When a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory at 29 Washington Place in Lower Manhattan on March 25, 1911, it took just 30 minutes to kill 146 young immigrant women who had been locked in to ensure that they stayed stooped over their machines and didn’t steal anything.
People looking up from the street thought that the owners were tossing their best fabric out the windows to save it before realizing that garment workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss.
The Triangle disaster spurred a national crusade for workplace safety, gains made primary because of the very unions that one century late Republicans are working so assiduously to neuter.