[issybird]

Originally Posted by gmw

I say "might" because quite likely some of these people sincerely believed there was no problem with radium (just as some today sincerely believe human activity has not impacted climate).

Such people get no pass, sincerity notwithstanding. It's incumbent on anyone to look at the evidence. There's far too much even now of people saying, "I'm entitled to my opinion" and "My opinion is as good as yours." Well, no you're not and no, it isn't, not if you haven't looked at the evidence and come to a reasoned conclusion. Wishful thinking (and in reality, intentional duplicity) can't be excused on the basis of sincerity.

I have no problem with popular history and the pity here is that Moore had done abundant research and could have made the same points without the window dressing, which by the same logic calls into question all of her statements.

For me, the bottom line is that at some point, and fairly early on as girls were picking pieces of their jaws out of their mouths, they knew. This is where I can't give them a pass; they continued to expect their workers to ingest radium. That by stopping pernicious practices they'd be tacitly admitting both to the truth and to culpability was the only moral position possible. For those individuals who decided that his own well-being was more important than the lives of the girls there is no excuse that holds.

As to the popular history aspect of this, it seems to me that this was always couched more as a media event in the US than as history. Unlike in the UK where it seems to have been favorably reviewed, the serious press in the US mostly didn't review the book - the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, for some examples. It was publicized with author Q&As but not reviewed. After having read it, I wonder if that wasn't an editorial choice; a standard review would have had to be more judicious in evaluating the book as history to the detriment of discussing the human impact.

Again, even as popular history, the book would have benefited mightily from decent editing. It could have addressed the worst flights of fancy, for one thing. But there were other irritating aspects of the writing style as in Moore's liking for paragraphs composed of a single sentence fragment, e.g.:

No action whatsoever.

Until now.

All this death.

I was frequently arrested by an injudicious choice of word or phrase. This would include Moore's use of Briticisms such as gramophone. She referred to New York as the Big Apple 50 years before the epithet became general and which had a flippant tone at odds with the material. She indulged in absurdities such as:

Sometimes the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Huge eyeroll there. And:

It was always wise, he considered, to keep your friends close - but one should always keep one's enemies closer.

Gee, did she think that one up?

And yet, and yet. I can't help thinking that we ignore such stories at our peril. The Radium Girls in addition to being a compelling story in itself, strikes me as an effective if flawed means of getting people to think perhaps a little more critically at how the already disadvantaged are used and abused and about the power of corporations and government entities. I wish it were better, but in a way I think we have the luxury of picking it apart here as it's already preaching to the choir, so to speak. I don't advocate slanted means of persuasion, but I think the takeaway from this is reasonably true to the facts.