Part 4

From The Peopling of New York City

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Research Experience

Contents 1 New York City 2 The demon, The law, and the ugly 3 The Fire 4 References

New York City

What happens when all the power of the city is limited to a few in society, this could include a group that is racially, religiously, economically, or even politically discriminating everyone else in society? What if this group was predominantly male and wealthy? Well, as I have come to agree with both Reitano, the author of Restless Ciy, and Von Drehle, the author of Triangle, you get a corrupt government or city with extreme violence, intense riots, unbalanced distribution of wealth, poverty, disease and illness, and many miserable poor folks seeking something they are not allowed to achieve-comfort. Comfort could mean wealth, status, power, or it could mean a simple and easy life with all one’s needs. Comfort definitely didn’t happen in the very late 1800s early 1900s for the millions of people living in New York City. The City of Ambition in “The Restless City” and the first three chapters of Triangle is about the struggles women, African Americans, and other minorities experienced in order to defend freedom, refine corruption, and establish a system to protect the future of their generations.

Jacob Riis exemplifies the conditions of living in the slums. Riis showed society the filthy and harshness that the lower class, particularly the immigrants, faced in N.Y. Riis urged for reform and many higher-class individuals tried to help. Riis also brought up the idea that whenever newer waves of immigrants came to the city, the senior immigrants of the city didn’t want them. This leads to violence and unfair discrimination. The eat, work, and vote riots were entirely organized by women. Women went on riots when hunger struck and the price of food was too high the. Women went on strikes when working conditions and wages were bad. The most important reason of organizing suffrage riots was for women to get more power in the government and setting laws.

The riots for improving work for women are further explained in the Triangle. The thesis of Triangle is to revisit the fire that changed America, including the role of Women in society. Women faced many troubles in the city. They overworked and were paid unfairly. They couldn’t acquire good education. So, the riots represented the “clashing of the old (ideas) against the new.” The first three chapters of this book concentrates on many aspects of living in N.Y. including the very harsh working conditions many women were in. The women strikes began from the mistreatment of Triangle employers. Wages were low and working hours were extremely long. Even though there are many downs about N.Y. during these hard times there is also one good thing to keep in mind. People were very involved with what happened in the city. When something was not right people would gather and organize riots and protests to reform the corrupt conditions. When the strikes began the city was not only divided by race and political affiliations, it became divided between workers and bosses. It seems it was a small internal war within N.Y. Von Drehle argues that corrupt police also became a central issue in reform.

The terrifying second part of the book, Triangle, reveals the horrors New York faces during and after the fire at Triangle shirtwaist factory. The Triangle story is wrapped around three inevitable truths, the selfish desires of human nature, the corruption of law, and defeat of the weak and hopeless. Other issues that also happened within the same decade have the same themes. New York’s uprising seems to be directly connected to all the corruption and troubles the city faced.

The early 1900s represented the expansion of the city, increase of wealth, and easiness of achieving the American dream. People all around the community who came from all over the world were gaining the opportunities the city and nation could offered. Millions of immigrants from all over the world poured into the city annually. However, immigrants, blacks and women were treated badly. The end of slavery slowly brought a new idea in the community. People endorsed the idea of segregation and this idea moves well into the years until the 1960-1970s. The depression of the 1920s made life miserably hard for many who lived in the slums of New York City. Black organizations and groups arise to fight against the unfair and unequal treatment of N.Y.C. black citizens. From these historical events, the city and nation was blamed for harsh racism and injustice. A few politicians rarely helped the people and one of them was LaGuardia. There were many sad stories during these times but many would say that the fire of 1911 at the Triangle factory was the worse scenario, “one of the most impressive spectacles of sorrow N.Y. has ever known.”(Restless City)

borrowed from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16960/16960-h/images/436.jpg

The demon, The law, and the ugly

The demon is the selfish desire of the human nature. Humans naturally tend to seek wealth, power and status. People would do this by any means. Some people would work hard and achieve success. Others cheat and lie to succeed. Furthermore, some would do anything, no matter how atrocious, to achieve their goals. Blanck and Harris are two individuals who cheated the law, people, workers and probably customers to gain wealth. They were so interested in making money that they lost their humanity. They had no humane concern for their workers, as it is evident in the story. They basically locked their workers in to death. It was also believed that the two owners were notorious for burning down their factories in order to collect insurance money. Some believe that the Triangle fire was a plan that went completely wrong. It is surprising that Blanck froze during the evacuation, as mentioned by Bernstein the manager. What happened to him? What was going through his mind? Why was it overwhelmingly strong to make him lose his consciousness? He was either afraid of what happened, a plan that went all wrong or he finally realized the mistake he made for locking doors. He was going to be responsible and so was his partner. But, how would he save himself from this?

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/photos/5780pbx39ff19.jpg

The Law represents the corrupt laws of the early 1900s. The Law was not completely for the people. Powerful and corrupt leaders controlled the laws and the poor and weak suffered in the consequence. It was mentioned that Professor Francis Ayimar warned the city for the dangerous working conditions of the Triangle factory. But, it seems no one in the city did anything. There was no law that enforced property owners to be concerned with the safety of workers. Obviously, the city only refined the laws after the fire. All the warning signs were completely ignored. It is funny how everyone after the incident began finger pointing. Everyone claimed that it was someone else’s fault.

