In his book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David Von Drehle pulls the reader back to the events of an era that transformed American policy in regards of worker safety as well as trapping the reader in vivid detail with the actions of the 146 factory workers that perished the night of March 25, 1911 during the flames of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. While the tragedy is most noted as acting as a catalysis for worker safety and building reform, Von Drehle brilliantly argues throughout his book the notion of Urban Liberalism, the idea of the rising of the Middle Class. “[The] book is one more attempt to open up the horror of the Triangle fire, to gaze intently and unflinchingly at it, and to settle on the facts and their meaning” (Von Drehle 5). Von Drehle works around the pivotal event, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, using it as a central point to rotate his evidence around. His evidence-the migrant workers, from factory workers to Tammany Hall elites, featured throughout the book seem to gravitate towards the inevitable tragedy of the Triangle Fire.
Von Dehle’s central theme of Urban Liberalism is told through his wondrous use of a novelistic style writing, allowing for the reader to experience the story, what Von Dehle wished to portray rather than a seemly endless list of facts. Although the word usage and colorful characters cannot make up for the near inescapable tendentious pages of the policies of the early 1900s-Tammany Hall-before the flames. The book wins over the reader with its novel like appearance and the steady flow of story lines that all interconnect or meet at the same goal.
As the book progresses through chapter after chapter, it is clear rather quickly that the Working Class is rising to power. It is first apparent that there has been an elevation in class as the work mentions the now “old” migrants whom have paved the streets and build the factories that the “new” migrants find themselves apart of as they enter America during the Progressive Era. Urban Liberalism carried both waves of immigrants to power either by business or reform-the Middle Class will have the control. While the “new” migrants of America found themselves exploited, they proceeded to climb the social or economic “ladder” by means of protests and strikes. In conjunction, the “old” migrants found themselves losing profits quickly in a highly competitive market. The answer to add money to the pocketbooks in times where strikers caused a loss of revenue for factory owners was fire. Fire is simply business-quick “harmless” way to get rid of extra inventory and cash in on the insurance policy. As Von Drehle further explains in his book, the policy and politics of the era where build the correct way for such a tragedy to happen. To the factories it was more profitable to burn inventory than to invest in fire safety standards or worker safe environments.
Von Drehle closes his work summing up the events and the lives he included within the two covers as he used them to build up his argument. In the end it is Urban Liberalism that does come to pass-the rising of the Middle Class to power. In the days of the trial and after, it is the coming together of both “new” and “old” migrants-Americans-that bring Urban Liberalism to America, and this is what truly changed America.
Miscellaneous Antics 