Doomed to Fail - Ep 93 - Disaster at Shift's End: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

This is THE Women's History Month story that Taylor has been wanting to tell you! At the end of the shift on Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory near Washington Square in New York City. Within a few minutes, three floors and the stairwells would be consumed by fire; within 12 minutes, over 60 people had jumped to their deaths to avoid the flames, and within 30 mins, 146 people were dead. Most were immigrant women who had been working for pennies in unsafe conditions for years.Join us for this tragedy that leads to workplace changes and labor reform in the US.   Sources:List of YA books- https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/86086.Textile_Mills_in_YA_Middle_Grade_FictionFrancis Perkins Leture - https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/FrancesPerkinsLecture.htmlRose Schneiderman - https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-roseStuff you missed in history - https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-missed-in-histor-21124503/episode/fire-at-the-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-30208427/Flames of labor reform - https://www.amazon.com/Triangle-Shirtwaist-Factory-Fire-Disasters/dp/0766017850 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California. First is Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back, Taylor, on a lovely, lovely Wednesday. I hope you're doing well. You look like you did on Monday. Yeah, yeah, same.

same same same change yep yep fair enough fair enough um we are in women's history month and i suspect that your story is going to involve a woman it is many women many women this time how many women would you say it involves um it involves hold on um I have this written down, 123 specifically, and then there's a couple auxiliary women. Wow, that's a lot of women. Any men? Yes. Oh, God. I just scrolled away from my numbers, but I'm going to scroll back to my numbers. Sorry, everyone. I have a lot of pages. 23. Well, okay.

Okay. 24, 25. So 23 men. And then there's like a couple other, 25, 5, 5, 5, 6,000, 28. so this is a story about men helping women succeed it is absolutely not that no not even a little I'm joking oh to anybody listening I promise I'm joking I have a bad sense of humor and Taylor corrects me on my humor I mean what a fucking women's history month so far like social media has been crazy because it's just everyone is so mad about everything that it's hard to just have a nice thing, you know, I see like, what were you posting about someone on LinkedIn, talking about men? I'm going to tell you this right now. So a former company, but they're freaking, okay, last women's history month, I think I did a presentation for the company and I think it was because, well, I was like the leader of the

women's ERG and then also like I had just done that Henry Ford quote and I was like what's ERG employee resource group just like a to advocate for you have them for like women for the LGBTQ community for um you know okay it's a whatever you like have like events and you you talk about women in the workplace essentially um but and we have like we had a book club and we've watched movies together and things like that but um the So I did a presentation to, like, being really mad about it. And I think that's when I talked about Henry Ford and the Edsel. I was like, guys, like, this is crazy.

Stop doing this. And then March 8th, which is Friday, is international women's day. And there are plenty of valid criticisms about women's history month. Like, you know, the corporate thing of being like, let's make everything pink and, like, be like, oh, this is for women. Like, you know, it's not, sometimes it's disingenuous, of course. The stuff that, like, sometimes trans women are included and like all sort of things that, like, it could be better because everything could be better. But on LinkedIn on Friday, you see a shit ton of companies, 99.9% of them being like, thank you to all women in our lives. This is our highlighting women on our board. This is highlighting this person. This is this. This is that. This is how we, whatever. And even if it's disingenuous, at least they do it. And then this company I used to work for, they posted a bio of a dude to be like, we're glad this dude works here. And I'm like, yep, he's a cool dude. A hundred percent. I'm also glad that he works there. I really like him. But.

that's not the fucking day to do this. I just spit, I'm so mad. Like, you have one job on International Women's Day, and that is not to highlight a man. You could have done nothing, and that would have been better. Is he a new hire or something? Kind of, but not really.

Like, there's just no reason, except they didn't know and they don't give a shit. And that just is like, I'm not there to yell at anybody anymore, so no one cares. And I'm like, that just sucks. I'm not, I'm, I'm, that was the argument I was going to make because I didn't know it was women's international.

