The Triangle Fire (20 page)

The dissatisfaction and unrest that had led the Triangle girls out onto the picket line filled the city’s other shirtwaist shops. Thousands prepared to follow their example. The general walkout was touched off at four overflow meetings held on the evening of November 22 at Cooper Union, Beethoven Hall, Astoria Hall, and the Manhattan Lyceum, all in the East Side area.

The main speaker in the Great Hall of Cooper Union was Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. He told the audience, sensing the approach of a dramatic decision, that he had “never declared a strike in all my life. I have done my share to prevent strikes. But there comes a time when not to strike is but to rivet the chains of slavery upon our wrists.

“Yes, Mr. Shirtwaist Manufacturer!” Gompers thundered, “it may be inconvenient for you if our boys and girls go out on strike. But there are things of more importance than your convenience and your profit. There are the lives of the boys and girls working in your business.”

Before the next speaker could be introduced, a slim, pretty youngster who had been beaten on the Triangle picket line, rose and asked for the privilege of addressing the gathering. When this was granted, Clara Lemlich said there had been enough talk. She called for a vote to authorize a general strike. Her impassioned plea was heard in earnest silence by the audience. They knew the hardships of striking.

The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of a strike. The chairman called on the audience to rise. He asked all to raise the right hand and when this was done he led them in the solemn Biblical oath: “If I forsake thee, may this arm wither….”

The strike spread to all the shirtwaist shops in the city. Newspapers reported, at first with astonishment and then with growing sympathy, the bravery of the immigrant girls and young men who put on their best clothing to march on the picket lines.

The determination of the strikers and their friends increased as the number of arrests rose. Not at all unusual was the dramatic appearance of Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont in night court at 2:30 in the morning of Sunday, December 14.

The court was hearing the cases of those arrested late Saturday afternoon. The doors swung open and in sailed Mrs. Belmont wrapped in furs and wearing a hat so huge that it had to be anchored to her carefully coifed hair by six jeweled hat pins. While spectators and attendants gasped, recognizing her from pictures they had seen in the newspapers, she drew up in front of the bench and confronted Magistrate Butts. She was there, she told him imperiously, to stand bail for four of the girl strikers. The amount of bail was $800. She was putting up as security the Belmont mansion at 477 Madison Avenue.

When the Magistrate facetiously asked if it was sufficient to cover the amount, Mrs. Belmont fixed him with a cold stare and replied: “I think it is. It is valued at $400,000. There is a mortgage of $100,000 on it which I raised to help the cause of the shirtwaist makers and the women’s suffrage movement.”

Carola Woerishoffer, young, wealthy, dark-eyed, and a graduate of Bryn Mawr, did it her own way. She used her money to buy houses. Then she haunted the entrance to the Jefferson Market Court at Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street and whenever another group of arrested strikers was marched before a magistrate, she was with them in front of the bench armed with a deed, ready to slap it down for their release.

Mrs. Belmont and the other women who had joined in starting the Colony Club patronized by the “cream of the Four Hundred,” including Anne Morgan, Elizabeth Marbury, and Mrs. J. B. Harriman, held a meeting with the strikers in their exclusive quarters. The
Call
reported how the strikers, “some of them children, faced the 350 women, representing the richest people in the world, sitting on the edges of their gilt chairs in the beautiful auditorium of their sumptuous club. They told how they worked for as little as $3 a week.”

Said one of the youngsters: “They hired immoral girls to attack us and they would approach us only to give the policemen an excuse to arrest us. In two weeks, eighty-nine arrests were made. I too was arrested and the policeman grabbed me by the arm and said such insulting words that I am ashamed to tell you.”

By Christmas Day, 723 arrests had been made. Conscientious community leaders rallied to the defense. Professor Seligman of Columbia, Lillian D. Wald, and Mary K. Simkho-vitch, pioneers of social work, and Ida M. Tarbell, who had started the muckrake school of journalism with her expose of the Standard Oil Company, were among those who publicly charged in a joint declaration that there was “ample evidence to warrant the statement that the employers have received cooperation and aid from the police,” that the strikers had been “subjected to insult by the police,” and that they frequently had been “arrested when acting within their rights.”

Magistrate Olmstead, sentencing a striker, had lectured her: “You are on strike against God.” The Women’s Trade Union League wrote to the noted British socialist and playwright George Bernard Shaw, asking for a comment. Back came the reply: “Delightful. Medieval America always in the intimate personal confidence of the Almighty.”

