"How the Other Half Lives" & The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vus4b8FRTKM

          This is a compilation of first-hand accounts of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.  You may have heard about it before in American History classes, it is pretty well known.  It came to mind while I was reading "How the Other Half Lives" and contemplating the poor conditions of the tenements many immigrants lived in and how little value their well-being held in the hands of the upper class.  This brief documentary provides a little perspective on how the poor conditions many immigrants experienced extended into the work place as well.  There is a particular interest in gender in this piece.  You can tell from the voiceovers (with notable foreign accents) and the images that this incident primarily involved women, although I'm sure men faced similar obstacles.  I believe the statistic reports that 146 people died.  The Shirtwaist Fire would not have been so hazardous had the safety standards not been so low, as they were in the tenements that Riis wrote about.  It is just another example of how at risk the lives of the lower class were because they were unfairly perceived to have less significant lives.

          Chapter 1 of the Other Half text states, "Yet so illogical is human greed that, at a later day, when called to account, "the proprietors frequently urged the filthy habits of the tenants as an excuse for the condition of their property, utterly losing sight of the fact that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for this they themselves were alone responsible"".  The consequences of the Factory Fire support Riss's claim in disproving the dismissive comments of the upper class that the squalid living conditions of tenements were a result of the lower classes' irresponsibility and uncleanliness.  The conditions were so terrible because low-income communities were taken advantage of by the overseeing class, whether it be on nearly unlivable property with unfair taxes or in unsafe factories with minimal pay and unsatisfactory conditions in which the workers took no part in designing.  After the tragedy of this fire legislation required improvement in safety standards and a union for female garment workers was created.  Unfortunately, as in the tenements, high death tolls were the main catalyst for public reform.