Peg A. Lamphier - Little by Little We Won: A Novel Based on the Life of Angela Bambace

At first, the falling girls had seemed like birds. Bright cardinals, bone-white doves, swooping blackbirds in velvet-collared coats. But when they hit the cement, the terrible truth of the matter was revealed.

Alice Hoffman, 2014

March 25, 1911

D inah Lipschitz glanced at the wall clock and felt herself frown. It was 4:45 and quitting time. All she wanted to do was go home and take a bath. Instead she had to deal with an angry sewing machine operator. One of the new girls stood before her, Italian from the look of her, though she was more insistent than most Italian girls.

They told me $14 a week. Not $12, the dark-haired young woman said. She held her pay envelope out to Dinah. If its going to be twelve, Ill give my notice now. I can get $14 at any factory in the city.

Dinah tried not to smile at the womans tone. She didnt much like Mr. Harris and Mr. Blancks low wages either. Your name? Dinah asked.

The young womans brown eyes narrowed at Dinah. Elizabeth Viviano.

Its just that new girls generally get $12 a week.

Im not new. Not to shirtwaists, I mean. Just new to this company. Mr. Blanck said $14 when he hired me. Youve shorted me $2.

Dinah admired the young ladys pluck but worked for Mr. Harris and Mr. Blanck, not for these poor girls. Dinah pulled a ledger book out from under a stack of papers and flipped it open. Yes. There it was. Viviano, Elizabeth. $14.

After adding $2 to Miss Vivianos envelope, Dinah closed her heavy account books and tucked them into her bottom desk drawer. She pulled a slim gold chain with a key on it from her skirt pocket and locked the drawer along with the cash box. Most days she locked the cash box in the company safe on the tenth floor, but after paying the girls the box contained only $3.

Mr. Bernstein, the floor manager, ran past Dinahs desk. Fire, fire! he shouted.

Dinah looked up in alarm. Another darn fire. How many did that make in the last year? They had fire pails all around the room because they worked with cotton, which was even more flammable than paper. The factories that made wool jackets and skirts had it easy compared to shirtwaist factories. Ladies waists, as they called blouses these days, were made from thin, oh-so-flammable cotton.

Across the room near the windows, she saw their head cutter, Mr. Abramowitz, throw a pail of sand on a small fire under the cutting table. The flames guttered out, smoked, then seconds later once again burst into angry red flames. It was one of the boxes where the cutters threw their scraps. Mr. Abramowitz repeated the water pail treatment with no better success.

Dinah pushed back her desk chair and stepped toward the fire before stopping herself. There were dozens of male cutters and foremen on the floor. They didnt need a bookkeeper to put out the fire. And it didnt look like much. The nearly two hundred women in the room paid the tiny conflagration no attention at all. The Triangle Waist Company was famous for its periodic scrap fires. Dinah returned to her desk and picked up the phone. She called the company switchboard up on the tenth floor. It rang once, twice, three times. No one answered.

As she listened to the phone ring, Dinah looked over at the fire. Not so little nowit was burning the cutting table and some paper patterns that hung on the back wall. Where was Mary? Dinah checked the clock on her desk. It was 4:46 and the fire seemed ten times larger than a minute ago. On the tenth ring, Mary picked up. Dinah yelled Fire! into the receiver.

What? Mary asked.

Fire! On eight. Tell Mr. Blanck. Dinah was about to demand Mary patch her into Verna on the ninth floor when Mary hung up. Dinah stared at the phone. She couldnt call the ninth floor directly. All the company calls went through the switchboard. And she couldnt scamper up there. The doors on eight were locked and she didnt have the keys. Shed told Mr. Blanck and Mr. Harris she should have the keys, but they always said no. She thought they liked controlling the movements of hundreds of women, including herself.

Dinah put down the phone and stared at the fire. In the time it had taken her to make a phone call, it had gone from a small fire to an out-of-control blaze. Off to her left she saw Mr. Bernstein grab the hose nozzle and turn the water valve. His hand turned, then stopped. Nothing happened. He looked across the room to Dinah. Mr. Brown, the floor machinist, ran over to the hose stand. Dinah watched the two men confer. Brown turned the valve again. Still no water.

Bernstein handed something to Brown and ran to the far side of the room for two more fire pails. He ran straight at the fire. Just like a man, Dinah reflected. It was brave but not very smart. Fire pails werent going to put out the fire and they needed to get the girls out of the building.