The banks of the rivers (and I say rivers because we have transited several since leaving Chicago including the Chicago, the Sanitary Canal, the Des Plains, the Kalcamoo, and the Illinois) are heavily industrialized and thick with commercial shipping (barge traffic). We have seen factories that make everything from coke to caustic soda, from iron pig to industrial steel springs, from paper to all sorts of petroleum products. The barges push all this stuff up and down the rivers. However, unlike in the Gulf, where the longest barge/towboat combos were six packs, or sometimes 4 strung out, on the Illinois River, they can push up to 15 barges - 5 long and three across! Unless you see these things move, you simply cannot imagine the size of these monsters.
Yesterday, while passing through the lock at Marseilles, Ill, we split time in the pool with a tow that had to split her load as it was too big to get it all in the lock and get the tow boat in the lock. The ACOE uses big cables and hydraulic drum winches to pull the load apart and then slide part of it out of the lock. Then, it gets tied up outside the lock and the lock goes down or up and fetches the second part of the load. This then gets connected to the first part. The first part gets slid even further up, and then the lock goes down/up to go fetch the tow boat. Then, it is all reconnected again, and the towboat-barge combo moves on to the next lock and does it again. Each time through, this process occurs and each time through, it takes a little more than an hour and a half. So, this is why, if you're wondering, we have only managed to cover the distance between Chicago and Ottawa these last 4 days (around 100 miles).
Anyways, with the exception of our overnight stay in a wonderful gravel pit south of Sugar Island, and behind a rock known as "Unnamed island", which, by the way, was about as peaceful and serene as it can get, notwithstanding the barge traffic that ghosts passed in the middle of the night, we have stayed at free docks in the towns of Joliet and Ottawa. We have transited 5 of the 7 locks on the Illinois River. Today we will do number 6 and stop for fuel at Henry. We always try to learn something about where we stay, but up to now, Illinois has been sort of "scary". What I mean by this is that there really is nothing truly beautiful to describe. Sure the waterway is pretty, but around every turn is another refinery or caustic soda plant, or paper mill, each of which belches its very own kind of garbage into the air and into the river. However, what we learned in Ottawa is truly horrific. I have said before that America, with all her warts and blemishes, is the greatest country on earth. However, the story of what happened in Ottawa gives me pause.
Joliet is a prison town with a casino. Nothing much else to describe. Ottawa, however, is at least the situs of the first of several political debates between Steven Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in 1850 or so when Lincoln was running for the US Senate. These debates were significant because they discussed slavery. Lincoln argued that the language of the Declaration of Independence said "all men are created equal" and that this included black people. Douglas argued on the other hand, that the states should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to tolerate slavery. Ultimately, Lincoln lost the senetorial election, but he had all the transcripts of the debates printed and used this as his platform for his run for the presidency. All very interesting. But.......
This is what Ottawa likes you to see. Also, Ottawa likes you to know that it is the home of the Boy Scouts of America. This is so ridiculously ironic in light of what I am about to tell you that you will feel as though you have just pushed half your sock drawer and a pile of sawdust into your throat.
There is a museum in this town dedicated to the memory of Steve Boyce, the founder of the Boy Scouts of America. Brenda and I went there to see it. After all, we visited the museum in Savannah where the Girl Scouts were founded. We like to keep rings connected when possible. However, when we got there, the place was closed. So, we just turned down the same street and headed back towards the center of town. As we passed the fire station and the post office, the general store and the hardware store, we saw a little statue on the other side of the street. Not knowing what it was, and at this point, not having anything better to do, we sauntered across the street to see this small statue of a woman holding something in her hand. Upon closer inspection, she is holding a tulip in one hand and a small paint brush in the other. This is a monument, dedicated in September of 2011, to the memory of thousands of women who died or suffered as a result of radium exposure in this town during the 1920's and 1930's. You will most likely not have every heard of this place or of its nicknames, "Radium City" or "Death City". Folks around here don't want you to know what happened here in Ottawa. They'll simply tell you this is a "Lincoln place." The deception runs deep, as does the embarrassment.
In the very early part of the 20th century, radium had all sorts of uses and was considered very beneficial in many ways. In fact, it was considered by some to be a miracle elixir, and the cure for many ills. They would learn later that it was far more deadly than it was useful. As far as Ottawa is concerned, however, it was also used by clock and dial makers so that, when painted on the numbers and hands of dials such as clock and watch faces, the dials could be seen in the dark. This is glow in the dark stuff.
