"Even the Triangle Workers Got One Day a Week Off"

"The men who owned the Triangle factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, didn't want 146 of the people who worked for them to die in agony. But they also never bothered to supply their factories with effective firefighting equipment of any kind because that cost money—and because they had a history of suspicious, end-of-the-season fires that conveniently burned up their heavily insured, surplus cloth.
"Public unions could have put policemen and firemen out of the Tammany machine's reach. Private unions could have protected the women working at the Triangle factory. Even in safer times, the need endures to guard workers from the worse tendencies of government and business."


Kevin Baker at The New Republic connects the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire to today's labor issues.