March 26, 1911 is a day that still remains an important one in history, especially in the history of labor in the United States. As the author notes, the fire only lasted half an hour (Von Drehle 2), but that was enough to make it one of the worst disasters that ever happened at a place of employment. In fact, it held that record for nearly 100 years. The fire caused a stir in New York and around the country, and led to very extensive workplace reforms, such as fewer working hours, child labor laws, and even building and fire codes to try to keep a tragedy like this from happening again. Those were all important results of this fire, and many people had a hand in making them come about. However, there was another important theme that came out consistently in this book, and that was the theme of the mostly foreign-born, mostly female working class who filled the floors of the Triangle Waist Company. To the money-hungry owners of the factory, these women were little more than animals, and this is the theme of the book that seems to matter most. The owners consistently disregarded human life in their quest for sales and profits, and so, many of the young women who worked 12 or 14 hours a day at back-breaking labor did not even have names to the people who employed them. They were nothing, and they died as nothing – burned beyond recognition and never identified. They were anonymous, they were treated inhumanely, but they were human beings, and the sweatshops of the past (and those of today in Third World countries) failed to recognize this, or recognize them at all. That seems to be the biggest tragedy of all in this book, that the very backbone of the organization, the women who made the products, were absolutely nothing to the men who reaped the profits. In fact, Von Drehle writes, "then the role of the boss was equally well filled by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the Triangle.