But you're not in charge of social media for a company that's supposed to be doing good. Dude, I also, you don't, okay, so it's South by Southwest for the next like two weeks. Do you know when I learned it was South by Southwest? Yesterday? Like two days ago when our former colleague posted that she's coming to Austin for South by Southwest. Like, when is that? And I looked it up and I was like, oh, it's, oh, it's, like, I also just don't.

pay attention of stuff. Of course, but I don't expect you to know, but you knew it was for my history month because I told you. Yes. Yes. I knew because you told me. Great. And that is someone that has to be at these places being like, pay more attention to the fucking world around you. You know, like it just, I don't know. I was, I posted it on Instagram because I was so mad and I'm like, I hope someone there sees it and it's like, oh, there's Taylor, you know, being a bitch again. That's fine. But like, look at yourself in the mirror. and tell me what the fuck you're doing. All right.

Well, we're going to cover some women's history then. Let's do it. So, okay, but not my hands are funny. I'm just so mad. I'm just so mad. I like texted someone, and I was like, well, it wouldn't be International Women's Day if I wasn't filled with rage.

So that worked out for me. Okay, I'm going to pulling my pants up above my knees so I can cool down. I'm wearing my paches. So I'm going to tell you about the most famous fire in women's history. Have you heard of a famous fire in women's history? I'm not going to make a guess. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to. Okay. I'm laughing. It's the triangle shortwaist factory fire. And then I wrote, pew, pew, pew, pew, because it's very exciting. Imagine fireworks going off behind me. This is a big fucking deal. Yeah, I would not have guessed that. Perfect. This is what

Morgan guessed, and I'm sure other women who listened, knew what I was talking about when I was like the most famous fire of women's history is the triangle shirtway's factory fire um so i did a couple um some research some sources i read like a really short book that i found on at the library um and i listened to a stuff you missed in history class but it was from like 10 years ago and it's like five minutes of content but still tells you a little bit um i also obviously was on Wikipedia a lot clicking around um when i was in college i went to NYU which is going to factor into the story very heavily. And I lived across the hall from a woman named Liz. And Liz had a relative who was in the fire and passed away. And I remember her telling me the story. And that was the first time I had really

heard of it. So I actually talked to her recently about it as well because she's still thinking about her all the time because everybody is. So I'm going to send this to her and I'm excited to hear what she thinks. But essentially, this is a fire that changed the way people looked at labor laws in the early 1900s. I heard once. that it was the reason that we have International Women's Day and Month. And it's not like specifically the day of the fire, but it does correlate. It does like kind of fold into labor reform to women's history, to all of this. So we'll talk about that.

So it is 1911 and it is March. So picture yourself in 1911. You're wearing a hat probably. And we are on the NYU campus. So do you ever go to, you went to New York like once and you hated it, right? Yeah, I did not go to the campus. Okay. And the way of campus is in the Greenwich Village area,

kind of in like the lower middle around Washington Square Park. This building, the Triangle Shirtways Factory Fire Inn used to be called the Ash Building. It was, it's on 23-29 Washington Place between Green Street and Washington Square East. So if you know, you know, it's like a cross street from the bookstore. It's like it's part of the campus of, of NYU, but also just like part of New York City. NYU in 1911 had not bought every single building in the area, but they will. Like now they own like, I think they own more buildings than the Catholic Church in New York

City or something crazy or they're like tied. So NYU owns a shit ton of real estate. But they did own the building next to the Ash building. The Ash building is now called the Brown building. And they have science classes there. And I 100% took science classes in the building that I've been. in it many, many, many, many times where this was. But before NYU bought it, before it was a part of the school, it was a factory.

And it was built in 1900 and it was deemed fireproof, which we've talked about, is not a fucking thing. Yeah. So fireproof means essentially that, like, the outside of the building will not burn. And like, sure, it's made of bricks. Fine. You know, like, okay. Like, the inside is a crucial part.

A hundred percent. That's where the people are and the stuff. You're not going to have like an empty building full of water and like try to catch that on fire. You have a building full of people. And in the garment industry, a building full of scraps and fabric and paper, you know, like very flammable things. Duh. Those things will burn. So because it's fireproof, quote, quote, quote, quote, it attracts the garment industry. So garment industry is people who make clothes. It has always. been bad since it started to be mass produced, maybe before then. But the garment industry is pretty terrible, even, I mean, especially today. I don't know if you've ever seen like an expose on the garment industry, but like fast fashion places like Shian or those like places that come directly from like China, people are getting paid like pennies an hour to make those clothes. You know, it's like slave labor. Yeah, it's very terrible. And a lot of that fast fashion ends up in these huge garbage piles like in India. I don't know if you've ever seen those,

