Even as their flesh and bones were decaying, the Radium Girls never gave up. They fought tooth and nail to receive justice even as their teeth were falling out of their mouths. With their persistence, the case of the Radium Girls would be one of many that ended up forming OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), as well as many other regulations that would be applied in various situations, including the eventual testing of atomic bombs during WWII.
After noting concerning connections between the Radium Girls’ cases, a health official from Orange County reached out to the Consumer’s League on behalf of the girls. While the Radium Girls were seen as expendable, constantly reassured by company managers that they were in perfect health while experiencing mysterious and painful symptoms that no doctor could identify, the Consumers League investigated and began the process of uncovering the truth.
Mollie Maggia, a watch dial painter at the U.S. Radium Corps, realized something was wrong when her teeth started hurting. No matter how many her dentist, Dr. Joseph Knef, pulled out, the pain didn’t get better. In fact, it got worse. Eventually, during yet another dentist visit, Dr. Knef touched her jawbone gently, and it shattered. It was eventually removed, piece by piece, through the mouth. When he learned about her occupation, Dr. Knef began to suspect “if Mollie might be a victim of phosphorus poisoning … [which] had hurt and killed many local women who’d worked in match factories” (Moore 24). Irene Rudolph was the second Radium Girl to see a dentist for tooth problems. Her doctor, Dr. Walter Barry, has never crossed paths with Dr. Knef, but Irene had heard about the story of Mollie, and one of her other coworkers had also been experiencing similar symptoms, and phossy jaw was suspected as well. Irene brought this up to Dr. Barry, and he agreed to file an official report to the Industrial Hygiene Division.
Although the Industrial Hygiene Division investigated, the radium company gave no honest answers. When the inspector visited the factory, “[He] observed with shock that all the girls were lip pointing… [and] the company man replied promptly that he had warned the girls repeatedly about this dangerous practice” (Moore 36). No one had ever told the girls that something might be dangerous about the method in which they were lip pointing. Soon after, a sample of the paint was sent to Dr. Szamatolski, a chemist. No phosphorus whatsoever was detected in the paint. Only radium was present. “[Dr. Szamatolski was sure that] such trouble as may have been caused is due to the radium” (Moore 38). However, his opinion was regarded as radical, and nothing came of his statement. With publications on the “health benefits” of radium flooding the market, it was hard for the public to believe that radium could cause any harm.
The National Consumers’ League was founded in 1899 by Jane Addams and Josephine Lowell, some of the most prominent women's advocates during that time. Florence Kelly, an attorney, became their first secretary, and stayed in that position from 1899 to 1932, when she died. The main goal of the Consumers League was to provide better working environments for women and children, and “under Kelley’s leadership, the National Consumers’ League became the nation’s leading advocate of laws governing the working conditions of women and children” (Foner 722). Although the women’s suffrage movement started out in the 19th century with mostly women in the elite class, middle class women started to get involved as well during the early 1900s. The Consumers’ League sought to help any women who dealt with injustice at the hands of companies and corporations, and the Radium Girls were exactly who needed their assistance.
A health department official from Orange, New Jersey, was the first to notify the Consumers’ League about the case of the Radium Girls. Katherine Wiley, director of the Consumers League, began to conduct research on the issue as soon as she heard about it. She “spoke to a local judge … [about] how the families could take legal action. But the judge told her … the women could not be helped” (Moore 64). A new law had been passed that offered compensation for a limited amount of workplace induced diseases, but the law had a lot of gaps that could be taken advantage of. Plus, radiation poisoning wasn’t covered under the list of diseases. Before Katherine Wiley conducted her investigations, Dr. Cecil K. Drinker, a physiology professor at Harvard, and Katherine Drinker, his wife, had also investigated the factory, though due to a lack of communication, neither were aware that the other was doing research into the same thing. On May 19, 1924, Katherine Wiley sent the results of her investigation to the Department of Labor. She asked for an investigation to be conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service, but received no satisfactory response, as the Department of Labor did not want the Consumers’ League looking into such matters.
Katherine Wiley had reached out to Dr. Alice Hamilton and Dr. Frederick Hoffman regarding the case of the Radium Girls. Dr. Hoffman had made the decision to visit Marguerite Carlough, who was among the first to develop symptoms. Soon, “Hoffman … sent a strongly worded letter to Roeder at USRC [about how] he believed the company would lose any legal case [Marguerite] brought” (Moore 75). Dr. Frederick’s letter motivated the girls, and “Marguerite Carlough found a lawyer … [and] filed suit against USRC for $75,000”, kickstarting the beginning of the Radium Girls’ rebellion against USRC (Moore 74). After a series of trials across multiple radium plants, the girls who survived were able to receive a sum that they were satisfied with. The Radium Girls played a crucial part in the development of further radiation safety laws. During their lifetime, tests to detect radiation in both corpses and living people were invented and information about the dangers of radiation was spread. Decades later, “in response to the research on the dial-painters, President John F. Kennedy… banned atomic tests aboveground, underwater, and in outer space” (Moore 335). Without the persistence of the Radium Girls, the harm of radiation would have likely been swept under the rug for much longer by the companies in charge, and many more innocent people would have died due to its effects.
The Radium Girls weren’t the only people that the National Consumers League helped out. They advocated for minimum wage laws for women, as well as limiting the working day to 10 hours. During their early years, the Consumers’ League looked into the working conditions of women in factories, and they pressured Walter Edge, a senator, to decrease the time that women spend working since women often worked longer hours and got paid less than men. Investigations revealed that “women night workers felt themselves to be in danger…and their children suffered from delinquency and undernourishment” (Rutgers). Due to this, the Consumers’ League also protested and worked to prohibit women from working between 10 pm to 6 am. However, no one wanted to enforce that law, so the League sponsored a yearly penalty clause bill to prevent any further breaches of the agreement.
The Consumers’ League played an important role in women’s suffrage and fighting for better working conditions for women and children. While the Radium Girls were only a few of such women, the Consumers’ League played a pivotal role in ensuring that the Radium Girls received the justice that they deserved. The determination of Katherine Wiley gave the girls confidence to stand up for themselves and sue the company that had taken their lives from them. The Consumers’ League’s dedication to helping all the women struggling under the hands of unjust workplaces helped many bills get passed that created a better working environment for women for years to come.
Works Referenced
Cover Image from: https://undark.org/2017/07/20/radium-girls-book-review/
Foner, Eric, et al. Give Me Liberty! W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 2022. Accessed 15 February 2024.
“The Girls.” The Radium Girls, https://www.theradiumgirls.com/the-girls. Accessed 15 February 2024.
Greenberg, Sally. “History – National Consumers League.” National Consumers League, 12 August 2021, https://nclnet.org/about-ncl/about-us/history/. Accessed 15 February 2024.
Kovarik, Bill, and Mark Neuzil. “Radium girls.” Environmental history, https://environmentalhistory.org/people/radiumgirls/. Accessed 15 February 2024.
Moore, Kate. The Radium Girls: The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark. Sourcebooks eXplore, 2020.
Perrone, Fernanda, and Luis C. Franco. Consumers League of New Jersey Records. 1979. Rutgers University Libraries, https://archives.libraries.rutgers.edu/repositories/11/resources/733.
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