Arming a Chorus of Women With Scissors

Hard to believe Ms. Wolfe never heard of Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter."

Articles like this are so essential to keep the New York Times great. Yes, we need the political and economic reporting, but these are the articles that stimulate our mind and enrich our soul.

As a historian who has lived in a former garment factory sweat shop, studied the history of the ILGWU and the garment industry's strike history and its intimate relation to rent strikes and housing law, the impressions conveyed by this article are flawed. In the pecking order of Garment Industry labor "cutters," as they were known, were almost without exception men, not women. They wielded shears with speed and expertise that wasted little and looked as effortless as any deft surgeon's one handed suture. The sound was a whoosh because the cutting was performed with an "open jaw" of the large shears. The knife-sharp edge of the shear held at the proper angle to the grain of the fabric did all the work. There was little waste and little measurement required to their practiced eye and hands. The barber shears show in the Times graphic are from the wrong trade. I have garment shears from Lechter's and they are as distinct from barber shears as a surf board is from a skate board. Sheep shears and fur cutters, along with all the other primary skilled labor before the advent of electric clippers, lasers, and certainly computers, were a poetry of form and function. All this is not to say that scissors were not also used to cut trim, thread, and more mundane tasks. But, garment work was a stratified labor field, and the women garment workers who took "piece work" taken home to their tenement to complete, where on the bottom and most exploited rung of the industry.

Thank you NYT for covering this composer and this event. It was a fascinating article in all of its aspects. Thank you Ms. Julia Wolfe for helping us to remember our history.

The Triangle Shirt Waist Fire should be remembered for what it was. As a greed-driven tragedy like so many before, and sadly, so many after. Whether we remember by books, by oratorio, or like "Radium Girls", as a play, we need to remember what happened. Any way possible. Thank you Ms. Wolfe.