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.
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_Fiction
Francis Perkins Leture - https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/lectures/FrancesPerkinsLecture.html
Rose Schneiderman - https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/schneiderman-rose
Stuff 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
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of the State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 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 hope you're doing well um you look uh like you did
on Monday yeah yeah same same changed 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 many women
this time how many women would you say it involves um it
involves hold on um
[Music] I have this written down 123 specifically and then there's a couple
auxiliary women wow that's a lot of women any men uh 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
um 234 25 so 23 men and then there's like a
couple other6 28 29 so this is a story about men helping
women succeed it is absolutely not that no not even a little bit I'm joking 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
[ __ ] women's history month so far like social media has been crazy because it's just everyone is so mad about
everything um that it's hard to just have a nice thing you know um I see like
what what were you posting about someone on LinkedIn talking about men I'm G to tell you this right now so a former
company but but they freaking okay
last women's History Month I think I did a presentation um for the company and I
think it was be 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 crg um
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 sure whatever you like have like events and you you talk about women in the workplace essentially um
but and we we had a book club and we watch movies together and things like that but um
the so I did a presentation like being really mad about it and I think that's I talked about Henry Ford in the edel I
was like guys like this is crazy stop doing this um and then March 8th which is Friday is 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 it's disingenuous of course um stuff
that like sometimes trans women AR included and like all sort of things that like it could be better cuz everything could be better but on
LinkedIn on Friday you see a [ __ ] ton of companies 99.9% them being like thank
you to all the 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 100% I'm also glad that he works there I really like
him but that's not the [ __ ] 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 kinda but not really like
there's just no re there's absolutely no reason except they didn't know and they don't give a [ __ ] and that just is like
I'm not there to yell at anybody anymore so no one cares and I'm like Wells I'm not 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 know 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
now I also just don't pay attention to stuff of course but I don't expect you to know but you knew his woman history
month because I told told you yes yes I knew because you told me
great and that is someone has to be at these places being like pay more attention to the [ __ ] 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 is like oh there's Taylor you know being a [ __ ] again that's fine but like look at yourself in
the mirror and tell you tell me what the [ __ ] you're doing all right well we're going to cover some Wom history then
let's do it so um okay now my hands are funny I'm just so mad um 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 gonna ping my pants up above
my knees so I can cool down um my PJs um so I 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 Makey ass yeah
I'm not going to be able to okay I'm laughing it's the triangle
short waast factory fire and then I wrote PE PE PE PE because it's very exciting imagine fireworks going off
behind me um this is a big [ __ ] 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 um is the Triangle shirt W factory fire
um so I did a couple um some research some sources I read 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 oh my name Liz and Liz had a relative who was in
the fire and passed away and remember her telling me the story and that was the first time I had really heard of it
so um and I had I actually talked to her recently about it as well because she's still thinking about it all the time because everybody is so um I'm going to
send this to her and I'm excited to hear what she 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 it does like kind of fold into labor reform um 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 um and we are on the NYU campus did 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 nway campus is
in down is in the grenwich Village area kind of in like the lower middle um around Washington Square Park this
building of the Triangle shirt Wass factory fire in 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 ex it's in 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 like new NYU owns [ __ ] ton of real estate but um
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 um where this was um but before NYU bought it
before it was 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 [ __ ] 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 100% 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 of scraps and fabric
and paper you know like very flammable things duh those things will burn so
because it's fireproof quote quot quot 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 never seen like an expose on the Garment industry but um like Fast fashioned places like
Shen or those like places that come directly from like China people are getting paid like pennies an hour to
make those clothes you know 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 ever seen those but those are
also crazy it's just like piles of clothes just like absolutely um like just an environmental disaster a
humanitarian a disaster it's a disaster so I looked up the term sweat shop cuz
that's we're going to talk about this is pretty much a sweat shop and when we imagine a sweat shop I imagine the
Garment industry you know I Picture People sewing and like with fabric and just like you doing a repetitive task of
like making the same thing over and over again I don't even know if that term is applied to anything but working in a
garment Factory exactly yeah yeah so there's things today in like Guatemala
and places where there are all these shops 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 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 um but the term started in
about 1830 is when the term sweat shop um 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 um 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 I was I I remember this story from when we lived in Los Angeles um but Los Angeles has
