The Times has an interesting look at the politics behind the workplace reforms that took place after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that took place 100 years ago from tomorrow.
You’ll see something there you don’t see much of today: powerful people — politicians and wealthy socialites — who saw the working class as “us” not “them”, as the foundation of our country not as big-screen tv owning leeches.
Kryptik
I’m going to repost something on this very topic that I through out the other day:
“Mbleh.
It’s quite amazing, how with columns and remembrances of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, that folks are using the time and the opportunity to tell us just how awful and soshulistic and ANti-American any and all business regulations are, and how anyone who wants to learn from the Fire is either Stuck In The Past or some kind of unionite thug who wants to DESTROY AMERICA FOR ALL TIME.
And I look around, and I see that most of these trolls tend to be the only fucking people anyone in the government fucking listens to anymore, and I realize just how utterly fucking fucked we truly are now. At this point in history, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Congress pass a bill commemorating the anniversary by eliminating all federal workplace safety requirements considering fires. Yeah, if life were that fucking nutso, I know at least Obama would still veto it, but that’s small consolation compared to the total utter wingnuttification of the country wholesale.”
Jon
Interesting coincidence. Was just reading about how the new BioShock Infinite’s game creators took a lot of inspiration directly from the Shirtwaist fire, the Tea Party and populism/nationalism in general. I cannot WAIT to play it.
beltane
There was a good PBS documentary about the fire and the events which led up to it. In all honesty, the rich and powerful did not see the working class as us and not them until after the fire. The workers had been striking on and off for years, often being brutalized by the police and private security, with little or no attention from newspapers such as the NYT. A few socialites such as J.P. Morgan’s daughter supported better working conditions for the laborers, but were adamantly against these workers forming a union because that would be too much like soc1alism.
Attitudes were no better then than they are now. If all those young women hadn’t burned to death their plight never would have gotten attention.
AliceBlue
For anyone not familiar with the Triangle fire or the labor movement in early 20th century New York, I wholeheartedly recommend “Triangle – The Fire That Changed America” by David von Drehle.
PurpleGirl
The PBS story watchable on line:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/
It really is good. Watch it.
Kryptik
@beltane:
At this rate, we’re backsliding to a point that even if we had another Triangle Fire moment, it’d probably end up with successful legislation repealing further Gov’t regulation. Since, you know, it’s all they’re fault that conditions were so bad, their bureaucracy preventing the godly private citizens from getting people to safety and all that.
Dan
I know that people realize it, but I also think that for the most part people underestimate the poisoning effect of that fat fuck on the radio.
jl
From the Wikipedia link:
“Elevator operators Joseph Zito[14] and Gaspar Mortillalo saved many lives by traveling three times up to the ninth floor for passengers, but Mortillalo was eventually forced to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat. Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped down the empty shaft. The weight of these bodies made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt.”
Sad_Dem
“For a time, Anne Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan, broke with respectable society and gave the strikers money. This was America’s Progressive Age, so she wasn’t alone. But as strikers pressed their demand to have a union, Anne Morgan decided this smacked of socialism and withdrew her support.”
http://glynholton.com/2011/03/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/
Kryptik
@Dan:
No, I think what’s more problematic is how said fat fuck’s bombast allows people to take seriously people with just as insidious proposals and policies, but state so in a ‘civil’ manner so as to be palatable. And then point out at the ‘incivility’ of their opponents to bolster their inherent rightness.
beltane
@Kryptik: If only the workers had prayed to The Free Market the Invisible Hand would have rescued them. In any case, the workers were not as productive as the owners. Safety regulations might upset the productive people and force them to Go Galt.
beltane
@Dan: Said fat fuck would mock the screams of the workers as they burned to death. They were mostly immigrants with accents whose death cries would have been most amusing to the fat fuck and his legions of impotent, man-boobed followers.
Kryptik
@beltane:
It’s truly sad how, as snark-filled as this is, I can imagine it coming out of Larry Kudlow’s mouth (amongst others) in all earnestness and sincerity. We really have backslid into the new Gilded Age. I hope to god we don’t backslide further.
