NYC Book Club Conversation With
David Von Drehle On January 28, 2004, Gotham Gazette held an online chat with David Von Drehle,
author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.
Gotham Gazette
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming to Gotham Gazette's NYC Book Club chat.
Today, we are chatting with David Von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, a new book about a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. The fire on
March 25, 1911, killed 146 people, most of them young Jewish and Italian immigrants. 123 were women.
It was the deadliest workplace disaster in New York City until September 11, 2001.
Gotham Gazette
Good afternoon, Mr. Von Drehle
David Von Drehle
Hi. Thanks for having me.
FROM 1911 TO SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Gotham Gazette
Personally, how did you get interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire?
David Von Drehle
I was a reporter in New York City, first for the Miami Herald and then for
The Washington Post.
And I lived in the Village a block from the site of the fire. The building is still there,
at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street--the Brown Building of NYU. I noticed
the historical marker on the building and grew more curious over the years as I walked past,
looked up and wondered what exactly had happened there.
My question was: Why, out of all the horrible workplace disasters in that era -- railroad
accidents, mine collapses, ship sinkings, etc. -- did the Triangle fire lead to genuine reforms.
Answering that question took me into the powerful political and social currents that were swirling
through New York in the months and years before the fire.
Gotham Gazette
Were you living in New York when you began work on the book?
David Von Drehle
No, by then I had moved to Washington, taken a detour into management, returned to reporting,
had a bunch of kids. It was early 2001 before I seriously started work.
Gotham Gazette
So you were writing during the attacks on September 11?
David Von Drehle
Yes. I was deep into research. For about a month I wondered if there was any book left. Why, I
wondered, would anyone care about a fire in 1911 that killed 146 people on the ninth floor?
Gotham Gazette
What made you decide to continue writing?
David Von Drehle
After all, thousands had died in the destruction of two 100-story towers. But I came to
believe that the message of resilience, and the discovery of meaning and power in the ashes
of the Triangle fire, could still have relevance.
Gotham Gazette
Were there any tangible changes to your book that came because of September 11?
David Von Drehle
I thought about writing a preface that would take September 11 into account but ultimately
chose not to. September 11 is such an enormity -- and it was important to me NOT to appear to
be taking advantage of it. But one feature of my book WAS influenced by it: I was struck, as
many people were, by the New York Times sketches
of the lives destroyed in the attacks. So I made an enormous effort to put together the
first-ever complete list of the Triangle fire victims. To restore their names to history.
Gotham Gazette
Describe how you compiled that list.
David Von Drehle
The victim list was compliled by sorting through hundreds
of pages of microfilmed newsprint, anguishing over dozens of misspellings and botches of various
kinds, then sifting and resifting until my list matched the number of identified victims --
140 of the 146 dead.
Michael McCall
It's interesting to see the contrast with the way the dead of September 11th were compiled --
and then modified over the past few years. Do you trust that account?
David Von Drehle
I think reporters and authorities made their best effort under incredibly difficult conditions.
What is different is that this time, they TRIED. In 1911 there was surprisingly little interest
in the lives--even the names--of dead workers.
LABOR AND FEMINISM
Gotham Gazette
How had the labor movement in the city begun to change the lack of interest in individual workers
by the time of the fire?
David Von Drehle
In the shirtwaist industry -- that's women's blouses -- there was a dramatic strike in 1909-1910.
I tell the story in Triangle. It helped to awaken the city to the lives of working women
and girls. But it was still a dawning awareness at the time of the fire.
Gotham Gazette
How did feminism play into this movement?
David Von Drehle
In this same period, upper-class and educated women were leading the campaign for suffrage--the
right to vote. The suffrage leaders joined the leaders of the strike--to promote the cause
of women of all social strata. As a result, the New York World newspaper called the
shirtwaist strike "The Lexington and Concord of women's rights in America."
Gotham Gazette
Was there any tension between the labor and suffrage movements?
David Von Drehle
Eventually. The strike leaders were mostly Socialists. The suffrage leaders tended not to be.
So after about a month of the strike the two factions split over the aims of the strike.
Gotham Gazette
What happened then?
David Von Drehle
What the fire did was it rejoined those two political forces -- the Lower East Side radicals
and the upper-class Progressives -- into a political force that demanded change from the Tammany
Hall democratic machine.
Gotham Gazette
How were the labor and feminist movements in New York different than in other parts of the
country before and after the fire?
