Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a fatal conflagration that took place in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. It serves as a symbol of injustice, both in Brooks’s writing and in American history. In 1909, one young immigrant working in a nearby factory started a strike protesting these unsafe working conditions. The company cracked down on them, and the rest of the city ignored them. No changes were made. When the fire began on a high floor, some attempts at stopping the fire were made, but they were largely unsuccessful. The factory manager, for example, tried to battle the fire by dumping buckets of water onto the cloth. Historians have since pointed out that if he focused on evacuating the workers rather than trying to save the building, perhaps no lives would have been lost that day. Firefighters arrived...