Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm teaming up with the historian and co host
Speaker 1: of the after Dark podcast, Dr Maddie Pelling to talk
Speaker 1: about her new book Hoax, and we want to hear
Speaker 1: your questions about scams and con artists. We'd have a
Speaker 1: swindler on cautionary tales, and we've featured a fair few
Speaker 1: over the years, including the cheeky art forger Eric Heborn,
Speaker 1: the shoemaker turned captain of Kerpenick, and who could forget
Speaker 1: Dr Brinkley with his miracle cure for impotence goat glands?
Speaker 1: What makes these stories so appealing? We'll aim to answer
Speaker 1: that and any other hoax based question you send in
Speaker 1: just email Tales at Pushkin dot fm by the thirtieth
Speaker 1: of June. Boston, January nineteen nineteen. Giuseppe Yantoska stands at
Speaker 1: his kitchen window searching for his ten year old son.
Speaker 1: All sorts of people come and go in Boston's North End,
Speaker 1: and Giuseppe likes to keep a close eye on little
Speaker 1: Pasquale or Pasqualino, as he's affectionately known at home. Giuseppe
Speaker 1: doesn't speak much English like many of their neighbors. The
Speaker 1: Antoscas hail from southern Italy. They're very poor. Even with
Speaker 1: Giuseppe's shifts at the Boston and Maine Railroad backbreaking work
Speaker 1: laying track, they struggle to make ends meet. Fresh milk
Speaker 1: and meat are rare. It is in the Antosca house
Speaker 1: and Giuseppe and his wife Maria worry about their six
Speaker 1: small children. Where is Pasqualino. Giuseppe surveys Commercial Street, a
Speaker 1: thoroughfare beneath his window that curves along the water. It's
Speaker 1: an unusually fine day from mid January, and the harbor
Speaker 1: is bustling. Fishermen hurry to their lunch, a plate of
Speaker 1: spaghetti at home, power as a pie from Partial's bakery.
Speaker 1: Dock workers shout as they unload shipping crates and horse
Speaker 1: drawn wagons hauling beer barrels mingle with peddler's carts. Motorized
Speaker 1: trucks rattle to and from the factories that ring the
Speaker 1: north end. Giuseppe scans the elevated railroad that swoops above
Speaker 1: Commercial Street and the freight trains directly beneath it. Finally,
Speaker 1: he traces the hulking storage tank that dominates the wharf.
Speaker 1: His eyes flick to a tiny figure clad in red
Speaker 1: and crouching in the shadow of the high steel walls.
Speaker 1: Pasqualino Giuseppe breathes a sigh of relief. Down on the wharf,
Speaker 1: pasquale A Tosca and his friends Tony and Maria Destacio
Speaker 1: are huddling beside the enormous storage tank fifty feet high
Speaker 1: and ninety feet wide. Its grumbles and shudders and its sweet,
Speaker 1: earthy scent are familiar to them. The tank isn't designed
Speaker 1: to store diesel or grain, but of all things, a thick, dark,
Speaker 1: sugary liquid and glasses. It pools around the base of
Speaker 1: the tank, and the children like to play there, dodging
Speaker 1: stern railroad workers to scoop the sticky liquid into their
Speaker 1: pails and hurrying home with their syrupy treasure. But today
Speaker 1: Pasqualino doesn't feel like playing. He knows his father's watching him.
Speaker 1: He's also very hot beneath his bright red knitwear. It's
Speaker 1: the second sweater his mother insisted he wear that morning.
Speaker 1: She fears him catching a cold. But the day's mild,
Speaker 1: and the extra bolk also slows him down. As he
Speaker 1: gathers firewood, the tank groans, which isn't unusual. A fresh
Speaker 1: load of the sugary substance has recently arrived from the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: Pasqualino looks up at the massive container fifty foot streams
Speaker 1: of my glasses seep down its side in long, treakily tears.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Arthur P.
