Triangle

This coming Friday, March 25, 2011, is the 100^th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. At noon Friday, Merry and I will be standing on Greene Street in front of the original factory building just off Washington Square in New York City as the names of the 146 people who died in the fire are read. It's a moving ceremony. A ladder truck from the NYFD is positioned with its ladder extended just short of the upper floors where the fire occurred. In those days the height of the buildings had outstripped the available rescue equipment. A fire bell chimes after each name. The pile of memorial flowers on the sidewalk, each bearing a victim's name, slowly grows.


We remember the Triangle Fire not just because it was a horrible and preventable disaster. For me the Fire marks the moment the tide turned in favor of real labor reform in this country. Just the year before the Fire, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the original New York Workers' Compensation Law as unconstitutional because it forced businesses to buy insurance to provide health care and partial replacement wages for workers injured at work. Employers didn't want to reduce their enormous profits even a little, and the Court agreed. Sound familiar?

The Triangle Fire broke out on a fine early spring Saturday. Many New Yorkers were out for an afternoon walk in Greenwich Village. As a result many witnesses saw the desperate young women throw themselves from windows ten stories high to die on the pavement rather than be consumed by the flames. Escape routes were limited. The single fire escape malfunctioned. Some made it to the roof and jumped to an adjourning building. Some got down the stairs, but some stairwells were locked by the owners to supposedly prevent the workers from stealing materials.


One of those eye witnesses was a woman named Frances Perkins, then a sociology professor at Adelphi. After the fire Perkins literally devoted the rest of her life to labor reform. New York soon passed a new Workers' Compensation Law and in 1918 Perkins was appointed to the NY Industrial Commission, the agency charged with finding a way to operate the new Workers' Compensation system. In 1926 she was appointed its chair by the new governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this role she moved New York to the forefront of labor reform, expanding factory safety investigations, lowering the work week to 48 hours, introducing the minimum wage and arguing for the institution of unemployment insurance.


When FDR became president he appointed Perkins his Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position. Perhaps her greatest achievement was serving as chair of the Committee on Economic Security whose final report resulted in the Social Security Act of 1935.

To be sure, these accomplishments were made possible by the growth of the labor movement and their unceasing demands for better working conditions. No one disputes that the labor movement received a boost immediately after the fire. Something of the spirit of that age can be caught in remembering how a leader of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, Rose Schneiderman, addressed a crowd of 3500 leading citizens who attended a memorial service for the Triangle workers held at the Metropolitan Opera House:

I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.

Despite what some would have you believe, that working-class movement goes on today. The ILGWU now calls itself Unite Here! It's one of the prime sponsors of Friday's memorial. If you are in NYC, I urge you to attend. For more information about the NYC events check out http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/


If you are not able to be in NYC, the above link also provides some information on commemorations across the country. In Syracuse there will be a reading of the names at 4:45 pm at the UAW 624 Union Hall at 714 W. Manlius St. in East Syracuse (near the Wegman's on James Street).


Friday evening Merry and I will be at the NYC Fire Museum to support the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Memorial scholarship program that provides small stipends for college students whose families have been affected by a workplace injury. http://www.trianglememorial.org/ I'm proud to have been involved in helping start this group ten years ago. It does good work.


I'm sure labor reform would have eventually come to New York and America had the Triangle Fire not occurred. But it did happen. People were moved and mobilized. Our country is stronger today because they were moved to demand real economic justice. That work continues. 

Oneida Community: a bibliographical essay

Several readers have asked me to collect all my Oneida Community writings in one easily accessible place.  I've finally done that by setting up a new blog: oneidacommunity.blogspot.com.  It also has material not found on this blog.  OC fans are invited to take a look.  From now on my OC writings will be found there, and only non-OC material will be posted here.  

There is an enormous literature devoted to the Oneida Community. A very large number of primary sources exist including the writings of John Humphrey Noyes, the many publications of the OC and the extensive writings of other Community members and descendants. A sizable library of secondary sources also exists. Analysis of the Community began while the Community was still flourishing and continues today. So far as I know, there is no truly complete bibliography of all the Oneida material.

