Flesh and Blood So Cheap

“Women played a key role in these activities. Wives not only ran the home, they and their daughters helped the menfolk earn a living.”

This description of Russian Jewish families reveals the balance in roles between the men and women. It shows that women were primary contributors to the household, setting the stage for both their position as human anchors (see Index of Terms) and the widespread entry of young Jewish women into the garment industry.

“People unleashed their anger in pogroms, from a Russian word meaning ‘riot’ or ‘devastation.’ A pogrom, in effect, was a license to commit murder.”

Pogroms, or violent government-sanctioned campaigns against Jewish people in Russia, contributed to the dire circumstances that forced millions of Russian Jews to flee to the United States in search of freedom from religious persecution and violence. Marrin’s inclusion of this violence draws a parallel between the wealthy factory owners and the oppressive governments and societies that immigrants were escaping.

“Growing cities brought growing problems. Traditional buildings of wood, stone, and brick could not be very tall without collapsing under their own weight. How, then, to put more people, more buildings, more factories—more everything—into a limited area? Reach for the sky!”

Marrin introduces the skyscraper as a solution to growing population density and industrialization. New York City is now synonymous with skyscrapers. At the turn of the 20th century, these were still in the process of being built. Skyscrapers were a sign of progress and growing industrialization, an acknowledgment of New York’s growing influence, but they also came with risks and drawbacks. The population density Marrin describes contributed to the atrocious living and working conditions in tenements and sweatshops. Tall buildings also resulted in occupants being trapped during fires, unable to safely reach the ground.

“Horses, however, left behind tons of manure each day, more than sanitation workers could clear away. Things got so bad that women in the wealthy Beekman Hill section of Manhattan complained about a manure pile twenty-five feet high. When it rained, streams of liquefied manure turned streets into gooey, evil-smelling swamps. In dry weather, the wind blew the filth, turned into fine dust, into people’s faces, homes, and food. Dozens died each year from inhaling poisonous ‘street dust.’”

This passage describes the unsanitary conditions of a New York City that lacked the infrastructure to keep streets clean and safe. Horses, a common form of transportation, added more population density to the city. Like humans, they required food and created waste. New York was growing so fast that city resources struggled to keep pace.

“Rich folk did not ride the subway. When they went about town, it was in luxurious carriages and the most expensive automobiles, like royalty. The wealthy felt entitled to everything they had, because God supposedly made them ‘better’ than ordinary folk. Showing off their wealth proved their superiority, making others give them the respect they claimed to deserve.”

This passage gives insight into the relations between the wealthy and the working class. Working people were seen as inferior and subhuman by the rich, who had little empathy for their plight. This insight reveals the marginalizing dehumanization of the poor, a dynamic that continues in many ways to this day.

“To meet the rising demand for immigrant housing, landlords cut these into tiny apartments. Sometimes, they rented cellars or built another house, little more than a shack, in the backyard. Thus, greenhorns crowded into districts never intended to house such large numbers. Every building, an English visitor wrote, ‘seemed to sweat humanity at every window and door.’”

In describing tenements, Marrin reveals the cost of New York’s rapidly growing population density. With little space to build new housing, existing buildings were portioned into smaller dwellings, where large families lived and sometimes took in additional boarders. Without toilet facilities, and constructed from flammable building materials, tenements were crowded, filthy, and vulnerable to fires. The working class was endangered both at home and at work; due to sweatshops, some workers could spend all day and night trapped inside a tenement building with little sunlight or fresh air.

“Not everything was so bleak and miserable. Immigrants, fleeing cramped apartments, spent much of their time in the streets. Outdoors, the air fairly crackled with human energy.”

As Marrin establishes in the book, immigrants lived in clusters and formed strong communities. Since the indoors was so cramped and dirty, many spent their free time on the street. Children played games and adults read and talked about the news, theater, and current events. This added to the electric feel of the city that so captured the imagination of visitors.

“Having faced discrimination in Russia, Jews took advantage of the public schools more than any other immigrant group. Learning, they believed, was their passport to a better life.”