New Yorker
Yeah, I had that thought also. Other than George Soros, what other rich/powerful people work hard for the benefit of the American working class these days?
The other thought I had is “this is what the teabaggers want us to return to: the paradise that was 1911 America and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire”.
gene108
@Kryptik:
The argument, I think, was made in some corners after the Big Branch mine collapsed in W. Virginia, killing 29 people.
Eric k
Quite the contrast:
Today whenever there is some catasrophe or another (mine disaster, oil spill, Katrina, etc) all we hear is how it is unseemly to talk about how to prevent it, don’t play the blame game, no one could have foreseen etc.
Then: a terrible tragedy happens they take the opportunity to prevent it happening again.
Villago Delenda Est
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Punchy
Does Sully own a big-screen TV? What about leeches?
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
I’m an Old Guy so take this with however many grains of salt seem appropriate to you. It appears to me that the painful lessons regarding organized labor, workplace safety and labor law have not only been forgotten, they are now actively being discredited by those with enough money to shout down and stifle the opposition. In many areas, we’ve gone from “A day’s work for a day’s pay,” to “A days work for whatever the fuck we feel like giving you.”
Unless something remarkable happens, our current transition through the Gilded Age will seem like the Good Old Days in years to come.
Kryptik
@Eric k:
We can’t have people going hysteric and overreacting to a crisis, you know.
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM:
You heard about what Maine’s Gov. is doing, right? Tearing down murals at the state Dept. of Labor featuring strikes and labor rallies and such, as well as renaming several offices bearing names like Cesar Chavez and Frances Perkins? Because Business Leaders complained and Gov. LePage wanted a ‘fair and balanced’ depiction of history?
They’re re-writing history on us as we speak.
Villago Delenda Est
@Dan:
The fat fuck needs to be on a tumbrel manifest.
Martin
Maybe Maine should take inspiration from this for their replacement murals. A coal miner with black lung on their death bed. A child in a textile factory being sucked into the machinery. Women leaping to their death from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. You know – pro-business imagery.
Surely there’s a public servant there planning on retiring soon who could take up this cause.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@Eric k:
Have you noticed that when these things happen, the meme is “It’s too early to talk about it! We don’t want to be hasty and enact laws or regulations while emotions are running high.”
Shortly after which, the people who just got done fucking us send us a bill for removing the semen stains from their silk underwear.
Kryptik
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM:
And after the measured reflection of the incident, the betters inform us ‘Shut up and don’t ask questions, serf, now get back to the field’.
Redshirt
Anyone heard what Maine’s new Teabagging governor is up to? Apropos of an anonymous email from a “Secret Admirer”, he wants to get rid of this huge mural depicting the Labor movement in Maine, from the Department of Labor building. Why? Cuz, that’s why. It’s causing a good bit of antipathy.
kay
@Martin:
What those murals do is glorify work.
They always meant (to me) that people’s work, even work that is not prestigious or highly valued by society, has worth, and dignity.
The big fucking irony of this whole thing is that conservatives, who pretend to be all about hard work, demean it unless it’s valued in a way they respect.
I’m really to the point that I don’t want them around children. They don’t share “our” values :)
They don’t value people’s work, in and of itself. They value money and prestige.
Redshirt
Damn. I see I was beaten. But, these teabaggers are burning down their own support with these stupid, clumsy moves. Surprise!
mr. whipple
I love how some people say, ‘well, yeah, unions were probably a good idea at the time,’ as if miserable corporate fucks wouldn’t lock people like animals into firetraps now if they could still get away with it.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@Martin:
Aw, c’mon, the marketplace worked perfectly; not one of the dead ever came back to work for Triangle Shirtwaist.
Kryptik
OT: Breitbart pulled from HuffPo front page after Daily Caller publishes video of him railing against Van Jones.
Sadly, he hasn’t been fired completely, just warned another incident would result in his dismissal entirely.
