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Chicago: a land of steel and stone and glass, where a forest of skyscrapers stretched above the antlike actions of its citizens below. As the five women made their way through the thrusting city streets, everywhere Chicago’s urban architecture dominated the view. Here there were no yawning horizons, such as those with which they were familiar, where the sun would hang in the sky like a citrus fruit above the endless fields. Here there were no fields—just opportunities, ripe for the plucking.

It was two days before the hearing: Wednesday, July 21. The women headed to North LaSalle Street, right in the heart of the theater district. They had dressed smartly, many in tailored jackets—all wore hats with beribboned bands—and given the heat of the July day, they were glad when they reached the address they sought: number 134. So this was the Metropolitan Building.

Even with their necks stretched back fully, they could not see its roof; the building was twenty-two stories high. And it wasn’t just any office building; as they hesitated outside the lobby, their eyes drank in the details: the gold paneling on the walls; the “M” emblazoned on the ground; the building’s own name picked out in solid gold letters above the door. It was all very different from the place they’d started out in this morning; that was for sure.

Catherine Donohue had just about managed the journey, for this was one meeting she would never have missed. The remaining girls had “formed an organization to band together in the prosecution of their cases,”1 and despite her fast-fading health Catherine was its chairman. It was essential that she led this quest to secure a lawyer who could represent them.

She had chosen to wear a smart black dress with white polka dots; it was the nicest one she had. She had slipped it on that morning with nervousness—and some concern. That lump on her hip, she’d thought anxiously, as the fabric slid over her increasingly thin body, it was definitely a little bit bigger than before.

With her in Chicago were Marie Rossiter, Pearl Payne, and the two Glacinski sisters, Frances and Marguerite. These five were representing all the litigating dial-painters, including the estate of Inez Vallat, whose claim for damages had been added to that of the living girls. Hats straightened, dresses smoothed, the women walked fearlessly into the lobby and rode the art-deco elevator up to the office they required.

That office was lined with bookcases full of heavy legal tomes; on the walls hung framed qualification certificates. Dominating the room was an enormous desk, made of a lustrous reddish wood and topped with glass. Yet all these furnishings faded out of consideration when the women made eye contact with the man standing behind the desk. He wore a three-piece tweed suit and glasses atop his large nose; his dark hair was neatly styled with a side parting. The man was somewhat full-figured, and he had kind eyes.

“Ladies,” he probably announced, stretching a welcoming hand across the desk to greet them, “I’m Leonard Grossman.”

The women may have been referred to him (or vice versa) by Clarence Darrow. Like Darrow, Grossman was a larger-than-life and flamboyant attorney, whose concern was for people on the bottom rung. He was born in Atlanta in 1891, making him forty-six when the five women knocked on his door; his birthday was on Independence Day.

That quirk of birth in fact characterized his personality and passions in many ways. He had been an early supporter of the Suffragettes; an article on their major march on Washington was headlined: 200 WOMEN AND 1 BACHELOR2—and that bachelor was Leonard Grossman. He was the type of person who always managed to get into the picture when a newspaperman happened to be near; he had worked as a stringer for various papers when he first left law school, and his nose for a story never quite left him. He was a brilliant orator. Grossman had been involved in politics in the past, yet it was workmen’s compensation cases that really inspired him. “He had a passion for the working person and for people who were in trouble,” said his son, Len. “He never went for the big buck.”3

Sometimes, he didn’t even go for the small buck; “he took shoes as fees,” remembered his son. “He did that way too often.” This may explain why in July 1937—despite the seeming glamour of his office—Grossman was “kind of on the outs; scraping it together.” But it didn’t matter to him: money wasn’t what drove Grossman; his principles were his fuel.

This was the man—his passions and priorities—into whose office the five women of Ottawa walked. It was, perhaps, the most perfect meeting of minds.

“We were at our wits’ end when he came to our rescue,” remembered Catherine Donohue. “He had no thought of money. He just wants to help us girls, to help humanity.”4 Grossman declared to his new clients: “My heart is for you; I am happy to be in this fight for you.”5

At last, the women had a legal champion. And they had found him not a moment too soon; in two days’ time, Grossman and the girls had a hearing to attend before the Illinois Industrial Commission.

Step by step, inch by inch, Catherine and the other girls made their slow way to the yellow-stoned LaSalle County courthouse on Friday, July 23. It was just four blocks south of St. Columba, so they did not have far to go. When they arrived, they were gratified to see that their story was being covered by the press.

It was a boost that Catherine in particular needed. In the short time since she’d been in Grossman’s office in Chicago, another piece of her jawbone had come out into her mouth. Not knowing what to do with it, she had put it in a small paper pillbox.

Despite her trials, Catherine that day seemed to take inspiration from Grossman, finding fuel in her principles—in standing up for what was right. She “presided over the reporters”6 as she and the other girls spoke to the press. As the women entered the courtroom and saw Grossman there, ready to do battle for them, they knew that, this time, they stood a fighting chance.

Some of the women sat at the counsel table with Grossman as he prepared to open their case. Representing Radium Dial were the same legal firms who had fought—and won—the Inez Vallat case two years earlier: the leading lawyer was Arthur Magid, a young-looking man with thick dark hair and glasses; another was Walter Bachrach.

Grossman’s first job was to ask for a postponement to give him time to “familiarize himself with the case and to trace, if possible, the ‘old’ company’s assets.”7 Magid readily agreed: the firm was in no rush for the trial to begin, for the longer the legal process could be stretched out, the weaker the women would be. There was not much more to that first hearing—although Bachrach did now reveal what the company’s defense would be. He said he would “contend the paint was not poisonous and that none of the women actually were suffering from radium poisoning.”8

Not poisonous. Even from the little Grossman knew of the case, he realized that this position was a complete volte-face on the arguments the exact same lawyers had used in the Vallat suit. Then, the company had said radium was a poison—because poison was not covered by the law and the court had to find against the girls. Now that the law had been rewritten to include poisons, the company was trying the opposite tack.

It was just the sort of slippery, unjust finagling that Grossman had fought against before. Inspired, he rose to the occasion. And even though this was a modest hearing, Grossman now revealed how apt it was that his office was located in Chicago’s theater district. For he was a showman, “a silver-tongued orator,”9 and as he stood center stage in the courthouse, he exhibited his skills. Seeing him shine, many of the girls were seen “weeping”10 that an accomplished attorney was finally on their side.

“We should have laws,” Grossman started, in his somber, melodious voice, “that will do away with things that rack, ruin, and destroy bodies.”11

He turned and scanned his eyes across the crippled women sitting at the desk. He gestured at them with feeling. “We do not need to have martyrs such as we have sitting around this table,” he said, “and the many dead who worked with these girls.”12

He paused dramatically, and then went on. “It is a heavy cross to Calvary,” he declared, “but we will bear it. And, with the help of God, we will fight to a finish.”13