As more and more girls fell ill, the company found that – in a stark contrast to the glory days in the war – they were encountering ‘considerable difficulty’ recruiting staff: a number of the girls had quit and no one wanted to replace them; production was now being held up. When Genevieve Smith – shocked into action by her best friend Marguerite’s decline – also handed in her resignation on 20 February 1924, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Viedt, the vice president, was ordered to find out why Genevieve was leaving and she cited Dr Barry’s ultimatum; the dentist was persisting with his outlandish claims.
The lack of operators was a big concern to the company, but there was another worrying development about the same time that really made them sit up and take note of what was happening to their former employees. For more than three years, Grace Vincent, Hazel’s mother, had been watching her daughter suffer. Hazel was in constant agony; no mother could bear it. Dr Blum had said there was no hope now, and Mrs Vincent had nothing to lose. She went down to the studio in Orange and left a letter there. In it, she told the firm ‘she was about to make [a] claim for compensation on account of [her daughter’s] illness’.
That got their attention.
At once, Viedt reported these developments to the New York headquarters. Not long after, USRC executives decided to launch an investigation to determine if there was anything dangerous in the work. For too long there had been rumour and suspicion; it couldn’t continue. After all – now, it was bad for business.
12
In a sign of how seriously the company was taking the downturn in its operations, President Arthur Roeder himself took charge of the investigation. In March 1924, he approached Dr Cecil K. Drinker, professor of physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and asked him if he would conduct a study at the Orange plant. Drinker was a qualified MD as well as a recognised authority in occupational disease; Roeder was taking no chances but bringing in the very best. To Drinker, Roeder wrote: ‘We must determine definitely and finally if the material is [in] any way harmful.’
To Roeder’s delight, Drinker found his letter ‘very interesting’ and offered to meet him in April for further discussion. Roeder told him of two cases, one fatal – probably Irene Rudolph – and one ‘very much improved’; Roeder emphasised knowingly of the latter: ‘I have been informed that her family have had considerable tubercular trouble.’
In response Drinker advised that ‘We are inclined to feel’ – Drinker worked with his equally brilliant wife, Dr Katherine Drinker, and another doctor called Dr Castle – ‘that the two occurrences which you mention have been coincidences.’ However, he added, ‘At the same time we are agreed that it is not at all safe to permit any conviction upon that point without a rather complete examination.’ In April 1924 the study would begin.
It is not wholly clear who Roeder meant by his ‘very much improved’ case. It was probably Marguerite Carlough, since she was the woman who had left his employ most recently (although, in fact, she was still greatly suffering), but it could also have been Grace Fryer, who was finally reaping the benefits of the expensive medical care she was paying for. Dr Humphries was still examining her once a week to see how her strapped back and feet were doing; now, at last, he was happy to note she was improving.
Humphries, however, had care only of Grace’s body – and it was her jaw that was now becoming her major source of pain. The same month Roeder wrote to Drinker, Grace was admitted to hospital in New York for a week-long stay; her latest round of X-rays showed a ‘chronic infectious process in the jaw’ and she sought treatment from Dr Francis McCaffrey, a specialist, who operated on her, excising some of her jawbone. As Knef and Barry had found, however, once an operation had been carried out, another was needed, and then another after that. ‘I have been compelled to go to the hospital so often,’ Grace later said, ‘that it seems like a second home.’
Grace – as with so many of her former colleagues – now became trapped in a vicious circle with each operation incurring yet another bill. Before too long, she had to swallow her pride and ask her parents for money; but the rising medical costs desecrated both her savings and the family’s bank account.
That spring, USRC, too, was concerned about money. April seemed rather distant for Drinker’s investigation to begin, given the pressing delay in production at the plant. Though Viedt had managed to hire an extra six girls, it wasn’t enough; the executives still had to address the ‘psychological and hysterical situation’ that was now unfolding in the studio.
So, while it waited for Drinker to begin his study, the firm organised its own examinations of the current team of dial-painters, conducted by the Life Extension Institute. The girls were tested confidentially – but the reports were shared with the firm. ‘The individuals concerned,’ Viedt wrote Roeder, ‘do not know that we have these copies . . . information given in them is very confidential and they might object to our having them.’ Though the institute found some girls had infected teeth, it concluded that their ailments ‘did not reflect any specific occupational influence’. Roeder wrote contentedly to Viedt that the results were ‘just as I anticipated’.
Viedt, however, who was more involved in operations at the studio, was not so reassured. ‘I do not feel quite as optimistic about this matter as you do,’ he wrote to his boss. ‘While the Life Extension Institute have made a report, I do not believe that this will satisfy our various operators and that we must wait for Dr Drinker’s final report in order to really convince them that there is no injurious element.’
Roeder then added his own two cents. ‘We should create an atmosphere in the plant of competence,’ he wrote decidedly to Viedt. ‘An atmosphere of confidence is just as contagious as one of alarm and doubt.’ And he advised that, in his view, ‘the most important action is to see Barry and perhaps others who have been making statements [having] jumped at conclusions apparently without thought or knowledge’.
Viedt knew an instruction when he heard one: in late March 1924, he duly paid a visit to Barry and Davidson.
The dentists received him coolly. They had no doubt that the agonising condition they were seeing in their patients was due to the girls’ former employment at USRC. During Viedt’s visit, they became outraged by what they considered a cold-blooded attitude.
‘You ought to close down the plant,’ Davidson told Viedt angrily. ‘You’ve made $5 million. Why go on killing people for more money?’
Viedt had no answer.
‘If I could have my way,’ Davidson told him bitterly, ‘I would close your plant.’