Frustrated by low pay, long hours, dangerous working conditions, and abusive management endemic to New York City’s shirtwaist industry, on November 23, 1909, more than 20,000 women garment workers, most of them young Jewish immigrants, participated in a general strike that lasted eleven weeks. They only succeeded in winning some of their demands, such as a shorter workweek and paid holidays, but the “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand,” as the strike came to be known, demonstrated the rising power of organized labor that continued throughout the Progressive Era. It further convinced powerful organizations such as the American Federation of Labor to reconsider their policies that prohibited the participation of women. But a deadly fire at one of the shirtwaist manufacturers targeted by the strikers, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, made it grimly clear that much progress remained to be made for young women toiling away making inexpensive blouses.