Speaker 1: Pushkin. Tim here with an exciting announcement about the Cautionary Club,
Speaker 1: our Patreon community for Cautionary Tales listeners. So many of
Speaker 1: you joined our live table read earlier this year that
Speaker 1: we're doing it again. Join me and I production team
Speaker 1: for a live reading of an unreleased episode about the
Speaker 1: people who almost invented the iPhone fifteen years early and
Speaker 1: the surprising reasons they failed. This will be a chance
Speaker 1: for you to see how the stories we tell are
Speaker 1: developed in real time and ask your burning questions about
Speaker 1: cautionary Tales. It's on the eighth of July at five
Speaker 1: pm UK or noon Eastern. If you join the Patreon
Speaker 1: before then, or if you're already a member, you'll get
Speaker 1: your exclusive invitation. Head to patreon dot com slash Cautionary Club.
Speaker 1: That's Patreon p A T R e O N dot
Speaker 1: com slash Cautionary Club. Boston, January nineteen nineteen. Giuseppe Yantosca
Speaker 1: stands at his kitchen window searching for his ten year
Speaker 1: old son. All sorts of people come and go in
Speaker 1: Boston's North End, and Giuseppe likes to keep a close
Speaker 1: eye on little Pasquale or Pasqualino as he's affectionately known.
Speaker 1: At home. Giuseppe doesn't speak much English. Like many of
Speaker 1: their neighbors. The Antoscas hail from southern Italy. They're very poor.
Speaker 1: Even with Giuseppe's shifts at the Boston and Maine Railroad,
Speaker 1: backbreaking work laying track, they struggle to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Fresh milk and meat to rare. It is in the
Speaker 1: Antosca house and Giuseppe and his wife Maria worry about
Speaker 1: their six small children. Where is Pasqualino. Giuseppe surveys Commercial Street,
Speaker 1: the thoroughfare beneath his window that curves along the water.
Speaker 1: It's an unusually fine day from mid January, and the
Speaker 1: harbour is bustling. Fishermen hurry to their lunch, a plate
Speaker 1: of spaghetti at home, perhaps, or 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 An 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,
Speaker 1: dark sugary liquid and a glasses. It pools around the
Speaker 1: base of the tank, and the children like to play there,
Speaker 1: dodging stern railroad workers to scoop the sticky liquid into
Speaker 1: their pails and hurrying home with their syrupy treasure. But
Speaker 1: today Pasqualino doesn't feel like playing. He knows his father's
Speaker 1: watching him. He's also very hot beneath his bright red knitwear.
Speaker 1: It's 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 bowlk 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 molasses 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 fourteen,
Speaker 1: and had been tasked with building an enormous molasses container
Speaker 1: near Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gell was assistant treasurer at the Purity
Speaker 1: 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 ate 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 first,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, and it was decided that reliable, efficient Arthur
Speaker 1: Jell was the man for the job. The deadline was
Speaker 1: virtually impossible, but Gell's bosses had hinted that if he succeeded,
Speaker 1: a New York City promotion was on the cards. He
Speaker 1: was determined to give it his best shot. As Stephen
Speaker 1: Pulio explains in his book Dark Tide, Gell had spent
Speaker 1: his professional life in a range of clerical positions. An
Speaker 1: experienced administrator, he was confident that he knew the right people.
Speaker 1: He consulted other tank manufacturers about the appropriate factor of
Speaker 1: safety for a container like this one, and ordered steel
Speaker 1: plates to form the sides of the cylindrical structure. He
Speaker 1: also negotiated a lease for the perfect spot in Boston's
Speaker 1: North End. Here, steamships from the Caribbean could discharge the molasses,
Speaker 1: and the sugary substance could then travel on to the
Speaker 1: Cambridge plant by railcar. Sure the area was densely populated,
Speaker 1: and there was a children's playground right next to the
Speaker 1: proposed tank site, but Jell knew that the residents of
Speaker 1: the North End were unlikely to resist the structure. Many
Speaker 1: of them were poor immigrants from Italy's south. They didn't
Speaker 1: speak English and kept to their own tight enclave. Their
Speaker 1: political participation was scant. All the same, lease negotiations were slow.
