Union Honors 104-Year-Old Survivor of 1911 Factory Fire
What 104-year-old Bessie Cohen still remembers is the running.
“Everybody was running, trying to get out,” said Cohen, the last survivor of the 1911 New York City factory fire that killed at least 146 garment workers. “And there was this beautiful little girl, my friend, Dora. I remember her face before she jumped.”
It was 85 years ago, on March 25, 1911, that flames ripped through the 10-story Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory on Manhattan’s lower Eastside. The tragedy triggered adoption of some of the first labor laws guarding worker safety in New York and other states.
On Monday morning, representatives of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and about 20 residents of the Jewish Home for the Aging gathered in Reseda to honor Cohen for her courage in escaping what labor activists call the nation’s worst factory fire.
Cohen was a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant from Russia who had been in the United States only three years when she started working at the factory for $3 a week.
Today, union leaders said, Cohen’s life serves as a reminder of the immigrants who still labor in unsafe and unjust conditions in sweatshops nationwide.
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