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Industrial Structure and Occupational Health: The American Pottery Industry, 1897–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Marc J. Stern
Marc J. Stern
Affiliation:
MARC J. STERN is associate professor of history and chair of the History Department, at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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Abstract

Beginning in 1897, the American ceramics industry entered a period of stability and collaboration that emerged from an agreement by several leading firms to fix prices and discounts, exchange cost and price information, and begin close contractual relations with its workers' union, the National Brotherhood of Operative Potters. One issue, however, remained trouble-some: how to deal with occupational health issues in this disease-ridden trade. Should firms rely on state or private inspection? Should they be bound to one standard? Significantly, the companies and unions opted for private inspection systems that allowed them to maintain trade stability, even at the cost of health improvements. This arrangement remained in place until 1923, when federal antitrust actions shattered the trade association. Employers then faced a shift to state inspection and enacted a range of new schemes and private welfare plans to suit their designs.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2003 , pp. 417 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2003

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References

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14 Asher, “Industrial Safety,” 115-30; Aldrich, Safety First, 94; Bale, Anthony, “America's First Compensation Crisis: Conflict over the Value and Meaning of Workplace Injuries under the Employers' Liability System,” in Rosner, David and Markowitz, Gerald, eds., Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America, (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 34–52Google Scholar; Robert Asher, “The Limits of Big Business Paternalism: Relief for Injured Workers in the Years before Workmen's Compensation,” in Rosner and Markowitz, Dying For Work, 19-33; Friedman and Landinsky, “Social Change,” 50-82. On the history of occupational safety, health, and law generally, see especially Bale, “Compensation Crisis” and Lubove, “Workmen's Compensation.” On women's exceptional role in this process, see Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “Two Political Cultures in the Progressive Era: The National Consumers' League and the American Association for Labor Legislation,” in Kerber, Linda K., Kessler-Harris, Alice, Sklar, Kathryn Kish, eds., U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 36–62.Google Scholar The American Federation of Labor initially opposed this scheme, but it eventually accepted the compensation-for-litigation tradeoff.

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16 Background information on the potteries can be found in Stern, Marc Jeffrey, The Pottery Industry of Trenton: A Skilled Trade in Transition, 1850–1929 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1994).Google Scholar On East Liverpool, see Gates, William C. Jr, City of Hills and Kilns: Life and Work in East Liverpool, Ohio (East Liverpool, Ohio, 1984).Google Scholar

17 New Jersey Board of Health, Eleventh Annual Report of the New Jersey Board of Health, 1887 (Trenton, N.J., 1887), 97Google Scholar (hereafter NJBOH); on East Liverpool, see Gates, City of Hills, 169. On firm size, see Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 14-15; on economies of scale in pottery-making, see Gay, P. W. and Smyth, R. L., The British Pottery Industry (London, 1974), 11-12, 36–7.Google Scholar

18 See U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Eleventh Special Report: Regulation and Restriction of Output, H.R. Doc. 737, 58th Cong., 2nd sess. (1904), 700-8; Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 86-114.

19 Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 26-52, 96. On the English potteries, see Stern, Marc J., “The Potters and Potteries of Trenton, New Jersey, 1852-1904: A Study in the Industrialization of Skilled Trades” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York-Stony Brook, 1986), ch.1.Google Scholar Women held 20-25 percent of American pottery jobs, while they filled 45 percent of English positions. See U.S. Congress, House Committee on Ways and Means, Tariff Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means on the Revision of the Tariff, 1893, H.R. Misc. Doc, 43rd Cong, 1st sess. (1893), 82; Office of the Census, U.S. Census, 1900: Manufactures, States and Territories, vol. 8 (1902), 423, 572–3Google Scholar; Gates, City of Hills, 164. On the tariff, see Marc J. Stern, “Politics and Trade Unionism in a Tariff-Dependent Trade: The Potters of Trenton, New Jersey, 1890-1902,” a paper presented at the Pullman Strike Centennial Conference, 1994. On autonomous workers, see Montgomery, David, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work Technology, and Labor Struggles (New York, 1979)Google Scholar, and The Fall of the House of Labor (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Benson Soffer, “A Theory of Trade Union Development: The Role of the 'Autonomous' Workman,” Labor History (Spring 1960): 141-63.

