What cultural conflicts emerged in the 1990s?FOCUS QUESTIONS
• Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America?
• How did the labor and women’s movements challenge the nineteenth- century
meanings of American freedom?
• In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and anti- democratic
impulses?
• How did the Progressive presidents foster the rise of the nation- state?THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
★ CHAPTER 18 ★
1900–1916
I
t was late afternoon on March 25, 1911, when fire broke out at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company. The factory occupied the top three floors of a ten-
story building in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York
City. Here some 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immi-
grant women, toiled at sewing machines producing ladies’ blouses, some
earning as little as three dollars per week. Those who tried to escape the blaze
discovered that the doors to the stairwell had been locked— the owners’ way,
it was later charged, of discouraging theft and unauthorized bathroom breaks.
The fire department rushed to the scene with high- pressure hoses. But their
ladders reached only to the sixth floor. As the fire raged, onlookers watched
in horror as girls leapt from the upper stories. By the time the blaze had
been put out, 46 bodies lay on the street and 100 more were found inside the
building.★^691