Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Debline and Chok reboarding and I'm scared out and
Speaker 1: we're just stearing up for our long Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 1: But by the time this episode airs, that will already
Speaker 1: have passed and a labor related memorial should have been
Speaker 1: unveiled in a town called Ottawa, Illinois. And the memorial,
Speaker 1: which was unveiled Friday, September two, is a statue of
Speaker 1: a woman holding flowers in one hand and paint brushes
Speaker 1: in the other, and it's meant to symbolize the women
Speaker 1: who worked for the Ottawa based Luminous Processes factory and
Speaker 1: there they painted watch and clock dials in the early
Speaker 1: tent twentieth century. And they were women who ended up
Speaker 1: getting serious radiation poisoning as a result of their jobs.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure how much national media attention this
Speaker 1: memorial and it's unveiling are going to receive. It was
Speaker 1: conceived of by a young lady named Madeline Pillar, who
Speaker 1: actually came up with this idea for the memorial after
Speaker 1: doing a junior high history project. How about that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: her dad is a sculptor and she did this project
Speaker 1: and kind of couldn't get this woman out of her
Speaker 1: head and proposed the idea of doing a memorial to them,
Speaker 1: and they raised all this money. But we're not sure.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that many news stories about it. I
Speaker 1: just randomly kind of stumbled upon it. But the story
Speaker 1: of the women who came to be known as the
Speaker 1: Radium Girls actually became a media sensation in the nine
Speaker 1: twenties and the nineteen thirties. Yeah, they certainly deserve a monument.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just an Illinois based story either, because
Speaker 1: workers at factories in Connecticut and New Jersey were really
Speaker 1: in the same boat. In fact, it was a story
Speaker 1: coming out of New Jersey that first brought this issue,
Speaker 1: this radium poisoning issue, to the public's attention in the
Speaker 1: first place. And that's the story that we're going to
Speaker 1: focus on today in the podcast. And we're gonna just
Speaker 1: sort of take a look at the historical circumstances and
Speaker 1: working conditions that d to these women getting radiation poisoning
Speaker 1: in the first place, because you're probably gonna wonder pretty
Speaker 1: quickly how something like this could happen. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: also going to take a look at how they came
Speaker 1: to be known as the Radium Girls and their struggle
Speaker 1: for justice that led to some workplace reforms in the end,
Speaker 1: so kind of try to put a positive spin on
Speaker 1: what is ultimately a very sad story. But before we
Speaker 1: can talk about the Radium Girls, we need to take
Speaker 1: a closer look at the element that's at the heart
Speaker 1: of their story, and that is, of course radium, literally
Speaker 1: the element very good punned bluinus. So we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about radium, of course, but that also gives
Speaker 1: us the chance to talk about one of our most
Speaker 1: frequently requested podcast subjects, Polish born scientists and Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winner Marie Curie. And this isn't a podcast on her,
Speaker 1: it's not a profile on her, but she is an
Speaker 1: important character in it, mostly because she discovered radium in
Speaker 1: eight and radioactivity was still pretty new at that time.
Speaker 1: It was not well understood. The German and physicists Wilhelm
Speaker 1: Conrad rent Gen had just discovered X rays back in
Speaker 1: and just a few weeks after that discovery and rebekr
Speaker 1: l had identified radioactivity during experiments with uranium salts. So
Speaker 1: when Marie Carey made her discovery. All of this stuff
Speaker 1: was kind of floating around and kind of new science,
Speaker 1: and people were really fascinated by it, and Carrie was
Speaker 1: one of them. She was really fascinated, especially by Beckerrel's
Speaker 1: findings because not that much attention were given to them
Speaker 1: at the time. So she started experimenting with pitch blend,
Speaker 1: which was which is a shiny tar like byproduct of mining.
