The Monroe journal. [volume] (Monroe, N.C.) 189?-1965, 1911-03-28
LIKE HAIL ON A PAVEMENT.
One Hundred and Fifty Girls Meet
Death In New York Fire.


in the Elevator Shafts, or They
Were Crushed as They Shot
Down Upon the Hard Pavement
A Riot Of Death and Suffer
ing-No Fire Escapes and Some
body Responsible for Multiplied
Murder.
A ten story factory building in
New York, without fire escapes, was
the trap Of death that caught one
hundred and fifty young girls in
New York city last Saturday. Either
they persisted in the flames or were
crushed to death as they jumped to
the sidewalk. The owners OF the
factory escaped.
How the fire started will perhaps
never be known. \ corner on the
eighth floor was its point of origin
and the three upper floors only we're
swept. On the ninth floor 90 bodies
we're found; 63 or more persons
were crushed to death by jumping,
and more than 80 clcgged the eleva-
tor shafts.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
square at $50 o'clock were scattered
BY the whiz Of something rushing
through the air before them, there
was horrible flop on the pavement
and a body hattened on the flags.
Wsyfarers on the opposite side OF
the street shaded their eyes against
the setting sun and saw the windows
Of the three upper floors Of the build
ing black with girls crowding to the
stills. There were no fire escapes.
Don't jump, don't jump" yelled
the crowd. But the girls had no
alternative. The pressure Of the
maddened hundreds behind them
and the urging Ct their own fears
we're too strong. They began to fall
to the sidewalk in terrible rain Of
flesh and blood.
Four alarms we're rung within 10
minutes. Before the engines could
respond, before the nets could be
stretched or the ladders raised, five
girls had fallen from the eighth and
ninth floors so heavily that they
broke through the glass and iron
roofs of the subcellars and crashed
through the very streets into the
vaults below. In an hour the fire
was out; in half an hour it had done
its worst; probably the death list
was full in 20 minutes.
Seven hundred hands, 500 OF them
women, we're employed by the shirt
waist company, They sat in rows at
their whirring machines, the tables
before them piled with fimsy cloth,
the floors Uttered with lint, the air
itself full Of flying, infammable dust.
The first rush of fame was almost
an explosion. Operators died in
their chairs, their lungs scared by
inhaling flame. Others crowded
into the elevator shafts after the cars
had made their last trip. Still 9TH
ers we're pushed of the inadequate
interior fire escape,
In such a horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows
that the fire nets, stretched by the
first companies to STRIVE, we're soon
gorged beyond capacity. Twelve
bodies weighted one net to the burst
ing point but the bodies kept on
tumbling to the pavement, through
meshes that could no longer support
them.
When the first breath Of famt
cur!ed over the e6s,e Of a pie Of
shirting en- the eighth floor five
minutes before quitting time, hun
dreds were in line before the cash
ier's window. In the Office building
across Washington place scores q
men detained beyond citce hours
worked at their desks. One Of then
saw a girl rush TO a window and
throw up the sash. Behind hel
danced seething curtain Of yellow
flame. She climbed to The sill, stood
in the black outline against The
light, hesitating, tieD, with a las
touch Ct futile thrift, whirled down
ward through the woven wire glass
of a canopy to the tagging below
Her sisters, who followed, famed
through the air like rockets. Theil
path could be followed, but hardl!
heard. 1t was SIS feet from tn,
eighth floor to the ground, about 81
feet from the ninth floor, lis fee
from the cornice of the roof, and tn
upward rush Of the draught and th'
craekle Of the flames drowned thei
cries.
Six girls fought their way to
window on the ninth floor over tn
bodies Of fallen fellow workers anC
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