20 William Evans, The Life and Death of a Working Potter: Shewing the Struggles, Hardships, and Honest, Independent Life of a Thorough Trade Unionist, reprinted in Journal of Ceramic History 3, pt. 2 (1970 [1865]): 17.

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23 For an excellent description of the effects of lead poisoning, see Hamilton, Alice, Lead Poisoning in Potteries, Tile Works, and Porcelain Enameled Sanitary Ware Factories, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor No. 104 (Washington, D.C., 1912)Google Scholar; and U.S. Treasury Department, Silicosis and Lead Poisoning Among Pottery Workers, Public Health Bulletin No. 244 (Washington, D.C., 1939Google Scholar). On lead poisoning generally, see Warren, Christopher, Brush With Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore, 2000)Google Scholar, and Warren, , “Toxic Purity: The Progressive Era Origins of America's Lead Paint Poisoning Epidemic,” Business History Review 73 (Winter 1999): 705–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 NJBOH, Seventh Annual Report, 1883,170.

25 New Jersey State Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries, Annual Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries, 1889 (Trenton, N.J., 1889), 58–96Google Scholar (hereafter NJBSLI); Trenton Emporium cited in Crockery and Glass Journal, 25 Jan. 1877.

26 Trenton Times, 24 Mar. 1891; NJBOH, Eleventh Annual Report, 1887,97-116. On alcohol as a cause of high disease rates among potters, see Thompson, W. Gilman, The Occupational Diseases: Their Causation, Symptoms Treatment and Prevention (New York, 1914), 621Google Scholar.

27 Trenton Sunday Advertiser, 5 July 1885.

28 NJBSLI, Annual Report, 1889,12-13; “Comfort and Health,” ALLR 1 (1911): 36-7.

29 These attempts were not unique to the United States. English pottery workers encouraged their employers to control prices as early as the 1830s by negotiating tradewide agreements. It was “the earliest case of a rationalist policy being forced upon an industry from the side of the employees.” Warburton, W. H., The History of Trade Union Organization in the North Staffordshire Potteries (London, 1931), 202Google Scholar.

30 U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, The Pottery Industry: Report on the Cost of Production in the Earthenware and China Industries of the United States, England, German and Austria (Washington, D.C., 1915), 27Google Scholar (hereafter U.S. Commerce Department, Pottery Industry).

31 Blaszczyk, Regina Lee, “Imagining Consumers: Manufacturers and Markets in Ceramics and Glass” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1995), 226Google Scholar; Lamb, Andrew McGeorge, “A History of the American Pottery Industry: Industrial Growth, Technical and Technological Change and Diffusion in the Generalware Branch, 1872-1914” (Ph.D. diss., London School of Economics, 1984), 65–6Google Scholar.

32 See Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 108-23. On generalware labor costs, see U.S. Commerce Department, Pottery Industry, 380.

33 U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census, 1910: Principal Industries, 1909, vol. 10 (Washington, D.C., 1913), 867Google Scholar. Jerseymen claimed only 5 percent of the national whiteware market by 1914. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Resources of the United States, 1914, pt. 2 (Washington, D.C, 1916), 507–8Google Scholar.

34 U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, 700-8; and Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 128-33.

35 U.S. Supreme Court, Records and Briefs in United States Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, October term, 1926, U.S. u. Trenton Potteries Company, et al., no.27 (hereafter Records and Briefs), 384, 389, 422, 439, 465, 526; report of the conference between two committees, one representing the manufacturers, the other the potters (hereafter SPA-NBOP Conference), 28 Sept. 1906, 349, Trenton Free Public Library; U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second District, Defense Brief, Trenton Potteries Company, et al v. U.S., 6,13 (National Archives) (hereafter Defense Brief). On the “rule of reason,” see Keller, Morton, Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 30, 31-3, 38Google Scholar.

36 SPA-NBOP Conference, 28 Sept. 1910, 26-30; Crockery and Glass Journal, 12 July 1879; Trenton Banking Co., The Trenton Banking Company: A History of the First Century of Its Existence (Trenton, N.J., 1907), 108–9Google Scholar; Godfrey, Carlos E., The Trenton Savings Fund Society, 1844-1919 (Trenton, N.J., 1919), 97Google Scholar; Cumbler, John T., A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989), 63Google Scholar; Starr, Dennis James, “The Nature and Uses of Economic, Political, and Social Power in Trenton, New Jersey, 1890-1917” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1979), 300Google Scholar.