but those are also crazy. It's just like piles of clothes. Just like absolutely like just an environmental disaster or humanitarian disaster. It's a disaster. So I looked up the term sweatshop because that's we're going to talk about this is pretty much a sweatshop. And when we imagine a sweatshop, I imagine the garment industry. You know, I picture people sewing and like with fabric and just like doing a repetitive task of like making the same thing over and over. I don't even know if that term is applied to anything but working in the gourmet factory.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So there's things today in like Guatemala and places where there are all these sweatshops where women are forced to be on birth control so they don't have, they don't go on maternity leave, you know, because they don't want them to continue working. They aren't allowed breaks. They're paid almost nothing. So it's just absolutely terrible. It's happening to hundreds of thousands of people today in the world. But the term started in about 1830 is when the term sweatshop was coined.

Sweating is a term for subcontracting in the garment industry. So that's like this person makes this part of this garment, this person makes another part of this garment. That's like sweating is the term for it. In 1850, a man in Britain named Charles Kingsley wrote a book called Cheap Clothes and Nasty about the industry. And you could probably say that now. Taylor, I was, I remember this story from when we lived in Los Angeles. But Los Angeles has this going on right now. Like there's a story in CBS News.

The title is, Garment Workers in Los Angeles described the modern day slavery of sweatshops. Quote, they paid us like five or six cents for a piece. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. It's horrible. Anyway, sorry.

No, absolutely. this is kind of like a not in line re-telling of the story in the beginning but just to go quickly to Charles Kingsley the guy here wrote the book Sheep Clothes and Nasty in 1850 He was a whole thing He was a priest to the Church of England He believed that the English were Totonic and Nordic

And all descended from Odin And that the English kings were a direct descendant from Odin and gods So like you know That'd be awesome A little bit that shit but also He did see this happening in the garment industry you know, over 100 years, almost 200 years ago. So it's always been awful.

Before this, you know, you didn't have a ton of clothes. You know, you would have like, if you were poor, you had a couple outfits that you like made yourself or, you know, someone in your life made for you. If you were rich, you had people making clothes for you, but all of it was by hand. It was very, took a very long time. And like, also for most of history, clothes were made either directly for you or if you bought something mass produced, it was all the same size and you had to, like, adjust it on your own body with, like, ties and buttons and things like that. You know how, like, old-timey bartenders have

that, like, thing around their arm? Yeah. It's to hold up their shirt because all their shirts are the same size. Yeah. And there was no, like, movement in it. So, um, the Industrial Revolution, I don't know exactly the dates of this. I didn't look it up. But I read so many young adult books about this when I was, like, in junior high about, like, girls getting their hair pulled out in like a loom and like all these things and just like how bad it was for some reason it's just like something that really is in the young adult market and I have a list of 10 books that good reads recommends on it but this is when sewing machines start to mass produce fabric and be able to mass produce garments and do you remember in the Winchester mystery house story how

the Winchester started off making sewing machines yeah yeah yeah that's just that's the one way you talked about that when you talk about the sleeves and the one size and all that Yeah. So when they did that, Taylor's were really upset that like it was going to take over their, their craft. And it totally did. Like it changed the way that that people were closed and people owned clothes. So, okay, I'm going to take a sip of a coffee. Next week, I'm also going to talk about a garment labor issue because it's always always a thing. But we're going to stay in the early 1900s right now. Garment workers had already started to organize in New York City and around the country. Most of the workers were, of course, immigrants. Most of them were women and many, if not all, were Jewish. So that's just like the people who are working in these deplorable conditions.

A lot of the women had been a part of the general Jewish labor bond in the Russian Empire, which was a union in Europe. And then they immigrated to America and they didn't have that protection. So they were used to being organized and used to being in labor movement. So they were kind of ready to start to, you know, start to organize. Incidentally, the flag of the general Jewish labor boon is just a red rectangle, which I love. I love that. It's like a fuck you flag if I were going to make one.

I'd also make one just red. In 1909, there was an uprising called the uprising of the 20,000, also known as the New York shirtway strike of 1909. And that was when, you know, 20,000 women walked off the job. and said, you know, we need better conditions than this. And this is like, they have to work 10 hours a day, six days a week. There's no breaks. They can't leave.