David Von Drehle
I can't claim to be an expert on these movements nationwide. What I can say is that the
reforms that began after the fire in New York spread steadily. The Tammany Hall leaders
who were pushed into reform by this coalition eventually rose to influence the entire
country when New Yorker Franklin D. Roosevelt reached the White House in 1932.
Roosevelt ran on an agenda pioneered by Tammany's Alfred E. Smith, whose political
breakthrough came when he pushed the post-Triangle reform agenda. Smith's Tammany
colleague Robert F. Wagner reached the U.S. Senate and wrote much of the new Deal.
Another Triangle reformer, Frances Perkins, was FDR's Secretary of Labor. She was actually
an eyewitness to the fire. She saw the tangles of victims falling from the windows. Late in life,
Perkins said the Triangle fire was the birth of the New Deal -- and we can trace not just
workplace safety reforms to that root, but also such laws, written by Wagner, as the Social
Security Act, the unemployment insurance program, the public housing program, and the right
to unionize.
Gotham Gazette
In the book, you mention that Tammany Hall, the dominant political force in New York,
was under pressure from all sides to reform at the time of the fire. Is it possible that
the change now credited to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire would have come about from the political
atmosphere in New York?
David Von Drehle
Sure. Everything is possible. All I can say is how things actually happened.
I don't have a backward-looking crystal ball.
IMMIGRATION
Gotham Gazette
Another thing pressuring Tammany Hall at the time was the waves of European immigration
in New York City. How did these immigrants affect New York City differently than other parts
of the country?
David Von Drehle
A huge percentage of these immigrants -- most of them from Eastern Europe and Southern
Italy -- settled in New York. They did not have the same loyalties to Tammany that the
earlier immigrants, mostly Irish and German, had felt. Many, especially the Europeans Jews
fleeing oppression, had a well-developed, often radical, politcal outlook. So they were able
to put pressure in a concentrated way on the political machine of New York. In a way, this
story is about the importance of organizing and voting. Those immigrants did, and they helped
change America.
Gotham Gazette
New York City is in the middle of its biggest wave of immigration since the time of your book.
Do you see any parallels?
David Von Drehle
Sure. One parallel is simply the vibrance that immigrants have brought and continue to
bring to New York. I found the period around 1910 to be such a tremendously exciting
period -- I loved spending time in that great city in my mind -- just as I love to spend
time in New York now. And obviously, the new immigrants are once again shaping the city's
politics -- although they could have more impact if they would vote in larger numbers.
Dnice
Have you any idea what the levels of voter turnout in the early part of the century were?
David Von Drehle
The numbers varied widely. In the best-organized Tammany wards you sometimes had near
100 percent turnout. If someone didn't show up to vote, Tammany workers would go find them --
or cast a vote in their name. But in less-organized wards, especially heavily Italian
neighborhoods, turnout was dismal -- below 10 percent. There is an excellent
(though hard to find) book called Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants that contains lots
of ward-by-ward numbers if you are really interested. Try the New York Public Library.
A LASTING LEGACY?
Gotham Gazette
In his review of your book, New York historian Mike Wallace wrote
that "The only problematic part of Triangle is the assumption, nestled in its title,
that the catastrophe wrought a permanent transformation in the American workplace...Sweatshops that
exploit vulnerable and unorganized immigrant workers are again alive and malignantly well
in New York City." How much has the legacy that the fire had on public policy eroded?
David Von Drehle
That is a complicated question. Workers today are about thirty times less likely
(one-thirtieth as likely?) to die on the job as workers were in 1910. That is a very real
and important change. On the other hand, it is true that the issue safety and the need to
organize workers did not vanish. Labor unions are losing numbers and losing influence. The Triangle
fire and its legacy DID change America. But that doesn't mean that the issues
involved went away forever. People who want to push ahead in this area can learn a lot, I think,
by reading about the struggles of their forebears.
Gotham Gazette
Thank you very much for being with us, Mr. Von Drehle.
David Von Drehle
Thank you. If anyone has other questions I can try to asnwer them at vondrehled@washpost.com
Gotham Gazette
We have been chatting with David Von Drehle about his book Triangle: The Fire That Changed
America. Continue this discussion on our NYC Books message board.
Our next book is Dreamland, by Kevin Baker. On February 25 at 6 PM we will be discussing
the book in person with its author at Borders Book shop at 100 Broadway in Lower Manhattan.
Thanks for coming.

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