Speaker 1: Gell had his work cut out. It was late nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen and had been tasked with building an enormous malasses
Speaker 1: contained near Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gell was assistant treasurer at the
Speaker 1: Purity Distilling Company, part of United States Industrial Alcohol or USIA.
Speaker 1: USIA processed molasses into alcohol for munitions like dynamite and
Speaker 1: smokeless powder, so when Europe went to war in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: the company had begun boosting production. Its plant in Cambridge
Speaker 1: was one of the largest in the country, but USIA
Speaker 1: struggled to keep up with demand. It didn't have its
Speaker 1: own storage facility, so it had to source its molasses
Speaker 1: from a broker in South Boston rather than directly from
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. This, in turn, eight into profits. To truly
Speaker 1: make hay while the sun shone, USIA needed its own tank,
Speaker 1: one that would be up and running by December thirty,
Speaker 1: first nineteen teen fifteen, and it was decided that reliable,
Speaker 1: efficient Arthur Jell was the man for the job. The
Speaker 1: deadline was virtually impossible, but Gell's bosses had hinted that
Speaker 1: if he succeeded, a New York City promotion was on
Speaker 1: the cards. He was determined to give it his best shot.
Speaker 1: As Stephen Pulio explains in his book Dark Tide, Gell
Speaker 1: had spent his professional life in a range of clerical positions.
Speaker 1: An experienced administrator, he was confident that he knew the
Speaker 1: right people. He consulted other tank manufacturers about the appropriate
Speaker 1: factor of safety for a container like this one, and
Speaker 1: ordered steel plates to form the sides of the cylindrical structure.
Speaker 1: He also negotiated a lease for the perfect spot in
Speaker 1: Boston's North End. Here steamships from the Caribbean could discharge
Speaker 1: the molasses, and the sugary substance could then travel on
Speaker 1: to the Cambridge plant by railcar. Sure, the area was
Speaker 1: densely populated, and there was a children's playground right next
Speaker 1: to the proposed tank site, but Jell knew that the
Speaker 1: residents of the North End were unlikely to resist the structure.
Speaker 1: Many of them were poor immigrants from Italy's south. They
Speaker 1: didn't speak English and kept to their own tight enclave.
Speaker 1: Their political participation was scant. All the same, lease negotiations
Speaker 1: were slow. By the time Gell had secured the location,
Speaker 1: it was September nineteen fifteen and the clock was ticking.
Speaker 1: Ever resourceful, he installed electric lighting at the wharf so
Speaker 1: that the construction crew could work through the night. But
Speaker 1: when a laborer fell inside the empty tank, lost more time,
Speaker 1: so traumatized with the other workers by the dying man's screams.
Speaker 1: Then a superstorm blasted Boston and he lost a further
Speaker 1: two days. Gel couldn't afford any more embarrassing setbacks or expenses.
Speaker 1: When the time came to test the tank for leaks,
Speaker 1: he knew that they could only fill the massive structure
Speaker 1: by tapping into the municipal water supply. This would be
Speaker 1: time consuming and costly, so he came up with a solution.
Speaker 1: The crew ran six inches of water into the bottom
Speaker 1: of the container to just above the first joint at
Speaker 1: its base. If the first joint didn't leak, right with
Speaker 1: the rest of them, the tank held its six inches
Speaker 1: of water and Gel announced that it was ready. It
Speaker 1: was late December nineteen fifteen, he had met his impossible deadline.
