This week is the 100th Anniversary of the July 22nd, 1913 Binghamton Clothing Factory Fire, in which 31 lost their lives. Not nearly as famous as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire two years earlier, it nevertheless emphasized that safety reforms, not yet passed because of resistance by factory owners that worker safety was too much of a hardship on their profits. As seen by recent clothing factory disasters in Bangladesh and elsewhere, Western clothing retailers, no longer permitted to ignore worker safety in their own countries, have merely moved operations to the Developing World, whose laborers must re-fight the struggles of collectively organizing to protect themselves and demand their rights.

Above, The Cheaper Way, by cartoonist Clive Weed — the only cartoon that Cartoons Magazine ran on the tragedy, from their September 1913 issue.

Beneath, Great Distress, from an 1850′s issue of the Illustrated London News, showing the frenzy of Western shoppers, for cheap clothing goods.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and better read their captions.

Above & below, two cartoons from a circa 1840s/early 1850s American scrapbook filled with images clipped from various unidentified publications.

Finally, above, from 1846 in Our Own Times, is Tremendous Sacrifice!, by legendary British cartoonist, George Cruikshank. From a scan of its November 1893 reprinting in the British periodical, Picture Magazine. Depicted is a clothing store — “Cheap Shop” — filled with customers remarking on the goods, “I cannot imagine how they can possibly be made for the price.” In the store’s backroom, we precisely how, with workers marching into a grinder, goods and profits (but not the workers) emerging from the machinery. One worker says on their way towards the end, “I understand that it is impossible to get a living at this work!” To which another worker replies, “So I have heard. Nevertheless, we must try!”

To find prior postings in the Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons series, click here.

Doug Wheeler

financial reforms