Category: Rightous Anger

Friday was the annivesary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, fire broke out at the Asch building, a garment factory at Green St. and Washington Place in lower Manhattan owned by the Triangle Waist Company. Like many of the sweatshops of its day, the facility had poor ventilation, dangerous machinery, few if any safety standards and a single exit where management-hired guards would inspect employees on their way home ostensibly to cut down on theft. Other doors remained locked from the outside during the work day.

When fire engulfed the factory’s lower floor, it trapped employees–overwhelmingly young, female and from Italian and Jewish emigrant familes–inside. Many leaped to their death from the roof, others burned inside. Although the building was fireproof and the fire department arrives within 15 minutes to put out the blaze, 146 works, nearly 30% of the total force at Triangle had died. It is considered one of the worst disasters in American labor history.

The tragedy served as a clarion call for the American labor movement and in the insuing years, garment worker membership soared and workplace safety standards were lobbied for and achieved. Nonetheless, sweatshops persist, even the offshore-happy American market of the early 21st century. Free The Slaves, a Washington D.C.-based activist organization reports that 27 million people live in near-enslavement throughout the world today, primarly by their employers. An estimated 50,000 enslaved persons live in the United States, many as non-unionized farm workers and domestics.

While we argue endlessly over whether our economic system can or cannot avoid trafficking in human misery, I’d like to think that we, as citizens and consumers, would make intelligent choices about supporting such practices if adequate education and labelling existed. Maybe it does and I’m just not aware of it. But that sounds like exactly the problem.

A google search on "Sweatshop free clothes" lists quite a number of options at prices roughly equal to  The Gap. American Apparel is one of the nation’s largest producer of T-shirts (of significantly higher quality and comfort by my experience) and runs a sweatshop-free factory in downtown Los Angeles and is expanding to retail stores throughout North America. Triangle:  The Fire that Changed America is an excellent book on the subject.