In the nonfiction book “Fresh and Blood So Cheap” by Albert Marrin there are many explicit and implicit reasons on how people were not valued shown by their lack of safety equipment in the building. Like not having lights in the halls on the way out and having the doors locked on the highest floor that there was, and they didn’t have any training on what was to do in case there was a fire in the building. Some of the explicit reasons that affected the people in the building were, The water bursts would go back hit the people and launch them into the fire, this is an explicit piece from the story because the people in the building didn’t know this and stayed in front of the windows thinking about jumping. The workers were not prepared in case of a fire were to have occurred in the building “Meanwhile, workers on the eighth-floor rang furiously for the two passenger elevators. Safety experts have always advised against using elevators in a fire.” showing that they were not prepared for a fire/ emergency …show more content…
This act of not caring for the workers is yet shown again in paragraph 7 it states “Those who reached the ninth-floor stairway door found it locked. This was not unusual, as employers often locked doors to discourage latecomers and keep out union organizers” meaning that they were keeping out people who would have saved them if they were to let them in without locking the
They both knew that the workers were being watched after a few tries of door knocking and that by them showing up and talking can cause these people to lose their jobs. They both still pursued on and didn’t care what would happen with those people. Aristotle’s’ Golden Mean of making the majority happy was also not applied. As they made these people more scared of what if they loose their jobs, and of intruding in
On a Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, a fire started on the top floors of a factory in New York, The Asch Building owned by the Triangle Waist Company. According to the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were practicing a common procedure in many factories to prevent workers from taking extra breaks and preventing theft. They locked the exit doors. These owners, weren’t held accountable for the deaths of the 146 employees. Numerous workers could not escape from the eighth, ninth and tenth floors. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris would go to trial for their actions of ignoring poor work conditions against “the people.” But this was a time when there was more greed with many factory owners. Owners were not being proactive in making their
On March 13, 1900, a tenement building in New York City caught fire, killing fourteen Italian immigrants. The poorly constructed frame building housed three stories of tenement quarters, with ten apartments per floor. The rooms were five by ten feet, separated only by flimsy half-inch thick boards. With just one exit through the entrance of the building, and that only by way of a 42-inch wide stairway, their only escape was destroyed, leaving eleven families of “caged victims beyond help.” People became so desperate that they jumped from upper balconies as the firemen on the scene struggled to control the flames. The top floor proved to be the deadliest, with a victim in nearly all ten rooms. After the arrest of a suspect and an
They were not willing to make any concessions. They wanted them to continue with the long hours as mandated by them. If the workers didn’t agree to these terms they would be fired. Employers knew that people needed jobs and were not concerned about filling vacant positions. In today’s age, if you’re working that many hours we believe that we should get paid for what we worked. They felt they same way, but because of the union they didn’t receive those rights.
There were a lot of issues that prompted employees at the Frontier hotel to take striking as an action to be heard. When watching this documentary for the first time I didn’t realize how long these workers were on strike for. One word to describe the owners of these hotels is “savages”. They started to fire individuals for no apparent reason it seemed the owners wanted to cut back. There was one girl that worked in the culinary department for eight years and she was let go. The hotel also took away health insurance benefits, pension contributions for employees trying to retire and the most important cutting employee wages for the hotel to save money and for the owners to profit even more letting these employees work next to nothing. A lot of workers said they felt their pride was being taken away also trying to take care of their own family will be even more inflexible. The hotel took away everything so these employees had no chose but to strike.
As Eddie Huang writes his memoir Fresh Off the Boat he brings many points across about his culture and his lifestyle, but through the whole memoir his most provocative point he tried to convey to the audience was his struggles with the American culture and the opinions of others regarding him and his culture and the lack diversity he had to deal with. For example, Huang had many encounters with other kids at school over his ethnicity and the difference of culture.
This alone would have help suppress and extinguish the fire before it got out of control. The only other suppression and detection systems to stop the fire either failed or were not present. There were only seven exits, four elevators with only one of them fully functional, two stairways down to the street but one the doors were locked, and one fire escape which was too narrow for a safe exit. The only elevator that was fully functional failed just after a few trips up and down. The one door to the stairway that was not locked was already engulfed in flames. Some of the workers were able to get to the roof but others who were trapped to extreme measure to get out of the fire. As the firefighters arrived, they watched as workers jumped form the eighth floor crashing on the concrete below. They attempted to put out a safety net but it quickly ripped under the weight and force of the falling workers. It only took 18 minutes for the fire to take all 145 workers. This incident caused an outbreak and forced safety measures to be enforced.
