Gerald Markowitz

In the early 20th century, there was really a massive, I think using the word slaughter is not too strong, of workers.

In the first couple of decades of the 20th century, there's an estimate that 35,000 workers died every year on the job.

Two million suffered injuries.

So that's the context for the Triangle Fire.

But it was, in a sense, the tip of the iceberg of what was happening to workers in a wide variety of industries.

Steel, railroads, mining, iron, meatpacking.

If I had to point to a time when

The awareness of chronic disease in the national consciousness really developed, it would be during the 1930s, in part because so many workers were identified, finally, as suffering from silicosis, and they had nowhere to turn.

In the 1930s, hundreds of men were hired to dig the Gawley Bridge Tunnel in West Virginia.

476 men died here from silicosis.

I was there digging that tunnel for six

It was both a news story as well as a congressional investigation and really put occupational disease on the political map.

put silicosis on the political map.

1935, a wave of fear was sweeping the country.

Silicosis was taking its toll from the ranks of American workers.

Cause of the disease, dust.

Results of the disease, disablement, poverty, death.

Cure for the disease, none.

After years of exposure to silica, once strong and healthy, John Steele is now weak and emaciated.

And this led to congressional hearings in the 1930s.