Season 11, Episode 4 March 23, 2025

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the listening tube.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. I'm sure glad the owner of Honda isn't saving my country billions of dollars. On this episode, we'll hear about how a New York mayor dug deep but still got the cold shoulder, and I'll have a chat with a New York City firefighter about one of the city's most horrific events.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

But first, not the headlines.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I read a lot of stories from a lot of different sources. If there's one thing I've observed, it's that the media hasn't learned a thing. There's simply no objectivity. There is only left and right, conservative and liberal. Granted, there is just plain news that all news organizations could report without pushing an agenda one way or the other, but that stuff is boring. It doesn't rile up either side. The legacy media decided that it was no longer any fun to report straight news. Everything has to be able to be slanted in the direction of one ideology or the other. It seems like the only important thing now is that the media not report anything that could be interpreted as unifying. No matter how important, no matter how humane, no matter how inspiring, if it can't be used in a way to promote some other cause, the legacy media would rather let it go unreported. It's equivalent to a lie of omission. It's just like if somebody was about to take a step in the dark, but before they did, they asked you if there's a 30-foot deep hole on the other side. You know there's a 50-foot deep hole on the other side, but you simply say, no, there isn't a 30-foot hole on the other side. The person asking the question feels assured that it's safe to take the step. They do, and fall into a 50-foot hole. You didn't lie when you said there wasn't a 30-foot hole, but you also didn't tell them the hole was 50 feet deep. You led them to believe there was no hole. While I was in Air Force Basic Training back in the 80s, I wrote a letter to my recruiter, who was based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I wanted him to know that I was thankful for all of his help and to let him know that everything he told me was true. I also made sure to point out that he didn't tell me everything. There were a couple of things I would have liked to know ahead of time, and I felt he certainly could have anticipated that. But unlike my Air Force recruiter, the legacy media tries every day to mislead me and plant ideas in my head with not just the stories they choose to write, but also by the way they write them. I've pointed out on the listening tube a number of times that the author of the story doesn't write the headline, and often the headline is written in such a way as to misrepresent what the story actually tells us. That's very common. But there's also deception inside some of the stories. Well, many of the stories. Some of the methods are so ingrained in how stories are now written that I'm not even sure the authors are aware of it every time. But mostly it's done on purpose. Certain words or phrases have been woven into news reporting that are meant to sow doubt in the reader. Words like without any evidence are often used to sway the reader of a story into believing that whatever the allegation is, it's probably not true. Even sometimes ignoring the fact that there is evidence, but the author refuses to acknowledge it. For example, a recent story from CNN about the lawsuit against Greenpeace in North Dakota, a lawsuit that is more than a decade into the process, has a paragraph that states President Donald Trump's return to the White House has ushered in a wide rollback of climate and environmental policies, an emboldening of fossil fuel companies, and a crackdown on free speech. None of that has anything to do with this lawsuit. Let's look over that quickly. The president has rolled back climate and environmental policies and unleashed the fossil fuel industry. But a crackdown on free speech couldn't be further from the truth. Some people are confusing free speech with supporting terrorists. There's a difference. The real threat to free speech was the last Democratic administration, who we now know used threats to all of the largest social media companies to eliminate or minimize any speech the left deemed to be contrary to the party line. Reporters were reprimanded and fired for violating the standards set by the Biden administration. The current administration has given voices to those who never had it before. They've given access to news gatherers who never had access before. For CNN to suggest Donald Trump is cracking down on free speech is simply incorrect. But that's what they want you to believe. So they must omit that President Trump is the most accessible president in modern history and also started a social media site called Truth Social where you're free to say anything you want. By the way, Greenpeace lost the lawsuit and has to pay $660 million. You'll hear it called an attack on free speech, but it's really people being held responsible for their actions, not their words. Sometimes, though, some of the media companies don't try to hide it as much as they just put it out there and assume no one will notice, or that those who do will agree. Now there's no doubt about the friction between President Trump and the Associated Press. The AP style guide is the Bible of journalism, and there's a lot in it that promotes progressive ideals in the way the guidance is presented. Plus, the AP has so far refused to recognize the new name of the Gulf of America. So the president excluded the AP from some of its privileges. Not a total exclusion, but a slap on the wrist, so to speak. So now the AP writes a story praising CBS for how critical they've been of President Trump in their news coverage. But they make it look like CBS is some kind of a hero for doing it. Just a reminder: CBS is the subject of a $20 billion lawsuit brought by none other than Donald Trump for the way they allegedly tried to influence the last election by craftily editing the answers given by Kamala Harris on a 60 Minutes interview. So both CBS and the AP have an axe to grind. The story calls CBS's reaction to the lawsuit fast and hard-hitting stories critical of the new administration, pointing out that every episode of 60 Minutes since the inauguration has included such a feature. The most recent fast andor hard-hitting story was about a concert that was canceled because of a new Trump policy. The concert was to feature the U.S. Marine Corps band. Did I ever tell you that I never met a Marine I didn't like? Anyway, the concert in question was to include winners of a competition who had earned the honor of performing with the Marine Corps band. That would be pretty cool. Being in a military band is the second best job you can have in the military. What's the first best? The one I had. Radio personality. So why did the concert get canceled? Because the president had prohibited DEI practices in the military. Well, the whole federal government. I know. You're thinking, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it turns out that in order to be eligible to compete for the honor of performing with the Marine Corps band, you had to be non-white. In other words, anybody can enter the contest assuming you know how to play a musical instrument and you're not a white kid. The Associated Press is glowing about CBS doing a story critical of a policy that prohibits bigotry against white people. The AP is praising CBS for supporting racism. Maybe I was wrong when I said the news won't report anything unifying. Both of these news disseminating organizations are telling you that Donald Trump denied a bunch of black kids an opportunity specifically because they're black. But the truth is, Trump doesn't care what color the kids are. He only cares that one kind of kid was excluded from competing based on the color of their skin. Prohibiting DEI policies and practices ensures that we don't judge people by the color of their skin. The CBS story that the AP praises is in support of racist policies. But they make it seem okay as long as only white kids are excluded. They either don't recognize the racism or they refuse to acknowledge it. But their ignorance can't explain the next example of the Associated Press intentionally creating stories critical of the Trump administration. And this one got two MSNBC hosts in trouble for parroting the falsehood. A story by the Associated Press credited Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat who is now the Director of National Intelligence for Donald Trump, with saying that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are very good friends. The headline even said, Gabbard says Trump and Putin are very good friends, focused on strengthening ties. Two MSNBC hosts took that ball and ran with it, claiming that it was a display of Trump's disconnect from American values and dangerous, with guests supporting the viewpoint. Both hosts wound up voicing corrections when they realized that the friendship the original AP story was speaking of was between Donald Trump and India's prime minister, not Russia's president. The AP later acknowledged their mistake and retracted the story, admitting it did not meet AP standards. While the AP style guide has been the go-to reference for journalists for decades, the AP itself seems to have forgotten about style or guidelines.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

