In 1924, Mae Keane got fired from a job painting watch dials. Failing at the job may have seriously altered her fate. The paint was full of radium.
āMy father was a watch maker. He abandoned it when Einstein discovered time is relative.ā
Radium?! I barely knew 'em!
Ah, those sad sorry days before tritium.
A painter of figures
that glow in the night,
you see us together,
chasing the moonlight,
my Radium Girl.
I read an essay in a magazine (Scientific American?) years ago titled, if I recall correctly, āThe Death of a Good Manā, where the author, an archeologist working in Africa, wrote about the manager of the American-chain hotel nearest to his research camp. The archeologist would take a monthly, long drive in to the hotel so he could enjoy some a glass of whiskey in clean surroundings and to catch up on world news.
The hotelās manager, was an obese, intelligent, gregarious man who had been sent to Europe to be educated by his village. The archeologist enjoyed conversations with this manager and liked him.
They had a ritual: Heād measure the managerās blood pressure, which was always dangerously high, and caution him to stop eating the highly processed food that the hotel served and to lose weight, otherwise he would die young. The man always replied that he needed to eat the hotelās food to make sure it was of sufficient quality, and besides, the hotelās quests didnāt want to be guests of a thin, severe man, but rather a fat, jolly manager. The manager was a hard worker, always under stress, and constantly taking antacids.
The essay was a eulogy to this ālocal boy who did goodā, who sacrificed himself, in a way, to help his local economy.
Would this not be the appropriate article for the Libertarian readers among us to explain how the invisible, corrective hand of the market would have eventually caused the company to change their practices without all that intrusive interference from, shudder, excessive regulations.
After enough of the women died horrible deaths from the radium poisoning, Iām sure that the kindly and caring plant operators would have changed their procedures. Iām sure as well that the company would never have filed bankruptcy to escape the liability for the lawsuits and ongoing health problems. We donāt need government interference or worker protections, let the market work!
Nonononono, YOU canāt send up the āLā signal and have them flock to Right Internet Wrongs. Only the Market can summon her defending hordesā¦
These comments are all so inane.
Welcome to the internet.
And yet you felt compelled to inform us allā¦with a comment. As we southerners like to say, āHow niceā.
Kurt Vonnegut had a character named Mary Kathleen OāLooney in his book Jailbird that held the same occupation.
It is pretty depressing, but I guess thereās not much to say. Itās sad, and possibly interesting to note that oneās failures can sometimes be a blessing.
What happened to the women is awful, and I donāt really find anything to laugh at in it. But thereās not much else to say either.
As for āwelcome to the internetā Iād always thought boingboing commenters to be a cut above youtube, but I guess those days are done.
Check out e.e. cummingsā play
HIM for a contemporaneous take on the radium boom.
burp
Man, your knickers twist easily. Now that you have denigrated all the commenters on the BB board, feel free to move on to another site more suitable to your expectations, and more appreciative of your feelings.
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