They're getting paid like the equivalent of like $3 an hour in today's money. So it's just like absolutely terrible conditions. And like they need their jobs, but they also need to be taken care of in some way or not. During that, that strike, there was a group of women called the Mink Brigade, which were like rich women who were marching with them. J.P. Morgan's daughter, Anne and Evanderbilt were there, which is interesting because they were also, like, you know, in a society that didn't allow Jewish people in their, like, clubs. You know, they were still out there marching with all these Jewish women. They had a rally at the New York hippodrome, which I think we've talked about before, trying to get people to, you know, support their cause. This is when the strike inspired a labor organizer named Clara Zetkin to propose International Women's Day. So that was because of the strike that it actually started at all from 1909. And the first International Women's Day was celebrated by the Socialist Party of America in 1909.

So that's kind of when it started officially. And it was kind of out of these labor strikes from the garment industry. So I wrote, I just, I wrote in the bullets, this is the story that I talked about at my last job. And then in caps, I wrote, which nobody listened to. Your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your delivery might need some optimization. And maybe that's why it was it was a, it was a very positive presentation, but now I'm on the other side of it. Um, so the, this strike, this New York shortwave strike of 1909 ended in 1910. Many demands were not met, but some of them were specifically the owners of the triangle shirtwaist fire or factory.

triangle shirtwoods factory they hired like thugs to intimidate people to beat people up on the line all the things just to get people back to work so they definitely did not agree to everything um but eventually the women did go back to work the triangle shirtways factory was just one of many garment industry factories um it normally employed about 500 people mostly young women um they would work nine hours on weekdays seven hours on Saturdays, and, yeah, it's equivalent of anywhere from 367 to 629 per hour. So, very, nowadays, so, like, very, very low-reges. So these women went back to work making shirt-waists. Do you know what a shirt-waist is?

A shirt-waist? Yeah, it's just a blouse. It's just like a shirt that, like, kind of, like, gets tighter around your waist. It's popular with, like, the Gibson Girl aesthetic, and we talked about. that with, like, Evelyn Nesbitt, who was part of that partner in Madisonville Garden. So it's like, they have like the big hair. I mean, like the shirt was like kind of big on top and then gets little and they have a skirt. And that was very popular and they mass produced shirt waste.

So there were a couple other shirt waste factories at this time. In November 25th, 1910, there was a fire at a factory in Newark, New Jersey, at a, at a shirt waste factory. 25 people died, most of the young women. Six of them burned to death while 19 jumps to their deaths. So this had literally just happened across the river over in Newark. The New York City Fire Chief at the time said, quote, this city may have a fire as deadly as the one in Newark at any time. There are buildings in New York where the danger is every bit as great as in the building destroyed in Newark.

A fire in the daytime would be accompanied by a terrible loss of life. So they knew that this was a very dangerous thing to have. So the Triangle Shirtways Factory had just passed an expect. an inspection, but like many, many air quotes because everyone was bribed, you know, they haven't, it wasn't really a, um, you know, it wasn't, it didn't mean it was good, you know. Yeah. So it is March 25th, 1911. It is a Saturday and it is a payday. So, um, a lot of women were very, or people that were worked there were very excited to, you know, get paid this day. They were going to collect their checks and go out for the evening. People

technically should not have been working on Saturday if they had accepted all of the demands by the labor unions, but they were working there anyway. It was almost closing time, so it's the evening. And the factory is on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the ash building. So it's like a, you know, white brick building. It's 10 floors, you know, in the middle of Greenwich Village. The administration offices are on the 10th floor, and the eighth and ninth floor are the factory itself. So these floors are very, very flammable, obviously. So what we've already talked about, they are full of fabric, and they're also full of scraps. So as you're, like, cutting fabric and creating these shirts, you're throwing the scraps behind you in these big piles.

The piles were emptied, like, once a quarter by a company that would take the scraps away and, like, use them for something else. but they hadn't been emptied for a few months. So it's just like as tall as a person. Exactly. Piles of piles of scraps. There's also like patterns hanging everywhere. So like sheets of very thin paper hanging from the ceiling, just like anything you can think of that can catch on fire is there. It's also very, very hard to leave the factory even on a good day.

