History Lesson:

The Radium Girls were factory workers who painted glowing markers on watches. They pointed their paint brushes with their lips after being told do so and that it was safe for them to do so by their managers. The paint had radium in it to promote the glow.

Dentists became the first people aware of the medical complications happening amongst all the women working in this factory. Complaints of loose bones, teeth, ulcers, etc. began to circulate amongst the staff.

Eventually, the girls started to die. The first one’s jaw literally came off her skull before her death as a result of radiation poisoning.

Perhaps all of that you could say was “stupidity” on behalf of the workers and corporation.

But what came next wasn’t. The corporation, the U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, lied to the public and said that their workers were dying from alternate causes such as syphilis. They continued to instruct their staff to work business as usual, perpetuating more deaths and illness amongst their staff so their product could continue to be made.

The Radium Corp offered to change the method of painting dials, but the alternative brushes slowed down work and they were paid by the dial. To continue earning the wages they needed, the girls were forced to continue to use the brushes that they had to wet with their mouths.

The girls eventually took the matter to court. They took it to court eight times because Radium Corp continued to appeal until 1939.

As a result of their win, which provided a settlement to each girl a lump sum, a yearly stipend, and medical expensed paid by the company, LABOR LAW changed to ensure that companies could be held accountable for not properly protecting their employees from disease. New health regulations and standards were put in place to keep workers safe and they stopped using the brushes after that point.

(I don’t have the data to say if there was a corresponding wage increase to factor for lost wages due to a slowing down after new regulations were made).

The point, though, is that this company willfully knew that its staff was geting sick and dying from the procedures they put in place, and lied to their staff and started a public smear campaign saying these women had sexually transmitted diseases instead.

That’s not on the “stupid” women, that’s corporate greed.

I’d also like to add that they were intentionally delaying the court case so there would be less girls left alive to be there. Even after they’re caught, they are still heartless shits. Don’t ever forget these poor women and the company that thought cycling through workers and leaving a trail of bodies was worth making more money at the top.

I’d also like to add another detail. The girls weren’t the only workers at the factory who worked with the radium mixture. They were the only ones ingesting it, but the (male) scientists who worked upstairs, mixing the radium paint powder in the first place, were given protective gear to wear while doing it. So the company knew enough by this time about the hazards to give the scientists some PPE, but did not care enough about the primarily young, immigrant, female workers to give them the same protection. The workers at that level were simply viewed as dispensible. But a scientific education was something they actually valued. The work they profited from the most, though, was the application of that science. Applied by a lower class workforce, lured into danger by the promise of a slightly higher wage. But they ended up having horrifically short careers.

It is said that regulations are written in blood, because they were generally promulgated in response to some corporation or another choosing money over lives. To this day, they still find cheats and work-arounds, still whine about regulations, and when they flout these protections, still kill their workers and wreck the environment - because to this day, corporations still view their workers as disposible. Use one up, hire another. May as well be a box of paper clips or a shipment of lumber for all they care. They’re not even subtle about it. Consider the term: Human Resources. A lot of places just shorten it to HR. Easy way to dehumanize their employees. Some places just use the last word, which is somehow worse.