My short take on
Radium Girls is that it's a gripping story that I wish were better written; a view that seems to be commonly held. That said, I will give Moore credit for telling a story with huge sweep on the one hand and with an eye for the telling detail, on the other. She also researched this intensely; while some of her flights of fancy were highly regrettable, she did convey the lives as such that were destroyed.
I deplored the projected scenarios which purported to know even people's thoughts, but I thought her stage-setting was very effective early on, with descriptions of the visible effects of clouds of radium dust and how it made the girls feel special and singled out, as indeed they would be later on as their bones glowed through their skin.
I can differentiate between the ignorance of "corporations" early days and the actions of individuals as the horrible truth was manifest. Yeah, radium's good for you, why not? They didn't know and there was a tendency in that age to think all scientific advancement was unalloyed good. But later on, as the major players circled the wagons to protect themselves and maintain their own lives at the direct cost to the lives of young women; it reaches a stage where legality is moot. They knew they were killing those women and they continued to do so. It was evil.
The girls were almost the perfect microcosm of fodder for the well-being of the plutocrat class. They were young, female, uneducated, poor, lower/working class and either of immigrant stock (in New Jersey) or Catholic (in Illinois). They didn't matter. Except that the classifications have altered a bit, the world hasn't changed.
I want to respond to several individual posts, but I'll take them in chunks.