Kryptik
Back on topic, per Harold Meyerson:
It’s sad that we’re hearing echoes of this still today, but instead of shoving them into the wastebin of history, we have people scrambling to nod, agree, and find ways to essentially outlaw the kind of regulations and worker rights that were fought for following the fire.
geg6
OT, but this seems a bit important to me:
http://www.salon.com/news/libya/index.html?story=/news/feature/2011/03/24/turkey_libya_nato_air_strikes
trollhattan
@Kryptik:
For that matter, wasn’t the Upper Big Branch Mine a rerun of Triangle Shirt Waist? Deepwater Horizon?
Punchy
Being we are approaching the 30th anniversary of the game, does the host then change his name to Dig Dug to honor the protagonist?
kdaug
@kay:
Fixed that for ya there.
ETA: And they do honestly care about hard work. YOURS.
trollhattan
@geg6:
Saw that on the Beeb site, although still labeled “unconfirmed.” If so, I’ll take it as a positive development.
MikeJ
@trollhattan:
Fukushima Daiichi?
R-Jud
@trollhattan:
Kryptik
@trollhattan:
Not enough people died in those accidents to count, you know.
Once we get a massive accident with at least 100 deaths (and sadly, I’m sure one is coming the rate we’re going), and the folks braying for less regulation win in its wake, then we’ll know we’ve rewound past the Gilded Age fully.
@MikeJ:
Nah, that don’t count, that’s Japanese, and they were dumb enough to build plants on FAULTLINES! We Americans are smart enough to avoid th-
(stares at Diablo Canyon, California)
Oh….um….heheheheheh….
mr. whipple
@kdaug:
Yeah. I always felt that ‘dignity of work’ stuff was bullshit propaganda to make the masses feel better while not earning shit. ‘Hey, we’re paying you crap, but yer sooooooo dignified and noble.’
MikeJ
@Kryptik: We could also add Karen Silkwood’s employer, Kerr-McGee.
geg6
@R-Jud:
Beat me to it. I don’t know what I’d do without the Guardian.
trollhattan
@Kryptik:
Sadly, I suspect you’re right. This is how Massey’s Don Blankenship was punished for his many deadly misdeeds:
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@geg6:
I sure hope that the accompanying photo was wrong though. America is the only nation (To my knowledge) flying the Osprey at the moment. Other nations have expressed interest, but (Again, to my knowledge) we’re the only ones currently deploying the thing.
kay
@kdaug:
We have a tiled 1930’s era mural near where I live, and it’s a celebration of work and workers. They’re all joyously swinging hammers and such. Now, they’d tear it down, because it’s not fair to the investors and job creators.
That’s the complaint in Maine, right? The “job creator” class felt left out, sad, and threatened?
Wolfdaughter
A couple of years back I saw the play “The Triangle Factory Fire Project”. A young friend of mine was at that time a senior at Tucson Magnet High School, which staged the play.
Although the kids were quite variable in their acting abilities, the play was nonetheless moving, informative, and frightening. If it is playing near you, I highly recommend going to see it.
geg6
And now for something a bit more on topic:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/23/buried-provision-food-stamps/
Tell me again that we aren’t in a class war.
trollhattan
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM:
I saw that photo and about choked. Ospreys landing in Libya?!? Hoping it’s ignoramus editors at play.
Kryptik
@kay:
It’s amazing, isn’t it? Real, concrete, tangible shitballs rained down on worker and the unemployed, all to assuage the fee-fees of the “job creators” who feel underappreciated and haz a sad for making $20m instead of their agreed $25m.
Comrade DougJ
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM:
I agree with you.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@geg6:
Besiege and then starve out. Everything old is new again.
geg6
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM:
I have no idea what the photo is about or whose Ospreys they are. Read the Guardian article R-Jud at #38 linked to. Sounds pretty good to me so far.
eemom
@Kryptik:
that was a great piece, especially that last sentence.
Meyerson really doesn’t get enough credit for being one of the three or four remaining WaPo/NYT op-ed writers who consistently speaks the truth and eschews the bullshit. I would say he’s up there with Krugman.
R-Jud
@geg6: I don’t love them as uncritically as I used to before I lived here. A lot of their columnists are as dim and annoying as those in the NYT.
Still, they report when it counts. Rusbridger refuses to go to a paywall model, and it’s causing them to bleed cash. I buy their dead-tree version a few times a week to do my bit to save them.
