Burma Road Riot 1911

“March 26th, 1911: the remains of the dead, it was hardly possible to call them bodies, because that word would suggest something human, and there was nothing human about most of these, were taken in a steady stream to the morgue for identification” (quote from The New York Times, used in documentary). The bodies were all so charred and mangled that the process of identification took three full days, even after these three days there were still seven bodies that could not be identified. On April 5th, 1911 a mass and funeral was held for these victims. The documentary also covered the new building they began using afterwards, just weeks after the new factory opened fire inspectors came to review the building. They found rows of sewing machines crammed too tightly together and blocking exit

September 11th, 2001 left a huge impact on people’s lives all over the country. Michael Burke, a wall street journalist, discusses 9/11 in the article, “No Firemen at Ground Zero This 9/11?”. He expresses the bravery the first responders showed on the tragedy of 9/11. On the 10th anniversary, the firemen were not invited to ground zero to watch the remembrance ceremony. The committee that puts on the ceremony sent invitations to politicians, but not the firefighters who put their lives on the line to save others. They were told they could watch on TV instead. Burke is trying to show the businessmen of New York about how wrong not inviting the first responders was, he does this with his descriptive narrative and organizational structure.

Workers went on strike to earn a fair living wage and in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in. His commission saw the truth awarded mine workers a wage increase and a nine-hour day. The department of Labor formed to help fix problems of the American worker. New York banned children from working under the age of sixteen for more than nine hours in a factory. To improve safety, in 1911, New York passed laws requiring fire escapes, fire drills and wired windows in all factories. In the next year, New York also passed a law requiring factory workers to have a “one-day-of-rest-in-seven”, meaning they needed to have at least one day break each week. After that, New York also made it illegal to hire children to do factory work in tenements or canneries, and made a fifty four- hour workweek the maximum for any working person under eighteen. (Doc 2)

The laws that were related was Wagner Act. It made the federal government the arbiter of employer-employee relations through the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This allowed rights for workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employees for the first time in history. This act would overturn the court decide that asserted the union labor violated an employee's. This was passed after the New Deal and had a major impact on the employee's

However, after the deadly fire, which was not related to the strike, things changed. Without anywhere else to lay the blame, the D.A. and newspapers at the time began placing blame on the factory owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Drehle points out that the D.A. of the time Charles Whitman, “was no longer focused on improving factory safety laws. His priority was to indict Isaac Harris and Max Blanck on charges of manslaughter (pg. 188).” They were tried and acquitted, but their trial showed that management was becoming less powerful than it had been. In the past management mistreated workers with impunity, but the public outcry after the Triangle fire changed that. The incident showed that now owners could be held accountable for any harm that might come to their workers as a result of their negligence. Tammany Hall, and Murphy himself, faced their own difficulties brought about by the fire. Having just lost the election for mayor of New York City, Murphy realized his power, and that of Tammany Hall, was waning. William Randolph Hearst was very outspoken against Tammany Hall, workers feared its power less and less, and the new wave of immigrants coming into the US had no respect for its influence. Murphy realized that he had to win over the workers and progressives if he wanted to keep power. “The Triangle fire struck directly at those people who Tammany needed most (pg. 211).” Realizing that he needed the growing influence of

The coal miners’ strike of 1902, was a big impactful move that ended because a federal takeover was threatened by President Roosevelt. The women's trade union league was middle and upper class women and immigrants founded to bring women workers into unions, this was established in 1903 and reiterates the main ideal of the era by fighting for all workers’ equality. In 1907 there were 10,000 black and white dock workers that initiated a strike and showed remarkable unbiased solidarity, this occurred in the town of New Orleans, Louisiana. In the 1909 uprising of the 20,000 garment workers, an unprecedented victory was accomplished for the international ladies’ garment workers’ union.

The Gilded Age: ingenious business men, innovative philanthropists, captains of industry. The Gilded Age: ruthless tyrants, power-hungry dictators, robber barons. The Gilded Age, taking place from the 1870s to the 1900s, was an era of booming business and industrial innovation. Because the government was focused on expanding corporations, human rights were forgotten, leading to the Progressive movement. Occurring from 1900 to 1920, the Progressive movement focused on citizens’ rights to competition, sanitary conditions, and democracy.

