At the turn of the century working conditions in the United States were appalling. In 1904, over 25,000 people were killed on the job and no place else were these conditions more deplorable than in New York's garment industry. Here young women toiled from dawn to dusk. One New York women described "dangerously broken stairways, windows few and dirty" and people being forced to work seventy or eighty hours a week. The women at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company had seen enough and in the winter of 1909, they decided to go out on strike.

The Union felt that if they could get three thousand workers to go out on strike. They would be successful. The union succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of their leaders when 20,000 women joined the strike. Black women and white women worked together against scabs, the police and the threats of imprisonment to defeat the companies. They read poetry to each other to improve their morale.

"Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew. Which in sleep had fallen on you. Ye are many..they are few."

But despite their efforts, the conditions did not change that much and on March 25, 1911, a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. The fire raged on through the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors. While half of the city's workforce spent their working days above the 7th floor. The fire departments ladders only went up to the 7th floor. Trapped women died at their workstations, or were crushed in the panic. Some jumped out the window to their deaths. The New York World described the scene: