Lizett McLoney
The sound of the dead
	At the beginning of the 20th century workers had almost little or no rights.  Most of those workers had dreadful work conditions, long hours of work and little wages.  However, America went into action and created laws to protect them by creating the American Federation of Labor.  However many employers did not recognize the unions and ignored safety regulation in their factories.  The consequences came later.  Events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City on a Saturday afternoon on March 25, 1911.  A mixture of cruel management, overcrowding and unsafe work conditions, and poorly designed architecture worked together to cut short so many lives that changed the history of this country.  
	The picture that caught my attention from the collection of the Cornell University website is image number 10.  For me that particular picture describes the horrors of that day.  Even though the picture is old and in black and white and at the time there were no digital cameras, you can very well see the face of the officer standing by the fallen bodies.  The officer was the one that I first saw and made me wonder in speculations.   In the picture the police officer is looking up to the building with a stunning face.  The broken bodies that are at his feet laying in a contorted way are at that moment of no interest to him.  The officer is perhaps worried for the people that were still alive trapped inside the building and jumping through the windows.  The sound that they most likely made when they touched the ground was a dead sound that the officer was hearing.  Perhaps he was hoping that one of the people jumping would make it, but none of them did.  Another two people that were standing by the officer were looking up as well.  At that moment no one is paying attention to the bodies of several young women that were lying on the ground. 
	In my research to find out more about the accident I found out that most of the workers were women between the ages of 13 to 23 and that their nationalities varied.  Most of them were immigrants hoping to have a better life here among many other things.  In the picture that I chose, I found an article on the California State University Northridge website that talk about the people that threw themselves from the building.  They chose to sacrifice themselves instead of being burned alive inside the structure.  It says “the employees of The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, aged mostly between 13 and 23 years of age, jumped 9 stories to their death… On lookers watched in horror as body after body fell to the earth. ["Thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead. Sixty-two thud -- deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant,"] said United Press reporter William Shephard”  (Leap for Life, Leap of Death).  This citation describes the sound that witnesses heard as they were standing watching the girls jump.    
	In one of my conclusions of the dead women lying in the street is that they stayed there and no one did anything until it was all over because there were so many.  The police and firemen were not able to get to them with any sort of quickness.  As in this citation says, “At a local police station, a makeshift morgue was quickly overwhelmed. Bodies of the fall victims lay where they fell, some covered with tarps, others exposed to the elements. Within 25 minutes, burned and broken bodies alike lined Green Street awaiting a friend or family member to recognize and claim them. Some would never be identified. Others were found by a mark on their stockings or a ring” (United States Department of Labor web).
	In the picture number ten, obviously the error in regulations that were the first that came to my mind were the emergency exits.  What happened to the fire escape ladder?   Many other questions are probably not answered because the safety of the workers was not a priority.  As the safety regulations of the building had obviously failed to uphold the standards.  This incident helped to pass laws that improved safety regulations as in the book ‘The Unfinished Nation’ said.  “By 1914 the commissioner had issued a series of reports calling for major reforms in the conditions of modern labor…its most effective supporters…Senator Robert F. Wagner and Assemblyman Alfred E. Smith. With the support of Murphy and the backing of Tammany legislators, they steered through a series of pioneering labor laws that imposed strict regulations on factory owners and established effective mechanisms for enforcement” (Alan Brinkley’s The Unfinished Nation page 532).  
	It seems to me that in those times the workers were expendable and safety was of no concern to employers.  One other possible answer could be that there were a lot of migrant workers coming to the United States and so there would always be someone waiting to take a workers place if he wasn’t satisfied with his job.  In a way it was like a different form of slavery.  Complaining was not an option.  That was until all of America saw what was happening to these people.  These unfortunate incidents helped shape for the better this great country and the way of thinking.