Despite the squalor of tenements and the abuses of employers, the United States still offered opportunities to Jewish immigrants oppressed in Russia. Despite access to education, however, many immigrant families allowed only their sons to benefit; daughters worked to help support the families instead. Girls, withdrawn from this “passport to a better life,” were not given the same opportunities for advancement or independence as their brothers. This sexist inequality echoes the sentiments of male union leaders, who saw women as inferior and did not allow them to participate in the labor rights movement alongside their male counterparts.

“This limited Italians to unskilled jobs in the cities. Chiefly manual laborers, they took, bigots snarled, ‘work no white man could stand.’ Yet such bitter resentment ignored a key fact: they did work that had to be done if America was to grow and prosper.”

Southern Italians, who had faced discrimination in Italy, continued to be seen as inferior in the US; by excluding them from the category of “white men,” Americans continued the bigotry first practiced by northern Italians, who had derogatorily called their southern neighbors “Black Italians” (10).

“Immigrants understood that unless they found work, and quickly, they could not survive, let alone prosper. Early-twentieth-century America had nothing like the social ‘safety net’ we take for granted today.”

In comparing labor conditions in the early 1900s to today, Marrin helps the reader see how much progress has been made by labor activists. He also hints at the struggle and hard work it took for so many immigrants to rise to the middle and upper classes. The word “prosper” here ties the American promise of hard work leading to success, to the corrupting forces of profit and wealth. In this way, Marrin suggests criticisms of exploitative capitalism.

“Any factory owner was always more powerful than any employee. Since owners hired workers and paid their wages, they made the rules, however unfair these might be. By themselves, then, individual workers were helpless.”

This passage establishes the circumstances that led to the need for unionization in industry. When Marrin describes the individual worker as “helpless,” he is highlighting the vast disparity in power between employees and owners and reinforcing how vulnerable to abuse and exploitation workers were.

“The new-model factory, however, did more than increase production; it made it easier to form unions. Firms like the Triangle Waist Company gathered hundreds of workers under their roof. With so many people so close together, they had the chance to share ideas, voice grievances, and discuss solutions.”

Marrin points out the irony of the new-model factory: Designed to maximize profits, it instead created an environment that fostered collaboration and allowed workers to share grievances. Had the sweatshop model stayed dominant, groups of workers would have remained too small for organizing and collective action.

“For without public support, they must admit defeat soon, leaving the owners stronger than ever. What to do?”

The women workers, already demeaned by male unions and denied the right to vote, did not have the power or platform to advocate for their cause with the public. Only when they made high-placed, powerful allies were the women able to sustain their strike and win concessions from owners: Public support came from the newspaper connections these allies had.

“Judge Olmstead, for example, confused factory owners with the Almighty: ‘You are on strike against God and nature, whose firm law is that man shall earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. You are on strike against God.’”

Olmstead’s attitude toward the strikers reflects the ingrained prejudice against the working class; in comparison, the wealthy were seen as “‘better’ than ordinary folk” (32). This demonstrates the American class prejudice that awaited the immigrants even as they fled to the United States in search of equality.Olmstead’s attitude toward the strikers reflects the ingrained prejudice against the working class; in comparison, the wealthy were seen as “‘better’ than ordinary folk” (32). This demonstrates the American class prejudice that awaited the immigrants even as they fled to the United States in search of equality.

“By the strike’s end, 85 percent of all shirtwaist makers in New York had joined the ILGWU. Local 25 grew from a hundred members before the strike to at least twenty thousand after it. Most of all, said Morris Hillquit, it touched the conscience of New Yorkers. ‘The people of this city began to realize that society owes some duties’ to those who struggle for a living.’”

This passage shows the effect of the Uprising of the 20,000 not just on the garment industry, but on the city of New York as a whole. Though women workers were seen as lacking the fortitude needed to unionize, it was their efforts that swayed public opinion toward the need for laws and regulations to protect workers. Highly placed allies also had an important effect, as without their help the strikers would not have had the legal and financial support they needed to sustain the strike.

“One man whom I advised to install a fire drill replied to me: ‘Let ‘em burn. They’re a lot of cattle, anyway.’ Workers could be easily replaced.”

