“The Radium Girls” sheds light on a dark chapter in American industrial history. Kate Moore’s gripping narrative unveils the shocking exploitation of young women in radium dial factories. Their tragic tale serves as a powerful reminder of corporate negligence and the relentless pursuit of justice.
Dive into this eye-opening account and discover how these brave women’s struggles shaped labor laws and scientific understanding.
Table of Contents
Genres
Industrial Health and Safety, History, Science, Biography, Feminism, Adult, Womens, American History, 20th Century American History, Chemical Elements, Consumer Behavior, World War I, Memoirs, Leaders and Notable People, History of Medicine
“The Radium Girls” chronicles the lives of young women who worked in radium dial factories during the early 20th century. These workers painted watch dials with luminous radium paint, unknowingly exposing themselves to deadly radiation. As they fell ill with mysterious ailments, they fought against corporate denial and medical confusion to seek justice and recognition for their suffering. Moore meticulously details their personal stories, legal battles, and the scientific discoveries that ultimately validated their claims. The book highlights the women’s resilience in the face of corporate greed and the lasting impact of their fight on workplace safety regulations and radiation protection standards.
Review
Kate Moore’s “The Radium Girls” is a meticulously researched and emotionally charged account of a little-known tragedy in American history. Her vivid storytelling brings the dial painters to life, transforming them from faceless victims into relatable, complex individuals. The narrative seamlessly weaves personal anecdotes with historical context, creating a compelling read that’s both informative and deeply moving.
Moore’s attention to detail is commendable, offering insights into the social and cultural norms of the era that contributed to the women’s exploitation. The book effectively balances scientific explanations with human interest, making complex medical concepts accessible to general readers.
While the subject matter is undeniably grim, Moore manages to infuse the narrative with moments of hope and triumph. The focus on the women’s fight for justice adds a layer of inspiration to an otherwise tragic tale.
One minor critique is that the large cast of characters can occasionally be overwhelming, making it challenging to keep track of individual stories. However, this does not significantly detract from the book’s overall impact.
“The Radium Girls” serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of workers’ rights, corporate accountability, and the human cost of scientific ignorance. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in social history, labor rights, or the intersection of science and society.
Introduction
At the beginning of the 20th century, working-class women joined the glamorous radium-dial industry, eager to make the best wages of the day. But when these women began to experience mysterious illnesses and painful deaths, they never guessed that their dazzling new profession might be to blame. In this book review of The Radium Girls, you’ll learn how the leaders of the industry misled its most vulnerable employees and knowingly put them at risk.
How a generation of working women fought for justice.
READ THIS BOOK REVIEW IF YOU:
- Are interested in American labor history
- Have curiosities about the legacies of female employment and female advocacy
- Care about the marginalized narratives of working women
As early as 1901, Marie and Pierre Curie, along with their collaborators and fellow scientists, understood the miraculous and devastating effects of radium. This was the beginning of radium’s financial heyday.
Though radium was branded as a marvel of modern medicine and inspired new products, the manufacturers who understood radium’s dangerous effects failed to warn the employees who were most vulnerable to its risks. In the following decades, dozens of women died as a result of radium exposure, and hundreds more endured devastating health problems such as cancer, tooth loss, deteriorating bones, birth defects, and amputations.
This book review will explore why young female workers were drawn to the radium industry, how it affected their lives, how victims advocated for themselves, and, in turn, how they altered the course of American labor history.
The Age of Radium
During the first decades of the 20th century, radium was all the rage. After scientists discovered radium’s ability to destroy human tissue, they hastily began using it to treat cancerous tumors. Because of this life-saving power, radium gained a reputation as a life-giving cure for any and all maladies.
Medical charlatans, pharmacists, and salesmen alike took advantage of this new craze. The wellness market was suddenly awash with radium products. There were radium spas, radium pills, radium butter, and radium lingerie. One advertisement claimed that radium could be used to restore youthful vitality in the elderly. Radium toothpaste was marketed as the secret to a whiter smile, and radium cosmetics became a new standard for beauty. One entrepreneur even created a radium-based spray that could kill roaches and shine furniture. With so many products that offered so many promises of youth, beauty, and perfect health, radium became an unprecedented craze.
However, radium was not for everyone. In 1917, a single gram sold for $120,000, which would amount to $2.2 million today. A wellness tonic water made with radium had the price tag of $200, which would amount to $3,700 today. Radium was so costly that not all products that carried its name actually contained any of this desirable substance. Only the wealthiest members of society could afford to indulge in the radium craze.
Radium’s medicinal power, popular allure, and high price helped attract a group of young women into a blossoming industry. During the early years of World War I, European countries had a growing demand for radium-painted products. Radium was used in various military tools, such as gunsights, compasses, and other instrument dials. Europe had an increasing demand for these types of tools, so radium dials became a big industry in the United States.
Once the US entered the war, the demand for radium dials skyrocketed to an even greater height. Various companies sought new employees to meet this financial opportunity and The United States Radium Co. in New Jersey hired hundreds of young women as dial-painters.
