Remembering the Triangle Fire and the (Mixed) Legacy of the American Labor Movement

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. – Abraham Lincoln

This past Friday marked the 100th anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, when 146 workers died in a blaze that was, until September 11, 2001, the deadliest workplace tragedy in the city’s history. Most of the victims were young Jewish and Italian women, many with no choice but to jump to almost certain death or remain trapped in a deadly inferno that was rapidly consuming the ninth floor of the building. It was later discovered that the factory’s managers had padlocked exits to all but one stairwell to prevent workers from leaving with leftover scraps of cloth. To compound matters, the door to the open stairwell swung inward, making it nearly impossible to open amidst the onrush of workers attempting to flee the quickly spreading fire. The factory building contained no automatic sprinklers and the one open stairwell was swiftly consumed by flames. A rickety fire escape, built to accommodate only a few people at a time, collapsed as panicked workers piled on. With no way out for the remaining workers, their only hope was to be rescued by the fire company, but the firefighter’s ladders only reached to the sixth floor, thirty feet below the igniting flames. Nearly fifty trapped seamstresses, mostly young teenage women, one as young as fourteen, leaped to their deaths, bodies accumulating on the sidewalk below, as a stunned and horrified crowd looked on from Washington Square.

When the cramped and unsafe working conditions endured by the garment workers were later exposed, a public outcry ensued and a credible workers’ rights movement was launched. In direct response to the Triangle fire, the New York State Legislature passed laws requiring automatic sprinklers in high-rise buildings, mandatory fire drills at large companies, and fire doors that swung out. Later reforms included a 54-hour workweek for women and child workers. The tragedy spurred the growth of American labor unions and influenced the passage of national laws outlawing child labor, further limiting the work week, and imposing minimum standards of workplace safety and more humane work environments.

A great irony of the Triangle fire is that, two years before the fire, the factory owners, themselves immigrants who became wealthy by employing new immigrants at low wages and long hours, successfully resisted a 13-week strike aimed at achieving union representation and safer working conditions. The fire and resulting deaths of 146 workers achieved what the strike could not.

One of the onlookers of the Triangle fire in 1911 was a young social worker named Frances Perkins. She and a friend were having tea in Greenwich Village when they heard the fire trucks and anguished screams of “don’t jump” from down the street. Perkins rushed outside and ran toward the commotion, where she witnessed flames and black smoke coming from the top floors of the Triangle factory. Young girls and women, some alone, some clutching hands, stood on window ledges with terrified looks in their eyes, as no good options existed. Perkins watched helplessly as many of the young girls and a few young men jumped to their deaths.

Twenty-two years later, Perkins became the first female cabinet member in U.S. history when she was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During her twelve-year tenure, the Triangle fire’s victims embedded in her memory, Perkins worked to guarantee the rights of workers to organize, form unions, and collectively bargain. With the firm backing of President Roosevelt, she helped win passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which called for the “elimination of labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency, and well being of workers.” Perkins was instrumental as well in securing implementation of the Social Security Act, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage.

Before the Triangle fire, and for virtually all of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, the balance of power in this country steadily favored wealthy industrialists and the owners of capital. The government’s willingness to interfere with the operations of American businesses and impose humane working conditions was greatly influenced by the principle of laissez faire, which instructed that government take a hand's off approach to commerce and business. The growing political power of the corporate class, tied to vast concentrations of wealth of a small number of conglomerates, contrasted sharply with the pitiful working conditions of most American laborers, who toiled in coal mines and garment factories, plantations and steel mills. Businesses and corporations predictably resisted virtually every effort at reform, arguing that mandatory workplace health and safety protections, and laws allowing workers to organize, would result in economic calamity.

“Such complaints, of course, are with us still,” writes Harold Meyerson of The Washington Post. “We hear them from mine operators after fatal explosions, from bankers after they’ve crashed the economy, from energy moguls after their rig explodes or their plant starts leaking radiation. . . . A century after Triangle, greed encased with libertarianism remains a fixture of – and danger to – American life.” Often ignored by the anti-regulation crowd is the fact that workplace protections were necessary precisely because of unfettered corporate greed and neglect and, despite such laws, the American economy experienced its greatest prosperity in the decades following corporate and labor reforms.

A. Phillip Randolph said, “A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess." The rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, to strike if necessary, helped shift the balance of power from the owners of capital to the laborers that made capital possible. "If capitalism is fair,” said Franklin Lloyd Wright, “then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor."

Although the rise of the American labor union helped, at least in some cases, to even the playing field between the large corporations and the workers on whose labor they profited, times have changed. Today, the word “union” is typically invoked in complaints about teachers resisting school reform or the excessive pension costs that are burdening state and local governments. “I pay for three police departments,” is a common complaint of township and borough mayors, “one active and two retired.” The growing power of certain labor unions in the 1950’s and 1960’s led to corruption and greed within labor’s own ranks. Many unions in the industrial northeast and Midwest demanded ever increasing wage and benefits packages, sometimes making near extortionate demands on their employers and ignoring the impact of ever increasing international competition. These unions often missed the big picture and eventually priced themselves out of a job, as manufacturers closed shop in the United States and took advantage of cheap labor overseas.

