0:00 The bell rang, signaling the end of another long Saturday.0:04 On the eighth floor of the Asch Building, hundreds of young women began to put away their work.0:12 They were tired.0:13 But they were almost free.0:15 And then, a thread of smoke curled up from a bin of fabric scraps that had been accumulating for months.0:24 The workday was not over.0:26 It was just beginning its final, terrible minutes.0:30 Last week, we saw how a river of molasses revealed a city’s secrets.0:36 The clue in this archive box is not a flood, but a simple object.0:41 A key.0:41 A key that was NOT in its lock when it was needed most.0:46 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the top three floors of that building in Manhattan.0:53 It was a sweatshop.0:55 Six hundred workers, mostly teenage immigrant girls, labored for fourteen hours a day, surrounded by piles of flammable fabric.1:05 The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had a history of factory fires.1:11 And a history of collecting the insurance money.1:15 To prevent theft, they said, and to keep the girls from taking unauthorized breaks, the main exit doors were locked from the outside.1:26 The stairwell doors were designed to open inward, into the room, not outward into the hall.1:34 Of the four elevators, only two were working.1:37 The single fire escape was narrow, and poorly anchored to the brick.1:43 Every one of these facts was a line in a report, filed away.1:48 Every one was a piece of a trap, waiting to be sprung.1:52 The fire, likely started by a discarded cigarette, devoured the eighth floor in moments.1:59 Panic.2:00 Workers surged toward the main exit, only to find it locked fast.2:05 They threw themselves at the stairwell door, but the crush of bodies made it impossible to pull it inward.2:14 They fled to the windows, to the fire escape.2:17 It bent under the weight and heat, then twisted away from the building, collapsing and sending dozens of people plunging to their deaths.2:29 Firefighters arrived below, but their ladders could only reach the seventh floor.2:35 For the women and girls trapped on floors eight, nine, and ten… there was no way down.2:42 No rescue was coming.2:44 The crowd on the street watched in horror as girls appeared at the windows, silhouetted by the flames.2:52 And then, they began to jump.2:55 One hundred and forty-six workers died.2:58 Burned, suffocated, or from the fall.3:01 The owners, Blanck and Harris, were tried for manslaughter.3:06 They were acquitted.3:07 A later civil suit awarded the victims’ families about seventy-five dollars for each life lost.3:15 But the crime did not go unanswered.3:18 A social worker named Frances Perkins witnessed the horror from the street and dedicated her life to reform, eventually becoming America’s first female Secretary of Labor.3:32 Public outrage was a tidal wave.3:35 In response, New York created a commission that led to more than thirty new state laws mandating fire drills, sprinkler systems, and unlocked exits.3:47 It was the foundation for the federal safety standards that protect workers today.3:54 The change was bought with blood.3:56 It was paid for on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village.4:01 And it was demanded by the public, in a mass funeral procession that filled the streets.4:08 Nearly four hundred thousand people marched.4:11 There was no music.4:13 There was no sound at all.4:15 They wanted the silence of their protest to be heard.
