1900s

FACTORY GIRLS MARCH 24, 1911

TRIANGLE WAIST FACTORY

A: A tucker

B: A Cutter

C: A Button hole maker

B: A Cutter

D: A Seamstress

A: A Cutter

C: Machine Operator

D: Sewing machine

A: Jew

D: Italian

C: Irish

B: Jewish

C: A Jew

D: Jew

C: Regno D’ Italia

B: I don’t have a name

C: Wait, I don’t have a name

A: My name? What’s in a name?

D: I have a name!

A: I live here. For one year. Ludlow Street

B: Orchard

C: The Bronx…near the subway station

D: 212 Avenue B, 6 months 3 days. Seven of us on the third floor…no privacy, believe you me.

A: I am one of the anonymous masses

ALL: We are

B: the factory girls, similarly dressed…blouses and skirts…similarly postured, the usual expressions…

(each one points to her commonplace expression)

A: It is exciting! I am independent woman…Lots of girls, so many engaged to be married. Matya is to be married in two days! I want to be married too! Every day, I walk down the creaky stairs, so early in the morning, but I want to be early and meet some of the girls so we could talk before work. You know, we can’t talk at work. (pause) I know some of the Italian girls but they… they’re English is not too good.

D: Concetta Prestifilippio…I live with my cousin Josephine on Cornelia Street, New York City! Also, Antoinetta, Maria and her twin sisters, Rosie and Vincenza. The baby, Albina, she’s 14 but she works at the factory too…cutting the threads from the cuffs. We all work together…Joesphine got me the job and I can send $2 a week to my family back in home. I keep $1 dollar for myself for lunch each week.

A: The Jewish girls I can speak Yiddish to, we are friends…we become friends. We are so lucky to be in New York City. Oh but the work is tedious…so tiring. I’m so tired.

B: I’m a feller hand…I sit next to the men, the supervisors. I am 16. All day I join the bottom of the lining to the garment. All day I hunch over, shrinking away from the men’s glances. “Careful, don’t twist the sleeve lining. Take small stiches.” I do this for hours. I’m so tired. But, I work fast. I do as much work as “the grown-up girls”…they don’t like me. Nettie, the head feller hand called me a “snip of a girl coming and taking the very bread out of her son’s mouth.”

Bat zona…and I don’t care if she hears me!

Thread the needles,

Pump the foot, push it through

Each piece, follow the pattern

Cut, cut

Slide it through, and slide, slide it through and slide

Tuck it, tuck it, hold, tuck it tuck it hold

Repeat and find more phrases

C: I want to sing! I want to sing!

(insert some song they can sing – prayer song or current popular American song?)

I am not allowed to sing …I’m not allowed to talk, oh no. I’ve already been spoke to and sent home…1/2 a day and of course, no pay, you know? Another day, I had some … trouble … my pad … the hooks on my belt broke and I had to use pins to keep it in place. The forelady yells, “what’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with you. Now we’re behind twenty-three embroideries. Why so long in the toilet? Huh?” I didn’t know what to say, I am embarrassed. She pushed me back to the machine, threatened to fire me if I “choose to stay in the toilet.” They were mean people, the bosses, and we were afraid, actually. Even though the strike ended in March, they did nothing different. Nothing. The doors are still locked…I am no thief, but they assume. We still have to wait for the freight elevator to enter and leave the building. We still can’t talk. We can’t talk. Such a sin, such a sin.

146 women and girls died on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, NYC

Please honor them by searching Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.