Greed Is Not Good: The Tragic Results of a FalseTheology

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

“No one can serve two masters; for a servant will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Matthew 6:24

One hundred and nine years ago yesterday, March 25, 1911, just a few minutes before closing time on a Saturday, a fire started, probably in a trash bin, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a Manhattan factory building.  

There were 146 victims in all, 129 of them women. Most were young immigrants.

In a famous scene in the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko, convincingly portrayed by Michael Douglas, gave his impassioned testimony to the shareholders of Teldar Paper Company:

"The point is, ladies and gentleman, is that greed – for lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind. And Greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."

It is important to recognize that Gordon Gekko's affirmation of greed is precisely that: it is an affirmation of faith. It is a theological statement.

It is about what we believe.

We don’t just tolerate greed. As a society we celebrate it because we believe it is essential to the economic system that has driven so much world progress, and no small amount of misery, over the last half millennium.

But greed isn’t good. Jesus was right. We cannot worship God and money.

Initiative is good. Enterprise is good. And effort should be rewarded. But greed is not good.

At the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory all but one of the exits had been locked to prevent the workers from taking unauthorized breaks.

Doors to the stairwells were locked. There was one internal fire escape but it collapsed quickly under the weight of so many bodies.

Louis Waldman, later a New York State Assemblyman, was reading in a nearby library when he heard the fire companies responding. He ran out to join the crowd in the street and remembered the scene this way:

"Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies."

In the New York Times the next day the story included this grim report: “The victims who are now lying at the Morgue waiting for some one to identify them by a tooth or the remains of a burned shoe were mostly girls from 16 to 23 years of age.” 

The Times suggested that the fire had been started by one of the machines, but an industry journal claimed that the more likely cause was smoking, which was forbidden in the factory. The industry report noted that the epidemic of factory fires was “fairly saturated with moral hazard.” 

In other words, the industry people were claiming that the deaths were attributable to the moral failings of the workers rather than the greed of the owners who blocked the exits.

The factory owners were tried for first and second degree manslaughter, but they were acquitted. The defense attorney asked a key witness, a worker who had escaped the fire, to repeat her testimony several times. After she repeated her answers almost word for word, he argued that this was evidence that she had been told what to say by the prosecutors and had memorized her testimony. 

Defense attorneys also claimed that the prosecution had not proved that the owners knew that the doors were locked at the specific time of the fire. Two years later, one of the owners was found guilty of illegally locking the doors on another factory and fined twenty dollars for the infraction.

When we look back, we are appalled. 

But it is only a few years ago that a factory fire in Bangladesh killed 112 workers. Again, because exits were blocked or inadequate.

And in Rhode Island especially, we remember the fire at the Station night club that claimed one hundred victims. Again, the cause of death was that exits were blocked, and they were not adequate. 

At the Station, they wanted to prevent patrons from entering without paying; at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and in the Bangladesh fire they wanted to prevent workers from leaving while they were being paid. 

But in each case the issue was greed





Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

*Parts of this post were originally published on March 26, 2011.