Like Quotes 6 and 15, this passage provides an example of class dynamics and the dehumanization of poor immigrants. Though life-saving safety precautions existed, owners were too motivated by greed to see workers as human beings rather than as disposable resources that could be easily replenished. This is the same sentiment expressed in the title of the book: “flesh and blood” was “cheap” to replace. The loss of a worker cost owners nothing because there were no requirements for workplace safety nor any compensation for families of people injured or killed on the job.

“We cannot know what passed through the minds of those who decided to jump. Yet their thinking, in those last moments of life, may have gone like this: If I jump, my family will have a body to identify and bury, but if I stay in this room, there will be nothing left.”

In speculating about their final thoughts, Marrin adds humanity to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, individualizing them for readers who otherwise would think of them as an abstract number of dead. Marrin’s suggestion that jumpers may have been thinking of their loved ones’ peace of mind foreshadows the efforts of families to identify victims based on a bit of jewelry, a shoe, or a hairstyle.

“Fire survivors […] may not have visible wounds. Certain wounds do not bleed, nor can they be bandaged or treated with medicine. For they are wounds to the spirit, invisible scars carried for the rest of the survivors’ lives. They may constantly remember and relive the experience. Nightmares may jolt them awake, shaking, sweating, and screaming. Everyday noises—sirens, clanging bells, thunder—can make them panic.”

Marrin provides a youth-friendly explanation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a psychological condition that can sometimes affect those who have undergone a terrible ordeal. This aids younger readers in recognizing the profound psychological effects of the fire on its survivors, reinforcing the painful legacy of the famous fire.

“Yet that loved one had also played a practical role. Victims, usually daughters, had been family breadwinners. Often, too, they supported aged parents in Russia and Italy. How could these people live now?”

Marrin highlights the practical and financial effects of the losses the victims’ families suffered. Many immigrant families lived paycheck-to-paycheck, with every dollar needed to stay fed and sheltered. These young women’s deaths stripped their families not only of loved ones, but also of financial security and, in some cases, of the hope of helping another family member travel to the United States.

“Martha Bruere, a wealthy reformer, watched the procession go past her window for six hours. ‘Never have seen a military pageant or triumphant ovation so impressive,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘It is dawning on these thousands on thousands that such things do not have to be!’”

The Triangle fire was so impactful that over 400,000 people came out to watch the funeral procession that followed it. The tragic solemnity and unthinkable loss moved public sentiment toward supporting workers’ rights and demands for workplace safety. The Triangle fire thus became a powerful policy motivator and political tool.

“If organized crime drove many companies from New York, foreign competition threatened their very existence. Over the years, the United States had lowered or ended most tariffs—that is, the taxes a government charges on imported goods. As a result, foreign-made clothing began to flood into the country. While strong American unions tried to keep wages high, foreign producers had to deal with only weak unions or none at all. Thus, their labor costs stayed low.”

Marrin’s scholarly focus on liberty under the law is reflected in this passage, which demonstrates the need for regulation to ensure that American workers are protected from unscrupulous greed. Without tariffs, regulated American workplaces are vulnerable to undercutting by foreign competitors who are not held to the same standards of safety and a livable wage.

“In other words, bearing hardships today can pay off tomorrow. So it had been with the new immigrants of the early 1900s. Eventually, better wages and working conditions created opportunities for them and, more important, their children.”

Despite the struggles early 20th-century immigrants faced, many of them were able to achieve the American Dream; Marrin points out that this dream was only achievable due to “better wages and working conditions,” which were regulated by the government. This passage emphasizes the importance of a government that stands between the working class and the wealthy who are incentivized to exploit them.

“‘My concern,’ says Sachs, ‘is not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are few.’ For, he insists, they are the price a nation must pay for economic development and a higher standard of living. He also argues that labor activists may harm the very people they want to help.”

Marrin includes noted economists Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Krugman in his discussion of sweatshops in the developing world to give weight to the argument that these workplaces should not be examined through a simplistic lens. Just as factory jobs were desirable despite their dangerous conditions, long hours, and low wages, sweatshop jobs in developing countries provide opportunities for steady work and pay. This suggests that there is a process to industrial growth, and that it is important to learn from the mistakes and struggles of history. Boycotting sweatshops does not help the workers, but organizing workers to demand better treatment and conditions does.