[US Navy Vet]

This was when in our Nation's History Unions were needed. Not now.

[BenLurkin]

I always heard that it was the union people who started the fire.

[Outlaw Woman]

self ping

[KeyLargo]

HBO has a biased story on this. Most of it is about how unions are the answer to everything.

[WOBBLY BOB]

So who do we blame for the Boston Molasses Disaster ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster

Willy Wonka?

[WOBBLY BOB]

So who do we blame for the Boston Molasses Disaster ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster

Willy Wonka?

[skeeter]

This tragedy could just as easily serve as an object lesson about Tammany Hall corruption as management/labor relations.

But of course it seldom is looked at from that angle.

[MeganC]

To the unions this was a watershed moment for them and if they were faced with the same thing today they’d probably do everything in their power to make sure it happened.

[oh8eleven]

Cornell University website has a very good Remembrance of the tragedy.
There's a also a monument in Evergreens Cemetery, Brooklyn which I've visited.
My gg-grandparents are buried nearby.

[Twinkie]

Unions were needed then; but then unions became corrupt and crooked, run by thugs and criminals who love money even more than the original sweat shop owners did.

[Alberta's Child]

So why the horrific, unnecessary loss of life? Because it was cheaper to buy fire insurance policies than invest money on fire prevention.

This might have been the case at the time, but nowadays having a big insurance policy simply gives the insurance company an enormous incentive to be far more strict about building safety than even the local building inspector might be.

[Gabz]

This was when in our Nation's History Unions were needed. Not now.

My daughter made a similar comment recently, after something on the news about what was going on in Wisconsin. she actually brought up the Triangle fire and asked me if I remembered when she did a report on a book about it.

My daughter is 12.

[Eva]

My grandparents were the victims of attempted murder by the CIO, after my grandfather was elected the first and only president of the CIOA local at RCA. RCA closed the plant after the attempt on my grandfather’s life and moved to the mid-west, without the CIO.

The violence by the unions against their own members was/is very common.