In the dark, repressed recesses of the human mind, those regions where only the likes of a Jung or Freud dare venture, there are few nightmares capable of generating more abject, cold-sweating, jerking-bolt-upright-in-bed, shrieking-in-the-night terror than the vision of a fifteen-foot-tall wall of molasses crashing through the streets toward you.
What's that, you say? You've never thought of a fifteen-foot-tall wall of molasses crashing through the streets?
Well, maybe you should!
By early 1919 the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, and its subsidiary, the Purity Distilling Company in Boston, had had a pretty good run. Its alcohol had been in demand throughout World War I for the manufacture of munitions, bringing it war-profiteer-level cash flows. Now, with the war just over, countries re-building their arms stockpiles in the wake of the armistice had somewhat supplanted wartime demand, and despite an uncertain future for the industry, compounded by the threatened passage of the 18th amendment, life was good.
The Purity Distilling Company molasses tank towers over the building in the foreground. |
On the water side of Commercial Street, opposite Copp's Hill, there stood in 1919 a giant storage tank. It had been built four years before by the Purity Distilling Company—massively constructed, with great curved steel sides and strong bottom plates set into a concrete base and pinned together with a stitching of rivets. It was built to hold molasses, that old Colonial commodity that stirs school-day memories of the "triangle trade": slaves from Africa to the West Indies; molasses from the West Indies to New England; rum, made from the molasses, back across the Atlantic for a cargo of slaves. The old triangle had long been broken by 1919, but New England still made (and makes) rum, as well as baked beans, and the molasses for both still came (and comes) north from the Caribbean and New Orleans. In 1919, Boston's Purity tank could hold about two and a half million gallons of the stuff.
Smithsonian Magazine: "Without warning, molasses in January surged over Boston"
A ship bearing molasses from another United States Industrial Alcohol subsidiary in Jamaica had arrived just a few days before and its contents had brought the tank to near capacity. At the time, the temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit. Then, over the ensuing days, Boston experienced a mid-January warming spell. and by January 15th the temperatures hit 43 degrees and workers in the vicinity were doffing coats and working in shirtsleeves. At noon on the 15th people in the crowded North End neighborhood near the tank had sat down to eat their lunches when they heard a low, deep rumble.
There had been warning signs from the very beginning about the 90-foot-diameter, 52-foot-tall tank that allegedly creaked and groaned under load. As massively big structures go, it "fell through the cracks" -- it was neither a building, nor a bridge, nor any of the other structures that required the approval of, and the filing of engineering blueprints with the Boston building department. Designed by its supplier, the Hammond Iron Works, and built to meet the exploding demand created by the war that had started in 1914, it had faced first delays and then was rushed through its construction, workers at the end laboring around-the-clock to meet a December 31, 1915 deadline when a ship from Cuba bearing 700,000 gallons of molasses, already under steam, was due to arrive.
Construction of the tank had been overseen, or more accurately gazed stupidly at, by Arthur Jell, a bean counter with no technical background who was unable even to read blueprints. Anxious to complete the tank in time for the arrival of the first molasses shipment, Jell forwent the elementary precaution of filling it first with water to test for leaks. Once molasses was pumped in, the tank leaked so copiously at the seams that neighborhood kids collected the drippings in cans. When an alarmed employee complained, Jell's response was to have the tank painted brown so the leaks wouldn't be so noticeable.
The Straight Dope: "Was Boston once literally flooded with molasses?"
Although the neighborhood in which the tank was constructed was one of the most densely-populated in Boston, the population was almost exclusively poor Italian immigrants who had maintained a close-knit community that largely eschewed involvement in the larger affairs of Boston and the North End. Most were not naturalized citizens and, therefore, politically impotent and unable to force much of a challenge against the construction of the tank.
Damage to the elevated railway |
At 12:40 p.m., on January 15, the added stress literally blew out the sides of the tank and molasses spewed in all directions. The two-story, 160 foot wide tidal wave, moving at an estimated 35 miles per hour, destroyed everything in its path: buildings, animals, and people. The thousands of rivets holding the steel plates together spit out like bullets, and a one-ton plate sliced through a column supporting the elevated railway, while another two-ton section landed in a nearby park. The collapse happened so suddenly, announced only by "a dull, muffled roar," that escape was virtually impossible.
Marilyn Dyrud: ETHICAL EXOTICA: SMALL, STICKY CASES FOR ANALYSIS
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The wave of 26 million pounds of molasses was described by witnesses as a wall anywhere from eight to fifty feet high, with most accounts describing it as around fifteen feet high. In minutes, an area of several square blocks was virtually destroyed -- buildings splintered or washed off their foundations, a firehouse collapsed, a train knocked off its tracks, people and horses washed away in the torrent. Blocks from the epicenter the molasses settled two to three feet deep as the force of the wave dissipated. The sticky goo sucked victims under like quicksand; it clogged nostrils and mouths virtually air-tight -- trying to wipe it off only made it worse. Most victims died of suffocation.
