Document 9940ByXVag12aLp1qNKJ4ONL

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1949 DOC NMA113 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Journal Article - Cancer in the Factory 2 2oe | a m. 7mar,. 1 Vm a3 hinds semn recnte Ha ' 2 6 lta Among Ourselves he Surrey's Surey's STOUT TRADITIONAL SHIP-- Th see cover still exploring the seas of change On course all these years as a guiding symbol it was drawn by Robert Cairns Dobson for the cover of October 4 Vol LXXXV CONTENTS No. 1 The Survey for January 1949 Editorial Civil Liberties in Germany PAUL KELLOGG ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS 1913 when the page was brought to its present size It was noted an editorial the caravel of Columbus sailing into the waters of the New World Portrait in Question Marks On Appeal in the Supreme Court Attack on the Business Cycle Food for Europe but with an IF GEORGE BRITT 12 . TED POSTON 18 BEULAH AMIDON 22 NATHAN KOENIG 26 BACK IN MAY 1932 The Survey CARRIET a story by Katharine Schaub then serenely waiting death from radium poisoning contracted as a painter of watch dials This the editors called a poignant argument for far greater safeguards for workers exposed The Angel to the Virgin a poem The Survey Through the 1909-1949 Apprenticeships for Living Helping Another Country Isn't Easy They Tax Themselves for Fun . PEGGY POND CHURCH 31 32 KATHRYN CLOSE 35 ERNEST G. GRIFFIN 39 FARNSWORTH CROWDER 42 to new chemicals and for compensation laws covering ... ... ... not limited lists of diseases but any disability directly due to occupational hazard Today seventeen years later only sixteen states have such Hors d'Oeuvres a Cancer in the Factory LETTERS AND LIFE poem Report of a Citizen HAROLD WIllard GleasON 45 MARION ROBINSON 46 HARRY HANSEN 50 generalized laws though the need for them Other Reviews 51 is daily more apparent Evidence is pro- THE COMMon Welfare vided in Marion Robinson's article on page 46 telling of the hazards to human health and life from inysterious inducing chemicals used in industrial production Alice V. Keliher and Others 788 PERSONALITIES AND PROJICIS 788 TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK JANET SABLOFF 59 Copyright 1949 by Survey Associates Inc. All rights reserved LONG TIME Survey READERS NEED NO INTRO duction to Miriam Van Waters now under 305 237 305 305 305 237 - $B attack by Massachusetts Gertrude Springer who fense on page 55 of this politicians nor to comes to her de issue One of the country's foremost penologists Dr. Van Waters has been an intermittent contrib utor to Survey pages since May 1922 when we published as a special section her re- port on a national survey of penal institu- tions for women In the late Twenties when she was referee in the Juvenile Court of Los Angeles she wrote a series of articles on parent relationships which later became parts of two successful books Youth in Conflict and Parents on Pro- bation In a later article about Edward Hickman a convicted murderer awaiting hanging in a San Quentin prison she gained widespread attention for her analysis of the ingredients of heredity and early SURVEY ASSOCIATES INC Stroudsburg Publication Office 34 North Crystal Street East Editorial and Business Office 112 East 19 Street New York 3 627275 627275 627275 627275 627275 627275 627275 62765 27275 627275 Y. AGNECShaBiRrOmaWnN oLf EtAhCe HbosaecrrdetJarOySEPAHNNP. RECEHDAMBBREERNLNAEIRN presidents JOHN PALMER GAVIT SHUMWAY Board of directors ADOLF A. BERLE JR JACOB BILLIKOPF JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN EARL G. HARRISON SHELBY M. HARRISON FRED K. HOEHLER BLANCHE ITTELSON FERDINAND KUHN WISE JR WILIAM W. LANCASTER AGNES BROWN LEACH HERBERT H. LEHMAN JUSTINE POLIER WILLIAM ROSENWALD LOWELL VICTOR WEYBFIGHT Editor PAUL KELLOGG Managing editor GEORGE BRITT Associate editors BEULAH AMIDON ANN REED BRENNER KATHRYN CLOSE MICHAEL M. DAVIS CORA EMME LOULA D LASKER KATHLEEN SPROUL Contributing editors Honorary JOANNA C. COLCORD MOVIE CONDON JOHN PALMER GAVIT ALAIN LOCKE LEON WHipple RUSSELL KURTZ BRADIFY BUFLI JAMES T. SHOTWELL FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG DANIEL S. GILLMOR Circulation and advertising manager ROSAMOND LEE advertising assistant MARY SIMON field representatives ANN ROILER ISSLER DOROTHY PUTNFY registrar MARY K. GOLDEN Survey The published on the 1st of the month Price of single copies of this issue 50c Canadian a copy By subscription subscription one year 5 two years 8 Canadian and Foreign one year 5.50 two years 9 Articles Digest Index to Labor Indexed in Readers Guide to Periodical Literature Book Review Psychological Abstracts Public Affairs Information Service Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus Biography Index Current Biography Cooperative Membership in Survey Associates Inc including subscription Year 10 _ neglect that combined to produce a vicious criminal Gertrude Springer is