cash-strapped union of garment workers, the WTUL had both money and social reach. Mary Dreyer was born into wealth, but from a young age she had taken an interest in philanthropic causes. At age 34, she had become the league's president. Dreyer disdained radical politics, but she recognized the inherent problems of New York labor unions. They were all male and concerned only with the problems of male workers. The American Federation of Labor helped form the WTUL as a kind of handout to their female workforce, a way of saying, we see you. But then the AFL blithely ignored their sister

organization, dismissing women on the whole as incapable of organizing. Realizing that she had to keep one foot in for the working class, Dreyer helped introduce young garment workers to the world of labor negotiations. But it was 27-year-old Polish firebrand Rose Schneiderman, who in 1907 helped the WTUL stage a successful strike of underwear makers. Two years later, the linen and home goods makers also took to the streets. Schneiderman was no stranger to picket lines or the garment industry. She had previously worked stitching together linings in a cap factory. And as for Pauline Newman, who had hidden in triangle factory bins as a child, she had successfully written her way out of the punishing world of shirt-waist making.

She wrote a series of exposés for the Jewish Daily Forward. These stories brought her to the attention of the Socialist Party of the United States. In 1908, when Newman was only 17 years old, the party nominated her to run for Secretary of Labor in New York State. The bid failed, but Newman was undaunted. She kept close ties with her friends from Triangle and supported the strike from her new position inside the WTUL. Despite the obvious class differences, Mary Dreyer was beloved by the radical young women she'd taken in. Thoughtful and well-spoken, with a hint of a German accent, she took on a maternal role with them.

She balanced the movement's leftist leanings with the middle-of-the-road stance required to find negotiated solutions. On November 4th, Dreyer even joined the picket lines at the Triangle Factory. As the replacement workers left work that evening, crossing the picket lines and into the night,

Dreyer approached one of them, a woman named Anna Walla, and gave her a pitch. Walla, though, cried out that Dreyer was annoying her, and she began to kick and hit Dreyer. A police officer pried the women apart, arresting only Dreyer, and hauled her off to the station. Mary Dreyer's arrest made all the papers the morning of November 5th. She was released immediately once the Mercer Street police realized that they were not dealing with a poor, lowly immigrant, but a woman of high society. What's more, Dreyer's arrest generated the kind of publicity the Triangle Strikers badly needed. Coverage appeared on the front pages of the leading New York papers, the World, the American, even the pro-management Times. She underlined the constant police harassment on the picket lines by referring to Mercer Street Station as the penitentiary precinct. Dreyer was quoted, Whenever we spoke to the girls, the police would

gruffly order us to stop talking. When we asserted our legal rights in this matter, they persisted in their refusal to allow us to talk. As to the incident this morning, which resulted in my arrest, I am glad of the chance to now tell the facts. Dreyer's arrest reverberated all the way to the back rooms of Tammany Hall, where Charles Murphy was facing a new set of problems. The voters of New York had spoken only three days before, and almost every Tammany-sponsored candidate was defeated. Murphy's power now hung only by the slimmest of threads, so he turned his attention to the papers, to the stories of

these labor strikes. He camped out at Delmonico's restaurant on 45th and 5th Avenue, holding meetings in what was called the Scarlet Room. Murphy's most important information came from a network of ordinary men from ordinary lines of work, shopkeepers and schoolteachers who brought him the word on the street. His watchers and listeners were often more valuable than the gossip swirling through Murphy's usual political circles. And Murphy's ordinary men were telling him about the Fabrenta Medloc, the fiery girls of the garment district. These girls were one part of an immigrant population, Eastern Europeans and Italians, that Tammany Hall had so far ignored.

But every year brought more immigrants to New York, more workers for these factories, and more potential voters. And although Murphy couldn't yet divine which side would emerge from this power struggle, he sent word to the Mercer Street police station. Cool it with the arrests. And like a magician who had just snapped his fingers, the arrests cooled down. At least for a while.

Imagine it's November 5th, 1909. You are a reporter for the New York Times assigned to interview triangle owner Max Blank about the arrest of Mary Dreyer last night and the strikes happening 10 floors below. He guides you through the shop floor, speaking expansively. Operators and seamstresses churn out shirtwaist after shirtwaist, focused and unblinking. The atmosphere is tense, but you realize the atmosphere is probably tense every single day, strike or no strike. So you see, there is no strike. There are reports that more than 150 women walked out of your factory.

Do you see any empty seats? I don't see any empty seats. Well, that's true. Every station on the factory floor is full. That's right. When I arrive in the morning, I don't see a strike. I just see a handful of pitiful girls who could be earning a living, but instead they're stirring up trouble with my girls. Girls who come to work every day, on time, and go home on the weekend with a paycheck that reflects that work. They are the ones being maltreated. The strikers insult them. They hit them. One of my Italian girls got hit by a potato on her back. Like to see the bruise? So then you're saying there is actually a strike? No, no, no. You misunderstand me. The lowest we pay is $8 a week. At least half these girls get $16 a week. You tell me that's not a fair wage. You glance around. None of the girls have looked

up. In fact, no one is looking anywhere but straight down at their machines. In his office on the 10th floor, Blank offers you a drink, which you decline. He thanks the Times for all the positive coverage so far. He knows, and you know, your editor leans pro-business, and that's the kind of piece you're going to deliver. But then Blank surprises you. So, how are we doing? I'm not sure what you mean. You're out there every day writing about this stuff. Tell me, what's going on? Well, that's why I'm here. I'm trying to figure out just what's going on. The readers want to know. Well, then you can tell them that Triangle won't be cowed by this union business, by three or four east side gentlemen who want to step in and tell us how to run our

factory. We create jobs here, and our girls, the ones who've remained loyal, are treated fairly and compassionately. You nod, furiously scribbling notes. When I left Russia, people were being killed for far less than what they're doing down there on the street right now. I saw it with my own eyes, but I'm not trying to incite violence. I'm trying to stop it. You know how? In fact, hey, this might be a scoop for you. Yeah, what is it? I've reached out to the other factory owners. I'm proposing our own union, one with other waste makers, and actually anyone who wants to join. Think of it as a union of management, a mutual owners association. How's that sound? You'd reply, but you're too busy trying to get

it all down. Blank goes on. Businesses should be able to organize too. That's the way I see it. You give a wry smile as you realize what he's saying. He's going to try and beat the unions at their own game. With December coming, the women workers of Triangle would find themselves quite literally out in the cold. But for all the other shirtwaist factories, wages were still low, conditions still grueling. Management still wielded dictatorial power. Popular sympathy for the strikers had grown, but sympathy alone wouldn't be enough.

Triangle's picket line was still basically a wildcat strike, only a little bigger than Jacob Klein's walkout one year ago. But now the stakes were higher. What was needed was a unified action, something to galvanize both the working class and city as a whole. And very soon, they would get just that, but it would come at a price. Next week on American History Tellers, a general strike of 20,000 workers is declared. The union finds an unlikely ally in another high society woman, the daughter of financier J.P. Morgan.

But just as the workers' movement seems to coalesce, disagreements on philosophy and politics threaten to tear the entire movement apart. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us created by Hernán López for Wondery. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me,

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only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself.