Adams: Triangle fire brought labor reform

Why celebrate Women's History Month each March? If ever there were doubt, the events of March 25, 1911, make the case.

That's when 146 factory workers died, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. Two documentaries airing this month tell the tale: a PBS American Experience film, "Triangle Fire," and HBO's "Triangle: Remembering the Fire."

The fire was a perfect storm of gender, class and power -- a horrific squall that has again converged to threaten our moorings even today.

Witness ongoing workplace disparities, from the glass ceiling to gender-based pay inequities. Witness our seemingly never-ending conflict with immigration, exploiting and demonizing people as the pendulum swings on our economic fortunes. Witness the union-busting tactics of right-wing business extremists whose collective greed has served to concentrate 85 percent of America's wealth in the coffers of the top 20 percent. This has created the greatest economic divide between rich and poor since the Gilded Age torched all notions of social justice in the name of owner profit -- fueling conditions so egregious that The Triangle shirtwaist fire should hardly be called an accident.

The Gilded Age was the era of the Gibson girl. With hair piled high and aloof sideward glance, she exuded an air of privilege and entitlement. Her idealized image was the creation of artist Charles Dana Gibson and her garment of choice -- from Paris to New York -- was the shirtwaist, a stylized high-neck bodice or blouse made of crisp, sheer linen.

Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the Triangle Waist Factory, were known as the Shirtwaist Kings. They were also known to be among the industry's worst employers.

When a 13-week strike for fair wages, healthier working conditions and an end to child labor hobbled New York's garment industry, Blanck and Harris hired Bowery gangsters and prostitutes to intimidate their workers.

When insurance inspectors, concerned that the factory doors were "usually kept locked," emphasized the life-and-death importance of fire drills, Blanck and Harris ignored them. When the owners were notified of extreme hazards, they upped their insurance to an amount 75 percent higher than the value of their property.

The problem wasn't only with Triangle, it was endemic throughout the shirtwaist industry. According to David Von Drehle, in his book "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America," an insurance trade journal would note at the time that the rash of shirtwaist fires was "fairly saturated with moral hazard."

But the deadliest of them all was the Triangle fire. What killed the workers wasn't the fire per se, in most cases; it was the lack of safety precautions and accountability. It was the fire hoses that couldn't shoot water that high into the air, the doors the owners insisted on keeping locked, the fire escape with no ladder that gave way under the weight of its victims. A few of the workers were charred to death, but most plummeted to their deaths, their bodies strewn on the pavement below.

From the fire would come the growth of unions -- workers bargaining in their own interests -- workplace safety regulations, fire codes, a recognition by women of the power of their own voice as workers, the rise of the women's movement, and a reconsideration of immigrants not just as cheap labor, but as human beings.

In short, in a time with issues not unlike our own, as the PBS poster promoting its commemorative documentary reads: "Triangle Fire: 100 years is too soon to forget."