Young, working-class women were drawn to this new industry for several reasons. Some of them wanted to do whatever they could to support American military forces, and creating necessary instruments felt like a meaningful contribution. Other women were attracted to this work because radium had such a commanding public allure. Even though they couldn’t afford to purchase radium tonics or radium lingerie, working-class women were excited to be working such an exotic, desirable substance. Finally, many women joined this industry because of the outstanding compensation it offered. Radium painters were ranked in the top 5% of female wage earners. Because of all of these factors, the radium dial business seemed like a no-brainer for working women.
Katherine Schaub was one such woman. At the age of 14, she applied for a job at the United States Radium Co. because she heard it offered good pay and because radium had a far more glamorous appeal than other factory jobs. Schaub joined the company as an inspection apprentice. It was her job to make sure all dials were painted carefully and to correct any errors. On her first day of work, Schaub learned the basics of the dial-painting trade.
Each dial-painter worked independently, mixing water and adhesive with a bit of radium powder to create a glowing paint, and then using an extremely fine camelhair brush to paint each dial. Even though the brushes were extremely fine, the painters still struggled to accurately paint the tiny dials that were as thin as a single millimeter in width. If the girls painted outside of those parameters, they would be reprimanded by their superiors. Furthermore, the girls were not paid with a fixed salary, but according to how many dials they completed on a daily basis. The workers had every incentive to paint as accurately and as quickly as possible. So, they did their best to make their brushes extra tiny and dexterous.
The solution, which seasoned employees always imparted to new trainees, was for painters to put the bristles in their mouths and use their lips to make the bristle points extra thin. This technique was called lip-pointing. While the girls experimented with rinsing the bristles in water or dabbing them on rags, no other strategy was as efficient for creating an extra fine brush, so lip-pointing became an industry norm.
Mae Cubberley, the 26-year-old painter who trained Schaub, had been initially skeptical of the prescribed technique. She wondered if there were adverse health effects associated with ingesting the radium paint. But one of her supervisors assured Cubberley that radium would cause her no harm. Because radium was known for its amazing curative effects, this supervisor even suggested that ingesting the radium paint could be good for the painters’ heath. With this reassurance, Cubberley and the rest of her colleagues carried on with the lip-pointing practice.
Young Schaub was still wary, but as she looked around at the other young women in the “painting studio,” her anxiety dissipated. At the end of each workday, the young painters had dabs of shimmering radium paint on their mouths, faces, hands, and clothing. As they walked home each night, they tracked radium dust through the streets and brushed it out of their hair before bed. In the darkroom, where superiors would inspect the dials in detail, the radium-covered employees were especially luminous. They glowed with the coveted beauty and power of radium.
Schaub thought that her colleagues looked beautiful after a long day’s work, so when she was offered the chance to train as a painter instead of an inspector, she jumped at the opportunity to join the more glamorous ranks. As World War I escalated, hundreds of young women did the same.
However, the business of radium was not as perfect as it seemed. As early as 1901, scientists and businessmen alike knew that radium had dangerous effects. Dr. Sabin Von Sochocky, who invented the radium-dial paint in 1913 and subsequently founded the US Radium Corp., was a medical professional and scientist who had studied under Marie and Pierre Curie, the very scientists who discovered radium. Von Sochocky was well aware of the dangers of radium. He knew that, while radium could diminish tumors, the wonder element had an indiscriminate power for destruction. It affected healthy human tissue just as much as it affected tumors. Von Sochocky made it a policy to issue lead-lined aprons and metal forceps to all employees. However, Von Sochocky himself refused to heed his own safety precautions. Even though radium had caused him to lose part of his finger, Von Sochocky continued to handle radium casually and carelessly, using his bare hands with radium vials and even immersing his arm in radium solutions.
Supervisors followed Von Sochocky’s example, not his regulations. Consequently, the young painters continued the quick, effective practice of “lip, dip, paint,” and Von Sochocky, who was usually too absorbed in own work to pay much attention to his underling employees, did not stop them.
Consequences
After the end of World War I, the demand for radium dials fell, and the companies employed fewer women. Some of the employees moved on to bigger and better things, like marriage and motherhood. But in the years following, former radium girls began to experience all kinds of inexplicable health problems.
For some, the symptoms were minor. One 15-year-girl experienced a wave of unprecedented acne, something her doctors didn’t pay much attention to because of her age. Another former painter, Hazel Kuzer, began to experience significant weight loss and an aching jaw. Another, Mollie Maggia, began suffering from incredible toothaches. Her doctor began removing her teeth, convinced that the pain would stop if he removed the source of it. However, instead of healing, Maggia’s gum sockets developed painful ulcers, and the rest of her teeth gradually fell out. As Maggia’s condition persisted, her doctor assumed that her fatigue and mouth sores could only be the result of syphilis. But the tests came back negative.
Her doctor then noticed that Maggia’s symptoms closely resembled phosphorus poisoning, and he began to wonder if perhaps phosphorus had been in the dial paint. Neither Maggia nor her doctor would have ever guessed that it was actually the radium that was at fault. In those days, a local newspaper declared that radium could be eaten in the form of a tablet in order to add years to the user’s life, so it was easy to assume that the radium paint bore no risk to the painters. Eventually, Maggia’s bones deteriorated. She suffered from rheumatism in her hips and her jaw broke at her doctor’s gentle touch.