The majority of the public sided with the girls. “From the start,” Ida M. Tarbell explained, “a large body of people who had perhaps thought very little on the subject of unionism and who had little acquaintance with the conditions under which shirtwaist workers lived, immediately came to their assistance.

“They said very rightly that these girls had a right to make an orderly stand to improve their conditions. In doing that, they are working not merely for themselves but for society as a whole. Anything which improves their condition,” Miss Tarbell concluded, “must improve everything in town.”

The strike ended after thirteen weeks. By that time ILGWU Local 25, which had entered the walkout with four hundred members and $10 in its treasury, had signed contracts with 354 firms.

Miriam Finn Scott listed some of the gains won by the strikers as the establishment of a 52-hour work week, wage increases of 12 to 15 per cent, a promise to end the subcontracting system in the shops, a 2-hour limit on night work, and “in the slack season to divide the work among all workers instead of giving it to the favored few.”

In the framework of that time, progress had been made. But the strike that had started at Triangle was not won at Triangle.

The girls who had worked at the Triangle shop “were beaten in the strike,” Martha Bensley Bruere declared. “They had to go back without the recognition of the union and practically no conditions.

“On the 25th of March,” she continued, “it was the same policemen who had clubbed them back into submission who kept the thousands in Washington Square from trampling upon their dead bodies, sent for ambulances to carry them away and lifted them one by one into the receiving coffins.”

Rose Safran was one of the Triangle strikers who returned in defeat. “I was one of the pickets and was arrested and fined several times,” she said. “The union paid my fines. Our bosses won and we went back as an open shop having nothing to do with the union. But we strikers who were taken back stayed in the union, for it is our friend.

“If the union had won we would have been safe. Two of our demands were for adequate fire escapes and for open doors from the factories to the street. But the bosses defeated us and we didn’t get the open doors or the better fire escapes. So our friends are dead.”

15. PROTECTION

… man’s peculiar vice.

—
CANTO XI
:25

On the day of the fire the Triangle Shirtwaist Company carried insurance totaling $199,750.

Months before the fire, the New York State Assembly had appointed a special committee to investigate corrupt practices among insurance companies other than life. The investigation was touched off by a scandal resulting from the accidental discovery that an insurance firm had bribed a number of state legislators.

After the fire, insurance expert Arthur E. McFarlane summarized in
Collier’s
magazine the findings of the committee and offered Triangle as a classic example of a “rotten risk.” He charged that if it was possible to obtain $ 100,000 worth of insurance on a $50,000 value, the purchaser would naturally tend to be careless and negligent. If a fire can mean gain instead of loss, he asked, why should even the most dangerous condition be corrected? “And if behind such an insurer we have an insurance system which permits and encourages over-insurance, which feels no obligation to inspect, remove dangers, or do anything whatever other than make insurance rates proportionate to the risk, the fire will follow almost as certainly as if kindled with matches and gasoline.”

Factories such as Triangle were fire traps because of the power and the activities of the insurance monopoly known as the New York Fire Insurance Exchange. McFarlane charged that the exchange had driven “factory mutuals” out of New York. The mutual insurance companies would have provided genuine protection against fire losses and would have stimulated fire prevention activities. These mutual insurance companies had operated successfully for years in textile mills, especially around Fall River. They offered low-rate insurance in return for the installation of safety devices such as sprinklers.

In 1895, a number of factory and building owners in New York City experimented with the installation of sprinklers. They asked their insurance companies for commensurate rate reductions. When the stock insurance companies refused to grant the reductions, the owners made their own reciprocal arrangements and threatened to form their own insurance association. The rates were reduced by the companies.

In spite of this concession, the single factory owner still found the cost of installing sprinklers high. To meet this problem a group of ten companies selling insurance and employing engineers proposed a novel plan. They would make New York factories safer at no extra cost to their owners.

This was to be done by installing a sprinkler system, thus improving safety and reducing the risk of loss. For these improvements the owner would be entitled to a reduction of his insurance rates. But the plan was to continue to charge the owner the higher “unsprinklered” rate and to apply the difference toward paying off the cost of the sprinklers.

The plan proved popular. Unfortunately, it cut into the insurance agents’ commissions and the brokers’ fees.

The Asch building, for example, represented a total of $1,647,000 worth of insurance. At the “unsprinklered” rate, premiums for Asch and his eight tenants totaled about $15,000, of which the broker’s share would be $ 1,600.

But a “sprinklered” New England or South Carolina cotton mill with the same amount of insurance paid about $1,100 in annual premiums. The agent or broker got about $60.