To begin with, the working conditions were very poor. Their employees worked in cramped lines at their sewing machines. The girls worked twelve hours a day, everyday. At the eighth floor, there were bins and bins of scraps, since the last time they were picked up and sold to cotton mills was January, and the fire happened midway into March. There were four elevators, but only one was working, so the workers had to file a long like to use it. They had two stairways that led to the streets, but one of them was locked from the outside to prevent robbery. Finally, the fire escape was so narrow that it would take hours to have all the workers use it, even if luck was on their side.
One of the main reasons why so many people died in the fire was because of the lack of regulations for buildings. For instance, the fire escape was too weak to hold large amounts of people and it collapsed, killing everyone on it. Some were even impaled by a metal fence down below. In addition to the weakness of the fire escape, it wasn’t even long enough to reach the ground safely. Regulations
It amazes me how the ones in charge didn't know anything about their own workers, not even how much they were getting paid. If I was in charge that would be one of the most important things to know but the owners didn't care enough to keep track. I am glad that everybody became fed up with being treated that way and started a general strike. The strike eventually led to a grievance system that was put into place but most still didn't follow
Billows of smoke rose into the dark clouds. Searing flames whipped and teared, growing by the second. It was chaos, and there was virtually no escape. The doors were locked, the elevators were broken, and the fire escape was collapsed. It seemed the only option was to jump. It is hard to imagine this fearful scene in real life, but this was the fate of the 146 workers who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Though this was a truly awful event, it brought to light the much-needed change to create safer work environments for workers at that time. This accident sparked strikes and rallies against the garment industry from within both the New York Community, as well as the nation. With the help of unions fighting for this cause,
It’s a terrible thing, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’” With the help of labor unions and very powerful strikes, the citizens of the United States couldn't allow it to go unnoticed. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was much more modern than the other factories around town, so it was greatly desired to work there. The environment was more modern and appealing for those who immigrated to the United States because it had big windows for natural light and higher ceilings to expose a bigger working space. The only disadvantage to working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was the fourteen-hour workday with just a small pay of $2 a day at most before the bosses would dock their pay from the resources they used that day. At the end of the day, they were technically held captive until the foreman’s inspected pocketbooks and bags at the exit. The employers made sure no one would steal from the shop because they could lose profit. According to the film, Max Blanck would keep late nights just to calculate how much he would lose if someone did walk out with one of his products or resources. This in turn caused many deaths during the fire because he decided the main exit, at Washington Place, be kept locked at all
After events such as Chicago Fire 1871, San Francisco Earthquake and fire of 1906, and the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 which had many deaths at each one, there was a change in codes that became more rigorous in preventing deaths and injuries in fire emergencies. Then Johnson states that John H. Lienhard the University of Houston’s College of Engineering says that mid nineteenth century buildings were not originally built for fire safety. It wasn’t until after tragic events happened that led to fire escape, fire escapes and fire safety in general. Then in 1968, New York banned all exterior fire escapes for new building projects because interior stairwells were considered safer. Then Johnson brings up Vincent J. Dunn who is a retired deputy chief with New York’s fire department. Dunn notes that there are only 200,000 fire escapes that remain in the city. Because of age and poor maintence, fire escapes susceptible to rust, corrosion and collapse. Even with fire escapes being banned or no longer mandated in new construction, they still exist as secondary emergency exits in historic
At first the workers tried to take the elevator to escape but it could only take so many before it broke down. After this, some people pried open the elevator doors and jumped down the elevator shaft to their deaths trying to get away from the fire. Other girls took the stairwell, but they found a locked door at the bottom so all of them ended up burning to death. Some employees took the fire escape but it was poorly built and constructed so it fell to the concrete with many people on it, killing all of them. The rest of the workers in the building jumped to their inevitable deaths to escape from the alternative of burning to death. Some of the people who were on the tenth floor escaped to safety on the roof of the building and survived. Two of these survivors were the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Even though there was a ton of evidence showing that these two were negligent for the fire, the court never indicted them for manslaughter which angered and upset the devastated families of the
Some physical changes could have prevented the needless deaths of employees. For instance having improvements to the building’s infrastructure is a crucial issue. A working, safe set of fire escape stairs outside the building