Research Paper on:
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
(Leap for life). It was 4:45 on a Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911. Within roughly twenty minutes 146 girls would be dead (CUILRS). Examination of the details of the fire  and the circumstances indicate that the girls were victims both of gender and ethnic prejudice. The employees of the factory were primarily girls and young women between the ages  of 13 and 23, the daughters of immigrant Jews (Leap for life). This particular New York sweatshop was located on the ninth floor. Most of the doors were locked and  those that were not locked opened inwards, so they were held shut by the onslaught of panicked women trying to get out (Leap for life). The only protection provided against  fire were "27 buckets of water and a fire escape" that collapsed as people tried to escape (Leap for life). The fire spread quickly. Fire Engine Company 72 and 33  were the first to arrive, but their ladders only reached as far as the seventh floor (Leap for life). Many of the girls jumped rather than burn to death. Some  of the girls tried to jump to the ladders on the seventh floor. No one succeeded. Sometimes they jumped three and four at a time. A United Press reporter,  William Shephard described his horror at witnessing this. "Thud-dead; thud-dead;...sixty-two thud-deads" (Leap for life). Shephard explained that he described it in this manner because the "sound and the thought of  death" came to him each time, "at the same instant" (Leap for life). Bodies of teenage girls lined the streets. Would-be rescuers held blankets to try to break the girls  fall, but they ripped form the weight of the bodies and the speed at which they traveled. Pauline Cuoio Pepe, a nineteenth-year-old sewing machine operator, was one of the