Cover: The Triangle Fire, 2nd Edition by Jo Ann Argersinger

The Triangle Fire

A Brief History with DocumentsSecond Edition ©2016 Jo Ann Argersinger

This new edition reflects and reinforces the continuing popular interest in the Triangle Fire of 1911. The Introduction provides critical context by exploring the demands industrialization placed upon urban working women, their fight to unionize, and the fire’s significance in the greater scope of l...
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ISBN:9781319048853

Cover: The Triangle Fire, 2nd Edition by Jo Ann Argersinger

This new edition reflects and reinforces the continuing popular interest in the Triangle Fire of 1911. The Introduction provides critical context by exploring the demands industrialization placed upon urban working women, their fight to unionize, and the fire’s significance in the greater scope of labor reform. By adding new sources that elevate the voices of immigrant women workers as they organized to gain better working and living conditions, Jo Ann E. Argersinger challenges students to analyze the important political and economic roles held by these "factory girls." The diversity of sources helps to engage students as they explore the impact of a major event in a significant era of American history. Several pedagogical tools are also included to aid students’ understanding and analysis: headnotes preceding each document offer critical historical context; a chronology of the strike and fire is provided for historical reference; questions for consideration are designed to stimulate deeper analysis; and a bibliography with suggested sources and a list of relevant Web sites encourage further exploration of the topic.

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Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Illustrations

PART ONE
INTRODUCTION: The Fire That Changed America
The Garment Industry and Its Workers
Triangle and the "Uprising of Twenty Thousand"
The Triangle Tragedy: Grief and Outrage
"The Fire That Lit the Nation": Investigations and Reform

PART TWO
THE DOCUMENTS
1. The Garment Industry and Its Workers
     1. Arthur E. McFarlane, Fire and the Skyscraper: The Problem of Protecting
       Workers in New York’s Tower Factories, September 1911
       2. Pearl Goodman and Elsa Ueland, The Shirtwaist Trade, December 1910
       3. Louise C. Odencrantz, Italian Women in Industry: A Study of Conditions in New York City, 1919
       4. Sadie Frowne, The Story of a Sweatshop Girl, September 25, 1902
       5. Clara Lemlich, Life in the Shop, November 26, 1909

2. Triangle and the "Uprising of Twenty Thousand"
     6. The New York Times, Arrest Strikers for Being Assaulted, November 5, 1909
     7. Allan L. Benson, Women in a Labor War: How the Working Girls of New York East Side Have Learned      to Use  Men’s Weapons in a Struggle for Better Conditions, April 1910
    8. The New York Times, Church to the Aid of Girl Strikers, December 20, 1909
    9. Constance D. Leupp, The Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike, December 18, 1909
    10. The Uprising of the Twenty Thousands (Dedicated to the Waistmakers of 1909), 1910

3. The Triangle Tragedy: Grief and Outrage
      11. The New York World, The Triangle Fire, March 27, 1911 
      12. The New York Times, Partners’ Account of the Disaster, March 26, 1911
      13. Rosey Safran, The Washington Place Fire, April 20, 1911 
      14. Miriam Finn Scott, The Factory Girl’s Danger, April 15, 1911
      15. The New York Times, 120,000 Pay Tribute to the Fire Victims, April 6, 1911
      16. Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee of the Charity Organization of the Society of the City of  New York, Emergency Relief after the Washington Place Fire: New York, March 25, 1911, 1912
      17. Elizabeth Dutcher, Budgets of the Triangle Fire Victims, September 1912
      18. Martha Bensley Bruere, The Triangle Fire, May 1911
      19. Rose Schneiderman, All for One, 1967

4. "The Fire That Lit the Nation": Investigations and Reform
      20. The Outlook, Indictments in the Asch Fire Case, April 22, 1911
      21. The New York Times, Triangle Witnesses Got Increased Pay, December 22, 1911
      22. The Literary Digest, 147 Dead, Nobody Guilty, January 6, 1912 
      23. Chicago Daily Tribune, What the Grave Covers, September 30, 1913 
      24. State of New York, Preliminary Report of the Factory Investigating Commission, 1912
      25. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 1946

APPENDIXES
A Chronology of the Triangle Fire (1900-2001)
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index
Headshot of Jo Ann Argersinger

Jo Ann Argersinger

Jo Ann E. Argersinger (PhD, George Washington University) is a professor of history at Southern Illinois University, where she teaches courses on World War II, the Cold War, and labor in the United States, including a history of women and work.  She is the author of Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry (1999) and Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression (1988).  She is the coauthor of Twentieth-Century America: A Social and Political History (2005) and of The American Journey (Sixth Edition, 2010).  She is currently writing a book on public housing and transnational perspectives, and her article entitled "Contested Visions of American Democracy: Citizenship, Public Housing, and the International Arena" is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History.  She will appear in a PBS documentary on the Triangle Fire, scheduled to air in March 2011, marking the hundredth anniversary of the fire.