still known as Miss Bailey to the numerous public welfare workers who in the days of the great depression used her Miss Bailey Saysseries of Survey articles and pamphlets as a bible for client understanding Mrs. Springer whose authorship has by no means been limited to the Miss Bailey series was managing editor of Survey Midmonthly from 1930 to 1942. From her pleasant retirement in Cape Cod and Brookline Mass she occasionally sends us book reviews and other requested items In her present statement Mrs. Springer indicates that Dr. Van Waters friends are ready to put up a fight to keep her in her present position Indication that this will be something to be reckoned with is the recent formation of the Friends of the Framingham Reformatory Larue Brown chairman 53 State Street Boston The committee which at present consists of about 200 prominent Massachusetts citizens is sending out some 10,000 letters to persons likely to be interested in supporting Dr. Van Waters her methods and admin- istration RICHARD RICHARD L. NEUEFRGEr one of the MOST appreciated contributors to Survey Graphic last year was victoriously swept into office on the tide of November 2 being elected to the State Senate by the largest vote ever received by a legislative candidate in Oregon Two years before he was defeated for the same place but still ran almost 9,000 votes ahead of any other Democratic candidate in Portland In 1940 he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives Although by this time apparently confirmed in his political inclinations Mr. Neuberger is not renouncing his career as a writer and is due to appear soon again in the pages of The Survey ON PAGE 59 JANET SABLOFF OF THE Sur- vey staff makes the first entry in our Traveler's Notebook since the interrup- tion of the war years Hoping to continue this as a regular Surrey feature the author welcomes any comment from prospective or armchair travelers as to the type of material they are interested in as well as stories of their own experiences on the road Cancer in the Factory New industrial processes have sharply increased the danger of occupational cancer Whose the responsibility for prevention and control MARION ROBINSON I WAS ONLY ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE THAT tion was indicted for the crime of cancer CIVILIZA- Now comes conclusive evidence that cancer in part at least is today a disease of industrial civilization Modern man is faced with a tremendous penalty in human suffer- ing for what he achieved in his greatest pride as though the wrathful God of our forefathers were bringing ven- geance upon man for daring to take nature's secrets for his own The discovery that hundreds of materials used for industrial manufacture contain producing agents will mean in the next few years many changes and new responsibilities in our personal and institutional lives Yet the very facts which uncover this new danger in modern living may possibly hold the secret of all cancer The work that will be done to roll back the threat of this environmental cancer may turn up the clue to the disease from which nearly 190,000 people each year now die The first entry in the call of agents unleashed by in- dustrial processes was a mere commonplace In 1775 a London physician Percival Pott writing of the curious incidence of scrotal cancer among chimney sweeps suggested a connection between it and the accumulations of soot on the bodies of the unwashed urchins During the next hundred years paraffin and shale oils pitch and tar were added to the list of suspected causesthis time of cancer of the skin way of medical writ- ings in France Germany and the British Isles In 1895 a medical researcher went to work on cancer of the blad- der among workers in the German dye industries He found the causative agent to be lurking in the aromatic naphthylamine and benzidine In the cobalt mines of Schneeberg Germany an occu- + -By a recent staff member of Survey Associates who this month goes off on her own as a free lance writer A graduate of the New York School of Social Work with experience both in casework and in social work interpretation in Baltimore and New York Miss Robinson came to Survey Associates three years ago to carry a major portion of the responsibility for the Survev Midmonthly To this task she brought a combination of technical knowledge in the social work field and a gift for lively expression Though her name has disappeared from The Survey masthead it will we hope continue to appear in the table of contents pational ailment called mountain disease has for centuries killed three out of four miners In the early 1900's it was discovered that mountain disease was really lung cancer caused by exposure to radioactive ores In 1926 a similar discovery was made about miners in the uranradium mines of Joachimsthal Germany About the same time radium disease made its appearance among young women workers in the