Changing Attitudes: Triangulation

As we sit staring at the spectacle of Scott Walker and Co destroying unions and handing out pay cuts to workers in a vain attempt, as one sign around the corner has it, to send us back to 1890 with fewer trains, it might be helpful to revisit a seminal moment in the history of the crappiness of capitalism when unmoored from humanism. On the 25th of this month we "celebrate" the one hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory's fire. You can read an account of the fire here and here is another very nice collection of narratives and documents. One aspect of the mess stands out.

Here is an account of the trial and here is some additional information. The factory's owners were moral monsters. In the immediate aftermath of the fire

Fire Chief Edward Croker told the press that doors leading into the factory workplace appeared to be locked and that his men had to chop their way through doors to get at the fire.

During the trial 

Bostwick produced 103 witnesses, many of them young Triangle employees dressed in their Sunday best. Through his witnesses Bostwick tried to establish that the fire quickly cut off escape through the Greene Street door, causing the panicked workers to turn to the Washington Place door--a door the prosecution contended was locked.  More than a dozen prosecution witnesses testified that they tried the door and were unable to open it.  Katie Weiner told jurors, "I pushed it toward myself and I couldn't open it and then I pushed it outward and it wouldn't go.  I was crying, 'Girls, help me!'  Other witnesses testified that Blanck and Harris kept the door locked to prevent employees from pilfering shirtwaists.  (On the stand, Harris admitted to an almost obsessive concern with employee theft even though he conceded that the total value of goods taken over the years was under $25).

Despite all that

On December 27, Judge Crain read to the jury the text of Article 6, Section 80, of New York's Labor Law: "All doors leading in or to any such factory shall be so constructed as to open outwardly where practicable, and shall not be locked, bolted, or fastened during working hours."  Crain told the jury that in order to return a verdict of guilty they must first find that door was locked during the fire--and that the defendants knew or should have known it was locked.  The judge also told the jury that they must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the locked door caused the death of Margaret Schwartz.

After deliberating for just under two hours, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.  After the verdict, one juror, Victor Steinman declared, "I believed that the door was locked at the time of the fire, but we couldn't find them guilty unless we believed they knew the door was locked." 

Despite a second attempt the factory owners were never found guilty of anything; however

[t]hree years after the fire, on March 11, 1914, twenty-three individual civil suits against the owner of the Asch Building were settled.  The average recovery was $75 per life lost.

By all accounts the fire and its aftermath energized reformers, strengthened unions and generally led to a passing laws, rules, and regulations that diminished the anti-human and anti-democratic tendencies of early 20th century America. 

It's important to keep this kind of thing in mind when you read anybody claiming that we ought to wait for market failures to intervene in this or that market. Left to their own devices, "markets" privilege profits over people. For those who think unions are anachronisms, consider the meat packers.