Speaker 1: Business boomed. From nineteen fourteen to nineteen sixteen, USIA's net
Speaker 1: profit increased nearly ninefold. The investors were thrilled. In April
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, the US declared war on Germany, and Gell
Speaker 1: was ready to show the managers in New York that
Speaker 1: Boston could rise to the challenge. That month, a munitions
Speaker 1: factory in Pennsylvania was bombed, the work of foreign employees
Speaker 1: who were angry about the war. Italian anarchists were said
Speaker 1: to be behind other similar bombings. Jell took note and
Speaker 1: increased security at the Boston Tank. A couple of weeks later,
Speaker 1: Gell ran into another complication. A man called Isaac Gonzales
Speaker 1: burst into his Cambridge office uninvited and unapproved. Gonzales was
Speaker 1: also a USIA employee, the assistant to the caretaker at
Speaker 1: the Boston Tank, and he was raving about some leaks
Speaker 1: in the structure. Apparently the tank oozed gallons of molasses
Speaker 1: onto the wharf. Everyone had noticed, and children even liked
Speaker 1: to play with it. Gonzales shoved tiny pieces of steel
Speaker 1: into Jell's hands and said that rusty flex dropped into
Speaker 1: his hair each time he entered the tank. Gell did
Speaker 1: his best to keep calm. This man was clearly paranoid.
Speaker 1: Even obsessed molasses had a life of its own, and
Speaker 1: leaks were normal, especially in a relatively new structure, and
Speaker 1: especially after a fresh shipment. Plus, Jel had had the
Speaker 1: tank resealed, so he knew it was being maintained. He
Speaker 1: told Gonzales that he needed to do a better job
Speaker 1: of keeping the neighborhood children away from company property. That
Speaker 1: would shut him up. He thought it didn't shut him up. Next,
Speaker 1: Gonzales revealed he had been sleeping at the tank so
Speaker 1: that he could sound the alarm should it start to fall.
Speaker 1: Jell was disturbed. Company employees should be returning home after work.
Speaker 1: The tank still stands. The tank will stand, he snapped.
Speaker 1: Then he sent the man on his way, promising to
Speaker 1: fire him if he breathed another word of this nonsense. Yes,
Speaker 1: Arthur Jell was a reliable, efficient man. Nothing would hinder
Speaker 1: productivity on his watch, not saboteurs with bombs, and certainly
Speaker 1: not some jumped up manual laborer. Isaac Gonzales returned to
Speaker 1: his post through nineteen seventeen and nineteen eighteen, other Bostonians
Speaker 1: muttered to him about the tank. The men of Engine
Speaker 1: thirty one fire house, which stood just along the wharf,
Speaker 1: commented on the obvious leaks that streaked its sides and
Speaker 1: the strange sounds it made. When another local worker pressed
Speaker 1: his back against the tank, he told Isaac it felt
Speaker 1: as though the steel walls were moving, pulsing in and
Speaker 1: out with the flow of the liquid inside. Gonzales continued
Speaker 1: his nighttime vigil in secret. Of course, he knew he
Speaker 1: couldn't speak to jail again, but in nineteen eighteen he
Speaker 1: complained to his superintendent, William White, he waited to see
Speaker 1: if his bosses would do anything. They did. In August,
Speaker 1: a crew arrived at the tank paint in Gel had
Speaker 1: ordered them to adore the gray steel walls with a
Speaker 1: dark red brown, the color of molasses. Gonzales had had enough.
Speaker 1: He quit his job and joined the army. Cautionary tales
Speaker 1: will return. Usia had done well out of the war
Speaker 1: in Europe, but when the armistice was signed in November
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, it faced a steep fall in profits. Assistant
Speaker 1: Treasurer Arthur jell knew all too well that the investors
Speaker 1: wouldn't be happy, but all was not lost. As the
Speaker 1: United States looked to ratify the eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution,
Speaker 1: Usia spotted a slim window of opportunity. The prohibition of
Speaker 1: the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: go into effect for another year, during which time there
Speaker 1: would surely be a spike in alcohol sales. Usia resolved
Speaker 1: to repurpose its distilleries for the liquor industry. It would
Speaker 1: once again make hay while the sun shone. On January
Speaker 1: the twelfth, nineteen nineteen, a ship cruised into Boston Harbor
Speaker 1: with one point three million gallons of molasses. The dark,
Speaker 1: viscous liquid had been warmed to facilitate its transfer, and
Speaker 1: it flowed easily into the tank. By next morning, the
Speaker 1: container was very nearly full. It held two point bis
Speaker 1: three million gallons of the sticky substance, weighing roughly twenty
Speaker 1: six million pounds. The weather in Boston had been bitterly cold,
Speaker 1: and when the warm, free flowing molasses topped up the colder,
Speaker 1: thicker liquid already in the tank, something unexpected happened. The
Speaker 1: introduction of all that additional heat accelerated a fermentation process
Speaker 1: producing carbon dioxide. The gas had nowhere to go, and
Speaker 1: it began to push against the steel walls of the tank.
