Gambling With Lives

A History of Occupational Health in Greater Las Vegas

Michelle Follette Turk

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781948908962
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

The United States has a long and unfortunate history of exposing employees, the public, and the environment to dangerous work. But in April 2009, the spotlight was on Las Vegas when the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to the recent "exponential growth in the Las Vegas market." In fact, since Las Vegas' founding in 1905, rapid development has always strained occupational health and safety standards. Gambling with Lives examines the work, hazards, and health and safety programs from the early building of the railroad through the construction of the Hoover Dam, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and dense megaresort construction on the Las Vegas Strip. In doing so, this comprehensive chronicle reveals the long and unfortunate history of exposing workers, residents, tourists, and the environment to dangerous work—all while exposing the present and future to crises in the region.Complex interactions and beliefs among the actors involved are emphasized, as well as how the medical community interpreted and responded to the risks posed.Updated through 2020, this second edition includes new and expanded discussions on:

• Union activity, sexual harassment and misconduct, and race and employment
• The change to Las Vegas' "What happens here, stays here" slogan
• The MGM Grand Fire and 1918 influenza pandemic
• Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the service industry
• Legionnaire's Disease outbreaks at resorts
• Effects of the Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting
• The COVID-19 pandemic

Few places in the United States contain this mixture of industrial and postindustrial sites, the Las Vegas area offers unique opportunities to evaluate American occupational health during the twentieth century, and reminds us all about the relevancy of protecting our workers.

1

THE RAILROAD

THIS STORY BEGINS at the turn of the century with the railroad. It embarked on a challenging task, constructing a railway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The two cities were separated by sparsely populated desert, with limited water and no infrastructure, so the carrier determined that it needed to establish a railway station and yard at the halfway point. Las Vegas was founded during the first period of occupational health history, a time when concerns for employee health and safety were beginning to emerge. Industrial capitalism brought conflict and volatility to the United States, prompting workplace violence, economic depression, corruption, increased social stratification, and insecurity, and eroded the nation’s democratic institutions. There were no workplaces more unsafe than those in America, and the railroad industry was one of the most dangerous.¹

Borrowing technological knowledge from Europe, Americans rapidly developed the railroad during the nineteenth century. The first continental carrier, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), was completed in 1828, and by 1873 American companies operated the largest railroad network in the world, with more than seventy thousand miles of track. The railroad industry borrowed from European technology to shape all aspects of railroad transportation, including safety. Those companies’ choices, along with limited federal regulation, created a unique American institution that was considerably more dangerous than European counterparts. In 1901 the fatality rate per thousand American railroad workers was more than double the rate per English workers. Indeed, railroading was a dangerous trade because it was a developing industry; Europeans also endured numerous accidents during the development process. As shown by historian Mark Aldrich, the main difference between the European and American railroad culture is that American carriers traded expensive capital and labor for accidents, running more freight than passenger cars and coupling with links and pins instead of the expensive European method, by hook and chain.²

Railroad management officials believed they were not responsible for health and safety because accidents were the workers’ fault. Edward Dickinson, general manager of the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR), commented, “Fully 90% of railway derailments and wrecks are caused by careless, or rather willful, disobedience of well-defined rules and regulations on the part of some employee.”³ At least initially, labor shared this viewpoint, consenting that all hazards were negotiable only before starting the job. After workers were on the job, hazards were part of their contract.

Farwell v. Boston & Worcester R.R. Corp. made it impossible for employees to recover damages from their employer even if a coworker contributed to an injury.⁴ Farwell influenced courts in Massachusetts and across the nation to develop a series of doctrines that made it nearly impossible for workers to seek the law for insurance against the risks of work. Often, courts found that coworkers were not liable if an injured worker was guilty of contributory negligence. Employers also were required only to exercise care. While obligated to warn employees of dangerous conditions, they were not required by law to remedy those conditions. According to historian John Fabian Witt, the combination of these nineteenth-century policies created an “‘unholy trinity’ of rules that made it difficult for injured employees to recover damages from their employers.”⁵