This week in 1900, the mayor of New York City, Robert Anderson Van Wick. I think that's how you pronounce it, Van Wick, Van Wyck, W-I-C-K, breaks ground for a new underground rapid transit railroad that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn. He was the first mayor to govern after the consolidation of the five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. The now famous New York City subway would open its first line about four and a half years later. You might think that the subway might be what Mayor Van Wick would be remembered for, but that's not the case. Otherwise, you would have already known what we just heard. But Mayor Van Wick is remembered as a figurehead who took orders from Tammany Hall, which is defined by Wikipedia as a democratic pressure group. So when the only company licensed to bring ice to New York peers decided to double the price of ice, it caused an uproar among the Tammany Hall base. This was in the years before refrigeration, and poor people couldn't afford to pay 60 cents for 100 pounds of ice. It was later discovered that the mayor had over a half million dollars worth of stock in the ice company.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Send email to thelisteningtube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

But it was fire that made the news in New York City this week in 1911. My guest this week is a retired New York City firefighter who's done research and written a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Among the most tragic events ever to strike the Big Apple, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire has left a lasting impression on fire prevention and building codes that still exist today. Andrew Serra shared some of what he learned from his research about this tragic event. You're a retired New York City fire chief. How long were you with the department?

SPEAKER_04 14:41

I was a captain actually. I retired. Captain? 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Wow. Okay. So you saw quite a bit. When did you retire?

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Uh a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago at this point.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Were you an active firefighter during the terrorist attacks in 2001?

SPEAKER_04 15:00

Yeah, I was. I started in 1998, so I had about three years on the job uh at 9-11 during attacks.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

And what was your role that day?

SPEAKER_04 15:10

I was a firefighter. I was working in Red Hook, Brooklyn at the time, which is uh it's right near the uh entrance to the battery tunnel. So uh units from from that area were among some of the first on the scene after the the attacks began. And um companies from uh my my firehouse had an engine company and a ladder company, two different types of units, and uh both were dispatched to the scene. I was supposed to be off that morning. I was home, and then um both companies were at the scene during the collapse. I responded from my home shortly after the the second plane hit the tower and drove to the firehouse. And a number of us who were off duty that morning, we actually borrowed a uh delivery truck from a hardware store across the street from the hardware uh from the firehouse, and we loaded it up with tools and we headed on in and then uh I think arrived sometime between or just after the second collapse. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Well, must uh certainly a traumatic day for everyone, and mostly uh New York City first responders, certainly. But we're here to talk about something entirely different, something that happened 90 years earlier, almost 90 years earlier, and that is the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. So on a Saturday afternoon, a fire breaks out in a textile factory in New York. Who was in the building when the fire began?

SPEAKER_04 16:41

Among others, uh the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was the largest uh shirtwaist manufacturer at the time. A shirtwaist, for those who don't know, it's a type of women's blouse uh that was very popular in the early 20th century. And this particular company was very successful. They occupied three floors, the top three floors of a 10-story loft building. And no one knows for sure, but they estimate somewhere between four and five hundred employees were on the upper three floors when the fire broke out. Wow. But everyone from the two owners to you know, everyone in between managers and and receptionists and seamstresses, hundreds of seamstresses.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So things were still going pretty well there, even though it was a Saturday afternoon.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

Yeah, the busy season was just about to start. They were ramping up orders, and you know, they worked six days a week as a as a rule, and uh the day was just about to end. Uh because it was a Saturday, they were ending right around five o'clock. Other days they would have probably worked until dark. But uh the workday was just coming to an end when the fire broke out.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

So you say there were uh what five or six hundred people in the in the building at the just in the top three floors, right?

SPEAKER_04 17:55

Yes, yes. Uh each the ninth floor in particular, the eighth floor was where they had uh they did the cutting, the designs, and they had some sewing machines, but not not many. Ninth floor in particular, I think estimates are around 270 sewing machines. So at the very least, 270 seamstresses on the ninth floor. But then you add in the the four men, four women, uh managers and other staff on that floor, and then you had on the tenth floor, you had the owner's offices, you had uh the shipping station, you had clerks, you had receptionists, so there were a lot of people there.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

How did the fire begin?

SPEAKER_04 18:36

Best estimates they think is that uh a cutter who was someone who laid a they're a very skilled worker on the eighth working on the eighth floor, cutters would lay out the designs and cut templates, and then they would go upstairs to be sewn by the seamatresses. Uh they think a cutter was smoking a cigarette and put either the match or a cigarette butt in the uh trash bin which was underneath uh the working stations.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

So the fire spread obviously pretty quickly with a there was a lot of fuel there for it. Textiles certainly aren't uh or weren't made the way they are now to be fire retardant in many cases, especially when it comes like children's pajamas and things like that that we have rules and regulations for. So there was certainly plenty of fuel there, and um, from what I understand, the fire itself didn't last very long.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

I mean, definitely less than 30 minutes, but I think from they know for sure with fire department uh dispatch times, I think from the receiver, the first alarm until the fire was declared under control was about 18 minutes. 18 minutes. So you you figure the fire started a few minutes obviously before it was transmitted in, but definitely less than a half hour, all this devastation, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

And how many people died in the triangle shirtwaist fire?