Speaker 1: That eventually led she and her husband Pierre to isolate
Speaker 1: two new chemical elements, polonium and the one we're focusing
Speaker 1: on today, which is radium. It was radioactive, it seemed
Speaker 1: to pulse with spontaneous energy, and the other cool thing
Speaker 1: about radium was that it glowed in the dark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that certainly seemed to be a selling point for it,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. But by this time people had started
Speaker 1: to realize that even though radiation was invisible, it did
Speaker 1: have strong powers. They could cause injury. Scientists were exposed
Speaker 1: to enlarge doses and they suffered from skin burns and
Speaker 1: hair loss, so clearly this element could do something. But
Speaker 1: this also cluded physicians into the possibilities that radiation held
Speaker 1: for treating cancer. Something that's powerful could potentially fight something
Speaker 1: that was hurting people as well as burn them or
Speaker 1: injure them. Yeah, So it was that potential and along
Speaker 1: with those kind of magical glowy properties that it had
Speaker 1: that gave it this reputation as a wonder substance. Pretty
Speaker 1: much from the get go, people thought it could cure
Speaker 1: everything from arthritis to diabetes, not just cancer, and an
Speaker 1: entire radium industry grew out of that belief. Some form
Speaker 1: of the word radium was actually incorporated into a lot
Speaker 1: of brand names, whether the products actually contained radium or not.
Speaker 1: It was funny, yeah, but a lot of products had
Speaker 1: radium added in them, including toothpaste, hair tonic, bath salts, lotions,
Speaker 1: heating pads, and male pouches. You got to explain what
Speaker 1: do you know what a male pouches now, because you
Speaker 1: told me, But it's it's your job to tell listeners.
Speaker 1: They were condoms, so those also contained radium or some
Speaker 1: with radium, but radium or raid on laced water was
Speaker 1: probably one of the most widely touted products, and it
Speaker 1: was called liquid Sunshine because people thought that this was
Speaker 1: some sort of magical elixir that could like extend your
Speaker 1: youth and make you healthy. And one brand in particular
Speaker 1: was called Rata Thor. You read about this a lot.
Speaker 1: It was a popular brand of radioactive water and doctors
Speaker 1: would give it to patients as a tonic. Really doesn't
Speaker 1: sound good, does It doesn't sound good to us now,
Speaker 1: but maybe it would have back then. I don't know,
Speaker 1: And you and I were talking about it. It makes
Speaker 1: you kind of concerned, what are we drinking or consuming
Speaker 1: now that will sound as horrible and ridiculous as radium
Speaker 1: laced tonic in the future. I mean, gosh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of don't want to know. Maybe I should, but
Speaker 1: but medium's use went beyond just personal and health products.
Speaker 1: To write. In nineteen o two, radium was isolated into
Speaker 1: pure metal and Marie Curry was involved with that as well,
Speaker 1: And soon after American electrical engineer William J. Hammer created
Speaker 1: a radium treated paint which had the trade name Undark,
Speaker 1: that when applied to things, would make them glow in
Speaker 1: the dark. So this was used on scientific instruments and
Speaker 1: things like that. It was expensive to do, but it
Speaker 1: became really significant during World War One, especially when people
Speaker 1: realize the advantage of applying this to military instruments. You're
Speaker 1: in a dark trench and you can actually read your
Speaker 1: watch or read your instrument exactly. So that's where our
Speaker 1: story about the Radium girls really begins. So, between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen and nineteen hundreds of young women got jobs applying
Speaker 1: radium treated paint too watches, to aircraft controls, clocks, and
Speaker 1: compass faces in factories in states like Illinois and New Jersey, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: even Long Island factories were owned by a big corporation,
Speaker 1: even though they were in different parts of the country.
Speaker 1: It was the US Radium Corporation. And for the young
Speaker 1: women getting these jobs, it seems like a pretty great opportunity,
Speaker 1: mostly because it paid a lot better than other factory
Speaker 1: jobs at the time, more than three times as much.
Speaker 1: It was about eighteen dollars per week instead of five
Speaker 1: dollars per week. They got paid about a penny and
Speaker 1: a half per dial they painted, and they would paint
Speaker 1: about two fifty dials a day, so a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: And the work didn't seem too treacherous either, at least
Speaker 1: for the time. The women sat together at these long
Speaker 1: tables with racks of dials and they would paint the
Speaker 1: faces sitting next to them and um mix up. This
Speaker 1: concoction of glue and water and radium powder into a
Speaker 1: glowing greenish white paint and then use their little camel
Speaker 1: hair brushes to apply the paint to the dial numbers.
