Radium Girls by Cy

Grace Fryer arrives at work to find that Miss Rooney wants her to train a new hire, Edna Bolz. Grace is to teach Edna "lip-pointing". She tells Edna, it's not difficult and that by the end of the week, she should be painting two hundred-fifty dials a day. The paint, called Undark is rare and expensive so a very small amount of paint must be used. Edna is told to first smooth the brush with her lip, dip it into the paint and then paint the dial. "Lip-dip-paint." Grace encourages her "to tip the brush several times per number" if she needs to.

At lunch break, Edna doesn't plan on eating because she has no money for food. However, Grace offers to lend her some money in advance and so they go to lunch. At lunch Edna meets some of the other girls: Katherine Schaub, Albina Maggio and her sisters Amelia "Mollie" Maggio and Quinta Maggio.

Edna tells them that her cousins are jealous because she's found a good paying job with such a prestigious company. But she admits the paint tastes metallic. Grace says that many girls quit because of the taste while Amelia reveals that now Edna is part of a very exclusive group, "the Ghost Girls". She is told she will understand that night when she goes to bed. And that night when she blows out the candle to get into bed, Edna sees that her hands glow in the dark.

The girls have fun with the paint that makes them glow in the dark. At a party, Mollie's party dress that she wears to work glows in the dark along with her nails which she surreptitiously painted with Undark. And Marguerite plays a joke on her boyfriend, painting her teeth with the paint so they glow. He is not amused.

Edna is concerned about drinking alcohol which is illegal during Prohibition but her friends tell her they are already breaking the law because the party is at a speakeasy (an illegal club that sells alcohol).

Then one day at work, Dr. Von Sochocky tells Grace not to put the brush to her lips as it will make her sick. This causes grave concern among the girls who question why he would say this if the paint is safe. They decide to question Miss Rooney about what Mr. Von Sochocky, who invented Undark paint, has said. Miss Rooney's response is that they would not ask the girls to do something that is harmful.

Life goes on with the girls going to movies and swimming. Then one day they learn  from the newspaper that Dr. Von Sochocky will be replaced by Arthur Roeder. Mollie who has not been very talkative lately, reveals that she has a toothache. Later on the girls learn that she was diagnosed with syphilis and has died. They express disbelief in this diagnosis.

Grace eventually leaves her job and finds another working in a bank. When Grace meets up with the girls from the United States Radium Corporation, Katherine reveals that Helen Quinlan and Irene Rudolph are dead and that Marguerite Carlough is very ill in a hospital in New York. Both Grace and Edna state that their teeth are beginning to hurt as well as their feet. They believe this is just a coincidence. But as it will turn out, this is the beginning of a terrible fate that will befall all the girls who have worked at USRC and that they will become known by a new name, the Radium Girls.

Discussion

Radium Girls is a fictionalized account of a real historical event using the graphic novel format. The event is the poisoning of women workers at the United States Radium Corporation. Female workers were poisoned at three different factories but Radium Girls focuses on the factory in Orange, New Jersey in 1918. The women had been told the radium paint, made from powdered radium, gum arabic and water was harmless. This luminous paint, called Undark, was developed by Dr. Von Sochocky.

The women were hired to paint dials and were encouraged to use the "lip-dip-paint" procedure as it was then called and as described in the novel because the camel hair brushes would quickly lose their fine point during painting. Meanwhile, scientists who knew of radium's dangerous radioactivity took precautions. This was portrayed in one of the novel's panels where the scientists are masked while the women workers on the floor below are working unprotected. In fact, as Cy portrays in her panels, they often painted their nails and even their teeth with Undark.

Amelia "Mollie" Maggia was one of the first women to fall ill and suffered terribly from exposure to radium, first losing teeth and then her jaw. She eventually died in 1922, but doctors diagnosed her as having had syphilis! Whether this was due to ignorance or negligence is not fully known. 

As more women became ill from the radium paint, their employers refused to acknowledge any connection to their work, even refusing to accept the findings of several independent studies. It was Dr. Harrison Martland who eventually proved the women were dying of radium poisoning. Beginning with Grace Fryer, the women attempted to sue, but encountered many obstacles including lawyers who wouldn't take their case, and the radium industry fighting every step of the way. Many succumbed before they could get any compensation, but eventually, they won.

Their cases brought about significant change in employer laws, making companies responsible for the health and safety of their employees and the creation of the United States Occupational Health and Safety Administration. 

Author Cy, tells the story of the "Radium Girls" from the perspective of a group of friends and the friendships that develop as a result of their work and eventually their illness. The novel portrays their life together before they began to sicken, attending parties, movies, going to Coney Island and enjoying life as young women did at this time. This friendships grew beyond work and led to them working together to seek compensation from their employer.

The graphic novel medium worked exceptionally well for this story. The panels were done in coloured pencil using a limited palette of eight colours including purple, blue, red, black, white and radium green. In the transcript of an interview at the back of the novel, Cy mentions that she limited her colour palette to "avoid making a color faux pas".

As she tells the story of the women poisoned by radium paint, the author includes many historical details, portraying life for women in the 1920's. Women were finally given the vote in August of 1920. In Radium Girls, the girls are divided as to the value of being able to vote but some point out they will now be able to vote on laws that directly affect them. However, many things in life are still very restrictive for women: when they go swimming  and Mollie shows up in a new bathing suit that is too many inches above her knee, she is threatened with a fine and harassed by the police.

At this time Prohibition was in full force, banning the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages.  Grace and the other girls visit a speakeasy, an illegal business that sells alcohol. Edna is very concerned but the other girls laugh off her worries.

Throughout the graphic novel, readers will note that the author has included illustrations and references to beauty products containing radioactive ingredients. This was very popular in the early part of the 1900's. Radioactivity had only been discovered in the late 1800's and it was not very well understood even into the 1920's and 1930's. Radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie, who would eventually die from her research with radioactive substances. It was believed that radioactive substances could increase vitality and overall health, and so radioactive substances were added to many products.

Radithor, a tonic believed to restore vitality was in fact distilled water with small amounts of radium. Radium wool, portrayed in the novel as a large advertisement on a building, was a real product that advocated dressing your baby in clothing that contained radium. Thor-radia was a face cream containing small amounts of radium and thorium, claiming to regenerate the skin. It was no wonder, that into this world, the girls painting radium onto dials of clocks felt their work was safe. But scientists knew better.

Radium Girls is a well-crafted graphic novel that captures the story of these inspiring women whose lives and suffering were forgotten until recently. It offers young readers a window into life during the 1920's and captures the Radium Girls' determination to seek justice and compensation for their suffering. Cy has indicated that one of the main sources for her novel was Kate Moore's book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Cy's Radium Girls serves as a good introduction to this topic.

Book Details:

Radium Girls by Cy
Chicago: Iron Circus Comics      2022
135 pp.