Speaker 1: USIA's only responsibility, as the company saw it, was to
Speaker 1: maximize profit. Somehow, that always seemed to mean profit now
Speaker 1: rather than profit later, and so Arthur Gel prioritized speed,
Speaker 1: growth and quarterly returns. If that sounds familiar, it could
Speaker 1: be because Silicon Valley has become famous or infamous for
Speaker 1: a similar corporate logic. Facebook's motto was move fast and
Speaker 1: Break things, and it became the tech world's battle cry.
Speaker 1: A move fast and break things culture can encourage innovation
Speaker 1: and banish fear of mistakes. After all, errors are path
Speaker 1: of the course, especially when you're making something new. And
Speaker 1: while slow and steady can bring small, consistent benefits to
Speaker 1: a business, throwing caution to the wind might generate a
Speaker 1: single massive payoff. But when a corporation values efficiency and
Speaker 1: growth above all else, there can be other consequences environmental costs,
Speaker 1: community welfare, and work. Because rights fall by the wayside,
Speaker 1: safeguards are eroded, accountability dissolves, and harm is written off
Speaker 1: as a cost of doing business. January fifteenth, nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: is a cloudy day in Boston, but unusually mild. The
Speaker 1: weather has been punishingly cold of late, and the people
Speaker 1: of the North End take advantage of the slight thaw
Speaker 1: At lunchtime. The harbor is a buzz Workers eat their
Speaker 1: lunch on front steps and chatter on sidewalks. The mood
Speaker 1: is a mellow tank. Superintendent William White has just received
Speaker 1: a phone call from his wife. She has her eye
Speaker 1: on new dress and wants to go shopping together. It'll
Speaker 1: be a quiet workday now that the new load of
Speaker 1: molasses has been safely delivered, and White sees no not
Speaker 1: to spoil her. Just before midday, he leaves his post.
Speaker 1: If he had lingered, he might have noticed Pasquale and
Speaker 1: Tosca and the Dastacio children sneaking onto the wall to
Speaker 1: collect firewood. Instead. A railroad worker begins scolding Maria d'astasio.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be here, he chides, this isn't a playground.
Speaker 1: Just along the wharf, the men of the Engine thirty
Speaker 1: one Firehouse are playing whist on their lunch break, smoking
Speaker 1: their pipes and mocking bay Ruth's ridiculous demands for a
Speaker 1: pay rise. The baseball star would never survive on a
Speaker 1: firefighter's wage, They scoff. Fifty six year old John Barry,
Speaker 1: a stonecutter for the City of Boston Street Department, has
Speaker 1: joined them from his workshop next door. Burly and muscular,
Speaker 1: Barry is physically formidable, but his friends at the firehouse
Speaker 1: know that his ten children are never far from his thoughts.
Speaker 1: What was that It sounded like thunder? One of the
Speaker 1: firefighters scrambles to a window. His face darkens with fear.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he cries. Run at his kitchen window.
