Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Remembered on HBO

Over the past few weeks we have seen many reports in newspapers, magazines and on the television marking the centennial anniversary on March 25th of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

The tragic fire, which caused many needless deaths, is widely seen as the foundation of American labor reform and ultimately of FDR’s New Deal legislation with its protections of worker rights, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and government regulation of industry.Since the dawn of the Ronald Reagan era in American politics we have seen a gradual attempt to roll back many of these New Deal values. In the agenda of the so-called “Tea Party” and its allied interests – something we witnessed in the recent battle between union forces in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan where newly-elected Republican governors have sought to lay the hammer down on organized labor – there has been a new flowering of the hardline Conservative ethos of the extremist Reagan vision. Attempts to balance government budgets have chosen to focus on organized labor in the public sector rather than on the financial industry, which came very close to bankrupting the country.

The commemoration of the Triangle fire has thus become a flashpoint for pro-labor and Progressive forces fighting to promote worker rights.

An excellent documentary on the fire is currently showing on HBO. Some additional background can be learned in an article from The Nation magazine.

What is fascinating about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is the largely Ashkenazi Jewish profile of those involved. Both labor and management was largely comprised of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. The tragedy of the fire speaks to the complexity of relations between the poor and wealthy immigrants and the profound changes that were underway in the American Jewish community that remain with us until this day.

It is noteworthy from a religious point of view that, not only were the factory workers maltreated and abused by ownership because of their greed and negligence, but that the actual fire took place on a Saturday afternoon; Saturday being a regular workday. This religious factor signifies the loss of traditional values at the expense of money and power for those trying to make their way in a new country. The traditional Sabbath day of rest – binding on both owner and worker – was discarded as the new American way of life changed Jewish life-patterns followed for millennia. Young Jewish women were working at their sewing machines on the Sabbath just as the Jewish owners were sitting in their executive offices. The loss of religious values reflected by the desecration of the Sabbath extended to the violation of basic civil rights accorded to workers in Jewish law. The new world of American values strongly undermined tradition and created a mad scramble to “make it” at any price in an alien culture.

The contentiousness that we see in this tragic tale set one Jewish group against the other and created divisiveness in the Jewish community between Liberal and Conservative, labor and management, rich and poor,  that is often played out in our public discourse. We often see Jews on opposite sides of a political issue doing battle with one another in a deeply polarizing way.

By studying the facts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire we can better understand the dramatic changes that took place in the American socio-economic system and the effect that those changes had on our political system.

A website has been set up to provide information about the fire and events marking its commemoration.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from his newsletter, Sephardic Heritage Update.