SHEET MUSIC: Mamenu or, An Elegy to the Triangle Fire Victims.
Tribute To Martyred Immigrant Jewish Women
[Labor]. Rumshisky, J.J. Mamenu or, An Elegy to the Triangle Fire Victims. Music by J.M Rumshisky. Words by A. Schorr. New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1911.
4to.,4 pages; appx. 13.5 x 10.5”; self-wrappers.
First edition of the sheet music for “Mamenu or, An Elegy to the Triangle Fire Victims”; printed in Yiddish and Hebrew, with translations of the title into English. On February 15, 1910, the historic shirtwaist maker’s strike involving 20,000 abused workers, including those at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Washington Square area, came to an end. With the exception of 19 companies (admittedly, the single largest one was among these) the industry began to unionize, and working conditions improved. Just over a year later the Triangle Shirtwaist factory burned down and nearly 150 workers were trapped inside and killed, calling attention to the need for further reforms: workers required stricter safety regulations. The tragedy—described as “the worst industrial tragedy in the history of New York and one of the worst ever anywhere”—lead to another breakthrough in worker’s rights legislation.
The fire started on the afternoon of March 25, 1911; the cause was never determined, but was assumed to have started from a spark from faulty wiring or perhaps an unextinguished cigarette igniting a pile of scrap material. As the fire grew, some workers escaped through the roof to adjoining buildings. Many others—the final death count was 147, mostly women from Jewish or Italian immigrant families—died trapped in elevators, locked in stairwells, or succumbed to smoke inhalation in the courtyard to which the single fire escape ladder led them. Firemen were able to rescue many of those trapped in the courtyard by smashing some of the locked doors, but were unable to reach most. Even before an investigation revealed that these conditions “satisfied existing fire regulations for loft factories,” the National Women’s Trade Union League organized a public funeral demonstration which grew to nearly 100,000 marchers, including mourners, “labor, business, civic and religious leaders.” They met and elected a committee of fifty to petition the legislature to investigate working conditions, and to revise their safety codes.
Senate majority leader Robert F. Wagner and assembly majority leader Alfred E. Smith proposed a joint resolution establishing the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, which became known as the Triangle Fire Commission. During its four years of active investigation, the Commission “held scores of public hearings, heard the testimony of several hundred witnesses, and produced thirteen volumes of carefully prepared reports. It drafted sixty bills, fifty-six of which were enacted into law, giving New York the best system of factory legislation of any state in the union. None of these was ever overturned by the courts” (HAWH, p. 610).
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