Speaker 1: So it sounds kind of social, kind of artistic in
Speaker 1: a way. A pretty nice job. Yeah, as they were
Speaker 1: painting these dial numbers, though, after a few strokes the brushes,
Speaker 1: those camel hair brushes they were using would lose their
Speaker 1: shape and the women couldn't paint as accurately. So their
Speaker 1: supervisors had kind of a solution for this. They told
Speaker 1: them to point the brushes with their lips, and according
Speaker 1: to an article in the Journal American History, some women
Speaker 1: later quoted their bosses as saying, quote, not to worry
Speaker 1: if you swallow any radium, it'll make your cheeks rosy.
Speaker 1: So Grace Friar was one of seventy young women who
Speaker 1: started working at a factory like this an orange New
Speaker 1: Jersey in the spring of nineteen sev Later, about the brushes,
Speaker 1: she said, quote, I think I pointed mine with my
Speaker 1: lips about six times to every watch style. It didn't
Speaker 1: taste funny, it didn't have any taste, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know it was harmful to add to matters. The workers
Speaker 1: really had fun with this, licking the brushes with the
Speaker 1: radium on it. They'd paint their nails and their teeth
Speaker 1: to through of amuse each other and surprise their boy
Speaker 1: friends when the lights would go out. Friar even remembers
Speaker 1: that after she'd blow her nose, her handkerchief would glow
Speaker 1: in the dark with this radium residue. But they just
Speaker 1: all have a good laugh about it, go back to work,
Speaker 1: keep licking those brushes and and keep painting. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: didn't have any indication that it was hurting them. In
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, Friar quit the factory to take a better
Speaker 1: job as a bank teller, but only two years later
Speaker 1: she started having some major problems. Her teeth started falling out,
Speaker 1: and she developed painful abscesses in her jaw. She got
Speaker 1: X rayed and it showed that she had such severe
Speaker 1: bone decay. The many doctors and dennis that she went
Speaker 1: to to try to figure out what was going on,
Speaker 1: they said that they've never seen anything like it. They've
Speaker 1: never seen bone decay to that degree. In July n
Speaker 1: one doctor finally suggested that her problems might have been
Speaker 1: caused by her former job. As a dial painter, and
Speaker 1: I think the delay there is is pretty remarkable. So
Speaker 1: when it was nineteen two when she started having these
Speaker 1: sempt it's not till nineteen five when somebody says, this
Speaker 1: looks like it's radium poisoning, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: Friar wasn't the only former dial maker having issues. I
Speaker 1: guess we can just assume that it took that long
Speaker 1: for word to spread among the medical community what was
Speaker 1: going on. But at the request of the Orange City
Speaker 1: Health Department, the National Consumers League, which was an organization
Speaker 1: that fought for safe workplaces and reasonable wages and decent
Speaker 1: working hours, started an investigation on these suspicious deaths of
Speaker 1: four radium factory workers between nineteen two and nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 1: So right around that time that Friar is realizing what's
Speaker 1: wrong with her, other people are realizing something's going on here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cause of death for these other four radium factory
Speaker 1: workers was listed as things like phosphorus poisoning, mouth ulcers,
Speaker 1: and syphilis, but the factory workers thought that the paint
Speaker 1: ingredients did have something to do with it. So New
Speaker 1: Jersey Consumer League Chairman Katherine Wiley can hold it some experts.
Speaker 1: She brought in a statistician, and she went to Harvard
Speaker 1: and consulted some people, and she found out when she
Speaker 1: was talking to people at Harvard that a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: physiology professor Cecil Drinker had been asked to study the
Speaker 1: working conditions at us Radium and report back to the company.
Speaker 1: So somebody had already been looking into this before it
Speaker 1: even came to their attention, and Drinker found out that
Speaker 1: pretty much the entire workforce that US Radium was contaminated.