On the Navy training ship Nantucket, the commander saw the tank burst from the harbor and immediately dispatched 116 cadets who were on the scene within minutes with stretchers, rescue equipment, and manpower. The mine sweepers Starling, Breaker, and Billow docked nearby sent crew to the scene, and an army hospital in Roxbury sent a medical detachment of eighty men to the site. The Red Cross was quickly on the scene with support services. Boston's emergency-response apparatus, just a couple of months removed from full war alert, was mobilized for the disaster. As rescuers worked to find and free trapped victims, the already-surreal scene was punctuated by the crack of gunfire as entrapped horses were put out of their misery. The toll reached 21 people killed and 150 injured, with dozens of horses, stuck in the quagmire, euthanized. Cleanup took over 87,000 man-hours.
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The gluey chaos caused by the flood was hosed down with salt water from fireboats and then the streets were covered with sand. All the rescue workers, cleanup crews, and sightseers squelching through molasses managed to spread it all over the city. Boots and clothing carried it to the suburbs. Molasses coated streetcar seats and public telephones. Everything Bostonians touched was sticky. The inner harbor was brown as hoses washed the gunk into the bay.
Smithsonian Magazine: "Without warning, molasses in January surged over Boston"
In the aftermath of the disaster, about 120 lawsuits were filed against the company by the victims of the flood. The multitudinous legal actions were combined into a single class-action lawsuit. Damon Hall represented the plaintiffs and prominent Boston attorney Charles Choate and his firm Choate, Hall, and Stewart was retained by the defense. Colonel Hugh Ogden, a decorated World War I veteran was appointed auditor by the Massachusetts Superior Court to oversee the lawsuit.
Early newspaper headline. The death toll increased over time as more bodies were recovered from the debris |
The company claimed the cause of the tank's rupture had been... Uhmmmm...
Anarchists! Yeah! That's it!
Anarchists!. To be fair, as a war
profiteer contractor, United States Industrial Alcohol had, in fact, been the target of anarchists previously -- some of its facilities in New York City had been struck during the war. Additionally, some forty anarchist bombings had taken place in the greater Boston area the previous year. And the Italian immigrant community was known to harbor some of the most committed anarchists in the Boston area. It was not an entirely preposterous claim, even if it did reek of desperation.
The atmosphere in which the proceedings took place, coming as it did at the end of the First World War and in a legal and regulatory environment that had become increasingly pro-business as forces of the moneyed establishment had chipped away over the past two decades at the reforms of the Progressive Era, should have favored United States Industrial Alcohol. In the early years of the century, although monetary awards to wronged plaintiffs could be high in such a case, business defendants won about 85% of all cases. The least bit of extenuating circumstance was usually sufficient to relieve a company of all responsibility for damages in the eyes of the court and the juries. The Supreme Court of the United States set the tone in those years with the kind of hard-nosed libertarian mindset and hands-off laissez faire attitude toward business relationships exhibited in the Lochner v. New York decision that gave the court of that era its name. The low propensity of plaintiff success in the courtroom was balanced only by the threat of the Really Big Judgment on the rare occasions when they did prevail.
Ogden, for his part, seemed the perfect candidate to carry the proceedings to the customary conclusion, thoroughly expected by the company and its defense team.
There is no doubt that Ogden, as a soldier and a patriot, would have despised both the motives and methods of the anarchists. And, as a conservative businessman, he more than likely shared USIA's concern about excessive government regulations and interference. Had he been a lesser man, the type of man Choate had counted on, one who let personal feelings -- and perhaps prejudices -- guide his legal judgments, a ruling in favor of USIA would have been simple and generated little controversy.
But Ogden had a deeper set of beliefs, and they were grounded in a sense of fairness and justice. They had been formed early in his life through the influence of his minister father and Ogden's own interest in religion, and then strengthened by his years of military service and his love for the law. His religious training taught him to treat all men with decency and dignity...
Stephen Puleo: Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
What was supposed to be a six-month procedure ended up requiring nearly six years. The testimony of over 3,000 witnesses was taken, and over 45,000 pages of testimony and arguments recorded. The defense spent over $50,000 on expert witnesses, trying to support its contention that the disaster was the result of a bomb planted by anarchists.
Among the evidence that emerged over the course of the hearings were the facts that USIA and Arthur Jell had engaged no one with any engineering or architectural expertise to review the plans created by Hammond Iron Works, either in the planning stage or after construction, nor had they asked other experts inside USIA to analyze the construction. The customary tests of the finished product for leaks and structural integrity had been skipped purely for reasons of cost and time. No one had ever inspected the tank after its construction, and concerns expressed by employees after the tank was filled were dismissed. The steel delivered by Hammond Iron Works was 10 percent thinner, even, than they specified in their own plans. A study by MIT Professor C.M. Spofford found that the size of the steel plates used and the spacing of the rivets at the joints were adequate to resist only half the load of the fully-filled tank's static pressure much less accommodating any increased pressure from the build up of fermentation gases or other factors.