this going on right now like there's a story in CBS News the title is garment
workers in Angeles described the modern day slavery of sweat shops quote they paid us like five or six cents for a
piece yeah it's everywhere yeah it's horrible anyway
sorry no absolutely um this is kind of like a not inline retelling of the story in the
beginning but um just to go quickly to Charles Kingsley the guy who wrote the book cheep 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 tonic and Nordic and all descended from Odin um and that the
English kings were like a direct descendant from Odin and gods so like you know that' be awesome a little bit
batet but also um he did see this happening in the Garment industry you know over a 100 almost 200 years ago um
so it's always been awful um before 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 around their arm
yeah it's it's to hold up their shirt because all the 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 read recommends on it um 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 Winchesters started off making sewing machines yeah yeah yeah yeah that that's just that's the one way
you talked about that where you talk about the sleeves and theid and all that yeah so when they did that Taylor Taylor
were really upset that like it was going to take over their their um craft and it totally did like it changed the way that
that people wore clothes and people owned clothes so okay let me take a sip of
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 in the early 1900s right now um garment workers had already started
to organize in New York City and like 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 um you know start to organize
um incidentally the flag of the general Jewish labor boond is just a red rectangle which I love I love that it's
like a [ __ ] you flag if I we're going to make one I'd also make when just read um
in 1909 there was an uprising called the uprising of the 20 ,000 also known as the New York shirt waist strike of 1909
um and that was when you 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 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 um
during that that strike there was um a group of women called The Mink Bri
Brigade which were like rich women who were marching with them um JP Morgan's
daughter Anne and a vanderbelt were there which is interesting because they were also like you know in 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 um they had a rally at the New York Hippodrome which I think we've talked about before um trying to get
people to to you know support their cause um this is when the strike inspired a a labor um organizer named
Clara zetkin to propose International women's day so that was because of the
um of the strike that it actually started at all from 1909 and the first women's International women's day was
celebrated by the Socialist Party of America in 1909 so that's kind of when it when it started officially and it was
kind of out of the out of these lab labor strikes from the Garment industry so
um I wrote I just I not I wrote in the bullets this is a story that I talked
about at my last job and then in caps I wrote which nobody listened
to your your your delivery might need some optimization maybe that's why it was it
was a very positive presentation but now I'm on the other side of it um so the
this strike this New York shirway strike of 1909 ended in 1910 many demands were
not met but some of them were specifically the owners of the triangle short waste fire or factory triangle
short waste 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 short Wass Factory was just one of many garment industry
factories um it normally employed about 500 people mostly young women um they
would work 9 hours on week Days 7 hours on Saturdays um and yeah it's equivalent
of anywhere from 367 to 629 per hour so
very now it is so like very very low rages um so these women went back to
work making shirt waist do you know what a shirt waist is shirt waist yeah it's just a blouse
it's just like a shirt oh okay that like kind of like gets tighter around your waist it's popular with like the Gibson
Girl aesthetic and talked about that with like Evelyn nesbet who was part of mic so it's like they have like the big
hair and then like the shirt where like kind of big on top and then gets little and they have a skirt U and that was very popular in the mass-produce shirt
waste so there were a couple other shirt waste Factories at this time in on November 25th 1910 there was a fire at a
factory in Newark New Jersey at a um at a short waste Factory 25 people died
mostly young women um six of them burned to death while 19 jumped to their deaths so this had literally just happened like
across the river over in New York um the New York City fire chief at the time said quote this city may have a fire as
deadly as the one in nework at any time there are buildings in New York where the danger is every bit as great as in
the building destroyed in New York a fire in the daytime would AC be accompanied by a terrible loss of life
so they knew that this was a very dangerous thing to have it's
industry so the triangle shs Factory had just passed an an inection but like many
many air quotes because everyone was bribed you know they have it wasn't really a um you know it wasn't it didn't
me mean it was good you know yeah 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 were going to collect their checks and
you know go out for the evening um 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 um it was almost closing time so it's the
evening and the factory is on the eth 9th and 10th floors of the ash building so um it's it's like a you know white
brick building it's 10 floors um you know in the middle of of Greenwich Village um the administration offices
are 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 and 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 piles
exactly piles and 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 like 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 if 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 pushed and pushed 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 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 uh to go out on a different floor and he went to go find her they pushed him out of the building
and he never saw her alive again so there's a lot of people who you know 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 um 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 put their face on
their shirt um they like try to hide it so like they did that so maybe it was a match maybe it was uh a 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 pretty easy to light that yeah I mean it's l just a building of kindling
