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Old 05-21-2018, 01:18 PM   #66
gmw
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Quote:
Originally Posted by astrangerhere View Post
Lawyer brain returning here...

There actually does have to be fault, legally. Without some sort of breach of duty to the women (i.e. legal fault), they were not entitled to any legal damages. Now, of course, the human brain cries out "but it was the decent thing to do!" But up until the point when they had a good idea that it was, indeed, their fault, how far should that decency have extended? Until it bankrupted them?

I think that this highlights a good point that others have made - that the book looks backwards knowing who's legal fault it was the whole time. But at what time those actors actually starting to willingly or negligently act with disregard to the safety of the workers is another matter.
This was really my point. By having created a system in which finding fault was necessary for these women to get any help at all, you automatically end up with a system that will go to extremes to deny fault. If there is any possible way to interpret the data in which fault can be avoided then that is what they will do. So you will get the huge delays while this happens and this only extends and exacerbates the suffering - when they describe the system as user pays they really mean it! But in a society with a health care system then people can get the help they need, and fault/blame can be sorted out later independent of addressing the urgent health requirement. (Of course, the 1920s was a bit early for this to be an option, anywhere, but it what I thought of as I read what these women had to go through.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady View Post
Clusters of women in their teens and early twenties, working for the same employer, at the same job, falling victim to unexplained diseases and dying--to my mind, that's quite enough to warrant grave concern about workplace safety, even before a specific causal link could be found.
But this is exactly the distortion the book is making in your mind - it's pretending this was clear at the time. But this "cluster" was no such thing to start with. It was a few apparently isolated cases where the doctors believed it was probably occupational, but even the doctors couldn't say exactly what or how - which is part of why some of them spent so long looking for phosphorous; no one imagined it could be the radium. And remember: the cases only started years later; most of the women weren't even working there any more; there had been many women work there but only these few were reporting problems. This was a new situation, I can see no way that the company could have worked out what was happening before 1924.

But in 1924 that started to change, and if Moore didn't exaggerate the Drinker's report then that would seem mark the place where USRC really knew there were problems they should be addressing - even if they still couldn't know the true nature or extent of the problem (because no one knew yet).
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