Speaker 1: They had strange blood conditions, and several workers had advanced
Speaker 1: radium necrosis. So Drinker made suggestions at that point, and
Speaker 1: as of June, I think that's when his report came out,
Speaker 1: and he suggested that they make changes that would protect
Speaker 1: the workers. But Arthur Rhoder, who was president of us
Speaker 1: Radium at the time, he resisted this, and furthermore, he
Speaker 1: refused to give drink Or permission to publish his findings,
Speaker 1: saying that Drinker had agreed to confidentiality and that he
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to. So it actually turned out later they
Speaker 1: found out that Rhodor had been circulating a false report
Speaker 1: under Drinkers him. It was basically his report, but it said, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no harm here, there's no problem with the radium
Speaker 1: that's used in the paint, and why he didn't want
Speaker 1: a Drinker to publish the real report exactly. But to
Speaker 1: be honest, Drinker's report wasn't the only thing out there
Speaker 1: that indicated that radium was a hazard. There were There
Speaker 1: was also scientific and medical literature, some of the dating
Speaker 1: back as far as nineteen o six that contained plenty
Speaker 1: of information about the hazards of radium. Even one of
Speaker 1: US Radium's own publications, and that's the part I think
Speaker 1: is really surprising. It was distributed to hospitals and doctor's offices,
Speaker 1: and it contained a section with dozens of references. This
Speaker 1: report was called Radium Dangers dash Injurious Effects, And so
Speaker 1: it was out there. They knew what was going on
Speaker 1: the entire time from the same company encouraging their workers
Speaker 1: to moisten their brushets. Yeah, and too, I guess to
Speaker 1: be fair, we don't know that the supervisors on the
Speaker 1: floor actually knew that there were dangers, but it became
Speaker 1: pretty clear the company as a whole did, though, so
Speaker 1: the consumer leagues wildly try. I had to get us
Speaker 1: Radium to pay for the medical expenses for Friar and
Speaker 1: for the other workers who were ill. But the company
Speaker 1: insisted that radium was not to blame, and it went
Speaker 1: beyond that though, and launched this campaign of misinformation. They've
Speaker 1: tried to tarnish the women workers reputations by saying that
Speaker 1: the problem wasn't radium, it was actually that they had syphilis.
Speaker 1: And in nine when Friar started exploring radium as a
Speaker 1: cause for her illness, a Columbia University doctor named Frederick Flynn,
Speaker 1: who said that he was referred to her by friends,
Speaker 1: asked to examine her and he found her health to
Speaker 1: be quote as good as my own. Later, though, Fryar
Speaker 1: found out that Flynn wasn't even a medical doctor. He
Speaker 1: was an industrial toxicologist on contract with US Radium. So
Speaker 1: it became pretty clear that almost from the get go
Speaker 1: us Radium had been acting um shady about covering up
Speaker 1: the effects of the element. Yeah, and we should say
Speaker 1: that although Flynn wasn't a doctor, I mean, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out earlier, it took a long time for doctors
Speaker 1: to kind of you mean, you mentioned catching on to
Speaker 1: the fact that these women had had radium something to
Speaker 1: do with it, right, But I think part of it
Speaker 1: was also that they didn't want to Radium had so
Speaker 1: much promise. They didn't want to admit that maybe this
Speaker 1: wonder element that they had found also had some negative
Speaker 1: effects because they were afraid it would keep people from
Speaker 1: accepting the positive effects that radium could have, just give
Speaker 1: it a bad name essentially. Right. So Friar did decide
Speaker 1: to sue US Radium in NI, but it took her
Speaker 1: two years to find an attorney who was willing to
Speaker 1: take her case. On May eighteenth, ninety seven, though, Raymond Barry,
Speaker 1: who was a young Newark attorney, took the case on
Speaker 1: contingency and filed a lawsuit in a New Jersey court
Speaker 1: on her behalf and pretty much right away, four other
Speaker 1: women with severe medical problems joined the lawsuit. Their names
Speaker 1: were Edma Hussman, Catherine Schobe, and two sisters, also Quentum
Speaker 1: McDonald and Albina Larisse. And as the case started to
Speaker 1: grow into a huge media sensation, the press in the
Speaker 1: US and Europe soon dubbed the five women the Radium Girls.
