PBS last night - Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Anyone else watch this?

[Fix The Stupid]

I am still floored by this show on PBS last night...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire


I came away thinking not much has changed, in regards to the owner/employee relationship.

The owners were able to:

1) buy the police
2) buy the city council
3) hired private detectives to beat the women protesters - Yes, you read that right - they hired mercs and ex-police officers to beat the WOMEN who were protesting the awful conditions. Local police also took part in these beatings.
4) Made the employees BUY THEIR OWN NEEDLES AND THREAD! Took these costs out of their wages... yes, you read that right.
5) many, many other horrible things I am too worked up about to remember.

And of course, locked them in while they worked so they couldn't escape when the fire happened...

The owners were acquitted of Manslaughter charges...

It pays to be rich in the US.

I am still shocked about this incident so excuse me if this post seems a little odd or truncated...

Just had to vent.

[niyad]

1. yes, I watched it, again, as I did the hbo documentary.

last year, on the centenary, there was a ceremony, and each of the victims was named.

what they didn't make clear in the pbs film was that the bastards who owned the company paid about $75 per victim to their families--and ended up with a profit of over $400 per victim from their insurer (as I pointed out in another thread, this may have been the first recorded case of "dead peasant" insurance).

what I am curious about is how, given the massive destruction on the 9th floor, they were able to determine that the fire was started by a cigarette.

[Fix The Stupid]

2. Yep.

I was a little disappointed in the way it was presented as well...

That one guy they had on, always referred to them as "bosses" - that made my temp. rise every time I heard it - I wanted to scream, "you mean the OWNERS!!!" - big difference between those two terms...

Also, to not touch on the 'dead peasant' thing was a huge mistake...

[niyad]

3. have you seen the hbo documentary? concentrated more on the victims, which I thought

was important.

[w8liftinglady]

4. Every time we have a gas well or cement plant fatality here,I think of this

Texas goes out of their way to evade any type of workplace safety law.

This will keep happening.The companies just throw more money under the table so it isn't broadcast.

[DianaForRussFeingold]

5. Watch it on line if you missed it! K&R

It was so Sad..! You gave a great synopsis... Thank You!!!

"Praised as the "finest documentary series on television," AMERICAN EXPERIENCE brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today."
http://video.pbs.org/program/american-experience/

[PotatoChip]

11. Thanks for the link. American Experience has done a ton of

quality programs- It just never occurred to me to check for any I may have missed online. I'm looking forward to seeing this one.

The episode preceding the Triangle tragedy (about Whaling) was quite interesting. And I'm not the type to care about that sort of thing usually. Watched it when it aired last week and was quite riveted (once they got past the gory descriptions).

Anyway, thanks for the link, and my thanks to the OP as well.

[sofa king]

6. They used to teach about this incident in middle school.

Is this not the case now?

[Fix The Stupid]

8. Exactly.

I was just thinking about this. Why did I never hear about this in all my years of schooling?


It's almost like a concerted effort to diminish or hide anything in our pasts that casts unbridled capitalism and greed in a negative light.

This story should be hammered into all of our collective minds so we never forget.

[sofa king]

9. Pretty scary, ain't it?

I first learned of the Triangle fire in the first couple of years of the Reagan Administration, before they began systematically meddling in education.

It was a cornerstone of the labor and regulatory movements led by Gompers, Sinclair, and others which, it was asserted in my day, directly contributed to the industrial might of the United States during World War II. By then, workplaces were safer and more efficient, workers were better treated, better trained, and better compensated for their expertise. That led directly to industrial standards that simply could not be duplicated anywhere else in terms of quality and volume of output.

For example, every British-made tank came with a little toolkit for properly shaping supposedly "interchangeable parts" before they could be used. Sherman tanks had truly interchangeable parts that dropped in without physical adjustment of the parts themselves. That gave the Sherman a sort of quality that partially counterbalanced its abysmal performance on the battlefield. It might take five Shermans to kill a Panther, but the four dead ones could often be rebuilt from spare parts in a matter of days or weeks.

Proving once again that proper treatment of labor is a national security issue on which our nation's survival depends. Screwing the American people for profit lowers the security of all Americans.

[malaise]

7. It was a repeat from lat year

I watched part of it while waiting for the Murdoch scandal on Frontline,

It's a horrific tragedy born of capitalist greed and establishment complicity

[area51]

10. I also watched it last year when it was on.

I can't remember if it was in the program, or in a little research I did later, that after the owners basically got away with the deaths of those workers, they later started another sewing factory, had another fire, and got away with the deaths of the next set of workers too.