Speaker 1: Giuseppe yan Tosca jumps back in horror. He's been following
Speaker 1: his Pasqualino as he gathers firewood, tracing that bright red
Speaker 1: sweater as it bobs along the gray wharf. But something
Speaker 1: has just swallowed the little boy. A kind of dark,
Speaker 1: gleaming wave pushing forwards, tearing towards Commercial Street. The kitchen
Speaker 1: growls and shakes, and before he can move, Giuseppe has
Speaker 1: been thrown to the floor. He hits his head, everything
Speaker 1: goes back. At a call box on Commercial Street, policeman
Speaker 1: Frank McManus is making a routine report to headquarters that
Speaker 1: chilling sound somewhere between a thunderclap and sickening scrape of
Speaker 1: metal makes him turn receiver still to his mouth. He
Speaker 1: can't quite believe what he's seeing, but he manages to
Speaker 1: utter a few shocked words to the dispatcher. Send all
Speaker 1: available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately. There's a wave of
Speaker 1: molasses coming down Commercial Street. What follows is the stuff
Speaker 1: of nightmares. The tank has burst clean open rid, its
Speaker 1: screaming through the air like shrapnels. The worker trapped in
Speaker 1: the railroad freight office saw the tank's steel walls fly
Speaker 1: into other buildings, which crumpled like egg. Two point three
Speaker 1: million gallons of molasses has rushed onto the wharf, a
Speaker 1: syrupite tsunami, thirty five feet high, one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: feet wide, and traveling at thirty five miles per hour.
Speaker 1: It snuffs out the daylight and wrenches the fire house
Speaker 1: from its foundations on Commercial Street. In the dining room
Speaker 1: of his second floor apartment, Robert Burnett, he is a swish,
Speaker 1: like a brushing of wind. A shadow falls across the room,
Speaker 1: and he hurries to the window. A great black wave
Speaker 1: is bearing down on the house. Burnett snatches at his
Speaker 1: front door that the wave is already surging up the
Speaker 1: stairs in the hallway. He slams the door and runs
Speaker 1: for the roof. The wall of molasses rebounds off buildings,
Speaker 1: shattering windows and pulverizing brickwork. It twists and snaps the
Speaker 1: steel girders of an elevated railroad, obliterating the track for
Speaker 1: more than one hundred feet. Horses, carts, and motor trucks
Speaker 1: are overturned, Children and adults vanish in a treatily deluge.
Speaker 1: Stonecutter John Barry lies in total darkness, wood and metal
Speaker 1: crushing his back its agony. He can barely breathe. When
Speaker 1: the wave of molasses ripped the firehouse off its foundations,
Speaker 1: the building collapse and the treacherous syrup seeped through the debris.
Speaker 1: Barry is trapped, pinned, face down, one cheek grinding into molasses.
Speaker 1: Only his left arm is free, and he clears the
Speaker 1: vile liquid from his face as best he can. Barry
Speaker 1: tries to call out to scream, but his voice is
Speaker 1: thin and reading. He imagines foul rats scuttling over his body,
Speaker 1: burrowing their yellow teeth into his flesh. I'm going to
Speaker 1: die here, he thinks. He wonders what will become of
Speaker 1: his ten children. On his kitchen floor, Giuseppe and Tosca
Speaker 1: comes too. His wife Maria is crying in the corner
Speaker 1: of the room. One of their daughters is comforting her bruised. Stunned,
Speaker 1: Giuseppe pulls himself up and goes shakily to the door.
Speaker 1: He will find Pasqualino. If it kills him. Cautionary tails
Speaker 1: would be back shortly. In the first moments of the disaster,
Speaker 1: the molasses flowed through the streets of Boston like water,
Speaker 1: or perhaps like ketchup being jiggled out of a bottle.
