Expendable

street corners. Whatever their backgrounds. The news he's shared a system after buying a stack of a hundred papers from the publisher for fifty cents, that'd sell each paper for a penny. That meant they earned just fifty cents for a day's work if they were lucky enough to sell all hundred papers. It's the equivalent of sixteen dollars a day in today's money. And in July of eight, New

Yorkers stopped getting their papers. The news ees went on strike, and that put wealthy news giants like William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer in a bind. The newspapers had bumped the price to sixty cents a bundle, cutting into the newses miniscule profits, and when the kids found out that not only had the price gone up, but the bundles included fewer papers that had enough. They tipped the New

York Journal delivery wagon over and stole the papers. The next day, the news hees met at Manhattan's City Hall Park and formed a union. From that day forward, they all vowed to never buy or sell a paper until Hurst and Pulitzer met their demands returned the price for a hundred papers backed fifty cents. Eighteen year old Louis Biletti and twenty one year old David Simons were some of the older news ease and became the initial leaders

of the newsboys strike. The publishing giants ignored the newses. In their eyes, the problem would soon be resolved. They had enough money to hold, and the kids didn't. Furthermore, police broke up strikers, often by force, but the news hees knew the system from the street level. They ambushed the journal wagons, stealing the papers so scabs couldn't sell them. They marched through the streets, tearing up papers and dousing unsympathetic news stands with water, though never the women resellers.

Bloody told the group a feller don't socle. Lady Bloody held speeches in the park, telling fellow news ees and gathered crowds alike. I'm trying to figure how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, and I can't see it. From then on, more patrons took up the newses cause the papers started to panic, and the public thought it was funny that rich men like Pulitzer and Hearst were hemorrhaging money due to a bunch of poor street kids.

And sure, the strike had hurt the papers, but the kids weren't faring well either. Within a week, word leaked that the papers had bought Ballettian Simmons. When both began wearing nicer clothes, the two were kicked out of the union and narrowly escaped beating. After two weeks, Pulitzer and Hurst agreed to buy back any unsold newspapers each day, Thinking they've been offered a solid deal, the children, some

of them just seven years old, went back to work. Sadly, labor laws barely existed at the turn of the century, and it would take more than child labor to change them. I'm Lauren Bogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows by the American dream was more of a nightmare for New York City sweatshop employees. Factory workers earned barely enough to scrape by. The housing developments where they lived were filthy and unsafe

without proper pervices or regulation. Garbage lined the streets. Parents couldn't afford decent food, much less childcare, and children often roamed the streets and attended kept at or below poverty levels. Frustrated workers began to clash with city officials and the corruption at Tammany Hall. Women wanted voting rights, workers wanted better pay and conditions. Wealthy business owners rewarded politicians for preventing or sidelining new laws aimed at protecting workers. Safer

conditions and higher pay affected their bottom line. After all, Tammany Hall politicians kept the tensions at bay, occasionally doing local communities some small favor, maybe a cleaner park or a half hearted attempt at trash pick up. Every Day, workers piled into the sweatshops, often working from five in the morning until nine at night. Hundred hour workweeks were not uncommon. Tuberculosis spread quickly in overcrowded factories and poorly

ventilated sweatshops. In July of nine, two hundred garment workers at Rosen Brothers shirtwaist manufacturing shop walked out, demanding pay increase. The shirts women's blouses that buttoned up the front had become all the rage, and employees hoped the huge demand would prompt management to give them a decent wage. Management refused to negotiate, hiring strike breakers to attack the picket lines. If the picketers fought back tammany officials ordered the police

force to arrest them or beat them back. The clothing company wasn't the first or the last to use the technique, but this time the workers didn't back down. The strike went on for a month before the company relented and gave their employees a raise. Elsewhere in the city, women and teen girls working in a necktie shop had it rougher being female. They were paid a pittance compared to

their male counterparts. Their pay was so small that no matter how many hours they worked, they couldn't afford to live anywhere except in the attics, sellers, and small rooms that the company provided, and despite the outcry for equal rights, the businesses and politicians ignored them. When the women went on strike, the company felt certain that losing both their pay and their homes would have them back to work in no time. But after weeks of lost profits, the

necktie company relented. While gender equality had a long way to go, the women and girls were given a raise. The early nineteen hundreds were a time of change, though the women's and workers rights advocate Clara Lemlich worked tirelessly as a union organizer. Her small five foot frame allowed her to move from shop to shop mostly unnoticed. The long hours, miniscule pay, and unsafe working conditions were only