Speaker 1: By the time Gell had secured the location, it was
Speaker 1: September nineteen ten, fifteen, and the clock was ticking. Ever resourceful,
Speaker 1: he installed electric lighting at the wharf so that the
Speaker 1: construction crew could work through the night. But when a
Speaker 1: laborer fell inside the empty tank, Gell 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. Gell 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: on to the wharf. Everyone had noticed, and children even
Speaker 1: liked to play with it. Gonzales shoved tiny pieces of
Speaker 1: steel into Gell's hands and said that rusty flex dropped
Speaker 1: into his hair each time he entered the tank. Gell
Speaker 1: did 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, Gel 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: Gell 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 firehouse, which stood just along the wharf, commented
Speaker 1: on the obvious leaks that streaked its sides and the
Speaker 1: strange sounds it made. When another local worker pressed his
Speaker 1: back against the tank, he told Isaac it felt as
Speaker 1: though the steel walls were moving, pulsing in and out
Speaker 1: with the flow of the liquid inside. Gonzales continued his
Speaker 1: nighttime vigil in secret. Of course, he knew he couldn't
Speaker 1: speak to jail again, but in nineteen eighteen he complained
Speaker 1: to his superintendent, William White, he waited to see if
Speaker 1: his bosses would do anything. They did. In August, a
Speaker 1: crew arrived at the tank, paint in hand. Gel had
Speaker 1: ordered them to dare 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 jel 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 three
Speaker 1: million gallons of the sticky substance, weighing roughly twenty six
Speaker 1: 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 gener rate
Speaker 1: a single, massive payoff. But when a corporation values efficiency
Speaker 1: and growth above all else, there can be other consequences.
Speaker 1: Environmental costs, community welfare and workers' 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 mellow. Tank Superintendant William White has just received a
Speaker 1: phone call from his wife. She has her eye on
Speaker 1: new dress and wants to go shopping together. It'll be
Speaker 1: a quiet work day now that the new load of
Speaker 1: molasses has been safely delivered, and White sees no reason
Speaker 1: not to spoil her. Just before midday, he leaves his post.
Speaker 1: If he had lingered, he might have noticed Pasqualeis and
Speaker 1: Tosca and the Dastasio children sneaking onto the wharf to
Speaker 1: collect firewood. Instead, a railroad worker begins scolding Maria Dastasio.
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 a 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, the kind of dark,
Speaker 1: gleaming wave pushing forwards, tearing towards Commercial Street. Kitchen growls
Speaker 1: and shakes, and before he can move, Giuseppe's been thrown
Speaker 1: to the floor. He hits his head everything goes back.
Speaker 1: At a call box on Commercial Street, policeman Frank McManus
Speaker 1: is making a routine report to headquarters. That chilling sound
Speaker 1: somewhere between a thunderclap sickening scrape of metal, makes him
Speaker 1: turn receiver still to his mouth. He can't quite believe
Speaker 1: what he's seeing, but he manages to utter a few
Speaker 1: shocked words to the dispatcher.
Speaker 2: Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel. Immediately. There's a
Speaker 2: wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street. What follows is
Speaker 2: the stuff of nightmares. The tank has burst clean open
Speaker 2: rid its screaming through the air like shrapnels. A worker
Speaker 2: trapped in the railroad freight office saw the tank's steel
Speaker 2: walls fly into other buildings, which crumpled like egg. Two
Speaker 2: point three million gallons of molasses has rushed onto the wharf,
Speaker 2: a syruped tsunami, thirty five feet high, one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty feet wide, and traveling at thirty five miles per hour.
Speaker 2: It snuffs out the daylight and wrenches the fire house
Speaker 2: from its foundations on Commercial Street.
Speaker 1: In the dining room of his second floor apartment, Robert Burnette,
Speaker 1: he is a swish like a brushing of wind. A
Speaker 1: shadow falls across the room, and he hurries to the window.
Speaker 1: A great black wave is bearing down on the house.