The protections afforded workers by occupational and safety laws, restrictions on child labor and excessive hours, and protections against discrimination and harassment, coupled with the wage increases unions won through the 1960’s, rendered the need for unions in some industries less compelling. Some powerful unions lost sight of their mission and seemed insufficiently grateful to a country that had enacted many progressive workplace protections. Government regulation of business and the enforcement of workplace rights is today a generally accepted part of the American economy, yet certain unions failed to acknowledge that the U.S. workforce was in a far different place at the end of the century than it had been when the Triangle fire shocked America’s conscious.

In the garment industry, for example, workers who were supposed to benefit from the wage and benefits packages negotiated by their unions found themselves with less work as jobs moved first to the south, where unions are less welcome, and eventually to India, China, and places with sweatshop-like conditions in factories that employ masses of people at low wages. Retail stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdales continually demanded steeper discounts and the ability to return goods they could not sell. Manufacturers in turn scrambled to reduce costs in piece work and outsourcing, as more and more U.S. jobs were lost. In 1975, 90% of all clothing sold in the United States was made in America. Today, the U.S. garment industry supplies only 5% of America’s clothing needs.

Increasing concentrations of wealth in the hands of a very few, along with international trade and globalization, have complicated and hampered the ability of the American workforce to maintain its standard of living. I have always been a strong proponent of free international trade, but when U.S. workers lose their jobs so that investment bankers can make millions of dollars on the backs of exploited laborers working in Triangle-like conditions in Thailand and other impoverished countries, I begin to lose my enthusiasm for tariff-free trade. We must open our eyes and insist upon more equal treatment of workers worldwide and, if necessary, impose tariffs and trade restrictions on countries and industries that fail to protect its workers in a manner required by modern decency and U.S. law.

I am fully aware of the labor movement’s failures. I recognize that certain unions became corrupt and undemocratic, some almost criminal and thug-like as extortionate contract demands wreaked havoc on businesses that were already struggling to compete in an increasingly global economy. In the fall of 1975, during a bitter and prolonged strike at The Washington Post Company, members of the pressmen’s union jumped the night foreman and pinned him to the floor with a screw driver at his throat, then severely beat him as other striking workers vandalized the pressroom, sliced the cushions of the press cylinders, ripped out electrical wiring, cut air hoses and sabotaged almost every piece of equipment before setting the presses on fire. Although twelve union members were eventually convicted of crimes of violence and The Post essentially broke the worst elements of the union, the damage was done.

A friend of mine, who owns a small trucking company in Ohio, once told me that his non-union drivers were threatened with violence by members of the Teamsters and, in retaliation for failing to unionize, found their tires slashed and, in a few instances, had pipe bombs set off in acts of intimidation. Such acts quickly dispel any romantic notions one may have of labor unions.

Nevertheless, it is easy to forget that a significant portion of U.S. prosperity from the end of World War II to the 1970’s was in part the result of union contracts and union advocacy. A strong labor movement contributed to a broad middle class with spending power and economic security that resulted in low unemployment and high wages. As Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal noted recently, for 48 straight months, between 1966 and 1970, the United States enjoyed an unemployment rate at or below four percent. Although unions were not wholly responsible for this prosperity, they helped maintain a fairer distribution of income and were, in the words of E.J. Dionne, Jr., “important co-authors of a social contract that made our country fairer, richer and more productive.”

Union excesses and short-sightedness notwithstanding, there would never have been a need for unions in the first place had businesses and corporations treated their workers more humanely and decently in the days before they were required to do so. In 1911, more than 100 workers died on the job each day. The Triangle fire was but a symptom of a much larger problem. Even today, despite all of the worker protections and all of the complaining of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups about the burdens of government regulation, industrial workplaces remain dangerous places. In 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,340 workers died in workplace injuries. In 2010, 29 miners died in one day at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, a non-union shop. The tragedies at the Triangle factory in 1911 and Upper Big Branch mine in 2010 spurred legislative investigations and calls to action. But in both cases, had workers had a stronger voice, a union, and the ability to insist on better and safer working conditions, both tragedies likely would have been prevented. In both cases, efforts by workers to organize, and their calls for safer work environments, were bitterly resisted by their employers.

So, while I have my problems with certain aspects of the American labor movement, as some unions are often their own worst enemy, I understand their importance and value to American economic life. In the words of Clarence Darrow, "With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men [and women] that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men [and women] than any other association." I am not yet ready to give up on the American labor movement, and we must never forget what happened a century ago at the Triangle factory in New York.