yeah exactly um at 4:45 p.m. someone saw smoke from the street and aert of 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 through the street um so a man on the eighth floor
was able to call the 10th floor and let them know so he called the 10th floor and warned them everybody on the 10th
floor most people that were on 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 are separated by like 10 ft of height so the NYU Law building is like separated by like an alley and 10 ft
higher and they put a ladder down from the building to the other building and people climbed across 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 I'm not doing that I'm I'm not like that is scarier than
dying there was one secretary who was like [ __ ] this and she jumped and she
died but she was like I'm not doing the lad thing yeah just hold her hand and be like let's do this together yeah yeah um
which is going to happen a lot um 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 um it's also so that people in the n
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 CU they were just like
getting ready for their night out and there were no alarms there were no sprinklers like there was nothing they
they didn't know until the fire was literally on them then that that there was a fire um there were less people
there than a regular day but still there were a lot of people there um there was a staircase on the Green Street side but
it was overwhelmed within 3 minutes in Flames so people some people did Escape rain down that that staircase but it
didn't last very long as a place to save people um women's skirts and hair were
like on fire like just fire it was like fire of spok ination but a lot of it was just like actual Flames um 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 uh died it collapsed to the ground because there 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 cuz it was before automatic elevators but the elevator operators were named Joseph zto and
Gasper Moro and they saved a [ __ ] ton of people these guys are heroes in the
story they would bring the elevator up to um the eighth floor in 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 cuz it's going up into the fire and the cables are melting and all of that
So eventually trying to figure out 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 elevator so the
elevator will never be used again isn't that horrible I um 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 this roll react this is
like three so it's the scariest thing in the whole world it's the scariest thing in the world I looked down I was like oh
my God horrible horrible um so a reporter
that happened to be nearby named William gun sheeper um 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 um
the first person to jump was a man um 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 um and you know
remember they're on the floor is 8 to 10 and I wrote well the [ __ ] 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 put water on the fire like that was impossible um the fire took 8
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 um a lot of people died of Burns and assciation after the last
person had jumped in 30 minutes after the fire started 146 people had died 123
women and 23 men um and I say women but also I mean and men but I mean also girls and boys people were like yeah 13
14 like they weren't they weren't like all grown-ups um a lot of people were there um on the
street watching this happen um what the coroner whose name name was James winterbottom he came to try to help um
cuz he was like the closest doctor technically but everybody 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 um yeah sure um one of my
favorite women um 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 ailia aart she worked on the fgr'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 um for American workers um 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 um she said quote I
remember that the accident happened on a Saturday I 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 window cills 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 that
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 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 and just
die immediately my only like thing that I think about that is like I feel like the
people on like 911 and jumped out of like you know 100 St think about the exact same thing like they must have
hopefully they passed out I think you're I think you pass out if you're like that high goinging that velocity right dude I
was thinking about that and I was like well that's thing you hit 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 also fast it's just so awful it's just such a terrible terrible way to go
I mean being pushed out of a window by people burning you know that happened in 911 like people were BN it was like burn
here or jump out this window you know um absolutely absolutely horrible um other
people who were there were um 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 a Democrat that El ofelt campaigned for um he lost cuz 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 um six victims were unidentified until years later but a
couple days later after the fire they had a funeral parade um for those six people who didn't who were buried in on
MAR grave um who no one knew who they were um other labor organizers got
involved very quickly um a woman named Rose Schneiderman who is is um a big in labor organizing she did a speech at the
Met Opera on April 12th 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 you need to support us you've seen this happening and so we need to have this this we need to have
better rights um the owners who I have not mentioned it was uh two men who owned the building
did I even write down their names oh my God this is terrible um were Max Blanc and Isaac Harris um they were also
immigrants they were prominent in the Garment industry they knew that um it
was unsafe but like they didn't give a [ __ ] obviously they had hired like the people to like break up the picket lines
all those things um 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 these people it was like literally a death trap um but they were acquitted um they were acquitted by the court the
um they were tried in December for involuntary manslaughter um 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 to today I mean about
$222,500 per family they were ordered to give them in today's money yeah yeah and
they [ __ ] 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 just 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 um eventually 1918 they
separated and they had other businesses but like they were not harmed by this like it was like pretty fine for them um
some of the good things that happened um 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 sweat shop in China today and the same
thing Could Happen um yeah so after 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 Roosevelts