Many folks don't know that the main building from Community days still exists and is open for visits. Not only are there excellent guided tours but overnight accommodations are also available. http://www.oneidacommunity.org/ There is nothing like a visit to the Mansion House to evoke the spirit of the OC. There is also an interesting recent blog by two current residents of the Mansion House that contains a treasure trove of Community tidbits in computer friendly form: http://tontine255.wordpress.com/about/

The only reliable single volume currently in print is Spencer Klaw, Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community (1993). Scholars and Community descendants alike have quibbles about Klaw's emphasis on social relations over other aspects of OC, but his book remains the most accessible over-all account.

I also recommend Maren Lockwood Carden, Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation, (1969, reissued 1998). This slim volume places OC in context better than other accounts and also shows the long-term effects of the OC on its business successor, Oneida Ltd., which was at the time still directed by OC descendants. As part of her research Carden interviewed many OC descendants. Her notes of those interviews are part of the OC Collection at Syracuse University.

After the Community days, a vast archive of OC writings was collected by George Wallingford Noyes, JHN's nephew. He sorted and organized this material with the plan of publishing the authoritative account of the OC. He managed to complete and publish only the first two volumes of his planned six volume work. Both are full of wonderful detail. The Religious Experience of John Humphrey Noyes (1923) deals with Noyes early life emphasizing the development of his religious ideas. John Humphrey Noyes: The Putney Community (1931) deals with the development of the central social practices of the OC such as complex marriage, communal ownership and mutual criticism. After GW Noyes died in 1941 some undetermined portion of this family archive was destroyed by descendants who feared the material, if made public, would somehow cause serious economic harm to Oneida, Ltd.

Fortunately, while GW Noyes was still alive, he allowed Robert Allerton Parker to have unlimited access to the family archive. Parker used these materials to produce the only “authorized” biography of JHN, A Yankee Saint: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community (1935). The remains of the family archive was finally collected at Syracuse University. GW Noyes' notes and outline for the unfinished volumes can be found there. In addition Lawrence Foster carefully reviewed the remaining manuscript material and produced an excellent selection, Free Love in Utopia: John Humphrey Noyes and the Origin of the Oneida Community (2001).

There are four very evocative books that portray everyday life in the OC and immediately after the break-up. All four are worth reading. Pierrepont B. Noyes, My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood (1937), Corinna Ackley Noyes, The Days of My Youth (1960), Harriet M. Worden, Old Mansion House Memories, By One Brought Up In It (1950) and Jane Kinsley Rich, ed., A Lasting Spring: Jessie Catherine Kinsley, Daughter of the Oneida Community (1983).

An even more intimate view of daily life can be found in the two published Community diaries, both edited by Robert Fogarty. I feel the introductory material to these books by Prof. Fogarty is some of the most lucid analysis of the OC in print. Both diaries concern the effects of living in a complex marriage. The diary of Tirzah Miller, Desire & Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller’s Intimate Memoir (2002) shows how one woman totally embraced complex marriage. The diary of Victor Hawley, Special Love/Special Sex: an Oneida Community Diary (1994) shows a man in anguish over his “special love” for one woman and how it ultimately led the two of them to leave OC.

Also worth mention are the three books by Constance Noyes Robertson, JHN's granddaughter and wife of the then president of Oneida Ltd. Late in her life, she compiled, edited, and wrote commentary on OC materials gleaned from a wide variety of published sources. Her books are highly readable and do provide a good, if somewhat unreliable, introduction. Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876 (1970); Oneida Community: The Breakup, 1876-1881 (1972); and Oneida Community Profiles (1977). Most scholars, myself included, believe these books to be primarily intended to protect the respectability of the OC legacy rather than accurately tell the entire story.

The bulk of the Oneida Community manuscript material is now held by the Syracuse University Library. SU has made digital copies of many of the OC books and publications available on-line along with 140 historic photographs. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/o/OneidaCommunityCollection/ In addition SU has catalogued the many thousands of pages of manuscript material they hold in their rare book collection. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/o/oneida_comm.htm. SU holds a separate collection of the papers passed down to P. Geoffrey Noyes including not only family documents relating to the OC but also a large collection of writings related to the founding and growth of Oneida Ltd. http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/n/noyes_pg.htm Another interesting source of seldom tapped manuscript material is the Rupert Nash papers held by Stanford University. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf4w100433

For further research, I recommend the excellent selected annotated bibliography by Marlyn Klee at http://www.communalstudies.info/bibliographies.shtml.