luminous dial plants of New Jersey and Connecticut Thirty percent of them developed cancer of the bones while a severe anemia overtook the others at an earlier stage before malignancy developed Reports from the chief inspector of factories in Eng- land in the past three decades establish a connection be- tween hot tar fumes in the English gas works and the skin cancer which develops among workers And in the past twenty years research here and abroad has revealed that a number of other industrially useful substances belong in this array of death agents Since 1924 creosote benzol chromates nickel carbonyl and asbestos have all been added to the list The U. S. Public Health Service is publishing in connection with a health report a chart of twenty agents which attack fifty kinds of body tissue Although nineteen of these correlations are still filed under Suspected thirty are marked E for Established T STORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER IS LITTLE KNOWN Only a small fraction of the thousands of cancer researchers and clinicians have given it attention Research has gone along quietly gathering momentum in the last twenty years as evidence began to mount Today it is a modest but brand new landmark in the long uphill struggle against cancer And it is crucial for this country since its cause and effect are rooted at the heart of indus- trial production Take Plant X one of our country's great dye manu- facturing industries situated in a county which has a population of 100,000 Plant X employs 1,000 people ten of whom work deep in the heart of the factory where dust and vapor by tons are given off into the atmosphere Two of the employes Bob and Mike have worked in the unit for fifteen and twenty years respectively The rest of the crew have been there six years or less Mike has been suffering pain and discomfort for some time and he goes to see a doctor The diagnosis is cancer of the bladder It can be treated but as is often the case with cancer by the time the symptoms show up the disease is well advanced Informed by Mike's physician that the cancer may be THE SURVEY cen- 900's ung 1926 .ran- the long s of hem emia ancy Eng- 1 be{ the 1 the ealed s be- sote have ealth .ealth ttack eteen cted it is uphill untry indus- nanu- has a le ten where phere in the ie rest se has E. and of the disease nay be RVEY connected with materials used in the plant the plant physician examines the rest of the men on the crew Hob is found to be suffering from the early stages of the same disease None of the other men show serious symptoms Mike's illness drags on for months It is proved that his cancer was caused by taking aromatic amines into his system through twenty years exposure to the dust and vapors but he is not eligible for compensation Few state compensation laws are written so that a new occu- connected illness like this can be recognized unless specifically written into the law The company a private settlement to care for Mile during his and for his dependents afterward makes illness If Plant X disregards Mike's tragedy and fails to find a way to protect its workers the experts predict nine out of ten of the men needed in this unit of operation will after a certain period of exposure develop cancer all in the bladder If the plant mistakenly puts its total effort into protection of the two men in this most exposed spot without taking account of the possible danger to others in the plant at large and in the surrounding community it may save the nine or ten in the vat rooms but will still have to reckon with the probability of cancer developing in forty or fifty other members of the plant population and in a hundred others out in the county Geology and clinate were o present one the two main factors in could excrt much effect on man the our But ages before environment environment ou that bas now grown hormously complicated by a myriad of chemical and physical agents released by the increase of chemical and metallurgical establishments and the inno duction of air pressure tools It comes as a shoch to real- ize that danger lurks in the materials used for power production transportation communication lighting he ing short almost all the trappings of modern life which we have considered as contributing to our safety comfort and convenience OST OF WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL CAN- cer has been learned in the past twenty years This may have been because the very nature of its origin delayed its most dramatic appearance until the industrial age was well advanced Those who know medical history point out however that the first clues appeared seventy years ago almost simultaneously with Pasteur's discovery of bacteria and other animate producing agents The ensuing battle against infectious disease absorbed the medical world and except for scattered research in various countries the clues were not followed up until the early 1920's