This thorough and comprehensive account by Kate Moore of the watch dial painters of the early 1900's is nothing short of harrowing. The United States Radium Corporation of Orange, New Jersey started up in 1917 as part of the war effort. Young girls were hired, many still in their teens, for the job of painting watch faces that would glow in the dark - all the better to be seen in the trenches. These girls recruited their sisters and cousins, wanting them to get in on the relatively high wages. In 1923, Radium Dial, another watch-painting plant over seven hundred miles away, opened in Ottawa, Illinois.
Little was known about radium other than that it could be used to eradicate tumors. As Moore writes, most of the U.S. researchers worked for the radium firms. Radium was a rare and mysterious element. Its commercial exploiters controlled and monopolized its image and most of the knowledge of it. The people that profited from radium medicine were the primary producers and publishers of the positive literature. Radium production was lucrative and kept on being so even during our country's worst ever economic depression. The cautionary voices, like that of Dr. Martin Szamatolski, a chemist who tested the paint, were ignored. The Labor Department reviewed Dr. Szamatolski's report but took no action.
The girls were to mix their own paint at their workstations, mixing radium powder into a paste. This glowing substance was used to paint the dials on the watch faces. The girls were instructed to put the brush bristles in their mouths to form a point, which made for a finer tool for painting: "lip, dip, paint" was the mantra running through their heads all day at work. The radium powder the girls used would leave a sparkling dust all over their hair and clothes so that they would glow as they walked home in the evening. People started calling them "ghost girls". At work, they were repeatedly told that the substance was safe and in fact "would make their cheeks rosy".
Even after more was discovered about the dangers of radium, the management at both the New Jersey plant and the Ottawa plant lied. A foreman at U.S.R.C said that he warned the workers time and again that lip-pointing was dangerous (he never did). Ottawa management put out a full-page newspaper ad declaring that the girls working in their plant were safe. However, they had each girl examined using a new breathing test - it showed radium in their systems. The results of their exams were KEPT FROM THEM; the workers were not told they had radium poisoning, and it was incurable. The girls were allowed to keep painting with it. Meanwhile, the company men working in a lab in Chicago were given protective measures such as lead aprons and forceps.
This was horror movie stuff for these girls. First, sores around the lips appeared. Then, tooth and gum pain. Decay of the mouth and jaw followed, with some even having pieces of their jawbone falling out with their teeth. They got tired and achy. Next came pain in the hips, feet and legs. Horrific sarcomas, necrosis of the bone, amputations and cancers followed. Many experienced heart-breaking infertility or low birth weight babies who had life-long health problems. Some of the Radium Girls fared better than others, but excruciating pain and death swooped in for many. These were young women barely into their twenties. As one dial painter Grace Fryer, put it, "Radium eats the bone as steadily and surely as fire burns the wood".
When five New Jersey girls were finally able to secure a lawyer to help them file a suit to help pay for their crippling medical bills, U.S.R.C. came to a settlement. But not before Dr. Frederick Flinn, a quack and a fraud who posed as a medical doctor but was not, pronounced that his tests showed there was no radium. He said the girls' problems were caused by nerves. U.S.R.C ultimately agreed to pay for their past and future medical bills. However, the corporation did their best to wiggle out of much of their monetary responsibility; many of the girls and their families were financially ruined.
The Illinois girls didn't fare much better when it was their turn. Radium Dial claimed that the girls' disabilities did not occur when they were in their employ - radium poisoning can take several years to manifest and there was a statute of limitations. Also, injuries caused by poison were not covered by the Occupational Diseases Act at the time.
Eventually, champions for the dial-painters (such as Dr. Harrison Martland who identified radium as the cause of death for the New Jersey workers; Katherine Wiley of New Jersey's Consumer League; Mary Doty of the Chicago Sun Times who gave them a voice; and lawyer Raymond Berry who first took the Illinois girls' case, and later Len Grossman) made headway with the help of many brave dial painters. One that comes to mind is Ottawa's Catherine Donohue who spoke out at trial in Chicago even as she experienced agonizing pain while pus literally oozed from her mouth. During that trial is when she first learned that her condition was fatal; doctors thought it best to shield female patients from that kind of news at the time. The Radium Girls of Illinois were at long last given compensation for the catastrophic medical bills incurred. Small justice for their and their family's suffering.
The dial painters' cases ultimately led to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now works nationally to ensure safe working conditions. Workers will no longer be told that corrosive elements will make their cheeks rosy. This haunting piece of non-fiction is hard to read but an important piece of our nation's history. Radium Girls by Kate Moore heralds the voices of the little people whose outrageous suffering was largely ignored for the profits of big business and should serve as a lesson for the world. I could barely put this book down! This is an unforgettable, terrible, true story of our nation. I think it should be required reading and give it five stars out of five.
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