The Triangle Fire

March 25, 2011, marks the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 garment workers lost their lives. This centennial edition includes a new foreword, and a list of all the victims' names and addresses at the time of their deaths.

The late Leon Stein was the editor of Justice, the official publication of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. He was also the editor of Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy. Michael Hirsch is a labor journalist and coproducer of the 2011 HBO documentary Triangle: Remembering the Fire. William Greider, national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine, is author most recently of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country.

With commendable restraint, Stein uses newspapers, official documents, and the evidence of survivors to unfold a story made more harrowing by the unemotional simplicity of its narration.

Stein suggests that the fire alerted the public to shocking working conditions all over the city and helped the unions organize the clothing industry, but his good taste keeps him from selling the reader any silver lining. A by-product of the careful research that has gone into this excellent narrative is an interesting sketch of the hard lives and times of working girls in the days when the business of America was business.

Stein recreates the tragic events of the fire in all their dramatic intensity. His moving account is a work of dedication.

Michael Kazin, Georgetown University:

Leon Stein's gripping narrative of the Triangle tragedy is one of the classics of American history. As the grandson of a onetime Triangle seamstress, I salute the reissue of a book that anyone who cares about labor, past or present, should read.