Redshirt
@kay: That’s the “reasoning”. But I suspect it’s far more petty, and inspired by an “anonymous” email.
It’s LePage using the same playbook as the other new teatard governors. It don’t think it will work out for him.
Dave
@trollhattan: The US uses the Ospreys for, among other things, delivering humanitarian supplies. That could be very well what is going on here.
Comrade Mary
@jl: God DAMN it. Actually crying here.
Comrade DougJ
@Punchy:
You mean the Cal-Stanford 1982 game? Yeah, I’ll change my name for that.
James E Powell
What may be the biggest surprise is how little things changed, legally and in practice, in the wake of the Triangle fire. For example, OSHA wasn’t created until 1970.
Kryptik
@eemom:
Which is why it was depressing to see the comments board for his post essentially 75% “SOSHULIZT!!! AMERICA HATER!!!” or “UNION THUG!!”
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@trollhattan: @geg6:
I just did some digging and found nothing to indicate that any of our NATO partners are yet deploying Ospreys. I’m going to believe that it was some editor shouting “Find me NATO hardware landing in Libya” until otherwise informed. The primary mission of the Osprey is inserting troops thus the WTF? reaction to seeing them purported to be currently landing in Libya.
Mark S.
@geg6:
Jesus, I didn’t know it was that high. That’s about 1 in 8.
And it’s fucking stupid. Food stamps are the best stimulus for the economy, even better than giving tax cuts to billionaires.
kdaug
@kay:
Yurp. And I’m really, really starting to give fuck-all to the fee-fees(tm) of our Galtian Overlords(tm)
But, again, the worm has turned, the zeitgeist has shifted, and change is in the air. Worldwide. The Arabs are full-scale, Japan is shattered, and I fear our maelstrom approaches.
Interesting times, this class war brings.
kay
@Kryptik:
I don’t know how to do it, exactly, but liberals and Democrats should pursue that idea. I noticed in the rallies in Ohio that there was a lot of talk about “pride in work”. I think some of the workers were offended, in the way you get when you work hard and some highly paid asshole says you don’t.
It would be wonderful to take valuing “hard working” from conservatives, who don’t mean it and it don’t deserve to have it, and give it back to liberals.
At base, they’re saying that some work is valued and respected, but other work is not. I don’t think they meant to do that, but they managed to.
I am not the big picture person, so flesh this rambling thought out, okay? :)
Conservatives don’t value people’s work. Is that too blunt?
artem1s
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42237593/ns/travel-news/
cause busting unions is a time honored tradition started by St. Ronnie.
How is it that only ONE traffic controller was working? I don’t care what time of the day it is. Al Quaida only works during business hours now? Somehow I think a strong union would demand more reasonable hours and back up staff but then again that’s probably why St. Ronnie busted them in the first place, for making demands that the ‘real’ workers don’t get on their job sites.
kdaug
@kay:
Not too blunt, but I would add “unless it profits them”.
ETA: See below.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@kay:
Conservatives don’t value work, they value cheap labor. They value interjecting themselves into the system so that the sweat on the face of every working man and woman results in a profit to them. They have a handful of “Gimme” and a mouthful of “Fuck you for letting me do this to you.”
jl
A little off topic, but related to the problem of completely forgetting our history. Or not knowing anything about it in the first place.
Bryan Fischer: Muslims Have No First Amendment Rights
“Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy.”
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/bryan_fischer_muslims_have_no_first_amendment_righ.php?ref=fpblg
Fischer is identified as a ‘top’ social conservative religious leader
George Washington’s letter to Touro Synagogue:
“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts.”
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_Touro_Synagogue
Emphases added.
I am assuming here that George Washington had some idea of what the First Amendment meant.
And just now I see on TPM that John Stossel is saying that no group has had more government help than Native Americans. No link for that, it is just too silly.
Martin
@Mark S.: Yes, but do food stamps help the real economy though? You know, the billionaire economy?