SPEAKER_04 19:56

146.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

146 people died. So uh just an incredible tragedy, although I guess considering how many people were in the building, it's fortunate that there weren't more of them. But why did so many of these people die?

SPEAKER_04 20:15

I think uh a combination of factors. I think the two main factors would be there was no thought to fire drills or pre-planning. If there were an orderly evacuation process in place, I think many, many more could have been evacuated, if not all. And uh probably the biggest contributing factor is that one of the exit stairwells was maintained in a locked position. It was always padlocked shut because the owners wanted to funnel workers out of a different entrance, and they had a wooden partition built in front of it, making it even smaller, and inspectors would uh go through the seamstress's handbags and coats at the end of the day to make sure they weren't stealing. So uh it was very difficult to evacuate the floor once the evacuation started, and even that was delayed because of uh lack of pre-planning and fire drills.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

So uh who owned the building?

SPEAKER_04 21:08

The building was owned by uh a man named Joseph Ash, but the top three floors were rented by the Triangle Company.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So whose responsibility was it to have, or were there no uh mandated fire prevention uh uh types of initiatives back in 1911?

SPEAKER_04 21:29

There were very little. And uh what makes this fire so uh significant is that many of the things we take for granted today were put in place because of this fire. One of the ironies is that uh many of the seamstresses from Triangle had only a year before gone on strike to uh fight for better conditions. And the owners of the Triangle Company, uh name uh Isaac Harris and Max Blank, they actually held out longer than any other owner. Owners. So many of these, mostly women, uh, fought for better conditions just a year before. And so there was a knowledge that that there was more to do. The fire chief, the New York City uh chief of department of the fire department at the time, a man named Edward Croker, who had become almost like a tabloid newspaper institution in New York. Uh, he'd been in the position over 10 years. He was very known among reporters and the public for speaking out on fire issues. And he had been arguing for improvements for fire inspectors, for better exits, for sprinklers and factories in particular, and he got a lot of pushback. Really, it wasn't until this fire that uh any of these changes were able to be enacted.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So there weren't very many, if any, safety measures put in place at the time.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

There were buckets of water uh every few feet, which, you know, even for at the at the time is not insignificant, you know. Um however, in this perhaps at this fire, they may have worked against because a number of uh the workers, uh one of the managers in particular, a man named Samuel Bernstein, spent uh precious minutes at the beginning of the fire trying to put it out. Whereas perhaps uh you know, hindsight looking back, critiquing perhaps uh the time would have been better spent just worrying about the evacuation. But uh that was about the only rule. No smoking. That was a rule that most factories did have even before. Whether whether you know it varied from place to place, how hard it was enforced. That triangle was actually enforced fairly well. Uh it was known that you would be fired instantly for for smoking on the floor. And uh yet this this fire was caused by smoking.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And then in nine in 1911, we really didn't have what uh what we what we know today as a fire extinguisher.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Did we uh I don't believe there were pressurized extinguishers like we would call them. There might have been uh like gravity extinguishers, you turn them upside down and water comes out, and really buckets of water. Yeah, there weren't pressurized extinguishers like we would have today, or dry chemical extinguishers, and definitely sprinklers were very rare.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Aaron Powell You mentioned the two owners of the factory. From what I understand, they had a reputation for using fire to gain uh financially if uh they saw fit. Do you what do you know about their history there?

SPEAKER_04 24:35

There's at least I want to say a handful of fires over the prior 10 years where they they got considerable payments from uh fire insurance companies for fires on premises, always late at night when no one was was there. And uh it was it's pretty well suspected that you know the arson was almost like a go-to uh how to get rid of old inventory, you know, and uh you get a quick payout from the insurance company. There definitely were very little follow-ups from insurance companies as far as investigations. The the fire rider adjusters, I think, they they kind of worked on a commission basis. So if they were getting good premiums every month, they weren't asking too many questions. It's it definitely uh uh this far, even with the triangle fire, I think they received uh the modern-day equivalent of uh a multi-million dollar payout from this fire. And it's funny the the victims got almost the families of the victims got almost nothing, but the owners of the factories uh financially did did well from it.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Did the owners ever take responsibility for the lives of the victims?