So the owners are very worried about theft. So they make the women go or the people that work there, mostly women, leave one by one through a door that is usually locked and they have to be searched and then they can leave. So there are, so there's like that one exit, but it's throttled. It's hard to get out. You can go out one at a time. There's a fire exit, but it's covered by shutters and not a lot of people know that it's there. And this is something that we'll see in other, other fires that if I get to other fires later where the door swings in instead of out. Yeah, terrible design. You know, so terrible in an emergency because you're just going to get pushed and push and push against a closed door.

So the book that I read has some personal stories. The one that it starts with is very, very sad. It's a brother and sister who were out the night before celebrating the sister's engagement. They had skipped work the day before and they were almost fired, but they were allowed to have another role there. And they were in the factory. And when the fire broke out, the brother knew his sister was getting ready to go out on a different floor. And he went to go find her. they pushed him out of building and he never saw her alive again so there's a lot of people who

lost you know very dear friends and family members but here here's what happened at 4.40 p.m. a fire started on the eighth floor and we don't know how it was probably a match or a cigarette people you know they smoked in there they would sneak cigarettes in and they would like smoke a cigarette and then like blow out the smoke in their shirts you know like putting their face in their shirt they like try to hide it so like they did that so maybe it was a match maybe it was a cigarette maybe something happened with like i mean i don't know i feel like even like friction with all that stuff in there like a spark to happen that yeah i mean it's really just a building of tumbling yeah exactly um at 445 p.m someone saw smoke from the street and alert

to the fire department once again they came on horses so they were there but they were on their way there's a really great photo of them kind of with the horses just running through the the street. So a man on the eighth floor was able to call the 10th floor and let them know. So we called the 10th floor and warned them. Everybody on the 10th floor, most people around 10, which included the owners and their children who happened to be there that day, escaped via the roof. So the Ash Building was next to the NYU Law Building, and they're separated by like 10 feet

of height. So the NYU Law Building is like separated by like an alley. and 10 feet higher, and they put a ladder down from the building to the other building, and people climbed across it. So imagine, like, 10 stories up, you're climbing across a ladder, running to the other building. You're shaking your head furiously. I'm not doing that.

I'm not. That is scarier than dying. There was one secretary who was like, fuck this. And she jumped and she died. But she was like, I'm not doing the ladder thing. Yeah, just hold her hand and be like, let's do this together. Yeah. Yeah.

which is going to happen a lot. There was something wrong with the switchboard. So the woman who was supposed to do the switchboard, she was out of the office. So someone else was there who like didn't really understand how to use it. And when she got the call on 10, I think from what I understand from how switchboards work, she like didn't make it possible for the guy to call nine. She just like ran and told the people on 10. But the guy was unable to call the ninth floor and tell them that the fire had started.

So the people on the ninth floor didn't know. for like several minutes, which was, that was the life and death difference. Yeah. It's also said that people on the ninth floor were getting ready to leave and they were excited, so they were singing and they didn't hear the screams from the eighth floor because they were just like getting ready for the night out. And there were no alarms. There were no sprinklers.

Like there was nothing. They didn't know until the fire was literally on them than that there was a fire. There were less people there than a regular day, but still there were a lot of people there. There was a staircase on the green street side, but it was overwhelmed with in three minutes in flames. Some people did escape, bringing down that staircase, but it didn't last very long as a place to save people.

Women's skirts and hair were like on fire. Like just fire, it was like, fire a spoken relation, but a lot of it was just like actual flames. There was a fire escape, but once 20 people got on it, it collapsed, of course.

You know, and all 20 people that were on it died. It collapsed to the ground because they're, you know, 10 stories up. there were a lot of people were saved by the elevators so the elevators like obviously didn't they didn't go on their own because it was before automatic elevators but the elevator operators were named joseph zito and gasper mortiro and they saved a shit ton of people these guys are heroes in this story they would bring the elevator up to um the eighth floor and the ninth floor and they would fit as many people as humanly possible into that elevator and bring them down they did several trips until it started to get difficult because the elevator was melting, you know, because it's going up into the fire and the cables are melting and all of that. So eventually, they're trying to figure

what to do. And the women on the ninth floor are prying, they pry the elevator door open and they try to slide down the cables or get out by, like, climbing down the elevator shaft, but they all fall and eventually the weight of their bodies makes it impossible to use the elevator. So the elevator will never be used again. Isn't it horrible? I was leaving a friend's condo, and they were working on the elevator, and the elevator door was open, and there was no elevator in there. And I was like, I, I just had a best role react. It's like three days ago. It's the scariest thing in the whole world.