a part of what angered her. Women and girls were expected to work with salacious foremen and managers who changed clocks, and supervisors who followed them to the bathroom and subjected the women to daily search is of their purses and other belongings to businesses. Clara was a threat that had

to be dealt with. It's unclear witch company or companies hired Charles Rose and his gang of men to stalk Clara, but their goal was clear, make sure Clara knew who she was up against in the most brutal way possible. On September they followed her through the streets of New York's Lower East Side, until they were away from public view. She recognized Charles and a few of the other men

as strikebreakers and understood what was about to happen. Two days later, she returned to the picket line with broken ribs and her face battered. The story of her brutal attack served to tell the others what the men and those who had hired them would sink to. Max Blank and Isaac Harris, who owned the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, watched the strikes but paid little attention. So far, they had managed to keep their employee is in line, though not

because they treated them much better. The company was the largest manufacturer of shirtwaist blouses, popular with the poorest career woman to the richest of socialites, and the men felt their operation would go unscathed. The opposite was true. Their company was about to make some major changes when it came to employee welfare. Blank and Harris were Jewish immigrants from Russia, where they had endured horrific conditions and sweatshops themselves.

Despite this, neither man seemed particularly bothered that they had become perpetrators of the same type of treatment that they had fled from. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a building on Washington Place. The average work day began at eight am sharp. The young girls and women talked about the latest play or fashions

as they jostled their way to the freight elevators. There were stairwells, but those remained locked and reserved for the management, mostly men, like owners Blanket Harris and factory manager Samuel Bernstein. The passenger elevators were also locked and manned by operators. Only management and customers were permitted to use them. On March nineteen eleven, the women and girls, some making as little as seven dollars a week, hurried to their stations

as they did every day. There were quotas to be met. With more women in the workforce, demand for the simple button up blouses meant the company expected their employees to work faster, and by the end of the day garments piled up at the buttonhole machine. Business was good. Blanket Harris claimed they were the shirtwaist Kings. Their company bundled, boxed, and shipped over two thousand garments a day. Every day.

The men raked in the money, and all that wealth went to their heads, to them the workers didn't have a lot to complain about. Six hundred employees were read out over three floors, after all, and they had the latest sewing machines. And while they were expected to work thirteen hour days, seven days a week, the shifts were shorter than at some other companies, with no breaks except

a half hour lunch. Smokers often took drags on their cigarettes between cutting fabric, then tossed the butts into nearby trash cans. Despite the flammable materials surrounding them, no one called them on it. At four thirty pm that day, a foreman began rounds to distribute the weekly pay envelopes, Starting on the tenth floor, Some of the young girls talked about a weekend date with a new bow of

some older women playned a nice dinner at home. One girl started to sing a popular song, Every little movement has a meaning all its own. Then a scream echoed from one of the floors below. Like the others, Bernstein turned to look out the tenth floor window. Smoke billowed past them. One of the women shouted that a fire had broken out on the eighth floor, a wide open space full of flammable cotton and tissue paper. Every employee

immediately understood the danger. On the eighth floor, one of the fabric cutters grabbed a fire bucket to douse the flames, though one bucket was hardly effective against the rapidly spreading fire. The hundred naty workers on the floor headed for the nearest stairwells in an attempt to force the doors open. Realizing the fire was spreading fast and the stairs were blocked, others climbed out onto the balcony and window ledges. On the tenth floor, Bernstein gathered a few of the other

men and began hooking up the emergency fire hose. When they turned on the valve, they discovered there was no water pressure. To Bernstein's horror, one of the workers clothes caught fire, engulfing him in flames. Employees crushed themselves against the door, screaming for help. When someone on the other side finally opened one of the doors. Bernstein had to rescue a woman who had fallen from being trampled and one of the seamstresses, Dinah, tried calling the ninth floor.

Bernstein pulled her away and towards the staircase. They were met with a wall of people trying to shove their way down the stairs. If he and Dinah joined them did meet a fiery death. Somehow, he had to convince as many people as he could their only chance of survival meant heading up to the roof of the burning building.