Speaker 1: So that's where the name comes from. So the Radium
Speaker 1: Girls were looking for two hundred fifty thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: compensation for medical expenses in pain for each of them.
Speaker 1: But first there was this legal obstacle in New Jersey's
Speaker 1: law that they had to get by. It was two
Speaker 1: year statute of limitations. But the lawyer, Raymond Barry, argued
Speaker 1: that the statute applied from the moment the women learned
Speaker 1: about the source of their problems, not from the date
Speaker 1: they quit working for the factory, since, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: that took quite some time. He also said that US
Speaker 1: Radium's campaign of misinformation was the reason the women weren't
Speaker 1: informed in the first place, and the reason why they
Speaker 1: didn't take legal action within the statute of limitations. So
Speaker 1: maybe Radium's fake doctor sort of complicated matters here definitely.
Speaker 1: While this was going on, though, medical examiners kept looking
Speaker 1: into the situation. Medical examiners from New Jersey and New York.
Speaker 1: They investigated the suspicious deaths of the plant workers, and
Speaker 1: in the process, a deceased sister of two of the
Speaker 1: Radium girls, McDonald and Laurie, was exhumed on October sixteenth,
Speaker 1: n Her name was Amelia Maggia, and she had also
Speaker 1: worked at the plant, and her bones were found to
Speaker 1: be highly radioactive. Her former dentists to tip them off
Speaker 1: on it. He actually had removed part of her jaw
Speaker 1: soon before she died because it had deteriorated to that point,
Speaker 1: and he kind of suspected that radium poisoning might be
Speaker 1: part of the issue, radiation poisoning, and so they exhumed
Speaker 1: the body and found that he was correct. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: these investigations, the exhumation and all of that and the
Speaker 1: legal maneuverings took up quite a bit of time, obviously,
Speaker 1: And in fact, it took up so much time that
Speaker 1: the first hearing didn't take place until January, and by
Speaker 1: that point the women's health had really deteriorated. Some of
Speaker 1: them couldn't even raise their arms to take the oath.
Speaker 1: The two sisters we mentioned where bedridden. Grace Friar had
Speaker 1: lost all of her teeth and couldn't sit up without
Speaker 1: using a back Braith definitely couldn't walk um. But the
Speaker 1: severity of their conditions really affected people in the courtroom
Speaker 1: when they did testify. When those who were able to testify,
Speaker 1: people in the courtroom were said to have wept when
Speaker 1: they when they watched them. Yeah, I'm just an example
Speaker 1: of one of their testimonies, Edna Husband's testimony included details
Speaker 1: about her financial troubles, which were caused by the medical
Speaker 1: bills that she had, and she said quote, I cannot
Speaker 1: even keep my little house or bungalow. I know I
Speaker 1: will not live much longer. For now, I cannot sleep
Speaker 1: at night for the pains. So, of course everyone was
Speaker 1: fascinated with the story, and it was everywhere. Even Marie
Speaker 1: Curie heard about it, and she was really surprised to
Speaker 1: learn how the factory workers had been handling radium on
Speaker 1: on the job. Referring to the Radium Girl, she said, quote,
Speaker 1: I see no hope for them. My experiments with radium
Speaker 1: convinced me that if a poison is taken, if the poison,
Speaker 1: sorry is taken internally, it is practically impossible to destroy it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, just an aside here. Many of you may
Speaker 1: know this, but Curie herself died in nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: of complications resulting from long term radium exposure. Also, but
Speaker 1: even then, with with Curie saying that she saw no
Speaker 1: hope for them, with the Radium Girls visibly deteriorating and
Speaker 1: public sympathy pouring in US Radium didn't hesitate to try
Speaker 1: to still delay the legal proceedings as much as they
Speaker 1: possibly could, so after hearing in April, the judge granted
Speaker 1: the defense of five month adjournment, and Barry tried to
Speaker 1: remind the judge that the women might not last those
Speaker 1: five months, not survive until September, and he even found
Speaker 1: lawyers with cases that we're going to be tried in
Speaker 1: less than a month who were willing to switch dates
Speaker 1: with him, but US Radium, as the refused, said that
Speaker 1: their witnesses were not going to be ready. They weren't
Speaker 1: going to be available until that five month window was
Speaker 1: was up. Yeah. So what ended ultimately helping them move
Speaker 1: the trial up was the power of the press, in
Speaker 1: particular Walter Littman of The New York World, and he
Speaker 1: helped kind of speed things along. The New York World
Speaker 1: was a really influential paper at the time, and Littman
Speaker 1: had written a number of editorials about the Radium girls.
