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The problem with pulling a particular piece of a post out for discussion is that you lose the original context - the result being that people pretend to paraphrase what you are saying and end up misrepresenting it entirely. Remember that much of this started with a line I was drawing between before and after June 1924. The intention of that comment was to explore what Kate Moore seems happy to ignore: that there are real people involved on the company side and they had their reasons for acting like they did. At the start, at least, those motives were not necessarily immoral, nor even amoral.
Being rich doesn't stop a person being afraid for their future. Being powerful doesn't necessarily mean they don't care, sometimes it just means that they have more to care about - so much more that they don't always see what they should see. Personally, I think outright evil is a rare thing, but ordinary everyday evil is common - and behind this you generally find ordinary, everyday, and very human frailties of the kind that you can understand (not saying condone) if you try hard enough.
Everyone here seems to enthusiastically agree with the idea that this book is a good fit for the history repeating itself theme, and even I agree with that sentiment, but for a different reason: the book itself demonstrates why we keep repeating ourselves, because we refuse to try and see that the other side behaved as they did for a reason, or a variety of reasons.
Trying to find and understand those reasons could help us see how things got so out of hand. By the time we get into court it's too late to be analysing the situation. By then the beast has taken on a life of its own, with lawyers and journalists and reputations all embroiled in scoring points off one another, but with little respect or care for truth or for the suffering of the women.
At no point have I suggested that it was "OK for a company to endanger the lives of its employees", or that a business should be allowed to be "torturing and maiming its employees", and I really wish people would stop putting such phrases in my mouth. I do understand that this is an emotional issue, and I understand that this book has exacerbated that, but please give me some credit.
What I have suggested is that the company had no way, before 1924, of seeing that it was endangering lives in this way*. Before that the known dangers were immediate ones, and the women showed no signs of being impacted by those. Once the long term dangers were known of course situation must be corrected - but the confrontational nature of litigation was always going to make this draw out and bring out the worst.
* Disclaimer: I want to emphasise that my suggestion about when the long term dangers were known is based on the "facts" revealed in this book so far, but I don't have a lot of faith in those facts. The author may reveal more by the time I reach the end, or there may be facts the author didn't think were appropriate to her audience
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