Well, there was this company that was doing business on the east coast using radium to paint dial faces. It was not too long after they started hiring folks to work in their factories there that folks started getting sick. Then, employees started dying. Quietly, the company closed its operations on the east coast, and moved them to the mid west, to Ottawa. They came into town and told the folks there that they were going to bring prosperity and industry to Ottawa. Soon thereafter, they opened their factory in the middle of Ottawa. The Radium Dial Company used paint composed of radium, zinc sulfide and a glue binder. The zinc sulfide emits light when struck by the radioactive particles. It glows all night and exposure to light is not necessary.
The Radium Dial Company hired young women ranging in age from the mid teens to the early 20's to apply the paint to clock dials and other products for several different companies. The dial painters were typically single and lived with their parents. Dial painting was easy work with comparatively high wages. Over the first 10 years about 2000 women were employed in this work, mostly in three locations including Ottawa, IL. Workers were taught to use lip pointing to bring the paintbrushes to a point between the lips. This made painting the numbers on a the face of a wrist watch possible. It also caused the workers to ingest radium.
If you have a watch that belonged to someone who lived during the 1920's and it has a luminous face, numbers or hands, this radium dial was probably painted by a dial painter that later may have suffered and/or died as a result of having painted the numbers and hands on this and other watch dials. By the 1920's and 1930's some dial painters and former dial painters began to suffer from a variety of illnesses, often crippling and frequently fatal as a result of ingesting the radium paint. Ingested radium is known to deposit permanently in bone. Radiation can then damage bone marrow, causing anemia. It can also weaken the bones so they might crush or snap under normal pressure. It can weaken bone tissue making it easy to get infection such as the jawbones that have dental work or gum disease. It can cause other forms of cancer in the sinus and mastoids.
Several well known people, including Marie Curie, died from disease probably related to exposure to radium. It isn't clear, however, how well known the dangers of radium were in 1917. It is clear, however, that no warnings were given to the employees of Radium Dial. Furthermore, the radium companies denied the dangers of consuming radium despite the warnings of medical experts and government officials. The poor, young dial makers were such a minority and lacked any financial resources to have any clout in dealing with industry. The battle for recognition of this health hazard to these women went on for many years. However, what is worse is the apparent government complicity in endeavoring to bury the truth.
The owners of the Radium Dial Company quietly left Illinois when public opinion was starting to sour. However, they came back to Ottawa under a different name and claiming their processes were safe. They didn't tell the people of Ottawa that the president of this company was the same guy who was in charge of the company they believed was responsible for so many deaths and so much suffering. Moreover, it turns out radium was an essential component for the construction of the atomic bomb. This company was the world's largest user of radium and so naturally, the government approached them to help in the effort to make the bomb that would end the war. So, workers were diverted to making aspects of the uses of radium and they did not know what they were making.
Later, in the 1950's the US Government set up a laboratory in Joliet called Argone National Laboratory to study the effects of radon exposure. Many of the workers from the dial companies were used essentially as human lab rats. They were tested, poked, prodded, but were never given any treatment and were never told the results of the testing. It is believed that this was one of the government's early means of studying the effects of radiation exposure on humans. They must have seen this place as an opportunity.
Certainly, in many cases, one can say that some benefit emerges from this kind of nightmare. One could say that the death of folks as a result of environmental and occupational catastrophes such as this leads to new legislation, or leads to a new medical technique, or leads to new discoveries in the prevention and cure of disease. Not here. Not in Ottawa. The deception ran too deep. The lies. The blatant manipulation of data. The use of humans with the knowledge they were killing them.....and for what? The owners of the luminous dial companies got filthy rich. Yes, the Radium Girls, as they became known, earned a better living than most and were able to buy themselves nice shoes and dresses they could never afford working in other vocations available to young women at the time. However, all that seems to pale in comparison to the price many of them paid.
Yet, even today, and given the fact that radium has a half life of 1600 years, it is likely the effects are still felt. The EPA has only cleaned up 13 of the 16 radioactive sites. Building demolition material and soil, polluted with radioactive waste, were used as fill material in the Ottawa area. Many of the 16 areas are residential sections and include some buildings. It has been said that, if you take a Geiger counter out to the old catholic cemetery on the outskirts of town, you will still find hot spots where the dead girls are buried.
It should be noted, however, that not all the women who worked in the factories got sick or died. Fortunately, some lived to be very old, so they could tell the stories of how so many of their friends died and suffered so.
This is a deplorable story of exploitation. There are certainly more notorious stories of occupational exploitation described throughout history, but this one strikes me as vial because of its incipient nature. You can learn a lot more about this story by watching a video that was made in 1987. It is on YouTube. Here is the link http://youtu.be/zLS6NCZPiSY
I'm leaving this place and I'm never coming back.
Dont worry Larry, our generation isn't being left out. Just ask Monsanto!
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