For Mae Cubberley Canfield, however, her loyalty had come to an end. Soon after she married, she fell pregnant and therefore handed in her notice in the early months of 1918. That chapter of her life was over.
Her place was quickly filled. That year, an estimated 95 per cent of all the radium produced in America was given over to the manufacture of radium paint for use on military dials; the plant was running at full capacity. By the end of the year, one in six American soldiers would own a luminous watch – and it was the Orange girls who painted many of them. Jane Stocker (nicknamed Jennie) was a new recruit, and in July a slim, elfin-featured girl called Helen Quinlan joined. She was an energetic woman whom the company rather sniffily described as ‘the type that did altogether too much running around for her own good’. She had a boyfriend she often brought to the girls’ picnics, a smart, blond young man who wore a shirt and tie to the gatherings. He and Helen posed for a picture at one of them: Helen had her skirts flapping around her knees, always on the move, while he stared at her rather than the camera, looking utterly besotted with this playful creature he had somehow been lucky enough to meet.
The women were still encouraging their families to join them in their work. In September 1918, Katherine wrote proudly, ‘I obtained a position for Irene at the factory.’ Irene Rudolph was her orphaned cousin, the same age as Katherine; she lived with the Schaubs. Perhaps understandably given her early life, Irene was a cautious, thoughtful young lady. Rather than spending her wages on silks and furs as some of the other girls did, she squirrelled it away in a savings account. She had a narrow face and nose with dark eyes and hair; the only picture of her that survives shows her somewhat downcast.
A month after Irene started, another new employee began work. But this was no dial-painter striding into a new job: this was Arthur Roeder, a highly successful businessman who was the company’s new treasurer. He’d already demonstrated a skill for seizing career opportunities: though he had left university without a degree, he’d ascended rapidly through the ranks of his chosen career. A round-faced, smart-looking man with a Roman nose and thin lips, he favoured bow-ties and pomade, which he slicked through his dark hair to press it close to his skull. He was based at the head office in New York and now took on responsibility for the dial-painters. Though he said he was in the studio on numerous occasions, his presence there was an exception, as most of the executives rarely went inside. In fact, of the firm’s top men, Grace Fryer remembered von Sochocky passing through her place of work just once. She didn’t pay it much attention at the time, but it would come to take on a great significance.
She was at her desk as usual that day, lipping and dipping her brush; as were all the other girls. Von Sochocky, as per his usual, had his head full of ideas and complex science as he walked briskly about his work. On this occasion, as he passed swiftly through the studio, he stopped and looked straight at her – and at what she was doing, as though seeing her actions for the first time.
Grace glanced up at him. He was a memorable-looking man, with a dominant nose and close-cut dark hair above his slightly protruding ears. Conscious of the pace of work around her, she bent again to her task and slipped the brush between her lips.
‘Do not do that,’ he said to her suddenly.
Grace paused and looked up, perplexed. This was how you did the job; how all the girls did it.
‘Do not do that,’ he said to her again. ‘You will get sick.’
And then he was on his way.
Grace was utterly confused. Never one to back down from something she thought needed further investigation, she went straight over to Miss Rooney. But Miss Rooney merely repeated what the girls had already been told. ‘She told me there was nothing to it,’ Grace later recalled. ‘She told me it was not harmful.’
So Grace went back to her work: Lip . . . Dip . . . Paint. There was a war on, after all.
But not for much longer. On 11 November 1918, the guns fell silent. Peace reigned. More than 116,000 American soldiers had lost their lives in the war; the total death toll for all sides was around 17 million. And in that moment of the Armistice, the radium girls, the company executives and the world gave thanks that the brutal, bloody conflict was over.
Enough people had died. Now, they thought, it was time for living.
4
Exactly one month after the Armistice, Quinta Maggia put those seize-the-day principles into action, marrying James McDonald. He was a cheery man of Irish heritage who worked as a chain-store manager. The newlyweds set up home in a two-storey cottage; to begin with, Quinta was still dial-painting, but that didn’t last long. She left the firm in February 1919 and soon fell pregnant; her daughter, Helen, would be born two days after Thanksgiving.
Nor was she the only dial-painter to depart. The war was over; the girls were growing up. Irene Corby also resigned, having landed a job as an office girl in New York City. Later, she would marry the rather dashing Vincent La Porte, a man with piercing blue eyes who worked in advertising.
Those who left were quickly replaced. Sarah Maillefer managed to get a position for her little sister, Marguerite Carlough, in August 1919. She was a dynamic young woman who wore rouge and lipstick and liked dramatic clothes: smart tailored coats with outsized lapels and wide-brimmed hats with feathered edges. Marguerite became best friends with the little sister of Josephine Smith, Genevieve, who had also started working there; another close friend was Albina Maggia, who was still slaving away over her trays of dials, having seen her younger sister marry ahead of her. Albina didn’t resent Quinta’s happiness, but she couldn’t help but wonder when her time might come; that summer, she too decided to leave, returning to hat-trimming.