37 See materials in U.S. Supreme Court, Records and Briefs; Maddock, Archibald M. II, The Polished Earth: A History of the Pottery Plumbing Fixture Industry in the United States (Trenton, N.J., 1962), 188Google Scholar. In open pricing, firms reported their sale price on items to the association's secretary, who then reported average prices to the association's members without reference to individual firms. On open pricing, see Eddy, Arthur Jerome, The New Competition, 4th ed. (Chicago, 1916)Google Scholar; Tosdal, H. R., “Open Price Associations,” American Economic Review 7 (1917): 331–2Google Scholar; Nelson, Milton N., “The Effect of Open Price Association Activities on Competition and Prices,” American Economic Review 13 (1923): 258–75Google Scholar.

38 On this general pattern, see John Kenly Smith Jr., “The Scientific Tradition in American Industrial Research,” Technology and Culture (Jan. 1990): 121-31. Ceramicists generally bemoaned the lack of scientific research on their field and communicated what there was in the Transactions of the American Ceramic Society.

39 On casting, see C. J. Kirk, “Use of the Casting Process for Large Clay Wares,” Fifteenth Transactions of the American Ceramic Society, 1913 (TACS): 573-84; Taine McDougal, G., The Casting of Clay Wares, Technical Paper 126 (U.S. Bureau of Mines, Washington, D.C., 1916)Google Scholar; Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 144-8,165-7; C. J. Kirk, “Scientific Management and the Bonus System as Applied to Pottery Manufacture,” Sixteenth TACS, 1914: 265-72; Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 144-8, 165-7; NBOP, First Vice President's Report, 1915, 21; Potters' Herald (East Liverpool, Ohio) (hereafter PH), 17 Apr., 5 Jun e 1919; NBOP, Executive Board Report, 1918, 29-3 1 (Trenton Public Library).

40 Brain, George, “The Dressier Tunnel Kiln for Firing Sanitary Ware,” Journal of the American Ceramic Society 3 (1921): 706–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newcomb, Rexford Jr, Ceramic Whitewares (New York, 1947), 126, 143-4Google Scholar; C. J. Kirk, “Results Obtained in Firing Sanitary Earthenware in the Dressier Tunnel Kiln,” Eighteenth TACS, 1916: 533-43; Solon, Marc, “The Control of Pottery and Brick Kilns,” Papers Read Before the New Jersey Clay Workers'Association at the Meetings Held at Rutgers College (Trenton, N.J., 1915), 38–42Google Scholar; Lawrence Barringer, “A Continuously Operated Tunnel Kiln for High-Grade Clay Ware,” Eighteenth TACS, 1916: 106-23; Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 166-7.

41 Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 133-43, 153-7, 175-82. On legal/identity issues, see Tomlins, Christopher L., The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (New York, 1985), 68–91Google Scholar. See also Gordon, New Deals. NBOP-USPA and NBOP-SPA contracts are available in the NBOP-IBOP Collection at Kent State University Libraries, Department of Special Collections and Archives.

42 On the doctors' failure to distinguish among respiratory diseases, see Hoffman, “Industrial Diseases in America,” 38; Rosner and Markowitz, Deadly Dust, 15-44. On Hoffman's role, see Rosner and Markowitz, Deadly Dust, 24-8.

43 For public discussion of diseases and shop benefit societies, see PH, 17 Dec. 1908, 3 July 1909, 19 May, 23 June, 7 July 1910, 19 Oct. 1911, 30 Jan. 1913; Trades Union Advocate (Trenton, N. J.), 23 May 1902Google Scholar, 29 Sept. 1905. The Thomas Maddock's Sons Co. Sick Club paid $1,080 in benefits in 1915 alone. PH, 6 Jan. 1916.

44 PH, 19 May 1910. Prudential's statistician Frederick L. Hoffman confirmed in 1918 that dippers, flint-mill workers, ground layers, mixers, scourers, and sweepers “are generally declined unconditionally.” Kilnmen, mold makers, placers, pug-mill workers, saggermen, slip makers “are occasionally accepted, but at somewhat higher premium rates than those charged men in recognized healthy employments.” Hoffman, Mortality From Respiratory Diseases, 265-6.