PurpleGirl
@Mark S.: Just think, that doesn’t include everyone who needs them. Food support (EBT) is paid for by the feds but there are local eligibility rules. The rules cover things like if you’re a single, childless adult (many states won’t give you benefits), whether or not you’re disabled (and get either state benefits or SSDI), and what your income is (being unemployed does not instantly let you have benefits, you may still get too much in UI benefits). Republicans AND Democrats have for years played with funding levels and rules at the federal and local/state levels.
kdaug
I think we get trapped into a false paradigm of “right/left”, “Democrat/Republican”, “Christian/Athiest” all the time. And I think it’s deliberate, propagated by the people who own the media and broadcast it.
The real paradigm: rich/poor.
And it’s always been the paradigm. In all cultures, in all countries, throughout history.
Sly
Seeing the charred and disfigured remains of dozens of teenaged girls and young women laying broken on the sidewalk has a habit of demolishing social barriers.
It didn’t last very long, however.
kay
@kdaug:
I don’t think they do, though, even if it profits them.
I keep thinking of Christie sneering at “babysitters”.
Even if it were true that pre-k teachers were babysitters, babysitting (private sector, of course) is (actually) hard, essential work.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but this new thing of conservative governors sneering at low-level workers seems unwise, and like it could be used for political gain. I think they used to give speeches expounding on the dignity of work. They love workers, liberals love welfare recipients, was the general idea they were trying to get across.
Turns out, they like certain workers. Not many. A few.
Mark S.
@Martin:
Maybe if there were some way to turn them into derivatives.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@kay:
They really like the ones who are packing heat and keeping them from being tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
Martin
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM: Only the US uses the Osprey, and the MV-22 is specifically the US Marines variant. Two MV-22s were used to rescue the downed F-15 pilots the other day, which is presumably what they are referencing.
I’m almost positive that’s file footage of the V-22, not an actual picture from Libya. I have no idea how Salon of all people would have a shot that nobody else seems to have. If it’s a recent AP shot, I’d expect to see it everywhere.
Martin
@Mark S.: Already done. Dead peasant insurance is effectively a derivative.
kdaug
@kay: Ah, now here’s the rub: the one’s they’re coming out against are teachers, cops, and firefighters. What professions did you see in your 2nd grade schoolbooks? The cognitive dissonance is a real, damned, hard, sell.
And all this to give the fat guy in the tophat on the Monopoly board a get out of jail free card?
I’m telling you, the ground is shaking from where I sit.
They overplayed their hand.
piratedan
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM: goes hand in hand with the bill that never even made it to the floor in the AZ Lege regarding limiting the size of clips that were sold for semi-automatic weapons post the Giffords shooting…. “we don’t want to politicize this issue, so we’re we’re going to ignore it until you forget about it”.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@Martin:
That’s what I figured. “Get me a picture!” won the race against journalism.
ETA: The pics were probably taken during Operation Operation some years back.
kay
@kdaug:
That is very funny.
Elliecat
On Majority Report Radio, Sam Seder interviewed Kevin Baker, who is coming out with a new book about the Triangle Factory fire. Baker has a lot of interesting things to say about labor back then, about the enormous number of people who died in workplaces, the bloody battles waged against organizing workers, and how the immigrant experience was less often “worked hard, got ahead” than “worked to death.”
Not to mention that the Triangle owners actually made money off the fire. No wonder Republicans want to go back to those days!
Bill Murray
The natural follow up of the Triangle Fire got outsourced, like many jobs, to Thailand for the Kader Toy Factory Fire, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kader_Toy_Factory_Fire. Don McGlashan, after the great NZ band, The Mutton Birds, called it quits, wrote a song about the Toy Factory Fire on his album Warm Hand.
mclaren
The reason the rich in America thought of working people in America as “us” rather than “them” is that back in the early part of the 20th century, most of the stuff rich people in America bought was made by working people in America.
Today, essentially everything a rich person in America buys is made by people in China or Taiwan or Singapore or Senegal or Haiti.
Rich people in America don’t need working Americans anymore, except as sex slaves and maids.
sparky
interesting that no one here said anything about why there were workplace improvements after the fire. well, here’s a three word explanation:
Alfred Emanuel Smith