It's the scariest thing in the world. Oh, my God. I looked down, I was like, oh, my God. Oh, horrible. Horrible. So a reporter that happened to be nearby named William Gunn Shepard, he said, quote, I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture the thud of a speeding living body on the stone sidewalk because people started jumping out the windows.

62 people jumped to their death to avoid burning to death. The first person to jump was a man. Another man was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they held hands and jumped to their deaths. so people are doing that. And, you know, remember they're on the floor is 8 to 10. And I wrote, well, the fucking fire department couldn't get that high. The hose only went up six stories.

There was nothing they could do. They couldn't, they could not put water on the fire. Like, that was impossible. The fire took eight minutes to consume all three floors. The last person jumped 12 minutes after it started. and they did have nets, but the nets weren't strong enough. So women would jump into the net and it would break, you know? A lot of people died of burns and asphyxiation after the last person had jumped.

In 30 minutes after the fire started, 146 people had died, 123 women and 23 men. And I say women, but also I mean men, but I mean also girls and boys. People were like 13, 14. Like they weren't, they weren't like all grownups. a lot of people were there on the street watching this happen and what the coroner whose name was James Winterbottom he came to try to help because he was like the closest doctor technically but everybody was already dead you know he was he was just collecting bodies and they were you know there's photographs of just dead bodies lining the street yeah I'm sure one of my favorite women that I want I love to highlight during women's history month was there Her name is Francis Perkins. I've talked about her before. She met Emily Earhart.

She worked on the FDR's administration. She was the first woman cabinet member. She was FDR's secretary of labor. But she has said that the New Deal was born that day because what she saw made her just dedicate her life to labor. She's the person who gave us Social Security, Unemployment benefits. She did so much during the New Deal for American workers. But she did a speech a little bit later about what she saw.

So I'm going to read it, read a little piece of it. She said, quote, I remember that the accident happened on a Saturday. It happened to have been visiting a friend on the other side of the park, and we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over where we could see what the trouble was. We could see this building from Washington Square and the people had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally, the men were trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them,

a net to catch people if they do jump there we were trying to get that out and they couldn't wait any longer they began to jump the window was too crowded and they would jump and they would hit the sidewalk the net broke and they fell a terrible distance the weight of the bodies was so great at the speed in which they were traveling they broke through the net every one of them was killed everybody who jumped was killed it was a horrifying spectacle we had our dose of it that night and felt as though we had been a part of it which is awful you would assume that right before the net breaks it would like slow you down a little bit uh i mean is that better or worse you know what you're right at that point just smack all the way just die immediately the only like thing that i think about

that is like i feel like the people on like 9-11 who jumped out of like you know a hundred stories up like they must have hopefully they passed out i think you're supposed i think you pass out if you're like that high angle that velocity right dude i was thinking about that and i was like well that's thing you had terminal velocity so you're not going any faster than somebody jumping out of the eighth story right you know but i was thinking like i was like i think the only thing you could really do is try to turn around so you're not looking at what's about to come i know it's so bad it's just so awful it's just a terrible terrible way to go i mean being pushed out a window by people burning, you know? That happened in 9-11. Like people were, it was like burn

here or jump out this window, you know, absolutely, absolutely horrible. Other people who were there were Al Smith. He was the governor of New York, I think, later in the 1930s, he ran for president, but he lost to Herbert Hoover, but he was a Democrat that Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned for. He lost because he was a little bit too New York and a little bit too Catholic, but he was there, and this really kind of helped him to work with labor issues as well. Six victims were unidentified until years later, but a couple of days later, after the fire, they had a funeral parade for those six people who were buried in an unmarked grave,

who no one knew who they were. Other labor organizers got involved very quickly. A woman named Rose Schneiderman, who is a big in labor organizing, she did a speech at the Met Opera on April 12, 1911. And I'm not going to read the whole part of it, but it starts off with like, she says, quote, I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk about good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. So pretty good. She's very much like, you guys aren't, you need to support us.

You've seen this happening. And so we need to have this, this, we need to have better rights. The owners, who I have not mentioned, it was two men who owned the building. I didn't even write down their names. This is terrible. Where Max Blanc and Isaac Harris, they were also immigrants. They were prominent in the garment industry. They knew that it was unsafe, but like they didn't give a shit.

