The spread of sweatshops was reversed in the United States in the years following a horrific fire in 1911 that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a women’s blouse manufacturer near Washington...

The spread of sweatshops was reversed in the United States in the years following a horrific fire in 1911 that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a women’s blouse manufacturer near Washington Square in New York City. The company employed 500 workers in notoriously poor conditions. One hundred and forty-six workers perished in the fire; many jumped out windows to their deaths because the building’s emergency exits were locked. The Triangle fire made the public acutely aware of conditions in the clothing industry and led to pressure for closer regulation. The number of sweatshops gradually declined as unions organized and negotiated improved wages and conditions and as government regulations were stiffened (particularly under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which imposed a minimum wage and required overtime pay for work of more than 40 hours per week). 19 Unionization and government regulation never completely eliminated clothing sweatshops, and many continued on the edges of the industry; small sweatshops were difficult to locate and could easily close and move to avoid union organizers and government inspectors. In the 1960s, sweatshops began to reappear in large numbers among the growing labor force of immigrants, and by the 1980s sweatshops were again “business as usual.” In the 1990s, atrocious conditions at a sweatshop once again shocked the public. 20 A 1994 U.S. Department of Labor spot check of garment operations in California found that 93 percent had health and safety violations, 73 percent of the garment makers had improper payroll records, 68 percent did not pay appropriate overtime wages, and 51 percent paid less than the minimum wage. 21