 | | Joel Salatin | The Radium Girls were hired by the U.S. Radium Corporation in 1914 to paint instrument dials with radium. Discovered by Marie Curie in 1898, radium quickly became the darling of the world. It seemed to defy the laws of physics by giving off energy without depletion. The silvery white metal found its way into countless products within a decade. Foods, cosmetics, medical prescriptions - the world was infatuated with this wonder product. [He's 2.5X'ed Berkshire Hathaway (Here's How...) ] Tea with radium in it, marketed as "liquid sunshine," promised curative wonders. Dials that could glow in the dark offered pilots and military personnel the ability to see instruments and watches at night. Painting the dials' tiny components required small hands and a meticulous touch. The Radium Girls, some as young as 14, performed this painstaking work. They had to lick the paintbrushes between each stroke to keep them in shape. The girls painted their teeth with radium to attract boys in dark dance halls. In less than a decade, however, they began experiencing excruciating, debilitating health issues. They developed tumors. Their teeth fell out. One girl's jaw fell out of her mouth. Many died. Hoping to shut the girls up, U.S. Radium Corporation said their health problems were a result of syphilis. By 1924, an independent report by the U.S. Labor Department had linked the health issues to radium. The company buried the report and rewrote it. After all, the company was tied to the military. The girls sued in Illinois and New Jersey in 1925, but thanks to some skillful legal maneuvering by the defendants, they did not see their day in court until 1928. By then, some had died. Dead Radium Girls were buried in lead caskets. Not until 1932 - when a wealthy industrialist named Eben Byers died from jaw necropsy after having drunk radium for two years - did the powers that be start taking the whole radium issue seriously. Surviving Radium Girls received $10,000 each in compensation, and the company closed its doors. Two of the buildings became meat storage facilities. No Questions, Please Studying history reveals patterns, and this one is common. It starts with society accepting and endorsing a fad without doing any long-term testing or applying the precautionary principle. How many times have we seen this pattern throughout history? The new fad is hip, cool and popular. Questioners face name-calling and nefarious legal shenanigans. Eventually, the fad's liabilities become too obvious to ignore. Then a timid, reluctant hand delivers "justice" to the countless lives destroyed by the fad. Society incentivized the Radium Girls with the narrative that they were on the cutting edge of progress... that they would help us win World War I... and that they would make life better for all. None of it was true. In fact, it was all a horrible lie. You can pretty much bet that whenever a mob forms, it is going in the wrong way to the wrong place. That's true of both liberals and conservatives. The people who resisted the urge to go to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2020, were the independent thinkers. The people who question Bidenomics are the sensible ones. If you see the media, the government and corporate powerhouses all jump on a bandwagon, you can be sure it's headed the wrong way to the wrong place. It may not be obvious immediately, but over time the truth will come out. These patterns are interesting in their own right, but what makes them valuable is applying them to today. Mob Rules What has mob appeal today that will probably be proven wrong a few decades hence? Defunding the police? ESG (environmental, social and governance) initiatives? DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movements? Censorship by social media companies? I wonder if in a century there'll be a documentary titled The TikTok Girls. How many 12 to 20 year old girls are madly painting their teeth with radium to create an outrageous short video? Among teenagers, suicide, eating disorders and overall mental health struggles are at an all-time high. Lacking real life experience, young people - and women especially - seek self-image and affirmation through TikTok, which is a medium of fantasy extremes. In the face of social dysfunction, of course, TikTok presents itself as a vehicle of cultural progress. As hip. As cool. How many lives will be destroyed by incentivizing devious, self-centered behavior? Whenever something takes hold this fast and is this strong, this all-embracing, you can be sure it will take us the wrong way to the wrong place. To question it puts you in the camp of the fuddy-duddies. The uncool. The unhip. But throughout history, mobs have usually had it wrong. That's as axiomatic as any sociocultural principle I've ever heard. Wise heads don't join mobs. We wait. We observe. We sleuth. We don't agree with anything just because it's cool. Sincerely, Joel Want more content like this? | | | | | Joel Salatin Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson. Those who don't like him call him a bioterrorist, Typhoid Mary, a charlatan and a starvation advocate. He draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. | | | | 
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