Working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company

"I'd like to tell you about the kind of world we lived in 75 years ago because all of you (ed: and your parents and probably your grandparents) weren't even born then. Seventy-five years is a long time, but I'd like to give you at least a glimpse of that world because it has no resemblance to the world we live in today, in any respect.

...I went to work for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in 1901. The corner of a shop would resemble a kindergarten because we were young, eight, nine, ten years old. ...The hours were from 7:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night when it wasn't busy. ...No overtime pay, not even supper money. There was a bakery in the garment center that produced little apple pies the size of this ashtray [holding up ashtray for group to see] and that was what we got for our overtime instead of money.

My wages as a younster were $1.50 for a seven-day week. I know it sounds exaggerated, but it isn't; it's true. ...I worked on the 9th floor with a lot of youngsters like myself. When the operators were through with sewing shirtwaists, there was a little thread left, and we youngsters would get a little scissors and trim the threads off.

And when the inspectors came around, do you know what happened? The supervisors made all the children climb into one of those crates that they ship material in, and they covered us over with finished shirtwaists until the inspectors had left, because of course we were too young to be working in the factory legally.

The Triangle Waist Company was a family affair, all relatives of the owner running the place, watching to see that you did your work, watching when you went into the toilet. And if you were two or three minutes longer than foremen or foreladies thought you should be, it was deducted from your pay. If you came five minutes late in the morning because the freight elevator didn't come down to take you up in time, you were sent home for a half a day without pay.

...The early sweatshops were usually so dark that gas jets (for light) burned day and night. There was no insulation in the winter, only a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the factory. ...Of course in summer you suffocated with practically no ventilation. There was no drinking water, maybe a tap in the hall, warm, dirty. What were you going to do? Drink this water or none at all.

The condition was no better and no worse than the tenements where we lived. You got out of the workshop, dark and cold in winter, hot in summer, dirty unswept floors, no ventilation, and you would go home. What kind of home did you go to? Some of the rooms didn't have any windows. I lived in a two-room tenement with my mother and two sisters and the bedroom had no windows, the facilities were down in the yard, but that's the way it was in the factories too.

We wore cheap clothes, lived in cheap tenements, ate cheap food. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to expect the next day to be better. Someone asked me once: 'How did you survive?' And I told him, 'What alternative did we have?' You stayed and you survived, that's all."

• "The Story of a Sweatshop Girl"
• Sweat Shop Tour