tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post459831595298769079..comments2024-03-29T05:29:08.934-05:00Comments on Every goddamn day: 03/29/24: Triangle fire still burns Neil Steinberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468057838260476480noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-32171436933325913832020-03-25T19:45:41.379-05:002020-03-25T19:45:41.379-05:00Great article! Employees back then were treated no...Great article! Employees back then were treated not only as property but as dispensable. Thankfully the Equal Employment Commission was created to protect employees — but it was a long time coming.Janethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15373960140777556685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-78877855656790216372020-03-25T11:58:57.983-05:002020-03-25T11:58:57.983-05:00I feel the same about reading about the Holocaust....I feel the same about reading about the Holocaust. (I am Jewish) It is really hard to take after reading the horror seeing the pictures. The last book I have read about the war which was not about the camps was Bielski Brothers. There is a documentary and a movie about them. I was unaware of both.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829109/ sanfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06580867647162091670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-25615179365324631072019-03-25T08:49:17.883-05:002019-03-25T08:49:17.883-05:00I also read the Leon Stein book and agree,it was i...I also read the Leon Stein book and agree,it was impossible to put down.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10171736457071537260noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-40115106984126248562018-03-26T09:31:07.695-05:002018-03-26T09:31:07.695-05:00For some reason, best left to the shrinks, I start...For some reason, best left to the shrinks, I started reading about infamous fires (Chicago, San Francisco, Peshtigo WI, the Iroquois Theater, the Cleveland Clinic, the Cocoanut Grove in Boston, various hotels and ships and other public places---all with many gruesome deaths) when I was in junior high. I also read the Leon Stein book about the Triangle disaster. It's extremely graphic...but I couldn't put it down.<br /><br />My family moved out of a West Side neighborhood less than a mile from Our Lady of Angels parochial school while I was in first grade...when the 1958 fire happened, I was in sixth grade. I saw all the awful images in the Daily News and on TV, which I could neither look at nor manage not to, and had nightmares for weeks. Years later, I found out it wasn't just me. OLA affected Fifties kids all over Chicago, and in old schools in the rest of the country as well. They've never forgotten it, either. <br /><br />Maybe OLA was why I began reading those awful stories. But the one about the Triangle disaster was the last. Couldn't handle it anymore. Thankfully, in my teens, I got into many other subjects that interested me. But even today, the thought of death by fire still terrifies me. It has to be one of the worst ways to go. There have since been other books written about the Triangle fire, but I find I'm in no big hurry to read them.<br /><br />My grandmother was 21 and was married and living in New York in 1911, and had just given birth to the oldest of my father's six brothers. She worked in the needle trades (as did my other grandmother, and some of my other relatives), and she was a young radical who'd been forced to run for her life at 15 (something like a 1905 Bernadine Dohrn). But she never mentioned that tragic and fateful day.<br /><br />It's sadly ironic that the centennial of this terrible event was so closely preceded by the 2011 anti-union campaigns in Wisconsin and Michigan and Ohio. <br /><br />I had to learn about the fire on my own. Apparently, the union-busters of today have not done the same. How anyone could read about or watch documentaries about the Triangle Fire--and still be anti-union--is beyond my comprehension.<br /><br /><br /><br />Grizz 65noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-6001938462255070162018-03-26T08:19:32.881-05:002018-03-26T08:19:32.881-05:00The hard won rights of workers were partially roll...The hard won rights of workers were partially rolled back with arguments of excess by the UAW and other unions. The Washington Post had to carry needless printers to mollify their union. The class struggle may never end with an equitable distribution of wealth but we are due for the pendulum to swing the workers way again. Just need to give it a little push.JPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-81938755507514458762018-03-25T22:30:52.014-05:002018-03-25T22:30:52.014-05:00"could barely speak English. Neil did you for..."could barely speak English. Neil did you forget a " at the end of the sentence. Rare for you if you did. Brilliant article.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04605155217533175936noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-58462984724815149722018-03-25T14:21:17.914-05:002018-03-25T14:21:17.914-05:00"The strong do what they will. The weak suffe..."The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must." Thucydides<br /><br />TomTomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09641357239788323783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-59553763729419549932018-03-25T11:26:28.082-05:002018-03-25T11:26:28.082-05:00In one of my early classes in law school, this cas...In one of my early classes in law school, this case was discussed. A crucial witness for the prosecution, one of those teenaged immigrants with little English, told her story clearly and emphatically. On cross examination, the defense attorney asked her to repeat the testimony. She did in exactly the same words. He asked her again and she did so again, word for word. Obviously, the witness had been coached. And the owners, who had plenty of notice of the hazards the workers faced, were acquitted because of the folly of the prosecutors and the cunning of the defense attorney.<br /><br />john<br /><br />tatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10088632798195131329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-16051381774505316612018-03-25T11:25:01.688-05:002018-03-25T11:25:01.688-05:00People who take the 40-hour week and humane workin...People who take the 40-hour week and humane working conditions for granted need to realize that capitalists did not bestow those things out of the goodness of their hearts. Heroic workers and their advocates, both famous like Eugene Debs and obscure, won them with their blood, often literally.<br /><br />In fact, the relatively benign conditions of the 1950s through the 1970s now seem like a historical accident, a result of the USA being the only major nation to come through World War II relatively unscathed. Business is done treating employees as partners; now they're back to being nuisances, who must be paid as little as possible so that ever more money can flow to the "stakeholders."Bitter Scribehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04645909858616987997noreply@blogger.com