Outside the building, spectators began to gather. Employees who had found their way to the rickety fire escape crawled down to an open window on another floor, finding the stairwells locked there as well. Some of them reappeared moments later, while some did not. More workers found their way onto the fire escape. The spectators watched in horror as the flimsy metals swayed and creak, finally buckling under the weight,

spilling twenty people to their death. On one of the floors, twenty four year old yet A Lubits began to cry when she realized the stairwells were locked. A manager promptly reprimanded her. She paused, but only for a second, deciding that if she were about to die, she'd act anyway she wanted. She followed other girls who were hopping from table to table dodging the fire. The flames were everywhere,

and their hair began smolder. Coughing from inhaling smoke and ash Yetta found her way to the staircase, where Bernstein ushered her up the stairs. Owner Isaac Harris, had been on the phone placing orders when flames shot out of the tenth floor elevator shaft. Having a key to the passenger elevator, he quickly ushered seven d other employees passed the fire and crammed as many of them as would fit into the elevator car, sending it to the rooftop

and back. He had time to rescue a second load of people, but out a third when the elevator rails buckled from the heat. Harris and the remaining employees hurried for the stairwell and headed to the roof. Everyone covered their faces as best they could and climbed the dark stairwell filled with smoke. They reached the rooftop and had another choice to make the fire engine sirens rang in the distance, but the fire wouldn't wait. They had to

get off the building before the roof collapsed. South and east sides of the building had nothing but a hundred and thirty ft drop. Two taller buildings sat on the north and west sides. Survival meant reaching one of them. Below, Engine Company seventy two barreled down Broadway. Flames shot out of the eighth floor windows. The firefighters began hooking up hoses to the closest fire hydrants. As people began to crawl out onto the ledges above them, Captain Howard Rush

realized what was about to happen. He ordered his men to set up life next catch the jumpers. He had little hope the nets would work to save them from such a fall, but he had to try. A man on a ledge pissed a woman, and the two clasped hands and jumped to their deaths. Others followed a One woman's dress caught momentarily on a steel sign. When her burning clothes gave way, she fell to the sidewalk below.

Those trapped on the roof were aware of the fire trucks, and they also knew they couldn't wait for firemen to reach them, nor would they survive jumping. Desperate, Harris took a running leap and managed to grab hold of one of the taller buildings ledges. He pulled himself up and over and summoned help. A janitor supplied him with a ladder and the two men lowered it to the roof

and the employees stranded there. The professor in the second building also found two painters ladders, and though the ladders were too short to bridge the buildings, his students lowered them and held on while Bernstein hoisted people up to reach the bottom rungs until he was the last on the rooftop. It was now or never. The flames had reached the roof, with threatening to cave in at any moment. The students called out to Bernstein, encouraging him to make

a leap for it. He took several steps back to get a running start, He ran and jumped, managing to just barely grab the last rung on the ladder. When he reached the safety of the other rooftop, he and the others had a sobering view their co workers, who hadn't made it to the roof with them, were leaping from the ledges. Sixty two people jumped to their deaths that day. Had the stairwells and elevators been unlocked, evacuation would have taken barely a few minutes. Instead, approximately a

hundred and forty six people died. The papers reported on the cause and how long it had taken firefighters to put out the blaze. All that remained then was figuring out who was at fault. The answer should have been easy enough. After the investigation, Blank and Harris were indicted on charges of first and second degree manslaughter in mid April. The men hired the best lawyer money could buy for their joint trial, which began on December four of nineteen eleven.

By all accounts, attorney Max Stawyer had the reputation of a shark. Getting his clients off on all charges required that he destroy all survivors credibility as witnesses. He ruthlessly questioned each one repeatedly. When one woman didn't waver in her responses, he said that her calm demeanor and repeated insistence indicated she had rehearsed her answers instead of speaking

from memory. And Stawyer questioned the defense's argument that the doors had been maliciously locked during working hours to trap workers inside. Sure conditions the factory were poor. The building suffered from faulty ventilation and outdated heating and cooling systems, as well as dimly lit stairwells. Paper and fabric clippings littered the floor pemicles were haphazardly stored patterns hung from

the ceilings. Inadequate fire buckets, and few restrooms to provide running water made the factory high risk, but Stawyer claimed that the mostly steel and iron building had been advertised as fireproof. In short, Stawyer claimed that his clients were not negligent. Sadly, the jury agreed and acquitted both men of all charges. That didn't stop the civil lawsuits, though

families remained understandably angry. While the men may not have been at fault for starting the fire, they had insisted that the stairwells and elevators be locked, and had allowed working conditions that were ripe for such a fire. Stawyer represented the men in the civil lawsuits as well. One by one, he tore down the victim's credibility. In the end, neither man paid out a single penny to the survivors

or their families. The following year, the twenty three litigants managed to get the company's insurance to pay just seventy five per claim. Later, in Blank found himself in trouble once more for locking doors in his Fifth Avenue factory. This time the judge had to do something, so he fined Blank twenty dollars and then apologized for having to punish him. While this piece of American history is bleak,

