March 25, 2025. On March 25, 1911, Francis Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and screams. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was.

A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square,

and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator,

which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof.

But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day, because, he later testified, he was

worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making. The people had just

begun to jump when we got there, Perkins later recalled. They had been holding

until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire

pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally, the men were trying to get out

this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do jump.

They were trying to get that out and they couldn't wait any longer.

They began to jump.

The weight of the bodies was so great at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net.

Every one of them was killed. Everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying

spectacle. By the time the triangle shirt waste factory fire was out, 147 young people were dead,

either from their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation. Perkins had few illusions about industrial America.

She had worked in a settlement house in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago

and was the head of the New York Office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers

to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for workers.

But even she was shocked by the scene she witnessed on March 25th. By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what

had happened on their watch. I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,

Perkins said. It was as though we had all done something wrong.

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