Obviously, they had hired like the people to like break up the picket lines, all those things. The prosecution's argument was like they had locked the doors. They had made it impossible to leave. They had made, they had a shitty fire escape, you know, like all the reasons. They had no alarms, no way to save this people. It was like literally a death trap. But they were acquitted. They were acquitted by the court.

They were tried in December for involuntary manslaughter. They were acquitted and they were ordered to give $75 per death to the families. So let me see how much that is now. In 1911, today, I mean, about $2,500 per family. They were ordered to give them. And today's money? Yeah. Yeah.

And they fucking got their insurance and their insurance gave them $400 per person that died. Dude, that is a score. And they only give $75 to the families. I mean, they kind of, they kind of crushed it. They crushed it. And they kept working. They started a new business. In 1913, they got a fine for having their doors locked again, but the fine was only $20,

which was the minimum fine they could get. Eventually, 1918, they separated and they'd had other businesses, but, like, they were not harmed by this. Like, it was, like, pretty fine for them. Some of the good things that happened after, you know, really people started to think about it. But, again, like, it's still really bad. There could be a fire at a sweatshop in China today,

and the same thing could happen. Yeah. So after this, they created a commission called the Factory Investigating Commission. It was chaired by Robert Wagner and Al Smith. So these guys are both like people who know the Roosevelt, they're Democratic politicians. They're also really involved in Tammany Hall, which I wish I knew more of,

and I want to maybe do that later. That would be an awesome topic. We covered, I remember that was like a topic in middle school of American history. Yeah. I never went back and revisited it. I feel like I picture gangs of New York like that. Yeah, yeah.

I definitely want to talk about that because I don't really understand it, but I, it sounds fun. in a weird bad way but exciting didn't we talk about bill the busher and how he was like a real person was i don't know but i want to talk about it all the time so i'm gonna look him up yeah he was like he sounded like he sounded like the kind of guy where he would look at me and be like that is not a man i don't know what that is but like he was he like got into like crazy fights he carved someone's eye out for a... It was a crazy person.

You know that he was so good at the movie. There's a picture. Okay, so if you're looking at him, there's William Poole, Bill the Butcher. The photo of him from the 1850s, he's wearing a top hat, a butcher's apron covered in blood, has a knife in it, and one hand he has a

saw, and other hand he has like a hatchet. He's the coolest guy. Maniac. But you never want to mess with. So yeah, we should talk about that later. I'll put that on my list. I'll talk about Tammany Hall in some way. But the commission recommended 38 laws in the first year and then later they ended up putting it up to 64 laws and 60 of them were put into place, which is great.

And those were things like alarms, sprinklers, lunch breaks, you know, like ways to at least make this semi-livable in this terrible situation. him. The last survivor of the triangle shortways factory fire, her name was Rose Rosenfield Friedman. She died in 2001 at age 107. She was 16 when it happened. So she was the last person who was there. And, you know, it changed. It didn't change everything immediately, but it really, you know, the public saw this happen. They saw it happen live. People were there. People were reporting on, you know, the sounds and the smells and the site. And there's photos of it. And there's photos of dead bodies and there's photos of coffins. So that started to have the general public be a little bit more aware. And because of that, New York is a big union town. You know, there's more labor laws involved. Right now, the building, I couldn't figure out this actually had happened or not,

but I think just last October, they put up a memorial around the building. There's a thing that started in 2004 where people would write the names, everybody who died on the sidewalk and chalk every, every anniversary and now they have this thing where it's like a metal ribbon like that goes all the way around and it has the names kind of engraved in it of all the people that died so there's a little bit of a thing there too but it's wild to me that I was like in that building taking a science class you know and yeah the ghosts of everybody yeah like I was just like about the ghosts that were there 10,000 percent I remember one time being in the bathroom by myself and being like

I'm not alone you're like something happened here yeah this is very very bad But yeah, that's the, that's the story. Hopefully, you know, it's, I don't know, it's, it's, it's a big one for women's history and for labor and for workers' rights. And we are not better worldwide than we were in 1911. It's part of the two. What? We are not better than we were in 1911. Not in the garment industry. You know what I mean? Oh, in the garment industry. I mean, things are better. But like the garment industry, there's still. plenty of sweatshops, plenty of terrible working spaces, people getting paid pennies, you know. It's funny. I was actually thinking about this as you were talking about the labor movement, which

I like mostly align myself with, but also I'm like, there's got to be like a balancing act here. Like I, you know when UPS provided like whatever it was? It's like everybody gets like $180,000 a year total package or whatever it was. And then like five months later, they announced

12,000 jobs were being, or 12,000 people were being laid off. Right. It's like, there's got to be like a bit of a balance. Yeah. When I talk about the post office and how like it literally cannot compete because it instituted these incredible entitlement programs within it that is just impossible to do in the open market.