Speaker 1: When he wrote on May tenth, ninety was particularly skating.
Speaker 1: He called the delay a quote damnable travesty of justice
Speaker 1: and said that if ever a case called for prompt adjudication,
Speaker 1: it is the case of five crippled women who are
Speaker 1: fighting for a few miserable dollars to ease their last
Speaker 1: days on earth, and those editorials, combined with the public
Speaker 1: outrage they caused, and the efforts of Barry and others
Speaker 1: altogether helped convince the new Jersey court system to change
Speaker 1: the trial day to early June. But just days before
Speaker 1: the trial, the Radium girls ended up settling out of court.
Speaker 1: They got ten thousand dollars each, coverage of their medical expenses,
Speaker 1: and a six hundred dollar annuity until death, so much
Speaker 1: less than they were hoping for in the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at least it was something before they passed away,
Speaker 1: because some of them did start dying from their condition
Speaker 1: pretty quickly after that. McDonald died in nineteen twenty nine
Speaker 1: at age thirty four, Friar died at age thirty four,
Speaker 1: and Shob died at age thirty in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and Husman died in nineteen thirty nine at age thirty seven.
Speaker 1: One lived for quite some time after it, Larisse. She
Speaker 1: died in nineteen forty six at age fifty one. But
Speaker 1: it's a really sad story anyway you look at it.
Speaker 1: But there is a silver lining the reason why we're
Speaker 1: covering this for Labor Day. They did make some strides
Speaker 1: for workers. Industry safety standards were enhanced, and the Radium
Speaker 1: Girls set a precedent in case law for the right
Speaker 1: of individual workers to soothe their ploys for damages caused
Speaker 1: by labor abuse. And of course it made people aware
Speaker 1: of the dangers of radium. New tolerance levels were set
Speaker 1: for workers and for researchers. And as for some of
Speaker 1: the products that we talked about earlier, the FTC issued
Speaker 1: a cease and desist order against the manufacturer of the
Speaker 1: product Rati thor in liquid Sunshine exactly that magical elick, sir,
Speaker 1: And they found that it contained enough radium to kill
Speaker 1: the people who drank it regularly. And of course the
Speaker 1: Radium Girls are not forgotten. There have been poems, books,
Speaker 1: and plays written about them. And now there's that memorial
Speaker 1: to that we mentioned earlier in Illinois. So so we're
Speaker 1: speaking from the past. But maybe after this Labor Day
Speaker 1: weekend we will go um check out photos of the
Speaker 1: unveiling of the memorial and and hope that something like
Speaker 1: this does get a little press for for Labor Day weekend. Yes,
Speaker 1: but we're not quite finished with labor related topics. We
Speaker 1: have done a few of this year, and one kind
Speaker 1: of touched on some of those things. The Leo Frank
Speaker 1: trial episode we received a lot of mail on, so
Speaker 1: we want to share some of that with you and
Speaker 1: our listener male segment now. So one of the things
Speaker 1: we asked of our listeners after the Leo Frank trial
Speaker 1: episode is, first of all, if they had heard of
Speaker 1: Leo Frank, and if so, then how they learned about him?