Speaker 1: Like ketchup, molasses flows freely when being violently shaken and
Speaker 1: exploding out of a high pressure tank is certainly a
Speaker 1: violent movement, but when malasses cools, it thickens. On January
Speaker 1: the fifteenth, the temperature in Boston had climbed a little,
Speaker 1: but the winter air was still much cooler than the
Speaker 1: syrupy liquid, and as it flowed out of the tank
Speaker 1: and through the streets, it began to slow and congeal
Speaker 1: like quicksand it tracked its victims. As the Boston Post explained,
Speaker 1: snared in its flood was to be stifled Once it
Speaker 1: smeared ahead human or animal, there was no coughing off
Speaker 1: the sticky mass. To attempt to wipe it with hands
Speaker 1: was to make it worse. It plugged the nostrils almost
Speaker 1: air tight. Horses thrashed around in the glooy mass like
Speaker 1: so many flies on sticky flypaper. They couldn't be freed
Speaker 1: and were shot dead. At a local relief station, nurses
Speaker 1: and orderlies streaked with molasses treated the injured. They carried
Speaker 1: patients on sticky stretchers, cutaway clothing, and cleaned gaping wounds.
Speaker 1: Anguished Bostonians clamored to know if their missing relatives were there.
Speaker 1: A lucky few were relatively unscathed. Five year old Albert
Speaker 1: Janshi had been picked up by the wave and drenched
Speaker 1: in molasses, but was miraculously unhurt. Once he had been
Speaker 1: cleaned up and had something to eat, he was allowed
Speaker 1: to return home. Others were taken straight to the local morgue.
Speaker 1: In the ruins of the firehouse, John Barry's back seared
Speaker 1: with pain. Despite his incredible strength, he couldn't move. He
Speaker 1: couldn't see anything either. It was pitch black, but he
Speaker 1: could hear something with the shred of energy he had left.
Speaker 1: He strained his ears. There it was again a man's voice.
Speaker 1: He wasn't alone down here. His friends were imprisoned with
Speaker 1: him in the debris. And then John Barry heard something else,
Speaker 1: the unmistakable sound of sores on wood and metal yielding
Speaker 1: to flame. Someone knew they were down there, Someone was
Speaker 1: coming to get them. Giuseppe jan Tosca spent hours searching
Speaker 1: for Pasqualino, but to no avail. Maria Destacio had been found.
Speaker 1: She had been right in the path of the monstrous
Speaker 1: wave and had suffocated immediately, but her brother Tony had survived.
Speaker 1: He had been thrown against a lamppost and suffered a
Speaker 1: fractured skull, but a firefighter had managed to pull him
Speaker 1: from the morass before he drowned. Could Giuseppe's boy have
Speaker 1: been rescued had he been swept into the harbor, or
Speaker 1: perhaps he was trapped beneath the debris on the wharf.
Speaker 1: In broken English, to Seppi frantically questioned the dazed and
Speaker 1: injured along Commercial Street, but no one had seen a
Speaker 1: little boy in a red sweater. Firefighters had rallied to
Speaker 1: reach their trapped colleagues from Engine thirty one chopping and
Speaker 1: digging through the wreckage was perilous work. With every move
Speaker 1: they made, the remains of the building shifted around them.
Speaker 1: They found some of their fellows in time, but thirty
Speaker 1: four year old father of three, George Lahey was dragged
Speaker 1: from the wreckage dead. After three hours and as many
Speaker 1: injections of morphine into his back, John Barry heard a
Speaker 1: saw slicing away at the wood near his head. It
Speaker 1: was getting closer and closer, and then quite suddenly it stopped,
Speaker 1: and he felt the great weight beheaved from his back.
Speaker 1: The exhausted stonecutter was lifted onto a stretcher and rushed
Speaker 1: to hospital. When his stricken daughters reached the ward, they
Speaker 1: didn't recognize him. Their powerful father had vanished. In his
Speaker 1: place was a fragile old man. Arthur Jell visited the waterfront.