SPEAKER_04 25:48

As far as I know, they you know, never like a public apology or anything like that. They were put on trial for manslaughter later in the year in 1911. And they had uh, you know, a very famous lawyer at the time representing him who was uh you know very good at his job, and he was able to really sew a lot of doubt, I think, with the jury as far as the witness statements of, you know, they interviewed a lot of the survivors, witnesses, and he was able to sew just enough doubt. And really all his his burden of proof for the trial, the uh the defense attorney and the the two defendants really were everything hinged on whether or not they knew the the exit doors were locked. You know, that that's really all they were on trial for. Uh nothing else that was going on there was really illegal at the time. So, but if the exit doors were locked, they they could have been considered guilty of negligence and manslaughter. And uh the prosecution wasn't able to prove that they knew the doors was locked, which is kind of a ridiculous premises. Uh premise, they certainly knew the the doors were locked, as history would later prove, because uh one of the owners in particular, uh well after this fire, was in trouble again for locking exit doors at one of his factories. So it was uh a standard practice, I guess, of of these particular owners and profits and uh you know superseded uh safety.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

So what actions were taken after the fire to try to prevent a repeat of that tragedy?

SPEAKER_04 27:20

I think probably most significantly, uh sprinklers be began to be required in uh factory spaces. And uh in New York City, anyway, uh the New York City Fire Department finally got funding for a Bureau of Fire Prevention, which uh Chief Croker had been arguing for for many years. And it was really the beginning of a new philosophy uh among fire fighting. Up until then, it was everything was focused on extinguishment. And now for the first time, you had inspectors out long before there was any fire, just inspecting premises for safety hazards and fire dangers and uh requiring improvements. And that's something that's carried on to this day. You know, uh even in the New York City fire department, you have civilian inspectors who inspect, uh make fire safety inspections, and even uh the local firehouse, the firehouses, they inspect every building in their every uh depending on the hazard of the buildings, it depends uh uh the frequency depends on the hazards, but they inspect all the buildings in the district on uh either an annual or five-year basis, rolling basis.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Aaron Powell Other than those inspections of which you speak, were there any other ways that the triangle shirtwaist fire led to changing working conditions for people even today?

SPEAKER_04 28:41

For sure. I think uh obviously this wasn't the beginning of uh the union movement. It had started before, but I think in many ways this was the moment that gave society in the country a lot of uh lent a lot of credence to the unions fights. Before that, unions had mixed results, whether it was in uh coal miners or railroad strikes, I it depending, you know, the strikers obviously felt very strongly about it and families affected by it, but you know, there was uh a lot of ambivalence in the country. If if your train wasn't going to run on time or the things you depended on were struck, you might be more sympathetic to the owners. You know, I think uh the plight of the victims of the triangle really brought to consciousness uh in light of the fact that the many of these seamstress had struck the year before to improve conditions, really gave a boost to the union movement and gave credibility that maybe before had not been um as prevalent in all you know across society.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Now, of course, in 1911 news did not travel as quickly as it does today, but certainly there must have been a reaction from the people who lived and worked in that immediate area. What was their shock? Was there disbelief? Was there did somebody just say for, well, you know, we knew this was going to happen sooner or later? What what was the prevailing attitude of it uh among the the citizenry then?

