Flesh and Blood So Cheap

The book presents unionization as a vital aspect of the fight for workers’ rights. Because unionization requires workers to come together in numbers, there must be solidarity, or fellowship arising from common interests. Despite the many superficial differences between the Russian Jewish and southern Italian immigrants, workplaces brought the people together into proximity to recognize their shared hardships.

Though Russian Jewish and southern Italian laborers worked together in the garment industry, they were initially separated by language and culture. As Marrin points out, immigrants tended to settle in communities with others from their homelands. They spoke different languages and had different customs. The early sweatshop model also kept groups separated, preventing the kind of solidarity necessary to force widespread changes in workplace safety and conditions. Once the new-model factories were built, immigrants from different backgrounds mixed in larger numbers. The immigrant women workers employed at the factories were 55% Jewish and 35% Italian; however, no Black women were employed there, as they were barred from garment factories because of racial discrimination.

The abuses and indignities of factory work bonded the women, making 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” (78). This emphasis on common interests allowed the women to build consensus and solidarity across religious and ethnic groups—solidarity that helped fortify them against the fears about the financial hardship that held them back from striking. Though each woman worker was powerless alone, their coming together was powerful enough to move the factory owners.

Further solidarity was exhibited by Black women who were offered the opportunity to work in the factories as scabs. Marrin describes the debate among Black women: Many felt they owed the white strikers nothing, but the community ultimately decided to “urge” each Black woman to “refrain from injuring other working women, and whenever possible, to ally herself with the cause of union labor” (93).

Solidarity also crossed class lines: Wealthy women allied with the striking workers, though they may have had some alternative agendas. Feminists saw the Uprising of the 20,000 as “more than a struggle over wages and working conditions” (94)—part of the larger struggle for gender equality. Suffragists like Alva Belmont saw the workers’ plight as the result of their inability to vote as women. Belmont and other suffragists joined the union cause because they believed that they could educate the public about “the link between working conditions and the ballot” (95).

As Marrin explains, no individual woman or worker in the early 20th century had meaningful power to change their circumstances, just as no individual worker in present-day Bangladesh has that power. Progress and resistance require people to recognize their common interests and band together, their power increasing with every person who joins the cause. This requires solidarity between groups that may otherwise see themselves as completely separate.

Wealth and greed are depicted as corrupting influences throughout the book. This greed is exhibited by the industry titans who freely wasted money while others starved, by factory owners who valued their property and profits above the lives of their workers, and even by the insurance companies who did nothing to require safety features in factories. Tammany Hall bosses made decisions based on greed rather than on constituent needs and benefits. The rampant greed of those in power directly contributed to workplace tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris are prominent examples of the corrupting and destructive power of greed. Originally poor immigrants themselves, Blanck and Harris began in the tenement sweatshops, meaning they had experienced the miseries of sweatshop work. However, as contractors and finally manufacturers, Blanck and Harris imposed the same cruel and abusive practices on their workers that had been imposed on them, in the interest of maximizing profits and minimizing costs. Though they bought the most up-to-date technology of the time, Blanck and Harris did not invest in the safety features that would protect their workers in the event of a fire—and since greed ruled the day, there was no one to force or require them to.

Marrin argues that insurance companies preferred their clients to insure unsafe buildings in order to charge higher premiums. The insurance companies collected enough money that they did not mind paying out for the smaller fires owners would sometimes set to recoup costs of materials or get a quick influx of cash. Though fire safety and prevention technology existed elsewhere in the country, New York City’s greed and corruption meant that these advances were almost totally absent. As Marrin explains, “[F]ire safety did not ‘pay’” (108); fire drills would take away productive work time while installing fire prevention technologies would affect profits.

Marrin demonstrates throughout the book how greed led to the dehumanization of workers. One factory owner told safety engineer H. F. J. Porter, “Let ‘em burn. They’re a lot of cattle, anyway” (109), equating the people he employed with animals raised for slaughter. For owners like this, personal property and profits were far more important than the lives of workers; owners were not willing to sacrifice any of their wealth to ensure safety and fair working conditions. Injured, troublesome, or dead workers were easily replaced by the vast numbers of poor immigrants. The supply of workers was so much greater than the demand that they were seen as disposable.

Wealth was so much more valued than lives that, as Marrin points out, one judge “confused factory owners with the Almighty,” telling a striker, “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” (92). The irony of this statement lies in the leisure and luxury enjoyed by the wealthy, who flaunted and wasted their wealth while many in the city starved or lived on the streets. Marrin describes the richest as wasting their resources on absurdly opulent events like “dog dinners,” or parties where “their pets wore gold collars and ate the best cuts of steak” (34).

Greed and corruption also ruled Tammany Hall, the headquarters of New York’s Democratic Party, which tacitly ran the city and operated on bribery and graft: “Contracts to build bridges, sewers, and elevated railroads went to the highest bidder. Want a job as a city clerk or judge, or promotion from patrolman to sergeant or captain? Pay up!” (82). Tammany Hall owned the police and justice systems, which meant that law enforcement did nothing to protect strikers from violence paid for by factory owners. Marrin exposes the destruction this greed caused through detailed descriptions of its effects—sweatshop work conditions, factory abuses, and ultimately, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which claimed so many lives.