Speaker 1: Burnett snatches at his front door that the wave is
Speaker 1: already surging up the stairs in the hallway. He slams
Speaker 1: the door and runs for the roof. The wall of
Speaker 1: molasses rebounds off buildings, shattering windows and pulverizing brickwork. It
Speaker 1: twists and snaps the steel girders of an elevated railroad,
Speaker 1: obliterating the track for more than one hundred feet. Horses, carts,
Speaker 1: and motor trucks are overturned, children and adults vanish in
Speaker 1: a treatily deluge. Stonecutter John Barry lies in total darkness,
Speaker 1: wood and metal crushing his back its agony. He can
Speaker 1: barely breathe. When the wave of molasses ripped the firehouse
Speaker 1: off its foundations, the building collapse and the treacherous syrup
Speaker 1: seeped through the debris. Barry is trapped pinned, face down,
Speaker 1: one cheek grinding into molasses. Only his left arm is free,
Speaker 1: and he clears the vial liquid from his face as
Speaker 1: best he can. Barry tries to call out to scream,
Speaker 1: but his voice is thin and reading, he imagines foul
Speaker 1: rats scuttling over his body, burrowing their yellow teeth into
Speaker 1: his flesh. I'm going to die here, he thinks. He
Speaker 1: wonders what will become of his ten children. On his
Speaker 1: kitchen floor, Giuseppe and Tosca comes too. His wife Maria
Speaker 1: is crying in the corner of the room. One of
Speaker 1: their daughters is comforting her bruised. Stunned, Giuseppe pulls himself
Speaker 1: up and goes shakily to the front door. He will
Speaker 1: find Pasqualino. If it kills him. Cautionary tales will be
Speaker 1: back shortly. In the first moments of the disaster, the
Speaker 1: molasses flow through the streets of Boston like water, or
Speaker 1: perhaps like ketchup being jiggled out of a bottle. Like ketchup,
Speaker 1: molasses flows freely when being violently shaken and exploding out
Speaker 1: of a high pressure tank is certainly a violent movement,
Speaker 1: but when molasses cools, it thickens. On January fifteenth, the
Speaker 1: temperature in Boston had climbed a little, but the winter
Speaker 1: air was still much cooler than the syrupy liquid, and
Speaker 1: as it flowed out of the tank and through the streets,
Speaker 1: it began to slow and congeal like quicksand trapped its victims.
Speaker 1: As the Boston Post explained, snared in its flood was
Speaker 1: to be stifled. Once it smeared ahead human or animal.
Speaker 1: There was no coughing off the sticky mass. To attempt
Speaker 1: to wipe it with hands was to make it worse.
Speaker 1: It plugged the nostrils almost air tight. Horses thrashed around
Speaker 1: in the glooy mass like so many flies on sticky flypaper.
Speaker 1: They couldn't be freed and were shot dead. At a
Speaker 1: local relief station, nurses and orderlies streaked with molasses treated
Speaker 1: the injured. They carried patients on sticky stretchers, cutaway clothing,
Speaker 1: and cleaned gaping wounds. Anguished Bostonians clamored to know if
Speaker 1: their missing relatives were there. A lucky few were relatively unscathed.
Speaker 1: Five year old Albert Janschi had been picked up by
Speaker 1: the wave and drenched in molasses, but was miraculously unhurt.
Speaker 1: Once it had been cleaned up and had something to eat,
Speaker 1: he was allowed to return home. Others were taken straight
Speaker 1: to the local morgue. In the ruins of the firehouse,
Speaker 1: John Barry's back seared with pain despite his incredible strength,
Speaker 1: he couldn't move. He couldn't see anything either. It was
Speaker 1: pitch black, but he could hear something. With the shred
Speaker 1: of energy he had left, he strained his ears. There
Speaker 1: it was again a man's voice. He wasn't alone down here.
Speaker 1: His friends were imprisoned with him in the debris. And
Speaker 1: then John Barry heard something else, the unmistakable sound of
Speaker 1: sores on wood and metal yielding to flame. Someone knew
Speaker 1: they were down there, Someone was coming to get them.
Speaker 1: Giuseppe jan Tosca spent hours searching for Pasqualino, but to
Speaker 1: no avail. Maria Destacio had been found. She had been
Speaker 1: right in the path of the monstrous wave and had
Speaker 1: suffocated immediately, but her brother Tony had survived. Had been
Speaker 1: thrown against a lamppost and suffered a frac should skull,
Speaker 1: but a firefighter had managed to pull him from the
Speaker 1: morass before he drowned. Could Guiseppe's boy have been rescued
Speaker 1: had he been swept into the harbor, or perhaps he
Speaker 1: was trapped beneath the debris on the wharf. In broken English,
Speaker 1: Touseeppe frantically questioned the dazed and injured along Commercial Street,
Speaker 1: but no one had seen a little boy in a
Speaker 1: red sweater. Firefighters had rallied to reach their trapped colleagues
Speaker 1: from Engine thirty one. Chopping and digging through the wreckage
Speaker 1: was perilous work. With every move they made, the remains
Speaker 1: of the building shifted around them. They found some of
Speaker 1: their fellows in time, but thirty four year old father
Speaker 1: of three, George Lahey was dragged from the wreckage dead.
