Flesh and Blood So Cheap

From the beginning of the US, New York City was a center of trade. This meant that goods and people would flow into the city both from abroad and from other regions of the United States. By the mid-19th century, New York was the dominant American port, and by the turn of the 20th century, it was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Because of its centrality to trade, financial interests were also based in the city, including Wall Street, which continues to be a major financial center today.

Industrialization and immigration drove the city’s rapid growth from 60,000 residents in 1800 to over 500,000 just 50 years later. Innovations in infrastructure—such as the Croton Aqueduct in 1842, which improved public health and sanitation—also contributed to the city’s growth. New York mastered the construction of the skyscraper, allowing for greater population density. As manufacturing capabilities increased, so did immigration, with new Americans traveling to the country in hopes of jobs, religious freedom, and the American Dream of prosperity in exchange for hard work. What they found was dramatic inequality; for example, Russian Jews and southern Italians faced bigotry and cultural discrimination, forced into dangerous jobs without safety precautions or worker protections.

Financial inequality plagued the city since its origins. As industrialization advanced, the problem worsened. Many major industry leaders lived in expansive luxury, sometimes only blocks from the cramped and unsafe tenement houses where their impoverished workers lived. Rapid immigration meant that there was a nearly unlimited supply of cheap, desperate workers who had no power to correct mistreatment.

The garment industry was a major contributor to this social and economic dynamic. The compartmentalization of garment work allowed for hundreds of small sweatshops to flourish; routinized tasks were easily taught to unskilled laborers, which provided little to no job security for workers. Meanwhile, contractors profited from keeping costs low. They passed the pressure to produce onto their employees, who worked as many as 80 hours a week for very little pay. As the population of the city grew, so did the demand for clothing. This, in addition to the spread of new fashions such as the shirtwaist—which also served as a symbol of women’s liberation—provided factory owners with even more opportunities.

New-model factories gathered hundreds of workers into a single location, packing them densely on each floor. Without proper (expensive) safety measures in place, fires spread quickly and caught hundreds in their path. New York’s stratified class structure, topped by industry barons, created an environment in which the pursuit of wealth, and the opportunities for productivity that new technologies offered, led factory owners to prioritize profit over the safety and well-being of their workers. New York’s position as an industry and immigration hub ensured a high population of impoverished workers, who were viewed by the wealthy as little more than cattle. This combination of industrialization, immigration, and unregulated workplaces created an environment in which a tragedy like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a predictable outcome.