The Lingering Great Recession: Jobs Needed

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
--Franklin Roosevelt, Inaugural Address 1933

Confronted with bread lines, soup kitchens, and nearly a quarter of Americans without work, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew on his first day in office in 1933 that America needed a massive jobs program. Although Roosevelt wanted private industry to hire workers, he understood the limits of capitalism and knew that, to create jobs in the short term, government needed to hire people. Roosevelt did not doubt the ability of Americans to respond to a national crisis. In a display of ingenuity and creativity not matched since, he proposed legislation establishing the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Combined, these agencies funded tens of thousands of projects and put millions of people to work, building waterworks, post offices, bridges, prisons, airports, swimming pools, athletic fields, playgrounds, and railroad stations, many of which are still being used today.

• At a time when America’s needs seemed limitless, WPA workers painted murals on post office walls, delivered books to rural areas, wrote plays, composed music, and employed more than eight million Americans. Its accomplishments were stunning, as it built or improved 651,000 miles of roads, 19,700 miles of water mains, 500 water treatment plants, 24,000 miles of sidewalks, 12,800 playgrounds, 24,000 miles of storm and sewer lines, 1,200 airport buildings, 226 hospitals, and more than 5,900 schools. Among the WPA’s most famous projects were LaGuardia airport, the San Antonio Riverwalk, and the Timberline Lodge in Oregon.
• The CCC, Roosevelt’s favorite New Deal creation, was up and running within 37 days of Roosevelt’s inauguration. It put to work 500,000 young men (women were excluded from the CCC), who were taught skills in carpentry and masonry and performed useful work related to conservation and the development of natural resources. These young men, who lived in military style camps throughout the United States in national parks and forests, went on to plant more than three billion trees, erect 3,470 fire towers, and construct 97,000 miles of fire roads; they fought forest fires, built campgrounds, and implemented disease and insect control. By 1942, the CCC's projects positively affected virtually every state in the country.
• PWA’s workers built the state capitol building in Oregon, the highway linking the Florida Keys to the mainland United States, San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, the city hall building in Kansas City, Outer Drive Bridge in Chicago, Washington National Airport, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, and Ellis Island Ferry Building. Between July 1933 and March 1939, the PWA funded over 34,000 construction projects, including airports, electricity-generating dams, and aircraft carriers. It also constructed seventy percent of the new schools and one third of the hospitals built during that time.

The investment in America’s infrastructure during the New Deal made possible the incredible economic growth that occurred after the end of World War II. Much of that infrastructure remains in use today, from bridges and dams to schools and sidewalks.

Although conservatives love to point out that New Deal spending did not end the Great Depression – it took American involvement in World War II and the mobilization of a war economy to do that – in reality, Roosevelt’s programs dramatically reduced unemployment. The unemployment rate dropped steadily from its peak at 24.9% in 1933 to 14.3% in 1937, when Roosevelt, eager to return to a balanced budget, raised taxes and cut spending. Not surprisingly, unemployment jumped back to 19.0% in 1938 and only the deficit spending of the war finally lifted the U.S. economy out of its doldrums more than three years later.

In hindsight, it is apparent that Roosevelt, whose conservative instincts precluded more radical measures, did not do enough to put even more Americans to work. Nevertheless, his jobs programs not only employed millions of American citizens – providing them with productive work and increased self-esteem – but also greatly enhanced the nation’s infrastructure. The New Deal employed millions of Americans at a relatively low cost and, while it did not end the Depression, it reduced the suffering of countless American families.

We could use a little of that New Deal spirit today. The unemployment rate in the United States is now at 10.2%, the highest it has been since the dark days of the Great Depression. It is even worse for African Americans and Hispanics, who face unemployment levels in their communities hovering above 15% and 13%, respectively. If you count the underemployed and those of all races who have given up looking for work (and who are not counted among the ranks of the unemployed), the rate exceeds 17% of the American workforce. We are indeed in the midst of a Great Recession. President Obama and Congress rightly responded to this latest crisis with a $787 billion economic stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but there is little evidence that these billions have been targeted to putting real people to work in real jobs. We bailed out the banks, gave modest tax credits to middle-class Americans, and plugged the leaking budgets of state and local governments, but we have done nothing approaching a Rooseveltian solution to massive job losses.

Paul Krugman, the award-winning economist of the New York Times, correctly noted in a November 12, 2009 editorial that the United States does not have a jobs policy, but a GDP policy. Our policymakers believe that stimulating overall spending will make GDP grow faster, thus inducing the private sector to stop laying-off workers and to start hiring again. Americans are justly proud of our economic system, which has historically produced goods and services and created wealth at rates far exceeding anything ever before seen in history. The standard of living of most Americans has steadily increased over the past sixty years, with America the envy of the world. Although the industrial nations of Europe and Asia have largely kept pace with, and in some cases exceeded, the growth and productivity of the American economy, Americans have generally prospered. We have benefited from an expanding and increasingly educated workforce, until recently a stable financial system, and a legal and regulatory scheme designed to promote free and fair trade while checking corporate excesses. Due to progressive reforms instituted during the New Deal and after, the elderly (social security and Medicare), the poor (aid to families with dependent children and Medicaid), and children (children’s health insurance programs, mandatory education, school lunch programs) are generally protected by government programs designed to provide a social safety net. Yet cracks remain, and have grown increasingly larger, as the ranks of the unemployed have swelled.

While long-term unemployment is at its highest level since the 1930’s, the bankers – bailed out with government largesse – thrive; it was recently reported that bonuses at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase, among others, are up 60% from last year, with over $30 billion scheduled to be paid out this year. The growing inequality of American society continues to present ethical and moral challenges to the defenders of a free enterprise system that enforces a callous form of social Darwinism. Thus, unemployment is on the rise at the same time that productivity, as measured by the GDP, is up by an impressive 3.5% this past quarter, and 80% of the S&P 500 reported better than expected earnings.

Why such a disparity? The United States permits employers to hire most workers "at will" which allows employees to be fired without cause at the whim of an employer. The American corporation, upon the first signs of difficulties, cuts costs by cutting people; it is how companies become more “efficient.” Unemployment thus continues to rise while the corporate bottom line improves. Unlike Germany and some other European Union countries, which have strong employment protection legislation, in the United States we fire employees and let them fend for themselves, while those untouched by layoffs continue to prosper.

Imagine if you were a farmer with a large family. One year, due to a drought and bad weather conditions, you have a very poor harvest. Your accountant advises you that, due to declining revenues, you can make ends meet if you simply evict three of your seven children. This cost cutting measure will permit the rest of your family to maintain its present lifestyle. Do you accept the accountant’s advice? Would anyone accept as ethical the farmer who implemented such a cost saving measure? Of course not, as we naturally expect the farmer to have his family make do on less until next year’s harvest. Why do we treat our economy differently? We bail out the banks to shore up our financial system – rewarding risky behavior motivated by greed – rather than ask the rich to make do with less to prevent the increased depravation suffered by recession’s victims.

It is past time to borrow a page from the New Deal and use a significant portion of the stimulus money to put people to work. It is not as if we have a shortage of needs in this country. America’s core infrastructure – roads, bridges, sewers, airports, trains, mass transit – is outdated and crumbling. While poor road conditions cost us billions of dollars in repairs and countless hours of delays, China opens a new subway system every year and Europeans travel on modernized, high-speed rail systems from Paris to Frankfurt. Our cities have an epidemic of broken pipes, dilapidated and vacant buildings, and sinkholes – just look at Camden, Philadelphia, Newark, and most any Northeastern city for examples. One-third of our schools are rundown and in need of repair. Add to this the fact that our addiction to oil has prevented any serious consideration of transitioning to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, renewable energy development, and expanded mass transit systems, and we have a recipe for a long-term decline.

Economic relief without jobs makes no sense and has a devastatingly negative affect on the psyche of millions of Americans. Workers who have been unemployed for a long time find it difficult to re-enter the labor market even after economic conditions improve; and the hidden costs of long-term unemployment – the emotional damage, for example, to children and families when parents are unemployed – are immeasurable. As Krugman argues, “We need to start doing something more than, and different from, what we’re already doing. . . . [I]t’s time for a policy that explicitly and directly targets job creation.”

Most economists acknowledge that, historically, spending on public works has a far greater effect on the economy than tax cuts, as more money is spent and jobs created at home than abroad. Let us put Americans to work where the nation’s needs are greatest – retrofitting schools and public buildings, repairing our highways and sewer systems, expanding the nation’s broadband capacity, and improving our cities and landscapes. President Obama understands this; he has put Vice President Biden in charge of a team that is making certain that federally financed projects are targeted to meet real needs, are smart investments in America’s future, and are not wasteful. But Obama, like so many Presidents before him, is caught in that great Congressional power hold that is Washington. Although $152 billion is earmarked for infrastructure investment, it constitutes only 20% of the total stimulus package. And much of that money has yet to be spent, caught in a system of earmarks and legislative trading, which leaves far too much discretion in the hands of individual state governments on how to spend the money.

Although we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on supporting a corrupt regime in Afghanistan and putting at risk the lives of American soldiers, we somehow consider the concept of employing Americans with public money to be dangerous and subversive activity. How is spending public money to create jobs and re-train workers a bad thing, when unemployment hovers at 10.2%? Do we wish to have economic and social policies that protect and look out for the general welfare of our citizens, or policies that protect the haves at the expense of everyone else? I do not have all of the answers, but I believe that looking to the New Deal and adjusting it to today’s needs is a place to start.