“A third of New York’s insurance profits were being paid by its Asch buildings and Triangle factories,” McFarlane pointed out. “If the property of the factory owner and the lives of his workers were made safe by this system of installing automatic sprinklers, the annual income of New York insurance agents and brokers might be diminished by at least $2,000,000.”

The brokers and agents were the controlling power in the Exchange. They forced the withdrawal of the Exchange license to sell insurance from the ten companies sponsoring the deferred-cost plan. One powerful firm, I. Tanenbaum Son and Company, resisted the move by the Exchange; the others were compelled to give up the plan.

But despite the higher “unsprinklered” rates thus guaranteed, the insurance companies found business with shirtwaist companies unprofitable. They had too many fires. And there were reasons to believe there would be even more fires in the future. McFarlane cited as contributing causes for this the costly shirtwaist strike and the threatening challenge of the one-piece dress.

By the end of 1910, one large insurance company had canceled 693 out of 1,749 policies it provided for garment shops. In 1910, it had paid out in 42 shirtwaist fires. But in 1911, with only 1,056 factories covered, it paid out in 81 shirtwaist fires. The trade publication
Insurance Monitor
declared that such shirtwaist factory fires “were fairly saturated with moral hazard.”

The insurance companies, confronted by this challenge, could take one of two possible courses of action. They could inspect and appraise the business conditions of all who had had fires and weed out all rotten risks. In this way, said McFarlane, there would be a concrete discouragement of fires and a positive incentive to prevent fires inasmuch as they would not be covered by indemnity.

Or the companies could take the second course which would be to estimate carefully the coming increase in the number of fires, raise their rates accordingly, let the fires come “and by keeping the rates up long after the crisis is past, profit by those fires.”

The New York Fire Insurance Exchange began to study rate revisions in 1910. It decided to raise them at the start of 1911. “The rate committee, during the very month in which 146 were burned to death, even decided upon the price at which employees should be allowed to smoke in factories like Triangle,” McFarlane wrote.

By June, 1911, increases totaling about 35 per cent were put into effect. “The payment for those deaths by fire in March had been arranged for in advance.”

The fire on March 25 was not Triangle’s first fire. In fact, the company was what insurers called a “repeater.” This is the record:

April 5, 1902—5:18
A.M.
, ninth floor, Asch building. Cause unknown. Insurance collected: $19,142.

November 1, 1902—6:00
A.M.
, ninth floor, Asch building. Cause unknown. Insurance collected: $12,905.

November 10, 1904—6:57
P.M.
, dwelling of Isaac Harris, 845 West End Avenue. Cause, carelessness with matches. Loss, small. Insurance collected. Amount unknown.

April 7, 1905—11:00
P.M.
, factory of Triangle Waist Company, 49 West Third Street. Cause, unknown. Fire did not originate on premises. Insurance collected. Amount unascertainable.

April 12, 1907—1:15
A.M.
, Diamond Waist Company, owned and operated by Triangle at 165 Mercer Street. Insurance collected. Amount unascertainable.

In 1908 and 1909—exact dates unascertainable—two small fires, probably caused by smoking, occurred at Triangle. They were put out at once. No insurance claims were made.

April 27, 1910—7:18
P.M.
, at Diamond Waist Company, 187 Mercer Street. Cause unknown. $17,000 insurance carried. Amount collected unascertainable.

Did this record mean Triangle had had increasing difficulty maintaining its coverage or getting new policies? On the contrary, it carried its greatest amount of insurance coverage at the time of the March 25 tragedy.

How was this possible?

Triangle was represented by the powerful brokerage firm of Samuels, Cornwall and Stevens. No insurance company dared refuse coverage to this firm, says McFarlane. In any case, there was little risk for the individual insurance company. Total coverage of Triangle was by syndicate. This meant that many companies joined to cover the total $199,-750. But each took only a small sliver.

McFarlane described the mechanics: “There is imprinted on the policy a small violet or blood-colored stamp reading ‘Other Insurance Permitted,’ and the broker goes down the line to get the next. No company is compelled to ‘stay on the risk’ after the second fire or the third.” A company could choose the amount it would cover: $2,000 or $3,000 or $5,000.

There were almost 150 companies in New York selling this type of coverage. The broker could choose among them. Of the twenty-four companies which together had covered Harris and Blanck in 1902, the names of only five appeared among the thirty-seven companies that were liable after the 1911 fire.

The strike had hurt Triangle; new style developments were cutting into sales, and the firm had in fact begun production of the one-piece dress in an effort to hold its customers.