By the last decades of the nineteenth century, after outrunning the capacity to handle its tracks, the railroad entered a new phase. With management directing capital toward new construction rather than existing lines, radical cutbacks forced supervisors to run their workers and equipment until they fell apart.⁶ The policies eventually prompted regulators, managers, and workers to campaign for better equipment and tighter regulation. In 1873 Eli H. Janney patented the automatic knuckle coupler, which replaced the link and pin method, and in 1887 George Westinghouse modified the train brake to work on long freights. The technological advances not only improved productivity but also fostered safer working conditions. Historians regard both developments as the most significant safety inventions in American railroads from the end of the Civil War to 1900.⁷ Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which published railroad fatality statistics. The figures revealed the extraordinary risk of trainmen on the job.⁸ A subsequent campaign for safety culminated in the Federal Safety Appliance Act of 1893, the first federal law that sought to improve worker safety. The act required all railroad companies to install air brakes and automatic couplers on all trains. It took nearly a decade for the new equipment to reach most carriers, but this equipment has been credited with the decline of trainmen accidents in the early twentieth century.⁹

It was during this period of occupational health history that the railroad arrived in southern Nevada. Even though it had an abundant water supply and fertile ground for crops, settlers found it hard to achieve long-term settlement in the region. In 1855 Brigham Young instructed Mormon missionaries to establish a homestead in Las Vegas, but the mission disbanded in 1858. At the turn of the century, Nevada emerged from a twenty-year economic depression after the discovery of various mineral lodes in central and eastern parts of the state. Still, state politics continued to favor the northern mining industry.¹⁰

The location of southern Nevada nevertheless elevated the region to prominence. There was no link between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, and U.S. Senator William A. Clark of Montana wanted to enter the railroad business. Clark was a corrupt mining entrepreneur from Montana, described by author Mark Twain: “[He is as] rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag. . .[and is] a shame to the American nation.”¹¹

The UPRR’s Southern Pacific Railroad also recognized the benefits of building a rail between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. The UPRR was founded under wartime pressure in 1862 to link the Pacific Ocean. By the 1890s it had declared bankruptcy and a group of financiers bought the company. Headed by Edward Harriman, the financiers forced major improvements, a vision that ultimately created the modern American railroad system. The UPRR had proposed building a southwestern route, but the company abandoned the plan during the bankruptcy process. Consequently, Clark won title to the land. In 1900 Clark chartered the San Pedro, Los Angeles, & Salt Lake Railroad Company (later shortened to the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, or LA&SL), organizing a construction company to build the line. Harriman, however, still intended to build the track. In March 1901 Harriman and Clark filed their claim in court, and began simultaneously constructing lines in the Clover Creek Canyon, a narrow ravine near Caliente, Nevada.¹²

Conflict between the two lines soon became unavoidable. The UPRR heavily recruited its rival’s crews, offering a significant pay raise, and swept their opponents off the grade. In response, the LA&SL erected barbed wire and barricades. The mood was restless, with both sides anxious to avoid violence—but a clash was inevitable. Some newspapers reported an all-out war, but with the exception of a few bloody noses and harassment allegations, work continued without significant interruption. Eventually, the courts interceded, shutting down track production on both sides until the companies reached a compromise. In 1902 Clark agreed to operate the railroad in exchange for furnishing the UPRR with a 50 percent stake in the company. In early 1905 workers completed the railway in Jean, Nevada, and special trains began running. Passenger service began on May 1, 1905.¹³

Finishing the track marked a significant milestone for southern Nevada. The line inspired the creation of a town somewhere between Salt Lake and Los Angeles: In 1902 Clark bought Helen Stewart’s two-thousand-acre ranch in the Las Vegas Valley with the intention of establishing a company town. After completing the track, he organized an auction for commercial and residential lots, forming a subsidiary, the Las Vegas Land & Water Company (LVL&W), to handle all land transactions. Las Vegas became a major transshipment site virtually overnight, storing and loading supplies from California and Utah onto wagons traveling northwest to construction camps. The town also benefited from Clark’s decision to establish another railroad, the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad, in 1907.¹⁴

