Radium Girls Lines

Term: Cue Line Def: my line

ROEDER: You see that Charlie? That is a marketing opportunity! Let’s send her one of our customer’s watchers. Courtesy, the United States Radium Corporation!

LEE: We’ll need a press release

ROEDER: …Anyone who thinks these are just novelties, consider all the other advances that have taken place in the past 50 years-the electric light, the telegraph-

LEE: The telephone!

ROEDER: The automobile! Inventions all once dismissed as novelties-as toys-

LEE: -are now essentials to modern life. Got it. That ought to sell some watches.

ROEDER: Watches, absolutely. But that’s not where the growth is now Charlie. You heard the lady, its the medical market.

LEE: And Standard Chemical owns it

ROEDER: Only because Von Sochocky lets them take it. But if we wanted to, we could get half their business. Its just a matter of positioning

LEE: Standard Chemical publishes its own journal. Sends it out monthly-to twelve thousand doctors. We could do something similar.

ROEDER: Something scholarly. That the doctors would respect

LEE: A bibliography. Listing every article ever published on radium…

ROEDER: But with capsule reports-to save the doctors time. They’d get information, find it fast-

LEE: And have us to thank for it

ROEDER: We’ll send it to every doctor in the US Radium Society

LEE: Every doctor in the American Medical Association.

Scene change to scene IV

MRS FRYER: thirty five dollars a week and she quits the place

TOM: More to life than money

MRS FRYER: That’s what ya say when you’re young Tom. But you’n Grace get to be my age-with a house fulla yer kinds underfoot. You’ll thank God for every penny ya put by

TOM: We got money put by

MRS FRYER: How much?

TOM: Enough to get married on

MRS FRYER: Don’t take much to get married on. Do ya have enough to stay married on?

GRACE: You’re going to get fat

MRS FRYER: (takes the plate back): Gotta keep up his strength. He works hard for his money

GRACE: Don’t start Ma

MRS FRYER: I didn’t say nothin. It’s your father who hit the roof over it

GRACE: He didn’t hit the roof

MRS FRYER: You shoulda seen the man’s face, Tom, when he found out that Grace wasn’t workin no more. Most girls would give their eyeteeth for a job like that-good money, easy work, nice-lookin fellas around the plant

GRACE: Wasn’t many of ‘em. Hardly seemed worth the mention

MRS FRYER: And she leaves it all behind. For reasons unknown. I’m tired of it up there, ses says. Are you tired of the paycheck, I says? Who needs a paycheck, she says. I got me a boyfriend to take me out on Saturdays.

GRACE: Oh you know I didn’t. And for your information, I got a job. I start at the bank on Monday

MRS FRYER: Oh yeah, the bank! And what’s it pay?

GRACE: Enough

MRS FRYER: Enough. Always enough. You know what that means, Tom. It don’t come close to what it pays up at the radium plant

GRACE: It’s office work

MRS FRYER: Office work! Well, I guess that means you’ll be spendin’ more on on clothes then. (She takes Tom’s empty plate and leaves)

MARKLEY: Hazel Kuser. Any connection to the others?

LEE: only by virtue of employment

ROEDER: Except she’s got a good lawyer

LEE: Knows how to write a good letter anyway, that lawyer.

MARKLEY: and she no longer works here?

LEE: Left six months ago

ROEDER: This makes four now

LEE: three

ROEDER: Four if you count the Maggia girl

LEE: I wouldn’t include her

ROEDER: She worked here

LEE: She also worked other places. And what she died from-you couldn’t pick up here. At least, I don’t think you can

ROEDER: That’s not funny, Charlie. Besides, that’s just idle talk

LEE: In my experience, there’s usually something to the idle talk. When it comes to girls like that.

MARKLEY: From a large family, wasn’t she?

LEE: Italians. The conditions they live in! Ten, twelve people in three rooms. It’s a wonder they don’t all die of one disease or another

ROEDER: In all of my time I’ve been here. No one has so much as slipped on the floor. And now this

LEE: We’re talking about four girls. Out of how many hundreds we’ve employed?

ROEDER: 6, 7 hundred over the years

LEE: And some of them were sick when they got her. One girl you hired was a complete cripp1e. Couldn’t even climb the stairs. Her father carried her up to the studio every morning

ROEDER: It didnt make any difference to me how she got up the stairs-she was a fast worker and a very sweet little girl

LEE: But she was in poor health

ROEDER: …I dont see any reason why we should stop hiring girls like that

LEE: When they get sick and try to blame us for it - you might want to reconsider that policy

MARKLEY: Dr. Drinker?

LEE: Some professor at the Harvard School of Industrial Hygiene

ROEDER: He chairs the department. And hes agreed to take a look at our operations

LEE: Don’t you think we are jumping the gun a little bit, hiring him?

ROEDER: We’ve had 6 girls quit this week. and Mrs MacNeil tells me there could be more

LEE: Girls come and go all the time

ROEDER: It’s never been like this. These girls and terrified. We’ve got to do something to calm them

LEE: Letting Drinker examine them? That sounds to me like a recipe for mass hysteria

ROEDER: Settle?

LEE: There’s no proof her problems are connected to us

MARKLEY: If she sues-believe me, you wont like the publicity it brings. and neither will your investors

LEE: You think this will affect the stock offering?

MARKLEY: Or not open at all

LEE: But if we give this girl something-that will keep her quiet?

MARKLEY: It would be a condition of the settlement

LEE: Maybe we better do it

ROEDER: Suppose that lawyer has a racket going? He finds sick girls and talks them into making suits. Then we reward them for his larceny

LEE: Unless…Miss Kuser genuinely believes she got sick here

MARKLEY: It ccould be like Charlie said. She comes from a large, immigrant family. Not well educated. Not a lot of resources

LEE: A few hundred dollars would make a big difference to a girl like that

ROEDER: Charlie (he shows him the report) He has to be wrong

LEE: He must have overlooked something

ROEDER: If were suffering from a new ailment caused by radium it should occur generally throughout the plan

LEE: one would expect

ROEDER: …Several hundred in crystallization

LEE: The entire back yard is filled with tailings

ROEDER: Radium is present in good amounts all over the property

LEE: If it’s the radium, then the incidence of illness should be highest in the laboratory

ROEDER: and no one there is sick

LEE: Then perhaps it’s some combination of the radium with the zinc

ROEDER: or something peculiar to our plant alone

LEE: some kind of bacteria, perhaps? In the brushes?

ROEDER: It cant be the radium. there are dozens of application plants across the country. and none has ever reported anything like this

LEE: The Department of Labor wants to see the report

ROEDER: Yes I’m aware

LEE: What are we going to do? This tears us to pieces. How do we answer them?

One page?

ROEDER: The most important page

LEE: Drinker will never stand for this