I don't know. It's a, it's a, there's going to be like a little bit of balancing act there about like labor versus like sheer common sense economics of how to sustain a business. But. Of course. of course clearly this was on the other side of the spectrum yes and like yes and then there's also like you know if they didn't do it they would just take an advantage of forever forever forever you know right right that's like that's it would just get worse and worse like the minimum wage exists

because people would pay you less and it didn't exist you know like right it that's the reason like that it's there and it's still the minimum wage in america is not livable that was 170,000 a year. That's what it came out to for UPS drivers and they laid off $12,000 of them. It was like, man. Anyways, fun. Well, not fun. It was good. It was educational. The labor movement in the U.S. is like

infinitely fascinating. My obsession movie is Hoppa. It's one of the few movies I actually own and I watch like probably once a year and it is always a treat. I haven't seen it. If I have a long time ago. I will Oh Armandar Sontes in it I will watch it

It's some fun I always think of when You know You've seen Super Troopers Have you seen Super Troopers? Have you seen Super Troopers 2? I see both of them I can't remember which one it is But Farva at one point goes

You know I'm not a union guy Just like maybe she laugh every single time Thinking about it You know I'm not a union guy Maybe that was one Maybe it was one But I think about that whenever I think of like a union

because I have like a hint that my grandpa had that says I will strike like I was in a union I'm a union guy but like I was like a far ever being like you know I'm not a union guy because of course he would not be a union guy I can so envision like people in the tech industry making like two 300 grand a year being like we should unionize yeah but also like the people of Starbucks should unionize if you have to you have to treat people like humans I just, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Well, you should. I'm not going to solve this now. I'm so conflicted on it, too. Like, again, I keep coming back to this. But I know that, like, Tesla, for example, is fighting the UAW on unionizing.

They do the negotiations for GM, Chrysler, and Ford. And then you look at it and you're like, like, there's got to be a balancing act here. Because, like, you look at, like, Ford. And it's like, wait. your expedition costs you $87,000 and it's like made out of spitting bubble gum. It's like, yeah, because we have a union, like we have to pay, we, the overhead on the personnel side is so high that we can't build high quality vehicles. But we can't trust them to do it on their own.

They would pay them nothing, you know? No, that's what I'm saying. Is there going to be like a balance? I mean, I don't think it's not about paying nothing. I think it's about like changing the market so that you can, um, I don't know. I don't know. I do, I do, I, I was looking at cars recently, and I was looking at Ford's

and I was like, what? How on earth? Because you look at the cars, you're like, this thing is literally put together with, like, spit. Like, the quality is absolute dog shit. The thing costs like 90 grand. Like, how is that possible? But you look at like a BMW that costs 90 grand.

You're like, oh, that feels like a $90,000 car. You look at a $4 that costs $90,000. You're like, how? Where did it go? And it's like, oh, it's all personal dollars. That's where it went. I mean, I'm just reading about our unions. It's a lot.

I'm not going to get it. I'm not going to keep reading this. But yeah, no. I understand what you're saying. Anyways, well, thank you, Taylor, for sharing. I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Please write to us at Dumafellpot at gmail.com. Follow us on the socials.

I'm about to hit the road. And we will rejoin you all in a week. Anything you want to end us with Taylor? No, I don't think so. Thank you to everyone who's listening and sending us emails and Instagram messages. It's super fun to hear from you and all of that. And please tell your friends. We'd love to have more listeners.

And tell me if you're going to Dan Carlin, Countdown, coming soon. Can't wait. Definitely let us go to Dan Carlin. Yeah. Very excited. Awesome. Cool. Thanks, thanks.

Thanks, Taylor. We'll chat later. Bye. I'm going to be able to