Mondays without dread: the Trade Union response to byssinosis in the Lancashire cotton industry in the twentieth century.

Trade unions have often been criticized for their failure to address occupational health issues. This article explores their response to byssinosis-a chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to cotton dust that was rife in the Lancashire cotton industry in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using the archives of the cardroom and spinning unions, it is demonstrated that trade union efforts to combat byssinosis began before the First World War and were sustained for over 70 years. During that period, byssinosis became a recognized medical condition and a compensatable disease, due in no small measure to the trade unions campaigning tirelessly for better dust control, compensation for all affected workers, and more medical research.

Mortality from byssinosis among New England cotton mill workers, 1905-1912.

Little was known about mortality from byssinosis among American cotton mill workers until recent times. Between 1912 and 1919, the Labor Department published two detailed investigations of mortality by cause of death among cotton mill workers and other residents of several New England mill towns. Statistical tests reveal no significant difference in mortality rates from nontubercular respiratory diseases between cotton textile workers and other mill town residents. Even when ex-mill workers who may have died from mill-related respiratory ailments are added to work-related deaths and subtracted from the control group, mortality rates do not differ significantly. Finally, when mortality rates for workers in the most dusty areas of the mills--picking and carding--are compared with those of other Fall River, Mass., residents, the differences are still not statistically significant. Apparently byssinosis was not a cause of excess mortality among New England cotton mill workers at the turn of the century.

Byssinosis--an historical perspective.

Based on the history of the growing awareness and recognition of ailments associated with the manufacture of cotton, it is concluded that recognition of byssinosis in the United States came late. In the American south byssinosis existed in an industry and within a social framework that helped to retard the acceptance of byssinosis as an undesirable but controllable disease. As late as the 1960s, United states medical opinion declared the disease nonexistent in American textile mills. In 1970, the scientific community showed that byssinosis existed in the United States. Mobilization of public opinion, changes in social attitudes, new scientific evidence, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act led to the setting of a standard to control and eradicate byssinosis. Controversy and debate over policy have brought the impact of scientific, sociopolitical, and economic inputs into health policy decisions, the altering perceptions of hazard, and the continually changing definition of risk into focus.