In January, 1910, the firm increased its insurance by nearly $100,000. In July, 1910, it refused to make a statement of its financial condition to a credit agency and as a consequence lost its credit rating. This was later restored “only by presenting a statement on which their whole resources were based, practically, upon the amount of insurance they carried.”

In October and November, 1910, Triangle renewed $74,-750 worth of insurance that had lapsed. In December, 1910, it increased its insurance by $25,000. “Before giving it, no company asked for any inventory or any evidence of added value. To have done so would have hurt that company’s interests with the great brokerage firm of Samuels, Cornwall and Stevens,” McFarlane commented.

But Triangle was hard pressed for money. On the morning of the day of the fire a provisional meeting of its creditors was held. The premium for $75,000 of insurance was not paid for until April 3, nine days after the fire.

McFarlane compares the Triangle shop to the “coffin ships” in the early history of British shipping. In the one case a fire and in the other a sinking, “could only be a business blessing, why should they do anything to prevent one?” The owners of the rotten hulks never actually did anything to sink them. But one old sailor had put it this way: “Her’ll go down time enough, wi’ the weight of her insurance, an’ the things they ha’ left undone.”

The record indicates that with Harris and Blanck, April was the worst month. “If such things were a matter of interest to the stock fire insurance business,” McFarlane insisted, “you would think that in the weeks preceding April they would have sent to see if there were no conditions discoverable which might in some way make for April fires. No one was sent.”

But on February 11, 1911, an inspector from the New York Board of Fire Underwriters walked through the Triangle factory. At that time, nearly 900 dozen muslin and lawn garments were being made each week. Rags, cutaways, lint had been accumulating for almost a month since ragman Louis Levy’s last visit.

As an agent of the Board, the inspector represented all of the insurance companies involved in covering Triangle, Asch, and the other seven tenants of the building. In theory, McFarlane stresses, this inspector was there to protect both insurer and insured. “There is still a wide, popular belief that the insurance business desires only to prevent fires. Here, then, was the very best chance to prevent one,” he continued.

“The New York Board knew that as a ‘repeater,’ the Triangle Waist Company had long been a ‘rotten risk.’ The whole shirtwaist industry was then potentially a ‘rotten risk.’ Harris and Blanck had been for months financially a ‘rotten risk.’ Because of the lack of all fire protection, the Triangle factory was physically a ‘rotten risk.’ And now, by those ever-accumulating rags, this initial and inherent rottenness was plainly being, hour by hour, increased.

“That inspector must have seen those rags,” McFarlane continued. “It would have been difficult not to! He did nothing! It was not within his province to do anything. The interest of his companies was guarded in the insurance rate. The moment a match head or cigarette butt dropped unheeded into one of those great rag bins, what must happen could be averted by no human power. Yet, smoking, too, was all a matter of insurance rates.”

After the fire, Harris and Blanck retained the firm of Goldstein and Company as their public adjusters. By July 24, the company received a total of $8,500 for services rendered. McFarlane was unable to discover the nature of those services.

Formally, they were to determine the amount of indemnity due Triangle. But even though, admittedly, Triangle goods had been totally destroyed, the company had kept no inventory record which it was able to produce. It had first claimed that there had been such a record but that it had been destroyed in the fire. But later it admitted it had kept no such books, that it noted its inventories on slips of paper which were kept not in the safe but in an office desk that had been burned to ashes.

Nevertheless “proof of loss” submitted by the adjusters was quickly accepted. No account was taken in this “proof” of poor sales and overstock. On the contrary, the “proof” disregarded the injury the company had suffered from the strike and assumed company earnings were at a rate three times greater than before the walkout.

Only one of the thirty-seven insurance companies covering Triangle balked at paying its share of the total indemnity. The Royal Insurance Company asked for an investigation of the circumstances of the fire. Royal did not generally refuse to pay. In fact, even while the fire was still burning in San Francisco after the earthquake, Royal had bucked the large group of insurance companies that had offered immediate settlement of claims at the rate of 75 cents on the dollar to the stunned citizens of that city. Royal brought most of them back into honorable line by announcing it would pay 100 cents on the dollar.

Barrow, Wade, Cuthrie and Company, chartered accountants, were retained to examine whatever Triangle books and documents were still available. They found no reason to believe that the stock destroyed was worth more than $134,-075, at the most.

Nevertheless, George R. Branson, head of the adjusting committee employed to protect the interests of the companies and the public in the settlement, wrote to Max Steuer, attorney for Harris and Blanck, assuring him that there would be little difficulty in the matter. “And though there was blood on every policy,” McFarlane concluded, “the insurance companies, with the exception of the Royal, paid the loss practically in full as demanded.”