The Triangle Factory Fire of 1911

On March 25, 1911, the 4:45 p.m. bell rang at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, signaling the workday's end. Employees gathered their belongings and prepared to leave. However, one of the most tragic events in American labor history began soon after when someone yelled "Fire!" More than half of the 275 employees died in the fire, most of them young women. The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University has produced an excellent Web site on this disaster. This well organized site provides a horrifying look at the day's events and of this tragedy's continuing impact on establishing workplace safety standards. The site effectively combines secondary and primary resources such as original newspapers, documents, photographs, and, perhaps most moving, oral histories by fire survivors.