SPEAKER_04 30:16

Uh I think uh one of the things that made this fire such an event uh that it was is that it happened in as basically public a manner and as and and in as real time a manner as anything could at that time. You know, there were hundreds and hundreds of spectators on the street. It was a crowded, you know, nice early spring day in New York City. People were out and about, and the fire broke out, and uh many of the, you know, the fire, you know, it's a it was a very big building, a corner building, had high visibility. Everyone in the area knew the building, and uh a large crowd gathered very quickly when the smoke started, and with fire coming out the windows of the upper floors of a building, it was uh quite the sensation. And then um most significantly, I think a majority of the deaths, I want to say maybe over 70 or 80 of the deaths were people who jumped from upper floor windows because they had no choice. So it played out right in front of people. There was uh photographers, there were reporters, and it was widely reported in a very uh graphic, especially for the time, manner. Pictures of bodies on the sidewalk, bodies in the street, uh reporters were reporting how how they had watched people jump. You know, almost, you know, it nine stories up sounds like a lot, but I've actually visited the building, and what strikes out is like you stare up at the the ninth floor windows, and you realize like you can see somebody's face, you make eye contact with them. It's it's not that far. And a lot of the reporters know like looking at these these young women, some girls, really, many of them, just with the the fear in their eyes and looking into their face and watching it as they just you know losing all hope just jumped because it was better than burning. And uh it really affected a lot of people, the reports of of exactly how this fire played out.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Now you uh correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to indicate have indicated that the owners were in the building that Saturday. How did they get out? They were on the tenth floor, correct?

SPEAKER_04 32:29

They were on the tenth floor, and uh most of the people on the tenth floor survived. Uh they were able to get to a stairwell, the one stairwell that went to the roof, and they all went to the roof. And then uh they were able to cross over to uh New York University had the uh the next building over, and they were able to cross over to the adjoining rooftop, and they got out that way.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

It's kind of strange how uh probably no one on the eighth floor even knew that there was a way out by going up.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

Right. By the I think, you know, every every floor had kind of different circumstances. I think uh I believe most of the almost everybody on the eighth floor got out because the fire, you know, they knew they were there when it started, you know, so they had time to get out. And the elevator operators, there were two elevator operators who were very brave. Uh, they kept making trips up through smoke, through fire, and in old accordion-style elevators. So there was very little protection. And uh they made trip after trip until the elevators finally failed. Uh, so many of the uh on the eighth floor, they got out either through elevators or through the stairs because the fire was in its early stages. Another issue that led to so many of the deaths was the type of communications. Uh, a worker on the eighth floor called on the telephone. She tried, it's funny, it's called a teleautograph machine. It was a very for early forerunner of a fax machine that was uh that they had in this building. And for some reason, her initial notification to the 10th floor was uh the modern-day equivalent of a fax. She faxed the word fire on a piece of paper and sent it upstairs, and then uh nobody answered. And so then finally she called on the telephone upstairs. The receptionist on the 10th floor answered, and uh, by this point, uh the woman on the eighth floor was screaming, and the woman on the tenth floor, you know, yelled out fire to everyone on the tenth floor, and then she just kind of left the phone there and didn't hang it up. It was like a switchboard type telephone. So now the woman on the eighth floor couldn't even call the ninth floor to tell anyone on the ninth floor. So the ninth floor, and with the, you know, it was a thick building, thick floors, thick walls. They weren't immediately, you know, the conditions weren't immediately known on the ninth floor that there was a fire below them. Really until they saw smoke outside the windows rising on the outside. So by then, uh now smoke uh fire started spreading to the one stairwell that wasn't locked. It became blocked by fire very, very quickly. And like I said, the other stairwell was was locked. Uh a number of trips, of elevators, uh trips did stop at the ninth floor, and many were saved that way, but uh many weren't.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

What did firefighters learn from the disaster?