By 1922, Maggia was dead. She was 24 years old. That same year, the radiumdial business was booming in Ottawa, Illinois, where the Radium Dial Co. was manufacturing dials for watches and aeronautical instruments. While the Radium Girls on the East Coast were experiencing the disastrous but still mysterious effects of their work, the process was starting all over again in Illinois.
Other dial painters experienced a symptoms similar to Maggia’s, and as the 1920s progressed, doctors began catching new details about these strange maladies. Doctors began to X-ray the weak bones and broken jaws that their patients presented and noticed strange white shadows on the X-ray images. One doctor was bold enough to conclude that it was radium that was causing bone deterioration and death for so many dial-painters.
In 1925, Marguerite Carlough, a former dial-painter, filed a lawsuit against the US Radium Corp. Because of this lawsuit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics began a national investigation into industrial poisons. Bureau agent Swen Kjaer visited the Ottawa factory to take a closer look at radium’s possibly dangers. After inspecting the factory and even asking one of the painters to teach him the “lip, dip, paint” method, Kjaer concluded that radium was dangerous. While he communicated this finding to the plant’s leaders, they did not extend this life-saving information to the employees who were at risk.
Back in New Jersey, the bodies of dial-painters were finally being tested for radium, and doctors discovered that these young women’s bodies were indeed leaking radium at levels that were 14 times higher than healthy levels. The US Radium Corp. settled its first three lawsuits out of court, paying paltry sums to the desperate women who sued them, but it still refused to take responsibility for the injuries and deaths of its employees. Further settlements made headlines across the country. By 1928, when the death toll had reached 17, news of radium’s role in killing former dial-painters made its way to Illinois, which gave rise to a new outcry.
However, Ottawa’s Radium Dial Co. took measures to calm its employees and avoid lawsuits. The company performed physical examinations of certain employees to test for radium poisoning, but never shared the results of those tests with the women. It wasn’t until the late 1930s that some of the employees raised successful suits against the Radium Dial Co. and received a meager amount of settlement money.
Justice
While many of the Radium Girls died before the end of the 1920s, others lived on for decades with the effects of radium poisoning. Some of them spent their lives in back braces or as amputees. Others had children with birth defects. While many women received compensation thanks to their lawsuits, most of the suits were not nearly enough to cover their extensive medical bills or provide adequate compensation for their losses.
Nevertheless, the legal battles that the dial-painters bravely waged were not fought in vain. Their public outcry changed the collective perception of the dialpainting profession. It was no longer a glamorous field. Instead, it was a profession that young women knew to fear. By the end of the 1930s, the federal government took the stories of the Radium Girls to heart, and implemented new safety standards for dial-painters. Shortly after these new restrictions took effect, the US entered World War II. Because they were brave enough to speak out, the Radium Girls inspired safety standards that protected a new generation of war-industry workers.
The fates of the dial-painters also inspired new safety standards for the Manhattan Project. After researchers discovered that plutonium had similar biomedical effects as radium, they knew that they had to take certain precautions in order to avoid the fates of the Radium Girls. Because of the dial-painters, the Manhattan Project knew to issue nonnegotiable safety standards for its workers.
However, this progress came at an incredible cost. For decades, companies lied to young women about the risks of radium. In spite of the many industry lawsuits, one Ottawa dial factory, which was started by a former president of the Radium Dial Co., remained open until 1978. Even after inspectors found radiation levels in the plant that were 1,666 times higher than safe levels, the company remained unapologetic, and managed to avoid paying for the cleanup expenses.
Conclusion
In the early 20th century, working-class women were eager to gain financial independence by joining the glamorous industry of dial-painting. Even though their employers knew the medical dangers of working so closely with radium, the companies failed to inform their employees of these risks. Some companies perpetuated this deception for decades.
While some of the Radium Girls received settlements for their suffering, others died due to complications from radium poisoning. Those who lived endured incredible pain and the burdens of various disabilities for the rest of their lives. In spite of their suffering, the Radium Girls made incredibly meaningful contributions to the US labor force.
Generations of American workers enjoy improved safety standards because the Radium Girls were brave enough to speak out about their experiences and file lawsuits against their employers. Their stories and courage are an invaluable component of US labor history.
Kate Moore is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Radium Girls, which won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Best History, was voted U.S. librarians’ favorite nonfiction book of 2017,and was named a Notable Nonfiction Book of 2018 by the American Library Association. A British writer based in London, Kate writes across a variety of genres and has had multiple titles on the Sunday Times bestseller list. She is passionate about politics, storytelling, and resurrecting forgotten heroes.
Table of Contents
List of Key Characters xiii
Prologue xvii
Part 1 Knowledge 1
Part 2 Power 145
Part 3 Justice 281
Epilogue 378
Postscript 398
Author’s Note 401
Acknowledgments 406
Reading Group Guide 410
Picture Acknowledgments 412
Abbreviations 414
Notes 416
Select Bibliography 462
Index 468
About the Author 478