Speaker 1: After three hours and as many injections of morphine into
Speaker 1: his back, John Barry heard a saw slicing away at
Speaker 1: the wood near his head. It was getting closer and closer,
Speaker 1: and then quite suddenly it stopped, and he felt the
Speaker 1: great weight beheaved from his back. The exhausted stonecutter was
Speaker 1: lifted onto a stretcher and rushed to hospital. When his
Speaker 1: stricken daughters reached the ward, they didn't recognize him. Their
Speaker 1: powerful father had vanished. In his place was a fragile
Speaker 1: old man. Arthur Jell visited the waterfront. He was aghast
Speaker 1: at the devastation, but kept calm. There would be a
Speaker 1: plausible explanation for the disaster, one that absolved Usia and
Speaker 1: himself of any responsibility. In the days that followed, the
Speaker 1: flood clean up operation began. Businesses had been decimated, and
Speaker 1: the harbor police picked all sorts of objects out of
Speaker 1: the water, rolls of cloth, barrels of ale, tubs of lard.
Speaker 1: Firemen spread sand on the pavements and dispersed the tenacious
Speaker 1: molasses with jets of salt water. On January seventeenth, USIA
Speaker 1: issued a statement the company knew beyond question that the
Speaker 1: tank was not weak. This calamity was the work of
Speaker 1: an outside influence. It was another three days before Giuseppe
Speaker 1: and Maria Jantosca learned the fate of their son. Rescue
Speaker 1: workers pulled the body of a little boy in a
Speaker 1: red sweater from the wreckage. A railroad car carried fifty
Speaker 1: feet by the wave had crushed him into a wall.
Speaker 1: Giuseppe was asked to identify the child. He was slicked
Speaker 1: with molasses and his face was horribly disfigured. Weeping, Giuseppe
Speaker 1: 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, but he was also scared about the
Speaker 1: Boston 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 residents
Speaker 1: of Boston's North End not as vulnerable individuals worthy of dignity,
Speaker 1: but as factors in a business model. The company had
Speaker 1: taken advantage of a power imbalance, knowing that the Italian
Speaker 1: Americans who lived near the harbor were unlikely to resist
Speaker 1: the building of the Malasses tank. USIA also knew that
Speaker 1: people 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 Va of Malasses had been structurally
Speaker 1: deficient and built without proper safeguards. Caretaker Isaac Gonzalez, who'd
Speaker 1: warned off the gel about the tank and been dismissed,
Speaker 1: took the stand and told of how molasses had oozed
Speaker 1: incessantly through the tank's riveted joins. John Barry, 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 trespassing, 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 receive damages. 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
Speaker 1: dollars today, that's not nothing, but split between one hundred
Speaker 1: and nineteen traumatized and grievously injured plaintiffs. It's also not
Speaker 1: very much. USIA closed its Cambridge plant and fired the
Speaker 1: people that worked there, but Arthur P. Gell seems to
Speaker 1: have got his New York City promotion. He took the
Speaker 1: vice presidency at another USIA subsidiary, the American Solvents and
Speaker 1: Chemical Association. Gell remained a company man through and through.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, he was named in a federal
Speaker 1: grand jury indictment against USIA for violating prohibition laws. He
Speaker 1: died in nineteen sixty three at the ripe old age
Speaker 1: of eighty four, survived by his wife, daughter, and four grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Isaac Gonzales had warned gel about the tank, and when
Speaker 1: his warnings had been repeatedly ignored, he'd quit and joined
Speaker 1: the army. After the war, he faced yet another test
Speaker 1: of his courage. He scaled a burning building to rescue
Speaker 1: a woman and her three small children, wrapping them in
Speaker 1: bedclothes and carrying them out. When they were safe, he
Speaker 1: returned to the blazing upon just in case anyone had
Speaker 1: been left behind. The fire cut his exit off and
Speaker 1: he had to jump to safety from an upper window.
Speaker 1: Gonzales was a hero, but it's hard not to wonder
Speaker 1: if his time at the Molasses Tank might have left
Speaker 1: him with some survivor's guilt, if only Arthur Gel had
Speaker 1: felt the same sense of responsibility. The key source for
Speaker 1: this episode of Cautionary Tales is Dark Tide the Great
Speaker 1: Boston Molasses Flood of nineteen nineteen by Stephen Pulio. For
Speaker 1: a full list of sources, see the show notes at
Speaker 1: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim
Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's
Speaker 1: produce by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
Speaker 1: and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional
Speaker 1: sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio
Speaker 1: Bend and Dapfhaffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohene,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It
Speaker 1: really makes a difference to us. And if you want
Speaker 1: to hear the show, add free and get access to
Speaker 1: exclusive content. Sign up to the Cautionary Club that is
Speaker 1: over at patreon dot com. Slash Cautionary Club contectlyt the
Speaker 1: Compact and