physical agents alpha rays chemical inorganic arsenic i beta rays i : z : z : : ultraviolet ultraviolet rays avers rays chromates ? * : . e * e : 2 : 3 nickel carbonyl carbon black : : : : i soot eanroe asbestos $ acesn polycyclic hydrocarbons 4 gamma rays * beryllium aromatic amines % chemical organic weet shale oil paraffin oil ee ts, ilo t. mineral oils , e, * *, s. . * * anthracene oil qpenavont creosote parasitic schistosoma hematobium nopraensfi i clonorchis sinensis* aniline i dyes ******** ******** ******** ******** **** estrogens ? viruses conflicting evidence A chart of the major known occupational producing agents from Environmental Cancer by Dr. W. C. Hueper National Cancer Institute Federal Security Agency U.S. Public Health Service Copies from Supt of Documents U.S. Government Printing Office Washington D. C. Price 20 cents JANUARY 1949 agree that cancer should be a reportable disease with responsibility vested in the state health departments as in the case of communicable diseases Compensation laws must be amended to allow for occupational cancer Al only help save the lives of these employes but will also provide valuable information on the relation between the exposure period and the length of time before symptoms appear newashut though some states so phrase their laws that each carcino- genic agent would have to be named specifically there are already so many new ones being discovered all the time some broad phraseology must finally be adopted Some experts feel too that there should be an addendum to the criminal code making it a punishable offense to allow undue exposure of an individual to a known agent The 64 question here as in all cancer research is Just what happens when the agent comes in contact with human tissue Does it have a direct effect or does it in some curious way cause the tissue itself to become endowed with carcinogenic properties Or as one theory theory has it does it cause functional change in an endocrine gland or the ALTHOT liver which then gen- ALTHOT LTHOUGH STRIDES HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN THIS FIELD IN the past twenty years the growth of industry and the increase of occupational cancer demand more rapid prog- ress in the new years Here are some of the questions that must be answered How widespread is this affliction There are no reliable data in this country concerning the number of occu- erates the deadly prod- uct In other words what causes cancer These are the questions that have stumped the experts in hundreds of laboratories and clinics the world over pational cancers To date some 8,000 cases have been ob- served in workers of many industries affecting many dif ferent bodily organs The actual number according to Dr. Hueper is probably appreciably higher than what is recorded How long and how intense an exposure to these agents will produce cancer in humans What is the length length of the latent period before symptoms appear These arc two of the toughest nuts to crack As in the cases of Mike and Bob it has been found that manifestations may appear from ten to fifteen years after the period of unreportable exposure If industries are not alert to the their employes and cancer remains an disease the turnover of plant workers scatters dangers clues to for the four winds A start on this gigantic detective job is be- ing made at the National Cancer Institute under Dr. Hueper's direction It is hoped that this project will not The discoveries in the field of environmental cancer bring a new slim ray of hope into the whole picture There is just a chance that this new field of inquiry may hold the answer to the ancient problem Suggest that to one of these canny medical men and he will shake his head doubtfully but there is a gleam of excitement in his eye The cause of 99 percent of cancer has hitherto been unknown It may be that this will turn out to be a tiny fraction in the first wedge of knowl edge to penetrate the innermost mystery of cancer IVES we call HAS ALREADY PAID PART OF progress He must begin HIS PENALTY FOR WHAT now to pay in the coin of responsibility Having exploited the environment for the sake of the good life he must now come to terms with it for the sake of a better life McGuffey to the Contrary THE " Jesuit Fathers were often very wise at their school at La Fl^"cheyoung Ren^'Descartes was permitted because of his delicate health to remain in bed each day until noon What McGuffey would have prophesied about the future . of such a child is not difficult to imagine But Descartes did not turn out a complete profligate Indeed his delightful habit of staying in bed until noon bore at least one remarkable fruit Analytical geometry camecame to him one morning as he lay pleasantly in Reprinted from Mathematics and the Imagination by permission of Simon and Schuster Publishers Copyright 1940 by Edward Kasner and James Newman n nt ema nnn icnit JANUARY 1949 49 BBs