In Bangladesh, public outrage about the fire has boiled over. An estimated 100,000 people attended the burial ceremony of 53 workers whose bodies could not be identified. Industry leaders have promised financial support for survivors and the families of the dead. The Bangladeshi government has started inspecting the country's 4,500 garment factories; it has already found fire code violations in almost a third of the hundreds it has examined.
"Now we have to do much more," said Mohammad Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, conceding past failures. "We have learned. We start from here."
In the United States, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis compared the Tazreen blaze to the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York, which led to sweeping reforms of American sweatshops. In Bangladesh, factory fires have been a persistent problem, with the International Labor Rights Forum saying more than 600 garment workers have died in such fires since 2005.
And even before the Tazreen blaze, outside pressure was building on Bangladesh's garment sector to increase wages and ease restrictions on union organizing. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with European diplomats, has urged the government to investigate the unsolved murder of a labor organizer, Aminul Islam.
In reconstructing the deadly blaze, The New York Times interviewed more than two dozen survivors; relatives of the victims; Bangladeshi fire officials; garment factory owners and managers; auditors; and others. In the end, analysts said, the conflagration was a tragic byproduct of an industry in which global brands and retailers, encouraged by hundreds of millions of consumers around the world, are still primarily motivated by the bottom line.
"We as consumers like to be able to buy ever-greater quantities of ever-cheaper goods, every year," said Richard M. Locke, deputy dean of the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management. "Somebody is bearing the cost of it, and we don't want to know about it. The people bearing the cost were in this fire."
I buy second-hand when I can, but ultimately global commerce is not going away. It really does come down to improving conditions around the world. Costs will have to go up. Our consumption will moderate (one hopes!), but consumption by those who are being paid better will increase...