Life in the early 1900’s wasn’t easy. Competition for jobs was at an all time high, especially in New York City. Immigrants were flooding in and needed to find work fast, even if that meant in the hot, overcrowded conditions of garment factories. Conditions were horrid and disaster was inevitable, and disaster did strike in March, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York set on fire, killing 146 workers. This is an important event in US history because it helped accomplish the tasks unions and strikes had tried to accomplish years earlier, It improved working conditions in factories nationwide and set new safety laws and regulations so that nothing as catastrophic would happen again. The workplace struggles became public after

The workers demanded an eight hour workday for which the average work week was sixty hours or more. The company hired strikebreakers which were often used by this era. On May 3rd, 1886 as a protest resulted in the killing of an individual by the police, and on May 4th a mass meeting was called to take place in the Haymarket Square to protest what was seen as police brutality. At the meeting there were approximately 1500 people as radical speakers addressed the crowd. As the mood of the crowd began as a peaceful meeting that quickly turned confrontational when the police began to break up the crowd. As fights broke out, a powerful bomb was thrown. The police began to use their guns. Seven police officers lost their lives which was later proclaimed that they were not killed by the bomb but however from the bullets from other police officers from the chaos of the event. Four citizens were killed and over a hundred were injured. The public was outraged because of the event. Within the next two weeks, on the cover of a magazine, illustrations were drawn of the bomb thrown into the crowd, cutting down police officers, and a priest giving last rites to a police officer at the local police station, thus leading to the blame of the riot on the labor movement and particularly the Knights of Labor.

The riots that marked this Taisho¯ political crisis go a long way toward explaining why Hara accepted a compromise that betrayed the hopes of hardline advocates of “constitutional government.” On one hand Hara insisted that landlords and business leaders deserved a political voice through their representatives such as his Seiyu¯kai party. But no less than his rivals in the bureaucracy or military such as Katsura or Yamagata, he was terrified by the specter of aroused and politically focused masses. He did not want to encourage them or their leaders. Such fear was not paranoia. The first twenty years of the twentieth century not only saw the Diet and its representatives win seats at the table of elite politics but were also a time of chronic

From the street there were people screaming and running it was mass chaos. At this time you could see the media and firefighters everywhere. I got the hell out of there went home hugged my wife. I realized God had spared me that day. A lot of my friends and coworkers died that day. I’m truly sorry, sometimes I feel guilty that I didn’t do my part to help but I was afraid for my life. A couple of my friends that made it from a bit higher up said it sounded like a bunch of explosions. I remember thinking after hearing from them and seeing the video footage what the heck happened? In my opinion it felt like a bomb (Jones).

NLRA was considered to be the law that affected the relationship among the federal government and private enterprise; this measure considerably increased the government’s powers to arbitrate in labor relations. Prior to this law, employers had the emancipation to chastise, spy on, question for no reason and fire union members. Work stoppages commenced in the mid 1930’s (Gould, 1986), which included striking by factory and industrial occupational workers. By the time the strikes came to a halt, America had a more conservative Congress. This Congress led to balance the power between employers and unions. While the Wagner Act addressed only unfair labor practices by employers, it was added to the enactment of

Workers had simple demands, such as a 52-hour workweek, a 20% pay raise, and the right to organize (von Drehle, 59). The strikers dealt with many problems, such as fierce strikebreakers, and when brought to the attention of the police, strikers tended to be the ones arrested (von Drehle, 64). This strike brought the support of many wealthy people including Anne Morgan (Von Drehle, 71), Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (Von Drehle, 66), just to name a few, who helped bring attention to the strikers cause. This helped in bringing attention, but was not enough to keep the strike going and formally ended in winter 1909. The strike did not lead to very many gains, and it would take the death of 146 workers (Von Drehle, 265) for any actual change to be brought about. The biggest benefit to labor that came out of the fire was the Factory Investigating Commission, which was born officially in June 1911 (Von Drehle, 212). The commission had virtual self-governance, and had investigators that would personally check the conditions of New York factories (Von Drehle, 213). The commission had a small set of cities it investigated, but was later expanded throughout the state of New York (Von Drehle, 214). The commission was the product of Wagner and Smith, the so-called “Tammany Twins”, and also brought in Frances Perkins, who would later become the Secretary of Labor

On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in the 10-floor Asch Building, a block east of Manhattan's Washington Square. This is where 500 mostly young immigrant girls were producing shirts for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Within minutes, it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders weren't tall enough. Exits were locked, and the narrow fire escapes were inadequate. Panicked, many jumped from the windows to their deaths. People on the street watched in horror. The flames were under control in less than a half hour, but 146 people perished, 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in the city's history.

riot, (we well Wild, out there what is it you explain man Tell the U.S.) Tom's name nick like a hound any one fights mighty geeeeeeeee?