Speaker 1: He was aghast at the devastation, but kept calm. There
Speaker 1: would be a plausible explanation for the disaster, one that
Speaker 1: absolved Usia and himself of any responsibility. In the days
Speaker 1: that followed, the flood, clean up operation began. Businesses had
Speaker 1: been decimated and the harbor police picked all sorts of
Speaker 1: objects out of the water rolls of cloth, barrels of ale,
Speaker 1: tubs of lar. Firemen spread sand on the pavements and
Speaker 1: dispersed the tenacious molasses with jets of salt water. On
Speaker 1: January seventeenth, USIA issued a statement the company knew beyond
Speaker 1: question that the tank was not weak. This calamity was
Speaker 1: the work of an outside influence. It was another three
Speaker 1: days before Giuseppe and Maria Yantosca learned the fate of
Speaker 1: their son. Rescue workers pulled the body of a little
Speaker 1: boy in a red sweater from the wreckage. A railroad
Speaker 1: car carried fifty feet by the wave had crushed him
Speaker 1: into a wall. Giuseppe was asked to identify the child.
Speaker 1: He was slicked with molasses and his face was horribly disfigured. Weeping,
Speaker 1: Giuseppe lifted his red sweater and saw a second sweater underneath.
Speaker 1: His heart breaking, he gathered Pasqualino's tiny body in his
Speaker 1: arms and hugged him close. One hundred and fifty people
Speaker 1: were injured in the molasses flood, and twenty one people
Speaker 1: lost their lives. It was months before all the bodies
Speaker 1: were recovered. At the inquest into the disaster, Judge Wilfred
Speaker 1: Bolster rebuked USIA. He was also scathing about the Boston
Speaker 1: Buildings Department. The city had bypassed the proper permit procedures.
Speaker 1: No one in the building's department had been qualified to
Speaker 1: assess whether the steel structure was fit for purpose, and
Speaker 1: then accepted the paper design simply because it bore the
Speaker 1: name of a civil engineer. This single accident has cost
Speaker 1: more in material damage than all the supposed economies in
Speaker 1: the building department. Laws are cheap of passage, costly of enforcement.
Speaker 1: They do not execute themselves, Bolster declared. Despite Judge Bolster's rebuke,
Speaker 1: a grand jury found that there was insufficient evidence to
Speaker 1: return an indictment of manslaughter. The people of Boston were
Speaker 1: appalled USIA was getting away with it. A group of
Speaker 1: Bostonians prepared to sue the company. If nobody would go
Speaker 1: to jail for their carelessness, they could at least be
Speaker 1: made to pay a price, But USIA had some tricks
Speaker 1: up its sleeve. Today, it's generally believed that the Boston
Speaker 1: molasses disaster was the result of brittle fracture, the sudden
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure of the tank structure due to poor design
Speaker 1: to withstand the strains they would experience. The tank walls
Speaker 1: needed to be at least twice as thick. Over time,
Speaker 1: as the tank was repeatedly emptied and refilled, the steel fatigued.
Speaker 1: The fatal fracture probably began as a circular hatch at
Speaker 1: the base of the tank. Engineers balance efficiency, resource allocation,
Speaker 1: and safety. Arthur Jell, who oversaw the tank's rapid construction,
Speaker 1: was a skilled administrator, but he wasn't an engineer. His
Speaker 1: focus wasn't the complex harmony of function and long term
Speaker 1: public safety, but short term profit. USIA regarded the residence
Speaker 1: of Boston's North End not as vulnerable individuals worthy of dignity,
Speaker 1: as factors in a business model. The company had taken
Speaker 1: advantage of a power imbalance, knowing that the Italian Americans
Speaker 1: who lived near the harbor were unlikely to resist the
Speaker 1: building of the Malasses tank. USIA also knew that people
Speaker 1: were suspicious of Italian Americans, and in its next move,
Speaker 1: it sought to capitalize on that fear. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the disaster, one hundred and nineteen Bostonians sued USIA,
Speaker 1: arguing that the Great Vat of Malasses had been structurally
Speaker 1: deficient and built without proper safeguards. Former caretaker Isaac Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: who had warned half the gel about the tank and
Speaker 1: been dismissed, took the stand and told of how malasses
Speaker 1: had oozed incessantly through the tank's riveted joins. His hair,
Speaker 1: now white from the stress of his ordeal, also testified
Speaker 1: he could no longer work as a stonecutter because he
Speaker 1: couldn't stand up straight. My back hurts all the time,
Speaker 1: he said. It's as though my spine is breaking. The
Speaker 1: doctor says there's no cure. Giuseppe and Tosca described the
Speaker 1: earth shattering moment his Pasqualino was engulfed by a dark wave.
