Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Remembered After 100 Years (DNAinfo.com)

Almost every semester I teach, at some point in the term I have reason to bring up the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching fire in the sixties.  The reaction from my students is always the same: “What?  How can a river catch fire?”  When I explain to them how polluted the river was and call up some Google Images photos of the fire, though, they seem to understand.  (As I teach in Michigan and nearly all my students are fans of Michigan sports teams, it also gives them an opportunity to hate on Cleveland, a side benefit.)  I use this as illustration of how, in the face of such an absurd calamity, it was nearly impossible to argue against the need for environmental regulation back then, which is why President Nixon, of all presidents, signed the act that brought the Environmental Protection Agency into being.  Trying to argue that we didn’t need some kind of safeguards to keep companies from polluting our air and water at that point was downright impossible.

Fast-forward a little over forty years, though, and I’m not so sure that is the case any longer.  Even at the lowest point of the Bush 43 administration, those agonizing days after the levees broke in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, there were only a few days of Republican stammering.  Seeing Sean Hannity speechless as Shep Smith and Geraldo Rivera chastised him for trying to downplay the immense human suffering in those postdiluvian conditions was easily the best programming that particular Fox network has ever shown.  Within days, though, the Republicans all got on message: “Oh hey, Louisiana has a Democratic governor!  Let’s pin everything on her!  No sir, no way any of this was Bush’s fault, or the fault of other Republicans diverting money from levee maintenance to pay for tax cuts for the rich.  Nope, this is all the Democrats’ fault.”  Thankfully the American public saw through that, at least long enough to get the Republicans out of Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008.

The seeds for this, as for most Republican/conservative misanthropy, came from Ronald Reagan.  Although conservatives have long tried to morally justify screwing the poor and the less fortunate, Reagan’s infamous “homeless by choice” remark penetrated into the American conscience like a cancer, where it has stayed firmly rooted ever since.  See someone on the street and feel moved to help him or her out?  Well, maybe that person could get a real job and just chooses to be there because he or she is just lazy or unmotivated.  Maybe not, but hey, you never know, so save your money and don’t waste your time.  If that doesn’t work, then you have the religious right telling you that whatever tragedies befall people are because they’re gay, or they’re not worshipping the right deity, or they’re just not praying hard enough.  Whatever the case, it’s not your fault, and don’t think of trying to help them because that’s socialist thinking.

Going back to my last blog about how conseratives are twisting the jobs/labour/unemployment debate, we see this same technique in action.  Lost your job or your benefits?  It’s not the fault of those CEOs who continue to pay themselves outrageous bonuses throughout the long depression; it’s the fault of those public sector workers who still have pensions and good benefits packages.  Go campaign against them; they’re the real reason why your jobs stink or have been eliminated.  The rich and powerful can crush the middle-class and working-class as much as they want and it’s just The Great American Way to make money, but no, it’s those of us who call attention to the widening wealth gap, the worsening conditions for all but the richest of the rich, who are the ones engaging in class warfare.

(To follow up on that last blog, sure enough Harley Davidson’s CEO got paid more than he did the previous year, even though he cut the jobs of Erin McFarlane and thousands of others, and the company made a good-sized profit.  Didn’t exactly hear much about that on the news, did you?)

One wonders what would have happened if today’s Republicans and conservatives were in control of America’s right-wing when the Cuyahoga River caught fire.  Certainly there would be no call to form the EPA; they’d twist and strain logic to absurd ends to show how a river being so polluted that it caught fire shows why we need less environmental regulation.  In fact, it probably wasn’t the pollution that caused the river to catch fire.  No, it was probably those weed-smoking commie liberals throwing their joints in the river.  Maybe dumping even more toxic sludge in the river could put the fire out!  Why don’t we try that first, before we burden these poor, poor CEOs with having to be environmentally responsible?

This past Friday was the centenary of the Triangle Fire, one of the great tragedies of pre-World War I America.  The lessons of corporate malfeasance we learned from the fire directly led to the work of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor (and first female cabinet member in American history), including programmes like Social Security, child labour laws, the forty-hour work week, union protections, and a host of workers’ protections that, surprise surprise, Republicans and conservatives would give their eyeteeth to dismantle.  There are reasonable arguments to be made against Social Security, but who in their right mind could argue that child labour laws are not a good thing?  Who would argue that the 146 working-class Americans who lost their lives in the Triangle Fire deserved their plight?

Still, the centennial of the fire passed a couple of days ago with hardly a mention.  Have we gotten to the point as a country that we can’t even publicly honour the lives of the victims of the Triangle Fire without worrying about Tea Partiers or the like condemning us as un-American socialists?  Are we getting to the point where right-wing politicians may begin to openly challenge child labour laws and argue that we need to put ten-year-olds to work to lighten the burden on our poor, poor CEOs?  I fear the answers to those questions is yes, and today’s conservative movement doesn’t even need to disguise their intentions that much any longer.  Given the open warfare they’ve waged on public unions in just the first three months of this year, I shudder to think what they could accomplish by the next presidential election unless clear-thinking Americans push back and proclaim that they will not allow their fellow Americnas to be bullied and exploited by corporate America any longer.

If you’re as angry about this as I am, you are not alone.  Our anger is not by choice.  It is being forced upon us by the CEOs who would, if they can find a rhetorical way to make it palatable, turn our country’s labour laws back not just to the days before the Triangle Fire, but fifty years before, when it was legal to literally own people and use their hard work for free.  No matter how many battles in Wisconsin and Ohio and elsewhere we lose, we must continue to fight for the rights and prosperity of all