When Colonel Ogden handed down his determination in 1925, the decision was a devastating defeat for United States Industrial Alcohol. Ogden found that the disaster was wholly the result of the structural failure of the tank, rejecting the defense claim of an anarchist bomb. The company had selected the site purely on its proximity to the wharfs without regard to the dense population in the area, he found. It had placed a man in charge with no engineering or construction experience who neglected to take basic measures to insure a proper factor of safety was provided in the design and construction of the tank, neither retaining nor consulting qualified engineering professionals to create or review plans, failing to carry out proper inspections, failing to test the receptacle when completed, and ignoring (and even concealing) concerns about the tank's safety after it was filled. Colonel Ogden found United States Industrial Alcohol fully at fault -- and the end result of Ogden's findings was the Really Big Judgment.
USIA paid out nearly a million dollars in settlements, equivalent of nearly $7 million today. Though it may not seem like a lot today, it was a very large payout for a company to make in the early 20th century, when business defendants were accustomed to waltzing away unscathed and the concept of liability insurance for a corporation was unheard of. The size of the settlement caught the attention of the business community at large. It was, it seemed, a clear message that the era of public trust in, and unquestioning acceptance of the actions of corporations had come to an end.
...the molasses flood and the court decisions that followed marked a symbolic turning point in the country's attitudes toward Big Business, which for most of the first quarter of the twentieth century had been subjected to few regulations to safeguard the public.
[...]
After the molasses hearings, despite continued economic prosperity and a strong pro-business attitude in Washington, the public began to fight back. Hugh Ogden's strong language and clear verdict against USIA in 1925 showed that the country had come a long way in ten years; a corporation could be made to pay for wanton negligence of the sort that led to the construction, with virtually no oversight or testing, of a monstrous tank capable of holding 26 million pounds of molasses in a congested neighborhood.
Stephen Puleo: Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
There were ample exceptions, of course, but the business community, for the most part, read a clear message in the judgment -- more of a shot across the bow, actually. It was time to straighten up and fly right. The public had had enough.
The molasses case marked the beginning of the end of an era when big business faced no government restrictions on its activities — and no consequences.
Mass Moments: Great Molasses Flood, January 15, 1919
On the public policy side, in the wake of the flood, the city of Boston required that all calculations of architects and engineers, as well as copies of their signed and sealed plans be filed with the city's building department before a permit could be issued. That practice spread across the country and is required by most permitting authorities in the United States today. It also led, first Massachusetts, and subsequently states across the nation, to strengthen engineering certification requirements and require the sealing of drawings by registered professional engineers. And loopholes that allowed the unregulated construction of an enormous structure whose failure was capable of causing enormous devastation and loss of life were quickly sealed tight.
The flood, combined with concurrent developments, brought significant changes to the Boston economy, at least as it related to the molasses trade that the city had hosted and from which it had reaped benefits since colonial times:
[T]he flood essentially ended three hundred years' worth of high-volume molasses trade in Boston and New England. While some molasses distilling took place in the city up until World War II, the industry never resumed its level of importance. Sugar prices dropped markedly after the First World War, and sugar replaced molasses as a sweetener. New technologies in the production of high explosives and smokeless powder soon eliminated the need for munitions companies to rely on industrial alcohol distilled from molasses. Molasses, which had played such a key role in the American Revolution, the slave trade, the rum business and in munitions production, slowly disappeared as a staple product in America and as a critical part of the New England economy.
Stephen Puleo: Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
Finally, the North End Italian immigrant community, devastated in the wake of the disaster, underwent a fundamental shift of priorities. The isolation it had practiced up to that point came to an end. The community assimilated the lesson of the flood -- by failing to involve itself in local politics, they had abrogated their ability to influence decisions that had direct and profound consequences to the community. It was a mistake the Italian immigrants would not make a second time. Boston's Italian community pursued citizenship and immersed itself in the politics of the North End and of Boston generally, its members laying claim to their voice in the decisions that affected them..
And that, dear Kossacks, is where regulation comes from -- not from some bored bureaucrat sitting in an office in Washington trying to think up ways to make life miserable and expensive for some innocent and unsuspecting businessman, but from real human suffering and tragedy brought about, all too often, by people who shirk what should be obvious responsibilities, who neglect basic diligence, who sacrifice safety for profit. They bring suffering on those who trust them and their products, and society adopts measures to make sure it never happens again. We have to force them, through regulation, to behave as they should have been behaving all along. That's how regulation come to be.
Hat tip to Clytemnestra who called my attention to the Great Boston Molasses Flood in her comment in my diary on another Boston disaster, How Regulation came to be: The Cocoanut Grove; and to shpilk, who mentioned it in the comments of Devilstower's front page post How Freedom Was Lost. Thanks, folks.
Previous installments of How Regulation came to be:
