The Triangle Fire was a horrible event which caused deaths of workers who were working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. This factory was a sweatshop. A sweatshop was a place where people worked for long hours with low pay, and they worked in very poor conditions. People who worked here were there for the money that they needed. They were immigrants, young women, and children. They may have been doing this to support their family. Poor conditions and a few other things caused many deaths in this fire.
Also there was a policy from the government called the laissez faire. This policy said that the government can’t interfere with the business operations. This was favored by the business because then they could do whatever they wanted to. The business could have horrible conditions for the workers to work in, and the government couldn’t interfere because of a policy that they themselves created. Also the courts could have imposed an injunction in the businesses. An injunction says that a person or a group has to do something or can’t do something.
If they had issued injunctions on the businesses then they would have to follow the rule or something could happen to them. But this could have interfered with their laissez faire policy. The business would talk about the laissez faire policy to the court. The 1911 cartoon by Robert Carter showed that there was was a skeleton building inspector. There were a few people on the floor who were dead. On the wall it showed a fire inspection certificate. Instead of showing that the building had passed the fire code.
This was showing that since the building inspectors did nothing to tell the owners about the fire, this happened to the workers in the buildings. The building inspectors are a part of the government. This symbolizes that the government was indirectly part of the responsible groups for the deaths. They should have trained the inspectors to do a better job. If they couldn’t train them, then they should have fired the bad building inspectors from their jobs. There were also dead people and a skeleton that represented the building inspector in that cartoon.
The skeleton represented that they should have done a better job of inspecting the buildings. It is coming back to haunt them and they feel bad that it was their fault that they let these people die. The dead people who are in the corner show that many people died and they were just lying there. They had no means of escape. This illustrates laissez faire because the inspectors might have thought that they didn’t have to do their job because the owners wouldn’t have followed their rules anyways.
The document Warnings by Leon Stein had many warnings about what could happen. It said things about fire drills and the crowding of people in one place. The owners of the factory had not held a fire drill for their building. If the owners of the building had considered to hold a fire drill then the people would know what to do in the event of the fire. Even if there was a lot of people, they would understand what to do because they had practiced getting out of the building safely. This was inspector’s job to tell what is allowed and what is not.
If the owners weren’t ready to follow the orders of the inspectors, the court could have issued an injunction to tell the owners that they have to do a certain thing. For example, if the people who the injunction was put on didn’t follow the injunction, then they could have had a fine issued against them. The inspectors also found locked doors in the building of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. P. J. McKeon found this out. He was a expert and lecturer on fire prevention at Columbia University. He wasn’t a building inspector, that wasn’t his job.
He should have sent a letter to the government of New York to show what happening and what could happen in the building. Also there was a part which stated that there had been a fire in Newark, New Jersey. Looking at this the other factory owners should have listened to the building inspectors. Also the government could have saw this as an opportunity to revoke the laissez faire policy. 25 people died in the fire in Newark. There was picture by the Brown Brothers on March 25, 1911. This picture showed fire engines spraying water at the burning building.
The water was not able to reach the floors where the fire was going on. If the building inspectors had done their jobs and told the government about the conditions of the buildings, then that information would have been passed on to the fire department to keep them prepared. The information not being passed on resulted in the fire department not being prepared. Also the fire department is part of the government, so this means that it was the government’s fault that they did not do anything to keep the firefighters with the latest technology so they can fight fires likes these.
The courts could have issued injunctions to the building inspectors and the owners of the building. The court could have said that the building inspectors had to do their job better even if the owners wouldn’t have cared. The courts could have issued an injunction to the owners to follow what the inspectors were telling them to do. The court was part of the government, they had the power to do this, but they didn’t take any use of it. It is partially their fault. They used it for workers, but not for owners or employers.
In a picture from an unknown source taken in 1911, it shows that there is a fire escape which has become warped and twisted. This fire ended two stories from the ground, so people would have to jump to the ground anyway. Also the fire escape was very close to the building, so it took a lot of heat. The government of New York could have tested the iron before it was installed in the building. If they had done this then they could have insured if the iron was strong enough to withstand the weight of hundreds of workers trying to come down in the case of a fire.
Also the government or the inspectors may not have cared to look at the iron because of laissez faire. Since the frre escape ended two stories from the ground, the workers would still have to jump, and this could be a possibility of being hurt. This illustrates laissez faire because the owners wouldn’t have listened to the government. They would say that you have made a policy that prevents you from interfering with what we are doing. This would mean that they would be able to use any type of material to lower their costs. The owners could have said that the building is theirs and they can do anything that they want.
