They Locked The Doors Then Counted The Insurance

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building in Manhattan. In under eighteen minutes, 146 garment workers were trapped behind an exit door locked from the outside. The factory owners never served a day in prison. Instead, they collected a sixty-thousand-dollar insurance payout—turning a profit while families received a settlement of just seventy-five dollars. Two years later, one owner was caught locking exit doors again. His penalty was a twenty-dollar fine. This is the documented record of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the acquittal that followed, and why that exit was locked in the first place. -------------------------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The Locked Door 0:31 - Inside the Sweatshop (1911) 1:33 - The Washington Place Door 2:30 - 18 Minutes: The Fire 3:54 - The $60,000 Payout 4:36 - The Trial & The Verdict 5:33 - Twenty Dollars 6:26 - The Cost of Thread -------------------------------------------------- #TriangleShirtwaistFactory #HistoryDocumentary #HistoricalDisasters #WorkplaceDisasters #Documentary