The ugly is all the troubles the poor immigrants and discriminated face living in the city. In the case of the Triangle factory, the workingwomen and men where the ones who suffered for the greed (demon) of others and uselessness of laws. 146 people died in the fire and only their death brought reform to the society.

The Fire

March 25, 1911 A Saturday afternoon a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, killed 146 people and changed the history of New York. The police department created a list of the dead and injured before 10 on Sunday Morning. By Wednesday the police had visited all the families of the Victims on the list ^[1]. Many books were written about the fire and the social and political reforms it urged the city to procure. However, no author has actually researched the lives of the victims. This web wiki presentation is our attempt to uncover the lives of the forgotten immigrants. We are in the search for the elusive immigrant. Women and Men who improved life in New York City. In this part of the project some history of the lives of Josephine Carlisi, Ida Jakofsky, Clotilde Terdanova, Mary Leventhal and Theodore Rottner will be presented. Initial research began with the list provided by Von Drehle in his book, Triangle.

In the late 1800s Russia acquired large populations of Jewish people by conquering Eastern European Countries such as Poland and Ukraine. Discrimination against the Jews began under the Czar Alexander. The Czar limited the number of Jews who could study in Universities and acquire professional jobs such as lawyers or doctors. Jews were also restricted to live in certain areas. Gangs would beat up or kill Jews, steal from their property and burn their homes and stores ^[2] This system of hatred was called the pogroms. The government did nothing to protect the Jewish communities. Instead, more violence was encouraged by propagating false accusations against the Jewish society. Many Jews fled the country and many ended up in America where they also faced hardships but they were a lot safer. Joyful Jewish immigrants sent news back to Russia “There is no czar in America.” ^[3]

William Shepherd once said “Every day I see someone on the worst day of his life. I’ve seen husbands kiss the bloodied lips of lifeless wives, heard wives whisper into the deaf ears of husbands as if they were napping and a tender word would wake them up; I’ve watched stunned mothers cuddle babies veiled in the blue-gray shadow of death. We’ve all been taught that every human body will one day stop functioning, but the reality of death makes us all children. And like children, the survivors scream and cry and cling. But, I have a job to do, so I calm them down the only way I can: by letting them tell their story.” ^[4] Here, our job is to uncover and tell the story.William Shepherd once said “Every day I see someone on the worst day of his life. I’ve seen husbands kiss the bloodied lips of lifeless wives, heard wives whisper into the deaf ears of husbands as if they were napping and a tender word would wake them up; I’ve watched stunned mothers cuddle babies veiled in the blue-gray shadow of death. We’ve all been taught that every human body will one day stop functioning, but the reality of death makes us all children. And like children, the survivors scream and cry and cling. But, I have a job to do, so I calm them down the only way I can: by letting them tell their story.” ^[5] Here, our job is to uncover and tell the story.This is the unique story of one of the five individuals who died in the fire, she has left some historical records that I found during my investigation:

Mary Leventhal The Ninth floor book keeper

The immigrants

William Shepherd said, “the floods of water from the firemen’s hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the pile of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer.” He looks at officer Meehan tagging a body and asks “Is it a man or a woman?” and Meehan replies, “It’s human, that’s all you can tell.” ^[6] The more difficult part of the story to track is the lives of immigrants who were yet not naturalized. To find anything valuable about their lives requires searching for artifacts that even historians can't easily dig up. Here is the list of immigrants who were too hard to find.

Theodore Rottner

Ida Jakofsky

Clotilde Terdanova The only person to have died from the tenth floor

Josephine Carlisi

These images are borrowed from http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/photos/photo_enlargements.html?image_id=78&sec_id=3&image_type=photo

The content on this page is only for educational purposes. Material was taken from the web Cornell University "Triangle" web site. If you would like to see more images please visit Cornell's web site.

This image was found at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/triangle/trianglefire.html

Location : New York, NY Date : March, 1911 Agency : WPA Credits : Brown Brothers Owner : FDRL Medium : B&W Photo Control Number : Photographs (General): Triangle Fire

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/triangle/trianglefire.html

References

1. ↑ Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee of the Charity organization society of the City of N.Y. (NYPL call number: SHD p.v.68, no.8)
2. ↑ High School World History: Connections to today by Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, Prentice Hall 2001, textbook.
3. ↑ High School World History: Connections to today by Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, Prentice Hall 2001, textbook.
4. ↑ Christopher Piehler and with collaboration with Scott Alan Evans, “The Triangle Factory Fire Project” Dramatists Play Service Inc. New York, 2005.
5. ↑ Christopher Piehler and with collaboration with Scott Alan Evans, “The Triangle Factory Fire Project” Dramatists Play Service Inc. New York, 2005.
6. ↑ Christopher Piehler and with collaboration with Scott Alan Evans, “The Triangle Factory Fire Project” Dramatists Play Service Inc. New York, 2005.