The first occupational health regime to coalesce in Las Vegas dealt with the dangers associated with working in and living near the railroad industry. The turn of the century marked a time of transition for railroad health and safety. The industry as a whole boomed, forcing carriers to upgrade existing lines to accommodate a rise in passenger and freight traffic. Yet the expansion increased the frequency of accidents. Even though carriers invested in high-tech brakes, couplers, signals, and other safety measures, worker and passenger fatalities rose 30 and 60 percent, respectively. During the first years of the LA&SL’s operation, the ICC reported more than 5,000 workers killed and 75,286 workers injured in railroad accidents nationwide, an increase of 755 killed and 8,577 injured from previous years. Congress responded to the spike in injuries and deaths by passing the Accident Reports Act, which required carriers to report to the ICC all accidents involving injury or losses of more than $150. To reduce negative publicity, carriers studied how to improve technology, and invested in better track, communication devices, and control features. They also created comprehensive safety programs and public positions on safety, hiring the American Railway Association (ARA) to speak on its behalf. The combination of higher accident costs to employers due to new compensation laws and stricter employer liability, and the establishment of safety programs, eventually improved conditions. Worker fatalities steadily declined after 1910.¹⁵

Still, accidents were frequent across the state of Nevada, most likely because it hosted a number of dangerous industries in remote locations. Most industries also lacked comprehensive health and safety programs until the 1920s. In 1944 Reno physician Dr. M. Rollin Walker recalled the struggle of regulating health and safety in the Nevada workplace: “The question arising concerning industrial injuries and occupational diseases is a very live one today. In 1911 such questions and discussions were just in their adolescent stage. Injuries were fairly simple, but questions concerning disorders supposed to be due to the occupation had received so little attention that only a few physicians and surgeons were conversant. . . . Even in so sparsely settled a State as Nevada it is apparent that the old order must give way to a broader concept, a more centralized control and administration in industry, education, and public health.”¹⁶

From 1913 to 1916 there were 4,145 accidents in all industry classes. Mining involved the most risk, with 4.84 out of 1,000 workers experiencing a fatal accident each year, and 205 out of 1,000 suffering some form of injury. In contrast, only 1.49 out of 1,000 railroad workers experienced a fatal accident, and 84.82 out of 1,000 suffered some form of injury.¹⁷

The LA&SL was a dangerous operation, but the workers willingly gambled with their lives. The risks of working versus the risks of not working were common predicaments among employees at the turn of the century.¹⁸ Workers knew the job could cause injury or death, but they also knew that not receiving a paycheck presented greater consequences, such as not being able to provide food and shelter to their families. The employee demographic was typical of western towns that depended on industries other than mining. Most of the population descended from at least one parent who had immigrated from the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe, and who had themselves immigrated from another state. The hiring process was prejudiced, with the most dangerous jobs allocated to minorities. In the quest for cheap labor, the railroad employed Japanese workers, forcing them to sleep outside the city limits in construction cars or the repair shops, and shuffling Mexican and Native American laborers to camps outside of town. There were very few Blacks, with only sixteen reported in the 1910 census of Las Vegas, and most worked in Block 16 and 17, the northern section of the townsite that legally served liquor without licensing restrictions. Conflict among the diverse railroad crew was common. In early 1905, the Las Vegas Age reported on fights involving White workers and the “swarthy sons of Japan,” and instances between Italians and Greeks working for the railroad south of town, writing, “Judge Brennan was engaged in a legal sponsor for the Greeks and Dan V. Noland appeared for the banana sellers.” In this incident, he fined the parties involved $10. In 1912 a Mexican laborer was murdered by a coworker, cut “from ear to ear with a sharp instrument,” dragged by the arms twenty feet, and his body placed between the railroad tracks. A switch engine later ran him over.¹⁹

Laborer conflict was a universal problem in railroading, but the work itself presented even more of a hazard. In 1908 alone, 281,641 employees in the United States were injured at work and more than twelve thousand killed.²⁰ The biggest risks at the LA&SL were human error and equipment failures. Miscalculations operating machinery on the train and in the yards, fatigue, limited work experience, and inadequate hazard awareness caused most accidents. Derailments, caused by weaknesses in road equipment, erratic desert storms, axle failures, inability to enforce speed, and track debris were particularly menacing. Derailments plagued the railroad industry throughout the nineteenth century, but steadily declined due to technological advancements. However, the economic upswing of 1897 reversed the trend, increasing passenger and freight traffic. In 1902 there were 1,609 derailments nationwide. In 1920 the total was 11,172. But although derailments increased, improvements in technology helped casualties decline. The railroad industry also gradually moved toward scientific technology to improve reliability, and rises in traffic and costs encouraged investments to improve track and roadbed.²¹

Desert storms caused the majority of derailments on the LA&SL. Large c...