“On the Dump Heap”: Employee Medical Screening in the Tri-State Zinc-Lead Industry, 1924–1932

In the following article, Professor Derickson examines the motivation for and the results of employee medical screening of workers in a midwestern mining community. He argues that, contrary to the goals of the associative state as envisioned by Herbert Hoover and others, government and mine operator efforts to determine the extent of respiratory disease among mine workers in the Tri-State were neither impelled by a concern for workers’ welfare nor conducive to the amelioration of their problems.