changes did come from such an avoidable tragedy. Investigations into the Triangle Shirtwaist company led the New York State legislature to create a Factory Investigating Commission. The commission looked into conditions at factories throughout the city. They frequently tangled with tammany hall officials, yet still managed to put sixty four new labor rights laws into place. The new laws mandated the building access not be limited, that there be adequate

fireproofing and fire extinguishers. It also called for the installation of fire alarms and sprinkler systems. As for the conditions, workers were to be given eating facilities separate from their desks or work areas, and factories were to provide proper lavatories with running water. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Workers aren't the only ones who have found themselves in

danger due to unsafe workplace conditions. In March of nine nine, Americans flocked to theaters to see the latest blockbuster disaster movie in the China Syndrome, a journalist discovers a cover up on safety issues at a nuclear power plant. Though the movie became a box office hit, many people found the premise a little unrealistic. They couldn't have been more wrong. On a sandbar in the Susquehanna River, just ten miles from Pennsylvania's capital of Harrisburg stood three Mile Island, a

state of the art nuclear power plant. In v eight. The four year old plant had a second reactor added to ramp up affordable and reliable power during the energy crisis. Nuclear power plants used the controlled fission of uranium to produce controlled heat, which is used to turn water into steam, which drives turbines that generate electricity. The problem started at four in the morning on March nineteen seventy nine, when a minor malfunction caused temperatures to rise in the unit

to reactor. It automatically shut down and a tiny pressure valve opened to release an excess of cooling water in the form of steam, but then the valve failed to close. There was no sensor in place to report this failure, so no one noticed that too much cooling water was draining out through the valve. Residual heat from the fission process continued to heat the core. By early morning, the temperature reached four thousand degrees, just a thousand shive a meltdown.

If a meltdown occurred, radiation would drift across the countryside, exposing the population to radiation poisoning. Another automatic system was pushing in replacement coolant water, but the stuck valve was sending it into the pressurizer, which you do not want to fill up with water. The workers noticed, and in a panic, shut down the emergency water system. While they scrambled to understand what had happened. The contaminated water released

radioactive gases into the plant. While not life threatening, the levels were dangerous, and without a cooling mechanism, the core continued to heat. A six fifty six am, the plant supervisor declared a site area emergency. A half hour later, station manager Gary Miller announced a general emergency. By eight a m. News of the accident spread outside the plant. Independent investigators found slightly elevated levels of radiation from the

leaking water. The plant's parent company, Metropolitan Edison, downplay the damage, insisting that no radiation had been detected off the plant grounds. Governor Dick Thornberg had a difficult decision. Should he believe the plant manager, which would save a lot of trouble, or the investigators and order and evacuation. Considering the nature of the accident, He briefed the White House, confusing the situation further, it was unclear who had the authority to

declare an evacuation. The plant operators still had no answers and were undecided on how much information the public should know. State officials turned to the National Regulatory Commission NARC Inspectors investigated, noting that the accident was caused for concern, but not particularly alarming. There was another problem, though the NRC had difficulty gathering accurate information. By eight p m, plant operators finally realized that shutting down the water had been a mistake.

After restarting the pumps, core temperatures began to drop, though half the core was already molten, The narrowly missed a complete meltdown by about an hour. The trouble wasn't over yet, though. On marcht operators discovered a highly flammable bubble of hydrogen gas within the reactor building back on. A reaction between exposed zirkiloid tubes and superheated water had created hydrogen gas. The NFC worried that the bubble had the potential to

cause a meltdown or even a giant explosion. They just weren't sure. The plant released a public statement asking residents to stay in side. Governor Thornberg advised that pregnant women and all children within a five mile radius evacuate until further notice. Though the evacuation was voluntary, people panicked. More than a hundred thousand people fled the area. It took two weeks before many returned. In early April, President Jimmy

Carter arrived at the plant. Operators assured him that the hydrogen bubble had been bled away from the system and no longer posed a problem. In the aftermath, investigators looked into emissions that had been released and how the accident had affected workers at the plant and nearby residents. They concluded that wild workers had been exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation. No one outside of the plant seemed to

have been affected. Clean Up took fourteen years and cost more than a billion dollars, and the accident spurred massive changes in nuclear regulation making other plants greatly safer than Three Mile Island. In twenty nineteen, the plant shut down for good. The destroyed Unit two is sealed and slated to be dismantled. In American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum.

This episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts