Color Problems: Work, Pathology, and Perception in Modern Britain

This article explores the historical relationship between scientific research and labor man agement by investigating the state supervision of color perception in British workers (1870s-1920s). Whereas eighteenth-century scientific writers had described color blind ness as an individual idiosyncrasy, color blindness was interpreted in the late nineteenth century as a social contaminant. As multiple sites of labor and industry were saturated with color?for example, through the deployment of flashing red and green lights on ships and railways?the color vision of workers became an increasingly significant medical and legal concern. Starting in the 1890s, the Board of Trade developed new efforts to legislate the admittedly subjective realm of color perception. But British workers also publicly op posed the Board's efforts to regulate their perception and objected to the "modernist" palette that was commonly used in color vision tests. I trace the emergence of color blind ness as a class-specific pathology and consider both the denigration and the valorization of workers' perceptions in modern British industrial society. In 1890, a young color-blind sailor named John Smith was called before the Roy al Society Committee on Colour-Vision. He had spent most of his life in service to a private shipping company, and had passed vision exams for all his certifi cates. When Smith took a vision test for his promotion to Mate's Certificate, his color blindness was finally exposed. He engaged a private oculist to examine him again, but "alas! found the Company's report too true!" Now, Smith was faced with a dilemma. The Board of Trade would permit him to continue his duties as a shipmaster, but he pronounced himself "morally incapable" of doing so: I call this a very painful case ... My color-blindness has destroyed my livelihood, and I fearlessly say that the Government test of sight is to blame for this. I am in formed that I cannot claim compensation from the Board of Trade, because they have not interfered with my certificate; but suppose I follow my avocation and get into collision from my defect, what then? And who would be to blame? I am a young man of 33, and I have a wife and family depending on me, and my position is at present very distressing. The best part of my life has been passed in useless toil. My energies and prospects for the future have been unrewarded and blight ed through no fault of my own, but through the lax and imperfect way in which I was examined ... by the Board of Trade.1 Smith's remarks to the Royal Society underscored the ethical plight of the work er in a laissez-faire state. He was forced to bear the burden of weighing the pub International Labor and Working-Class History No. 68, Fall 2005, pp. 93-111 ? 2005 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.124 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:46:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 94 ILWCH, 68, Fall 2005 lie safety against his own economic interests. And by the time the Committee published its Blue Book Report in 1892, John Smith was dead. The official cause was consumption. But the Report suggested a different interpretation, in which the Board of Trade's negligence had destroyed the sailor. One witness noted that while Smith had been a hearty man, the fateful color vision test had proved his downfall: "the loss of (Smith's) situation, the having to give up the sea, and the destruction of his hopes so preyed upon his mind and body, that he became the victim of an acute phthisis and died."2 The first documented case of color blindness in Britain was reported by the Royal Society in 1777: an account of Harris the shoemaker who complained of being unable to distinguish the red fruit in his garden from the surrounding green leaves.3 In 1794, the famed Quaker chemist John Dalton discovered his own in sensitivity to certain colors: a defect subsequently termed "Daltonism." Eigh teenth-century accounts focused on the rarity of the disorder, and the amusing social improprieties it caused. Dalton was prone to parade in public in the cherry red robes he had been awarded as a Doctor of the Civil Laws: an inappropriate outfit for a Quaker. Other authors recounted tales of an undertaker who lost business after covering a coffin in bright red fabric, and an M.P. who nearly caused his wife to divorce him by appearing at her mother's funeral dressed en tirely in red. But the emblematic color-blind figure of the eighteenth century was Dalton himself, the heroic scientist who made his own idiosyncratic body the subject of communally beneficial experimentation.4 The gap between John Dalton, the virtuous chemist of the eighteenth cen tury, and John Smith, the victimized and potentially hazardous worker of the nineteenth, was profound, although the physical defect was the same. As new sites of labor and industry were increasingly saturated with color?for example, through the deployment of flashing red and green lights on ships and railways? the color perception of workers became a major medical and legal concern. Col or blindness in the eighteenth century had been just a "scientific curiosum"; now, it was a crucial political question.5 Achromatopia, or total color blindness, was exceedingly rare and accompanied by bad vision, photophobia, and nystagmus.6 Dyschromatopia, the term encompassing all other forms of color blindness, was regularly estimated at a rate of one in eighteen Englishmen, or 5.5 percent of the male population.7 The color-blind worker could wreak havoc on his fellow citi zens, perhaps even more so than a consumptive or a cholera patient.8 Individ ual idiosyncrasy had become collective pathology; the object of scientific inter est had become a social contaminant. This article explores the historical relationship between scientific research and labor management, investigating the state supervision of color perception in British workers. Public safety debates about color-blind workers focused on railway men and sailors, who played a special role in national histories of wealth and maritime glory.9 Occupational expectations of mariners' vision were par ticularly complex, as the art of imperial navigation involved proficiency in sketching, mapping, and observation.10 The sailor had to be familiar with all the colors of lights for beacons, boathouses, and buoys, as well as being able to rec This content downloaded from 207.46.13.124 on Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:46:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms