Every Book

Every book offers its own special something, right? I mean, that's the idea.  Why write a book if it is has all been done and said before, even though some say it all has been said.  The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is something about which I have read a lot.  But Triangle:  The Fire that Changed America taught me a lot about it that I didn't know.   I read this for my nonfiction book club and I was glad I did even though when the group picked it, I thought, oh man, I know about this.  I didn't know a lot of this stuff!  It made me sick of course, again, when I thought about the owners and how they locked in their workers.  And then how the rotten lawyer got them off.
It made me think, why some people who are abused, either as children or in an abusive relationship end up abusing people and why some who are abused don't.  Blanck and Harris were both poor immigrants.  Their evil lawyer, Steuer was also.  They all had toiled in garment factories like those who died in the fire.
Then on the other side, there were wealthy people who fought for the rights of the poor and labor.  Like Florence Harriman and Anne Morgan and Mary Drier?  So what makes someone like Harriman, without a need for money, ever, care about the poor, while a man like Donald Trump (I won't dignify him by including a link.) does not?  Is it a matter of character?  It seems so.
Anyway, very, very good read.

misleading title, but full of information!

Flesh and Blood So Cheap:  the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and Its Legacy was a really good book for me to read because I don't remember as much as I wish I remembered about the second wave immigration and the history of labor relations in the US.  This book contained a really great recap and gave me a lot of information that I didn't have before, including some personal stories about big names in the history of it.  If you want a good book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, even though it is historical fiction, I would recommend Uprising.
The end of the book talks about modern day sweatshops, especially in Bangladesh.  It sites a 2009 fire.  But sadly, in 2013 there was another fire that killed more than 1,000.  I found it here on this page first.  Another super-sad thing about reading books that talk about immigration to the US is that today there are so many who want to put up walls, when on our Statue of Liberty it still says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless tost to me, I lift my lamp, beside the golden door."- Emma Lazarus.  If we don't feel that way anymore, then we need to take that statue down, scribble off the words, at least or change them, as some have jokingly suggested.  Because what a joke that is now, to have those words there, when we really don't seem to mean them anymore.

When I was a little girl...

we had a book around the house about fire disasters, Going to Blazes.  I remember this book being both scary and fascinating.   There were chapters on the fire at Cocoanut Grove, the Hartford Circus (also the topic of this book I read and loved) and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.  I don't remember reading about the Hartford Circus back then, but the Triangle Fire stuck with me, I think because the pictures were so graphic and I was a young girl reading the book, learning about young girls whose lives seemed so very different from mine and were lost so horrifically.

So there was this dirtbag, Max Blanck and this other creep, Isaac Harris.  These guys owned the factory.  They themselves had escaped their native Russia because of the religious persecution and the pogroms of the Russian Empire.  They came to America penniless and worked their way up and then they hired young girls who had also escaped their countries of origin due to the same pogroms or starvation or other forms of hell.  When they hired these girls they paid them nothing, they worked them nearly to death in horribly unsafe places.  And this horrible fire breaks out and kills more than a hundred of them.  Harris and Blanck get fined.  Nice.  And then years later, Blanck is fined again.   Again.  For doing the same stuff.  Locking doors so workers in his factory can't get out.  Nice.  Really freakin nice.  Blanck and Harris.  Good going.  Nice.  I hope you made a lot of money and felt really good about it.  Nice.  If you read more about Blanck and Harris, I suggest that you make sure your blood pressure is under control.  It is VERY upsetting.
Uprising is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, but it is more than that.  It is the story of gender and class and immigration and prejudice and suffrage, and well, this book has a lot to think about and I think it would be an excellent book discussion group for moms and daughters, grandmas and daughters, etc.