45 U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, 708; on stinting and fines in the NBOP, see Local Union 45, Minutes, vols. 1-5, National Brotherhood of Operative Potters-International Brotherhood of Operative Potters, Papers, Kent State University (hereafter IBOP Papers); SPA-NBOP Conference, 17 Sept. 1906, 267; U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report, vol. 3, S. Doc. 415, 64th Cong., 1st sess. (1916), 2989, 2999.

46 Hamilton, Alice, Lead Poisoning in Potteries, Tile Works, and Porcelain Enameled Sanitary Ware Factories, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor No. 104 [Washington, D.C., 1912), 29Google Scholar.

47 Newman, Bernard J., McConnell, William J., Spencer, Octavius, and Phillips, Frank M., Lead Poisoning in the Pottery Trades, U. S. Public Health Service, Public Health Bulletin No. 116 (Washington, D.C., 1921), 46Google Scholar.

48 Hamilton, Lead Poisoning, 7-8, 29.

49 Hayhurst, E. R., A Survey of Industrial Health-Hazards and Occupational Diseases in Ohio (Columbus, Ohio State Board of Health, 1915), 241, 237-8, 229-55Google Scholar; sweeping sometimes took place during working hours, NBOP Local Union 45, Minutes, vol. 4,16 Jan. 1917, IBOP Papers.

50 Hamilton, Lead Poisoning, 21, 22, 43-6, 53-5.

51 A 1919 federal study found that 7.7 percent of all workers at risk and examined had lead poisoning. Including presumptive cases, however, that figure rose to 13.5 percent; when suggestive cases were added, 22.8 percent of the workforce was found to be at risk. Newman, Lead Poisoning, 90,167.

52 On lead poisoning as a gendered issue, see Carolyn Malone, “Lead Poisoning is a 'Woman's Problem'? Medical Men, Gender, and Lead Poisoning in England, 1850-1914,” North American Labor History Conference, Oct. 1997.

53 Hoffman, Mortality from Consumption, 634, 707-8. Mortality from consumption includes potters' phthisis. Other causes of death include bronchitis and asthma. Data published in 1908 suggested an actual level of 48 percent of deaths due to respiratory problems. Data on the general male population are from the tables in Hoffman's 1908 report.

54 U.S. Treasury Department, Silicosis and Lead Poisoning Among Pottery Workers, Public Health Bulletin No. 244 (Washington, D.C., 1939), 44, 71, 112, 119Google Scholar. Many diseased laborers undoubtedly went uncounted by leaving the trade.

55 Hamilton, Lead Poisoning in Potteries, 14-22, 29-31, 77; U.S. Treasury Department, Silicosis and Lead Poisoning, 44. On Alice Hamilton, see especially Sellers, Hazards of the Job, 69-106. As one old potter recalled about health and cost consciousness, with the development of the airbrush in decorating came hoods and ventilation, “not as much to keep the dust away from the workmen as to keep it from contaminating the atmosphere and settling on ware not to be so decorated.” Floyd W. McKee, The Second Oldest Profession: A Century of American Dinnerware Manufacture (1966, private), 13.

56 SPA-NBOP Conference, 13 Oct. 1908, 7-11; NBOP, First Vice President's Report, 1909, 18; 1911, 21; NBOP, Proceedings of the Annual Convention, 1905, 39; 1906, 21; 1907, 16-17; 1908, 10; 1909, 4; 1910, 28; 1914, 74-5; NBOP, Resolutions and Recommendations, 1915, 7, 8, 10, 14; 1916,14; 1919, 6,13, 18; 1920, 8; NBOP, Vice President's Report, 1911, 21; PH, 9 June 1910.

57 NBOP, Proceedings, 1906, 28-9; PH, 3, 10 July 1909; NBOP, President's Report, 1909, 12-13; 1910, 11-12. On the Western Federation of Miners, see Dericksen, Workers' Health. Death benefits were important to U.S. potters in the nineteenth century as well. The Knights of Labor discussed such issues at their 1890 meetings. Proper funerals signified upright men. See Knights of Labor, District Assembly 160, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Session of the Operative Potters' National (Trenton, N.J., 1890), 11, 41, Trenton Public Library. Some wealthier pottery assemblies in the Knights of Labor introduced meager sickness benefits for members, but these did not last long. See Knights of Labor, Local Assembly 3573, “Minutes,” 16, 23 Mar., 20 July, 3 Aug. 1888, Trenton Public Library.