they're Democratic politicians um they're also really involved in tamon Hall which I wish I knew more of and I want to maybe do that later that would
be an awesome topic I we covered I remember that was like a topic in Middle School American history and I never went
back and Revisited it I feel like I picture um Gangs of New York like that
yeah um I definitely want to talk about that CU I don't really understand it but I I it sounds fun in a weird bad way but
excited didn't we talk about Bill the Butcher and how he was like a real person
was I want to talk about it all the time so I'm gonna look him up yeah who's 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 he was he was a crazy
person is so good movie there's a picture okay so I you look at my name William P Bill the Butcher the photo of
him from the 1850s he's wearing a top hat a butcher's apron covered in blood
it has a knife in it and one hand he has a saw and the other hand he has like a a hatchet yeah he's the coolest guy Maniac
that you never want to mess with so yeah I we should talk about that later I'll put that on my list I'll talk about
about timy Hall in some way um but uh the commission recommended 38 laws in
the first year and then later they ended up um 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 like semi- livable in this like terrible situation um the last survivor of the triangle sh
Wass factory fire her name was Rose Rosenfield fredman she died in 2001 at
age 107 she was 16 when it happened um so she was the last person who who was
there um 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
sight and there's photos of it um and there's photos of dead bodies and there's photos of coffins so that
started to have like the General Public be a little bit more aware and because of that like New York is a big Union Town you know there's more more labor
laws um involved um right now the building I couldn't figure out if this
actually had happened or not but I think just last last October they put up a memorial around the building um there's
a thing that started in 2004 where people would write the names everybody who died on the sidewalk and chalk um
every every anniversary and now they have this thing where it's like a metal ribbon like that goes all the way around
and has the names kind of engraved in it um 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 the I was just thinking about the ghosts that were there 10,000% I remember one time being in the bathroom by myself and being
like I I'm not alone you're like something happened here yeah this is very very bad um yeah that's the that's
the story um 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 it too what we are not
better than we 1911 talk 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 sweat shops plenty of terrible working spaces people
getting paid pennies you know it's funny I was I was actually thinking about this as you were talking about the labor
movement which I like mostly aligned myself with but also I'm like there's there's got to be like a balancing act
here like I you remember when UPS provided like what whatever it was
was 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 being laid off right it's
like it's there's got to be like a bit of a balance when I talk about the posttop 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 it's
a there's got 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 taken 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 if 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 it was $170,000 a year that's
what it came out to for UPS drivers and they laid off 12,000 of them was like
man um anyways but fun well not fun it was good it was educational I um I the
labor movement in the US is like infinitely fascinating my obsession movie is ha it's one of the few movies I
actually own and I watch like probably once a year and it is always um a
treat I haven't seen it if I haveo
um I will oh arander Sundays in it um I
will watch it it's fun I always think of when you know um you've seen Super Troopers have you seen
Super Troopers to both of them no I can't I can't remember which one it is
but Farva at one point goes you know I'm not a union guy just like makes me laugh every single time thinking about it like
Chief you know I'm not a union guy maybe that was one maybe it was one but I think about that when I I think of like
a union because I I have like a h that my grandpa had that says I will strike like I was in a union I'm a union guy
but like I always think of far being like you know I'm not a union guy because of course he would be not be union guy I can so in Envision like
people in the tech industry making like two 300 Grand a year being like we we should unionize just like yeah but also
like the people at Starbucks should unionize if you have to you have to treat people like humans just I don't
know yeah I don't know I don't know well you should I'm Sol this now but I'm so
conflicted on it to like again I keep coming back to this like I know that like Tesla for example is fighting the
um UAW on unionizing they do the negotiations for GM Chrysler and um 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 so your Expedition cost you $87,000 and it's like made out of spit
and bubble gum it's like yeah because we have Union D like we have to pay we the
overhead on the Personnel side is so high that we can't build high quality
Vehicles we 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 G be like a balance I mean I don't think it's not about paying I think it's about like
changing the market so that you can um I don't know I don't
know I don't know I do I do I've been I was looking at cars recently and I was looking at forges and I was like what
how on Earth cuz you look at the cars you're like this thing is literally put together with like spit like the quality
is absolute dog [ __ ] and the thing cost like 90 grand like how is that possible you look like a BMW that cost 90 grand
you're like oh that light feels like a $90,000 car you look at a for that cost 90 grand you're like how where did it go it's like oh it's all Personnel dollars
that's where it went I mean I'm just reading about har unions it's a lot I'm
not going to get I'm not going to keep reading this um but yeah no I have 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 Doom toot
gmail.com follow us on the socials I'm about to hit the road and we will rejoin
yall in a week um anything you want to end us end us with Taylor uh no I don't
think so um thank you to everyone who's listening and sending us emails and
Instagram messages it's super fun to hear from you and and all of that and and um please tell your friends we'd
love to um have more listeners and tell me if you're going to Dan Carlin countdown
coming soon can't wait definitely let us Dan car yeah very excited awesome cool
sweet thanks thanks T we'll chat later
bye