http://www.oldnewark.com/histories/factoryfire01.htm....
Unwillingness to Protect Women Employees
This building, erected fifty years ago for men to make army pistols in, was now, when unsafe from construction, age, and contents, filled with women making paper boxes, lamps, and muslin night-gowns. The number of women employed varied from week to week, but the average numbers were fifty on the first-floor, forty on the second, fifteen on the third, and on the fourth an average of seventy-five; on the day of the fire there were one hundred and sixteen women on the fourth floor. Whereas the employees had formerly been all men, there were now about two hundred women and some fifteen men. The few alterations made to meet the needs of women workers were due entirely to the kindness of the employers. The State factory statutes made no concession to the sex of factory workers. The New Jersey Department of Labor has not power to compel an employer to provide proper sanitary arrangements. When the Department issued an order to Frank P. Venable, calling for suitable toilet accommodation for each sex on each floor of the Pope Mill, Paterson, he refused to comply. When a suit was brought to compel his observance, the case was not supported by the court, as it was held that the present law was not properly drawn to cover this particular situation.*
<*Report of the Department of Labor; New Jersey, 1909.>
What Was The Matter with the Fire-Escapes?
A State, that does not guarantee its women even proper sanitary accommodations can hardly be expected to understand that women need a different sort of fire-escape and more fire-escapes than men. Up to 1903 there was only a part of a fire-escape on this building, and it was a vicious affair, a cross between a ladder and a stairway, extending from a fire balcony on the fourth floor to a fire balcony on the third floor. Upon the order of the City Building Department, this was extended. An iron ladder, flat against the wall, connected the fire balcony on the third floor with the roof of the boiler-house. Just why the roof of the boiler-house was chosen as an island of safety from fire danger is not clear.
In 1906 the City Building Department served notice that two additional fire-escapes must be placed, one at the north and one at the south end. The owner replied that the City Building Department no longer had authority 'over his building, Because the New Jersey's Legislature had, by the Acts of 1904, placed the responsibility for fire-escapes on the Department of Labor. The City Building Department did not contest the point, did riot refer the matter to the Common Council. The Building Department was content to leave responsibility for the safety of its factory employees entirely in the hands of the Labor Department.
The Labor Department ordered one additional fire-escape. This was placed, most unfortunately, over the public highway, so that the descent from the second-story fire balcony to the ground must be by means of a ladder hanging from the third-floor balcony, and placed in position by hand at need. This iron ladder was too heavy for women to manipulate without practice. Inside the windows that gave upon the fire-escapes it was necessary to build wooden platforms and steps, because the window-sills were forty-eight inches above the floors.
Thus the fire-escape provision for two hundred women in an extra-hazardous building was two fire-escapes, both of which were difficult to get to, and which ended, one in the air and the other on the roof of a boiler-house
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