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Though Knef did not know why the films were fogged, Marguerite Carlough appreciated his considerate attentions nonetheless. With a spark of hope, she said that “of late she had felt a little better.”1 But visiting doctors noted that was “a statement not in accord with her appearance.”2 When Katherine Wiley, from the Consumers League, met her in May 1924 as part of her independent investigation, she was shocked, calling her “this poor sick young thing who looked fairly transparent.”3 The level of sheer suffering was difficult to witness. Wiley later wrote: “After seeing one of the victims, I can never rest until I have seen something done whereby I am assured it will not happen again.”4 She resolved “to stick to this thing until there is some action somewhere.”5

And stick to it she did. She interviewed more of the girls, including Josephine Smith, but found her “unwilling to discuss the subject while continuing to be employed by the Corporation.”6 Wiley left no stone unturned, also visiting Katherine Schaub and Edith Mead, who had nursed Mollie Maggia through her terrible illness. The nurse had not forgotten her former boarder. “Miss Mead wishes,”?Wiley wrote, “to do anything that she can to prevent such a tragedy happening to anyone else.”7

And Wiley felt exactly the same. Hearing of Hazel’s mother’s desire to claim compensation, she consulted a local judge to get his advice on how the families could take legal action. But here she learned that New Jersey law was set against the women. The state, in fact, had somewhat pioneering legislation; a new law had come in only that January that made industrial diseases compensable. But—and it was a big but—only nine diseases were on the permitted list, and there was a five-month statute of limitations, meaning any legal claim had to be filed within five months of the point of injury. Not only was “radium poisoning”—if indeed that was what the girls were suffering from—not on the list, but most of the girls had not been employed by USRC for years, let alone five months. The judge told Wiley frankly, “When radium poisoning is made a compensable disease, if ever, it would not be retroactive; so that, as far as these girls were concerned, nothing could be done.”8

The families had hit the same brick wall. Stone-broke and desperate, Marguerite Carlough was also now considering legal action, in order to get some money to pay for her treatment, but neither she nor Hazel Kuser’s family had been able to find a lawyer who would take the case without getting cash upfront. As Wiley noted grimly, “They have none.”9

On May 19, 1924, Wiley returned to the Department of Labor with the results of her investigation. She took them straight to the top, to Commissioner Andrew McBride, but he was “furious”10 to find that the Consumers League had stuck its nose into the matter. When he learned that his deputy Roach had supplied Wiley with the women’s names, he hit the roof. McBride summoned Roach to their meeting and, Wiley said, “rebuked him in my presence [in a] severe calling down.”11 Wiley wasn’t daunted one bit by McBride’s ferocity, however: she continued to argue with him. McBride, frustrated with this nagging woman, asked her what she wanted to happen.

“An investigation by the U.S. Public Health Service,”12 she said immediately.

“Put it in writing,”13 he replied wearily. She did—at once.

Even as Wiley was continuing to champion the women’s cause, developments were afoot at the center of all the trouble: the United States Radium Corporation. The Drinkers had been busy assessing the results of all their tests and now, on June 3, 1924, they delivered their full and final report to the firm.

Fifteen days later, on June 18, Viedt wrote to Roach at the Department of Labor to share the doctors’ verdict. He didn’t send the full report, which was lengthy, simply a table of the medical-test results of the workers, which showed the employees’ blood to be “practically normal.”14 “I do not believe,” wrote Viedt confidently, “that this table shows a condition any different than a similar examination would show of the average industrial worker.”15 The department agreed: the table showed that “every girl is in perfect condition.”16

The company was in the clear. President Roeder wasted no time in spreading the news. “He tells everyone,” an observer commented, “he is absolutely safe because he has a report exonerating him from any possible responsibility in the illness of the girls.”17 Immediately, just as Roeder had hoped, the situation improved at the plant: “Rumors quieted considerably,”18 noted an internal memo with satisfaction.

It was, therefore, unfortunate timing that at this moment Dr. Theodore Blum begged the company to help his patient Hazel Kuser. Since she’d first visited Blum in January, her condition had deteriorated rapidly, despite many operations, two blood transfusions, and multiple hospital stays. The bills were coming in faster than Theo Kuser and his father could pay them. Though Hazel’s wealthy physicians, intrigued by her strange condition, were providing her with a significant amount of free treatment, the bills ran into the thousands. Theo was mortgaging everything he owned, while his father’s life savings hurtled into a financial black hole, swallowed up as soon as father and son withdrew them from the bank.

Her family could not afford the care Hazel urgently needed, so Blum appealed directly to the company. He made sure to say that he wasn’t trying to lay the blame at the firm’s door—even though, by this time, Blum was willing to state that the disease was undoubtedly caused by the material used in dial-painting. “It is not a question of whether or not your firm is responsible,” he wrote carefully, “but I feel that if you have the money to spare you should let them have it in some way.”19 He wasn’t interested in culpability: this was a matter of life and death.

The response from USRC was swift. Full of the confidence given them by the Drinkers’ report, the company refused to help in any way whatsoever; to do so would establish “a precedent which we do not consider wise.”20 Five years before, the firm had been stung when they’d offered $5 compensation for some ruined laundry; they were not going to make the same mistake again. Instead, they gloried in the conclusions of the recent study: “The results of the very thorough investigation which we [made] upon this condition which you claimed was caused by her employment in our plant have shown that there was nothing in our work which might be considered the cause.”21 The letter concluded, somewhat insincerely, “We are sorry that we cannot help you in this way.”22

Blum was stunned. “I was only appealing to the humane sense of the officers of your corporation to find out what you would do to help this poor creature,” he wrote back. “I must admit that I am surprised that you failed to see the humane side of the question.”23

But the corporation cared not a jot for his jibes. They were guiltless—and they had a report that proved it.