Was History Fair to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Owners?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/was-history-fair-triangle-waist-factory-owners-180971019/

by minikites • 8 years ago

9 13 8 years ago

newmana• 8 years ago

Yes.

smadge• 8 years ago

If I were being charitable, the article is saying "Yes, they were grossly and intentionally negligent, but it was only because they were rationally maximizing profit given the market and regulatory environment."

eli_gottlieb• 8 years ago

That's not intellectual charity. That's a pointed criticism of capitalism.

hackeraccount• 8 years ago

Regulation makes things safer. It destroys competition and raises prices.

Seems like it was a reasonable trade off in this case.

throwaway2048• 8 years ago

Historical inflection points are often interesting. The outcry that leads to widespread change is often triggered by things that are actually substantially better than the status quoa, but the timing works out very badly for those involved.

Reminds me these days of Google. Google isn't even operating in China in any real capacity currently, and a lot of western companies are, but Google is taking a huge amount of heat.

What seems to matter in these cases isn't the actual facts of the particular instance, but the widespread issues they become a symbol of.

Consider the theory that revolutions often happen not when things are going from bad to worse, but when things are getting better, but insufficiently fast enough to satisfy the populace. The newly wealthy merchants of the French monarchy system were one of the key drivers of the overthrow of the monarchy, and newly wealthy landholders the key mover in the American revolution.

boomboomsubban• 8 years ago

In summary, the workers probably started the fire, other factories were worse, they weren't found guilty of manslaughter, and the workers didn't even want a safer factory. At most you can say that contemporary factory owners should be judged similarly, not that we should blame workers.

elliekelly2• 8 years ago

Today few realize the role that American consumerism played in the tragedy. At the turn of the century a shopping revolution swept the nation as consumers flocked to downtown palace department stores, attracted by a wide selection of goods sold at inexpensive prices in luxurious environments. The women in the factory made ready-to-wear clothing, the shirtwaists that young women in offices and factories wanted to wear. Their labor, and low wages, made fashionable clothing affordable. Seeking efficiency, manufacturers applied mass production techniques in increasingly large garment shops. Entrepreneurs prospered, and even working-class people could afford to buy stylish clothing. When tragedy struck (as happens today), some blamed manufacturers, some pointed to workers and others criticized government. In a paradox of action, Americans pushed for both lower prices and safer, better-regulated factories, throughout the 1900s. Today attitudes have largely changed.

Have attitudes largely changed though? I feel like these sentences are pretty applicable today, too.

kevinventullo• 8 years ago

Yes, Americans have stopped pushing for better-regulated factories because they're largely all overseas.

chrisdhoover• 8 years ago

But the NFPA and the NEC are frequently updated. Modern buildings built to code are much safer. The problem now is mostly inspection and compliance. There should not have been field modifications of the structural steel at the San Francisco transit center and the fuckwad “artists” in Oakland built their ghostship deathtrap without a care for any lessons the previous 150 years of tragedies had taught us.

cafard2• 8 years ago

I look forward to similar articles on coal-mining disasters.

"Few realize the role that American desire not to freeze played in the tragedy."

Or the occasional refinery explosion:

"Few realize the role that America's obsession with cars played in the tragedy."

elliekelly2• 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

retSava• 8 years ago

Fires really scare me. They are one of the things that rapidly can get out of control, have devastating consequences, can happen in everyday conditions (as opposite to eg flying).

Lots of highly flammable particles in the air is really a recipe for disaster, see eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7mLSG-Yws (sfw)

Locked or blocked exit doors is evil, see eg the Station fire, or the fire in Gothenburg disco fire of 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothenburg_discoth%C3%A8que_fi...

A year back, I was eating breakfast with my 4-yo daughter, and we came up with the question of "what happens if we put hard bread in the toaster?". Don't do it. The fire started quickly, and the flames were surprisingly large (under a cupboard too). Luckily, despite the small fire extinguisher not working at all, I managed to put the fire out without any damage to anything but the toaster.

Edit: Station nightclub fire (warning: scary, pretty graphic), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bknYdprA9ug

Was History Fair to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Owners?

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