58 See Lubove, “Workmen's Compensation,” 264, 270; Shotliff, Donald A., “The History of the Labor Movement in the American Pottery Industry: The National Brotherhood of Operative Potters-International Brotherhood of Operative Potters, 1890-1970” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1977), 152Google Scholar.

59 NBOP, President's Report, 1911,14-15; PH, 13 July, 14 Dec. 1911.

60 USPA, Thirty-Third Proceedings, 1911, 47-8.

61 NBOP, President's Report, 1913, 1-4; 1914, 17-18; 1916, 14; SPA-NBOP, Wage Scale, 1920, 85. By 1916, seventy-two NBOP members had been in sanitariums for fund-sponsored treatment. Union members in Ohio sought to have a union man appointed in 1913, and Mushet's territory soon included both centers. This reduced his effectiveness somewhat. NBOP, Resolutions, 1913, 5.

62 USPA, Thirty-Fifth Proceedings, 1913, 49.

63 USPA, Thirty-Seventh Proceedings, 1915, 31.

64 New Jersey. Department of Labor, Report, 1915, 37-9; PH, 4 July 1912; 10, 17 June, 9 Sept. 1915; 27 Jan., 10 Feb. 1916; Trades Union Advocate, 23 Feb. 1912; 10 Apr. 1914; 21 May-18 June, 22 Oct. 1915; 23 Jan. 1916. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relation, Final Report and Testimony Submitted to Congress by the Commission on Industrial Relations, vol. 3, S. Doc. 415, 64th Cong., 1st sess. (1916)Google Scholar, Frank Hutchins, 3000-1; Local Union 45, Minutes, vol. 3: 14 Jan. 1912, 404Google Scholar; 11 Feb. 1913, 412; 19 Mar. 1913, 421. In 1913, the health committee asked for improved ventilation, enforced sweeping after 6 P.M. and before 4 A.M., urinals in buildings, dressing rooms for women, heat in winter, wet cleaning of glazes, heat exhaust fans, moist flint for placing, lunchrooms, washrooms, and convenient sinks and lockers. PH, 17 July 1913. Local Union 45 heard TB lectures at their local meetings, Trades Union Advocate, 21 Feb. 1913. On the department's reorganization, see ALLR 5 (1915): 689–90, 6 (1916): 322-3Google Scholar.

55 Katherine G. T. Wiley to John Roach, New Jersey Bureau of Sanitation and Hygiene, 23 Apr. 1923, Consumers' League of New Jersey Collection, Special Collections, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., Subject File Series, Industrial Health: Pottery Survey, 1923-24.

66 See Weinstein, Corporate Ideal, 40-61; Nelson, Managers and Workers, 125; New Jersey Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1915, 37-41.

67 USPA, Thirty-Sixth Proceedings, 1914, 57; Thirty-Ninth Proceedings, 1917, 25, 44, 45. It is likely that Hoffman's work directly influenced Campbell, as the latter was undoubtedly privy to the detailed reports the statistician submitted to Prudential. Sellers, Hazards of the Job, 60. On the broad-based coalition involved in changing shop conditions, see David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, “The Early Movement for Occupational Safety and Health, 1900-1917,” in Leavitt, Judith W. and Numbers, Ronald L., eds., Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health (Madison, Wise, 1997), 467–81Google Scholar.

68 USPA, Thirty-Ninth Proceedings, 1917,46.

69 NBOP, Proceedings, 1912, 40; ALLR 9 (1919): 689-90.

70 Newman, Lead Poisoning in the Pottery Trades.

71 USPA, Thirty-Ninth Proceedings, 1917, 46-7; Forty-First Proceedings, January 1920, 54, 77-8; PH, 18 Sept. 1919,15 Jan., 27 May, 10 June, 25 Nov., 23 Dec. 1920. On welfare capitalism generally during this period, see Cohen, Iizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Brody, David, “The Rise and Decline of Welfare Capitalism,” in Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the 20th Century Struggle (New York, 1980), 48–81Google Scholar; Bernstein, Irving, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (Boston, 1972), 144–89Google Scholar. Campbell helped champion these ventures in Trenton.

72 PH, 10, 17 Apr., 22 May 1919. By 1914, the inspector noted that there were toilets in all but four eastern shops. USPA, Thirty-Sixth Proceedings, 1914, 58.