Speaker 1: Did they learn about Leo Frank in history class? Because
Speaker 1: Sarah had and I hadn't, and she grew up in
Speaker 1: Georgia and I had not, So we wondered if it
Speaker 1: was a totally georgeous specific story, and we got back
Speaker 1: some interesting responses. We got back a lot of responses,
Speaker 1: and most people, I think, especially people who weren't from
Speaker 1: Georgia's said that they had never heard of Leo Frank before,
Speaker 1: or they hadn't learned about him in class. A few
Speaker 1: people had heard about him, quite a few people, but
Speaker 1: they heard about him from kind of a surprising source.
Speaker 1: And this letter from Grace that I have here kind
Speaker 1: of indicates that or tells us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that she says, Hey, guys, I just listened to
Speaker 1: the podcast on Leo Frank and the whole time I
Speaker 1: wanted to burst out into song. Why because our recently
Speaker 1: did a production of Parade. It's a musical about the
Speaker 1: trial of Leo Frank. Like you said in the podcast,
Speaker 1: a lot of historians think that Leo was innocent, and
Speaker 1: that was the stance the play took too. If you
Speaker 1: ever get a chance to see it, it's a great production,
Speaker 1: written by Jason Robert Brown. Also, I'm from Melbourne, Australia,
Speaker 1: and if I hadn't done Parade or listened to this podcast,
Speaker 1: it is very unlikely that I would have found out
Speaker 1: about such an interesting piece of Georgian history. So we
Speaker 1: also got some mail about another artistic interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Leo Frank story. This one is from Marika and she wrote, Hey, ladies,
Speaker 1: I knew about Mary Fagan and Leo Frank, but not
Speaker 1: from history class. I learned about the case because I
Speaker 1: am a Lana Turner fan. The movie They Won't Forget
Speaker 1: is considered to be one of the best films of
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and it's based on the Leo Frank case.
Speaker 1: Lana Turner plays Mary Clay, the Murdered Girl, and it
Speaker 1: was her very first film appearance. Claude Raines and Edward
Speaker 1: Norris also star. So how about that a Lana Turner
Speaker 1: movie and a musical. So just like the Radium Girls
Speaker 1: that we just talked about, they have some dramatic interpretation. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So those were some positive responses that we got from
Speaker 1: people um or some neutral responses, and we also got
Speaker 1: a few critical responses of the episode, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to share one of those two that brought up some
Speaker 1: interesting points and and kind of respond to that a
Speaker 1: little bit and just put it out there for you
Speaker 1: guys to think about. This is from John in Florida,
Speaker 1: and he says, I found the podcast on Leo Frank
Speaker 1: to be disturbing on a few levels. I get that
Speaker 1: this is about a miscarriage of justice, but I don't
Speaker 1: get the Jewish aspect. People are subject to prejudice every
Speaker 1: day all over the world. Once you add the element
Speaker 1: of a victim's religion, you separate them from the fabric
Speaker 1: of society and it becomes more about the prejudice than
Speaker 1: the injustice. You could not have worked any harder of
Speaker 1: painting a wonderful picture of Leo Frank. In reality, he
Speaker 1: was engaged in child labor. To say he was using
Speaker 1: children and women for light duty sounds like it is
Speaker 1: from a pr firm for the Frank family. How about Mary?