Speaker 1: USIA countered that Pasquale an Tosca shouldn't have been there
Speaker 1: at all. A company is under no obligation to make
Speaker 1: its premises safe for trespassers, snarled one defense attorney. USIA
Speaker 1: held that at lunchtime on January the fifteenth, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: unknown anarchists, probably Italian, had dropped a bomb in the tank.
Speaker 1: The company had spent more than fifty thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: expert witnesses to support its claims. It continued to take
Speaker 1: this line even after a professor from MIT testified that
Speaker 1: the tank had been of insufficient thickness to withstand the
Speaker 1: pressure of the molasses inside. Order Sir Hugh Ogden listen
Speaker 1: to nearly one thousand witnesses and heard over twenty thousand
Speaker 1: pages of testimony. The proceedings took five years, but in
Speaker 1: the end he rejected USIA's claims of sabotage. I cannot
Speaker 1: help feeling that a proper regard for the appalling possibility
Speaker 1: of damage to persons and property contained in the tank
Speaker 1: in case of accident demanded a higher standard of care
Speaker 1: in inspection from those in authority. Ogden declared he recommended
Speaker 1: that the plaintiffs received damage. A private agreement was reached
Speaker 1: and in nineteen twenty five USIA took a charge against
Speaker 1: profits of six hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars due
Speaker 1: to the Boston tank accident, about eleven point five million dollars. Today,
Speaker 1: that's not nothing, but split between one hundred and nineteen
Speaker 1: traumatized and grievously injured plaintiffs. It's also not very much.
Speaker 1: USIA closed its Cambridge plant and fired the people that
Speaker 1: worked there, But Arthur P. Gell seems to have got
Speaker 1: his New York City promotion, he took the vice presidency
Speaker 1: at another USIA subsidiary, the American Solvents and Chemical Association.
Speaker 1: Gell remained a company man through and through. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, he was named in a federal grand jury
Speaker 1: indictment against USIA for violating prohibition laws. He died in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three at the ripe old age of eighty four,
Speaker 1: survived by his wife, daughter, and four grandchildren. Isaac Gonzales
Speaker 1: had warned Jel about the tank, and when his warnings
Speaker 1: had been repeatedly ignored, he'd quit and joined the army.
Speaker 1: After the war, he faced yet another test of his courage.
Speaker 1: He scaled a burning building to rescue a woman and
Speaker 1: her three small children, wrapping them in bedclothes and carrying
Speaker 1: them out. When they were safe, he returned to the
Speaker 1: blazing apartment just in case anyone had been left behind.
Speaker 1: The fire cut his exit off, and he had to
Speaker 1: jump to safety from an upper window. Gonzales was a hero,
Speaker 1: but it's hard not to wonder if his time at
Speaker 1: the Mala Tank might have left him with some survivor's guilt.
Speaker 1: If only Arthur Gell had felt the same sense of responsibility.
Speaker 1: The key source for this episode of Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: Dark Tide the Great Boston Molasses Flood of nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: by Stephen Pulio. For a full list of sources, see
Speaker 1: the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines,
Speaker 1: and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music are the work of
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan
Speaker 1: at Brain Audio. Bend and Daphaffrey edited the scripts. The
Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been popped without the work of
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohene, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 1: and review. It really makes a difference to us. And
Speaker 1: if you want to hear the show, add free and
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Speaker 1: Club that is over at patreon dot com Slash Cautionary
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