Flesh and Blood So Cheap

The city was shocked by the disaster. Police on the scene were left shaken by the gruesome sights. Stunned survivors walked home and were received by relieved family members. The trauma lingered with them for decades after the event.

Retrievable bodies were taken to a large shed that acted as a temporary morgue. Family members identified charred remains by remnants of jewelry, clothing, and hair. Their losses were not only emotional. Many of the dead had been breadwinners for their families. Without their income, many families would struggle more than they already were.

On April 5, 1911, a massive funeral procession made its way through the city. Some 400,000 people came to watch, of whom at least 120,000 joined the marchers. Despite the huge number of people, the procession was silent. Some of the marchers carried banners supporting unions or demanding fire protection. A few days earlier, on April 2, “civic and religious leaders, progressive reformers, members of the Mink Coat Brigade, and workers” (130) attended a meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House. Little was agreed upon until Rose Schneiderman stepped forward. She spoke about the uselessness of bureaucratic solutions when “the life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred” (132). She said it was “up to the working people to save themselves” (132). Her speech changed the tone of the meeting, and participants formed a commission to demand reform from the New York State legislature. Frances Perkins became committee secretary. Little progress was made until she met future New York State Governor Al Smith.

Al Smith had grown up on the Lower East Side and had both Irish and German heritage. After his father’s death, Smith was forced to drop out of the eighth grade and get a job. He boasted that he “held two degrees, with honors, from two of the world’s finest schools: the Fulton Fish Market and the College of Hard Knocks” (133). As a teenager, he started running errands for local Tammany Hall “bigwigs” (133). He was “a go-getter, an organizer with a gift for making friends” (133). As he rose through the ranks, he became the majority leader in the New York State Assembly and would eventually serve four terms as governor. Smith had sympathy for the poor and understood how precarious the financial situation of working people was.

Smith gave Perkins advice about politics: The state legislature needed to set up its own commission. That way, the commission could be proud of its efforts and believe it was working on its own goals. Before Smith could get Tammany Hall on board, he needed “Silent Charlie” Murphy on his side: “Murphy was a political calculating machine. For him, any problem boiled down to two questions: What’s in it for Tammany Hall? How can we get votes at election time?” (135).

Tammany Hall had been primarily staffed by New Yorkers from Irish backgrounds for many years, but the new immigrants now outnumbered them. During the meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House, Italian and Jewish immigrants emphasized the importance of voting for enacting change. This was something Tammany Hall understood, so Murphy gave his blessing for the creation of a commission to investigate factories.

The commission began its work on June 30, 1911. It operated under the supervision of the Tammany Twins, Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, both of whom were children of immigrant workers. The legislature empowered the commission to do the “most thorough study of worker safety and health done until then” (138). The commission planned two stages: First, it would collect facts and information; then, it would draft laws in response to the problems it found. Smith named Perkins the chief investigator and allowed her to choose her assistants. She showed Wagner and Smith many horrifying sights: “[L]aundry workers standing ankle-deep in filthy water, bakery workers covered with body lice […] child cannery workers—five-, six-, seven-year-olds, shelling peas at 4 a.m., their bleeding fingers bound with bits of rag” (141). The commission worked for four years, from 1911 to 1915, during which time it investigated thousands of workplaces, questioned hundreds of witnesses, and obtained over 7,000 pages of testimony.

The commissioners saw a new role for the government after their investigations: a force for good. Smith decided that it was not “wrong for the State to intervene with regard to the working conditions” (143). The commission drafted 34 laws based on its findings, enacting sensible legislation that is taken for granted today. Laws now mandated measures like fire drills, fire extinguishers, automatic sprinklers, doors that swung outward, bright red “EXIT” doors and windows, and room occupancy caps that would prevent overcrowding. They also ordered safety guards, automatic shutoffs on machinery, adequate lighting, ventilation, sanitary conditions, and a workplace injury or disability compensation scheme. Child labor was banned. To enforce this, they appointed 123 full-time inspectors.

Perkins met Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was a young state senator. Like Smith and Perkins, Roosevelt was a reformer. When he was elected New York’s governor in 1929, he made Perkins the state industrial commissioner; after he became president in 1933, he appointed her secretary of labor, making Perkins the first woman to serve in a cabinet post.

Today, the Asch Building belongs to New York University, which renamed it the Brown Building. It is a National Historic Landmark. On the anniversary of the fire, people still gather at the site to pay respects. Schoolchildren participate in the memorials.