73 USPA, Forty-First Proceedings, January 1920, 54.

74 Newman, Lead Poisoning in the Pottery Trades, 57-71, 77, 144-7; U.S. Treasury Dept., Silicosis and Lead Poisoning. Kiln demands for 1916 included heat in the kiln rooms during winter, washing facilities, ventilation, and dressing rooms. PH, 26 Mar. 1916.

75 USPA, Thirty-Sixth Proceedings, 1914, 58-9; Thirty-Seventh Proceedings, 1915, 34; Forty-Second Proceedings, 74. Operatives still faced higher rates than other trades. USPA, Forty-Fourth Proceedings, 1923, 98.

76 See Himmelberg, Robert F., The Origins of the National Recovery Administration: Business, Government, and the Trade Association Issue, 1921-1933 (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

77 See Maddock, Polished Earth, 321-2; McCabe, National Collective Bargaining, 383-9.

78 See SPA-NBOP Conference, Sept. 1922; McCabe, National Collective Bargaining, 412-20.

79 Stern, Pottery Industry of Trenton, 203-4.

80 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, vol. 2, Manufactures: 1929 (Washington, D.C., 1933), 846–7Google Scholar; Maddock, Polished Earth, 321; USPA, Forty-Fifth Proceedings, 1923, 81-2; Forty-Sixth Proceedings, 1924, 87-8. The census suggests a decline in the number of sanitary firms from 1925 to 1929. On tunnel kilns in general-ware, see Blaszczyk, Regina Lee, “‘Reign of the Robots’: The Homer Laughlin China Company and Flexible Mass Production,” Technology and Culture 36 (Oct. 1995): 830–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Crane took over Tepeco in 1924, Kohier bought Cochran-Drugan in 1925, and Standard Sanitary bought Maddock in 1929.

81 USPA, Forty-Fifth Proceedings, 1923, 82; Industrial Commission of Ohio, Department of Workshops and Factories, Proposed Rules Relating to the Pottery Industry (Columbus, 1917)Google Scholar; “Specific Requirements for Potteries,” Bulletin of the Department of Industrial Relations and the Industrial Commission of Ohio (Columbus, 1924)Google Scholar.

82 On New Jersey health inspection during the 1920s, see Clark, Claudia, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997), 28–33Google Scholar.

83 PH, 10, 24 Jan., 1 May, 10 July, 21 Aug. 1924, 20 Aug. 1925; Trenton 1 (Aug. 1924): 15; 2 (July 1925): 6; USPA, Forty-Sixth Proceedings, 1924, 87-8. Mushet went to work for Tepeco in 1924 and died shortly thereafter.

84 F. L. Hoffman to Mrs. Catherine G. T. Wiley, 3 May 1923, Consumers' League of New Jersey Collection, Special Collections, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., Subject File Series, Industrial Health: Pottery Survey, 1923-24.

85 Wiley to Roach, 3 May 1923, Wm. Mushet to Wiley, 18 May 1923, Consumers' League Subject Files.

86 Report of Secretary, Oct. 1923, 1 Feb. 1924, Consumers' League Reports; Jersey, New, Laws of New Jersey, 1924 (Trenton, N.J., 1924), 231Google Scholar; Ohio Department of Industrial Relations, The Workmen's Compensation Law (Ohio, 1924), 75–6Google Scholar. The list also included phosphorous, gasoline, wood alcohol, benzol, naptha, brass, zinc, and compressed air, among others.

87 Bale, “Compensation Crisis,” 396. On disease-based compensation, see 444-601.

88 U.S. Public Health Service, Silicosis and Lead Poisoning, 1, 8, 40-1, 50, 54, 73, 114, 118, 121, 123-7. According to Bale, in “Compensation Crisis,” 648, suits over pneumoconiosis “began appearing all over the country” during the late 1920s, and this, joined to such incidents as the Hawk's Nest disaster, led to the inclusion of silicosis in workers' compensation systems. By 1937, forty-six states had laws covering silicosis. Cherniack, Martin, The Hawk's Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster (New Haven, Conn., 1986), 111Google Scholar.

89 This personal communication was made to the author during a tour of American Standard, the last sanitary plant in the city. That pottery fired its last ware in June 2002. There are no sanitary pottery plants left in Trenton.