SPEAKER_04 35:19

I think a lot they, you know, you gotta remember the the equipment of the day was certainly wasn't what it was today. One issue that everyone on on the scene noticed right away is that it that actually the tallest ladder in the city arrived at the scene and raised this ladder up and it only reached the sixth floor. So uh it was not able to reach the ninth floor where most of the people were trapped, and that was just uh the technology of the day. You know, there was very little at that time that could have been done about that. The buildings were getting taller and taller, outpacing the firefighters' capability. One one thing that, from a firefighting point of view, the fire actually went out fairly quickly, and that was probably largely due to uh Chief Edward Croker. His efforts over the year over the prior decade to institute a high-pressure water system in Lower Manhattan. He had uh pumps built on the on the Hudson River to pump a very large diameter water main across lower Manhattan. Because of these high-rise and factory loft buildings, water pressure from the regular city main is not sufficient really to pump water up multiple flights of uh, because you have gravity working against you. And uh the steam engines that fire engines at the time had couldn't add enough enough pressure to make water reach the upper floor. So he fought actually successfully. It's one one of the few things he was able to get over the years, uh high-pressure water main in lower Manhattan. And uh the firefighters, when they were on the scene, they actually had a good water pressure on the upper floors fairly quickly from from the time they arrived. And from their point of view, uh, they put the fire out relatively quickly. It was just too late for dozens and dozens of people who had been trapped on window ledges, you know, before then. One of the chiefs, uh, it wasn't Chief Croak, it was his successor, testifying at one of the trials for this, uh, was asked by uh one of the legislators and said, but this is a fireproof building. Uh we don't understand. And his answer was, yes, the building may be fireproof, but the people inside it aren't. You know, so uh fireproof is probably a misnomer for buildings. Uh the type of construction might slow the uh the spread of fire, and maybe the the structural elements of the building don't burn as quickly. They were able to resist the fire, but all the contents of the building, obviously, if there's bales of fabric on the floors, they burn, and people inside it obviously are in danger of fire.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Now, you wrote a book about this event, as from what I understand. What tell me about that?

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Uh correct. It's uh a historical novel that basically is centered around uh the event of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, but also uh the lives that intertwine uh uh the seamstresses, the young firefighters, uh especially um the owners of the building and Chief Croker and many of the politicians of the day, and kind of uh the what what created this perfect storm that led to this moment.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

And was politics one of those factors?

SPEAKER_04 38:26

For sure, for sure. Because uh, you know, New York City obviously goes back to the 1600s, but the five borough city of New York that we know today was only uh a little over 10 years old at this time. The five boroughs were united in I think 1898, and uh it was basically a deal, like kind of like a movement among uh politicians at the time, because New York City was under the control of uh Tammany Hall, which is the political machine that controlled the Democratic Party, and then by default, uh all of New York City politics and much of life in New York City was controlled by this organization called Tammany Hall, and they had political bosses who basically made all the decisions behind the scenes that mayors and and councilmen and all, you know, enacted in public. So everything basically had to be kind of filtered through this second tier of governing, you know. So there was the factory owners definitely had their say. They, you know, money obviously always gets you power. The nascent uh progressive movement, which started right around the turn of the century, was was rising, and uh it was actually starting to push back against Tammany Hall's control. But this actually caused some further strife because Tammany Hall, a lot of the new reforms where uh Tammany Hall basically patronage was taken away from them, but they couldn't dole out, you know, civil service jobs the way they used to in the 19th century. So now they had to form, they had to find a new power base, you know, because you had civil service reform. So now Tammany Hall is basically looking uh to how they're gonna grow their power coming into the new century. And in a lot of ways, maybe uh the owners were able to have a lot more influence than they might have a few years earlier, whereas the workers might have been more of a thought for Tammany leaders. So there's that push and pull between all these forces going on at the time.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

So what is the name what is the title of the book?

SPEAKER_04 40:31

The book is called Hell's Hundred Acres, which is uh basically a a nickname given to this area of Manhattan in the in the 1950s, I believe, by the fire commissioner at the time, because by then all of these factory loft buildings that uh were so prevalent at the end of the 19th century, early 20th century, much of them, uh much of the manufacturing by the 1950s had moved out of New York City and moved on, and these factory lofts were starting to deteriorate. And uh there were a large uh, you know, a very big fire hazard at the time, these uh abandoned factory lofts. And they would go on in the coming decades to become uh home to artists, and that's where Soho grew out of, and now it's very trendy. But at that time it was a very dangerous area. And uh I think you start to see, you know, I what I tried to show in the book is where, you know, how these buildings, you know, they're so characteristic to the neighborhood, but they, you know, they have their own story to tell in a way, you know, the the dangers they brought and the changes to everyday life.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Andrew Serra's novel about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is called Hell's Hundred Acres, and it's available nowhere ever you buy books. In fact, Andrew Serra has written a number of books that you'll find interesting. Many thanks to Andrew for spending some time in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, Copywright 2025. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Support the show or text me from the homepage. I'm your host, Melbourne, for the Middle End Infinitum.