Speaker 1: What were her working conditions? We did hear a lot
Speaker 1: about Frank's degrees and his work as a leader in
Speaker 1: the industry. Why did Mary have to get her check
Speaker 1: from Frank? Do you have to get your check from
Speaker 1: the founder of how Stuff Works? I found this to
Speaker 1: be a one sided and very cold report. I felt
Speaker 1: no compassion for Mary, and I felt I was being
Speaker 1: told to feel compassion for Frank. Sorry, but in the
Speaker 1: real world, I do not trust people who hire women
Speaker 1: and children to save a few cents. When we see
Speaker 1: this now, we bring it to the media's attention and
Speaker 1: boycott the products. Why is Mr Frank excused from this
Speaker 1: kind of inspection because it happened a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Exploitation of workers is exploitation of workers. Mary was exploited
Speaker 1: as a worker. Why was she not safe in her
Speaker 1: own workplace? What was the effect of the deaf on
Speaker 1: her family? Was there prejudice because she was irish? We
Speaker 1: did hear about Frank's final request, as we get away
Speaker 1: from child labor, we forget the injustice and the abuses
Speaker 1: forced on workers. It took the federal government to step
Speaker 1: in and stop people like Frank from exploiting children. Do
Speaker 1: you really think he had Mary's interest and say afety
Speaker 1: at heart? I love your podcast on history, Please don't
Speaker 1: let it become revisionist history. Thank you. All right, So,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a lot to address in this letter, right, definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, first, we wanted to start out by saying
Speaker 1: that the podcast, as the title indicates, was to focus
Speaker 1: on the Leo Frank trial, and as John mentioned, it
Speaker 1: was mostly about the miscarriage of justice there, and so
Speaker 1: that's why I think Leo Frank got more or the
Speaker 1: focus more of the focus in in the podcast. And
Speaker 1: and the murder itself is so horrific and unequivocally wrong
Speaker 1: that kind of speaks for itself in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think because Mary was so young
Speaker 1: and she was the murder victim, and because of the
Speaker 1: press that the trial has gotten, we really don't know
Speaker 1: that much about her. We know that she was thirteen,
Speaker 1: that she was young, that she was beautiful, that she
Speaker 1: was a sweet girl, she went to church, that she
Speaker 1: was Catholic. I mean, we know all these things about her.
Speaker 1: That she worked in the factory, putting the little eraser
Speaker 1: is in the middle case scenes at the end of
Speaker 1: the pencil. That's what she did, but we don't really
Speaker 1: know that much more to answer John's questions well, and
Speaker 1: consequently her story and her role in history, and not
Speaker 1: just the way we've presented it, but the way it
Speaker 1: is presented is as the murder victim, and that's terrible.
Speaker 1: That's part of the injustice of her life, that that's
Speaker 1: all she got to be. Yeah, and that's one reason
Speaker 1: that we pointed out exactly how much money she made.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about her collecting a dollar twenty
Speaker 1: five that week, and it was our intention by doing
Speaker 1: that to point out how very little she died for
Speaker 1: and how tragic her life was and her death. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, the podcast did move into more of a
Speaker 1: discussion of the trial and of Leo Frank and as
Speaker 1: we indicated at the end of that episode, more most
Speaker 1: sources do kind of assume that he was not guilty
Speaker 1: of her murder, and so maybe that is why that
Speaker 1: side of the story came through more. But we did
Speaker 1: try to emphasize at the end when we mentioned that
Speaker 1: he had received the posthumous pardon that this a lot
Speaker 1: of people have said that this doesn't mean that he
Speaker 1: is exonerated for the crime. Nobody really knows it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one knows what happened to Mary Fagan. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe someday we'll have more information, maybe not, um, but
Speaker 1: at this point, we can only give you as much
Speaker 1: information that we have, and we can say that we
Speaker 1: always try to give you a balanced story and that's
Speaker 1: always our goal, but maybe it doesn't always turn out
Speaker 1: that way. Maybe sometimes it's a little more emphasis on
Speaker 1: one person than another character in a story that we're telling,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're we apologize for that. We we
Speaker 1: always hope that we can tell something that's a balanced story.
Speaker 1: But thank you John for that email. We always love
Speaker 1: to get really honest responses from our listeners and here
Speaker 1: what you guys are thinking and hopefully kindly put, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one is really kindly put and it was really
Speaker 1: thoughtful and we appreciated it, and um, you know, please
Speaker 1: send us more of those. We do read them. So
Speaker 1: I hope this shows you guys that But are. We
Speaker 1: are at history podcast at how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to send us anything else about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcasts, or rack to any of the
Speaker 1: listener mails, or tell us more about Leo Frank or
Speaker 1: US Radium or the Radium Girls, anything, please write us.
Speaker 1: You can also look us up on Facebook. You can
Speaker 1: like us there if you actually like us, that is,
Speaker 1: and you can look us up on Twitter at miss Industry.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about radium and radiation, we do have an article called
Speaker 1: how nuclear Radiation works, and you can find it by
Speaker 1: searching for nuclear radiation at www dot how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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