Women's History: American Women & Work

For some reason, our media types have pushed the meme that women in this country never really worked until WWII, when American men left in droves to fight, and women manned the factories that kept our war effort alive at home. The history of early American female settlers (who tended the fields, fed their families, died in childbirth, and sometimes raised families alone) is ignored. As is this fact, many women worked difficult jobs early in the Twentieth Century to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

The reality for many working women in the early Twentieth Century, especially for those that worked in mills and factories, was confinement to jobs that regularly exploited them. They worked as much as 70 hours a week for three dollars or less. It’s important that we never forget that part of women's history.

The female gender has paid its price and earned its place in the American workforce; nothing was given to us. Women even played an active role in the unionization of American workers. The price of our inclusion was high, and some women lost their lives in the process.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

The site of the first major strike of women workers in the US was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. In the early 20th Century, hazardous working conditions were the norm in American industry, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory wasn’t an exception. Its overcrowded working conditions, poor ventilation system, and dangerous machinery initiated a local union strike against Triangle.

National feminist figures like Lillian Wald (photo, left) spoke in support of the strike at NY rallies. A spirit of solidarity grew throughout New York's clothing factories and in the fall of 1909 a general strike was called. Twenty thousand workers (4/5 of them women) walked off their jobs.

A strike limited to one company became the first large scale strike of women workers in American history. Unfortunately, although the strike was able to secure a small wage increase, union demands for increased fire safety were not addressed. This was a failure that had tragic consequences less than two years later.

Major Industrial Disaster

The New York City Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on Saturday, March 25, 1911, is one of the largest documented industrial disasters in America’s history. It was marked as the worst workplace disaster in New York City until the tragic events of 9/11. Many workers lost their lives, most of them were women. (The photo on the right is of a fire truck responding to the blaze.)

The Triangle workers had a nine-hour day during the week, in addition to the seven hours worked on Saturdays. It was a practice of Triangle management to lock the exits until the end of a work shift to prevent workers from taking breaks during work. These practices led to the death of 146 garment workers (116 of them women).

As a result of management practices, workers were not able to escape when a fire quickly engulfed the workplace and turned it into a burning inferno. Workers either died in the fire or died jumping from the building to escape the flames. The factory was on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch building, and the ladders of arriving fire trucks could not reach workers. One hundred women perished in the burning building as a result of blocked exits and a lack of fire escape routes. Six of the victims were never identified. Victims died of burns, asphyxiation, blunt impact injuries, or a combination of the three. In shades of 9/11, a man was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they jumped together to their deaths.

A New York state assembly man named Louis Waldman remembered the ugly scene in his 1944 memoirs:

“Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies….”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire led to legislation that required improved safety conditions in factories. It was a force in the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. The LGWS fought for better working condition for sweatshop workers, which included many women.

Lament for Lives Lost

The photo on the left is of a march that took place to commemorate those who died in the Triangle fire. It was not the only remembrance of the workers who lost their lives. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, protest rallies and memorial meetings were held throughout New York.

During one memorial at the Metropolitan Opera House, tension between social classes was palpable. Members of the Women’s Trade Union sat in the galleries. They saw class solidarity as the solution to industrial safety problems. The middle- class and upper-class women in the boxes sought reforms like a fire prevention bureau.

Rose Schneiderman, a Polish immigrant and former hat worker who had once led a strike at the Triangle factory, spoke. Schneiderman (photo, R-below) held the audience spellbound in her Lament for Lives Lost:

“I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies, if I were to come here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public—and we have found you wanting.

 

The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today: the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch fire.

 

This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in this city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred! There are so many of us for one job, it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death.

 

We have tried you, citizens! We are trying you now and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers and brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.

 

Public officials have only words of warning for us—warning that we must be intensely orderly and must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back when we rise—back into the conditions that make life unbearable.

 

I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. And the only way is through a strong working-class movement.”

ILGWU

The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest unions in our country. It had a primarily female membership, and it was a major force in the labor movement during the 1920s and 1930s. Its membership hit 450,000 in 1969.

The ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995 to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented only 250,000 workers between them. Union membership has been impacted by the global economy and the transfer of manufacturing jobs to countries like China and India through unfair practices fostered by both Republicans and Democrats.

UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE.

The Building Site

The ten-story Asch Building survived the fire and was refurbished. Real estate speculator/philanthropist Frederick Brown purchased it and donated the structure in 1929 to New York University. It now exists as the Brown Building of Science and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was named a National Historical Landmark in 1991 and listed as a New York City Landmark in 2003.

Two plaques in the front of the building commemorate the women who lost their lives in the fire. A coalition of preservation organizations, historians, artists, and labor activists, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, have joined together to form the Remember the Triangle Coalition with the goal of commemorating the Triangle Fire Centennial in 2011 (http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/).

______________________________________________________________________________ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILGWU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Building_of_Science

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5480/

http://www.laborarts.org/exhibits/union/triangle.cfm

http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/

 http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/travel/pwwmh/ny30.htm