--:-- Marcus Parks: There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot ass. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Who's that? Molasses Report. Breaking molasses news. Wow, you better be ready for the most molasses you've ever heard about or consumed in your entire young lives. Those of you who have never even seen a jar of molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, I know what you're thinking. What is molasses?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I thought for a second there you were singing the Mortal Kombat theme song. Molasses!
--:-- Marcus Parks: Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the thick with molasses Henry Zebrowski.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I view myself as the Raiden of molasses combat. I'm just missing my Chinese hat. That's all I got to do. Zap, zap, you just got molasses. I'm Asian, I'm electric, I'm covered in molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: And also, of course, the I would say pre-sticky Ed Larson.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yes, I am covered in goo in the future. And I got to, you know what I want to do when I thought of this? I want to change Jackie Onassis' name to Jackie Molasses because she was a little quicker. She would have got them brains back in their head.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, she was a bit slow. She was a bit slow, but honestly, if her name was Jackie Molasses, I'd expect a little bit more of the gumption in the trunk. She actually was pretty thick.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, the reason why we're talking about Molasses is because today we are going to be covering the great molasses flood of 1919. This is one of those topics we have hovered around for a long time. It's unusual. It's interesting. But also features a lot of the history of molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. And the... Well, don't fucking... Don't blow it all just yet.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, definitely don't want to ruin the history of molasses. The surprise.
--:-- Marcus Parks: I know what you're thinking. If a lot of people died and were talking about it, why are we calling it great? It's called the Great Molasses Flood because some guy saw what happened right afterwards. And he was like, "Well, great. Oh, great. It's a molasses. Oh, it's a flood of molasses. Great. There goes my long weekend. Oh, good. Get the broom."
--:-- So the Great Molasses Flood was a horrific industrial accident that occurred in Boston in the year 1919. That January, a massive storage tank holding 12,000 metric tons of molasses burst above the North End neighborhood. Too much molasses. As a result, 21 people died, 150 were injured, and the neighborhood itself was all but demolished.
--:-- Now, one might think that this story is a one-and-done, a curiosity in which a bunch of people die in horrific, unimaginable ways, and that's all there is to it. Fortunately, though, this story turned out to be a two-parter because it's filled to the brim with my favorite thing in the whole wide world.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: What's that?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Historical context. About molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And Boston.
--:-- Marcus Parks: I know. But it's mostly about molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: Now, is this the reason why Boston hates the color brown?
--:-- Marcus Parks: You know the answer? Kind of. Kind of, and we're going to absolutely get into it. See, the Great Molasses Flood represents a moment in American history in which multiple historical topics and events come together to form a single massive fuck-up of the highest order. Amongst other subjects, this story involves bombings, anarchists, industrial corruption, World War I, immigration, political violence, prohibition, and ultimately the American Revolution itself. Basically, molasses is nutmeg all over again.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I didn't work so hard to get away from nutmeg. We covered nutmeg so thoroughly, and now we're up to our hairlines in another nutmeg. I didn't work hard to get away from nutmeg. I reluctantly let go of nutmeg. God, actually, what's funny is that I do have a kind of a series of tchotchkes people have given me all over the years. I have, on top of my gig through all the various meet and greets. I was going through all the stuff for some reason. It was dusting. And I saw a big jar of nutmeg. And I was like, "Oh yeah, somebody just gave me that nutmeg."
--:-- Ed Larson: I gave you the nutmeg.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, Ed came in and gave us both nutmeg.
--:-- Ed Larson: I know where my nutmeg comes from.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, well, I know where it comes from too.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Slavery.
--:-- Ed Larson: Seems like someone doesn't want his molasses jar.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But don't worry, dear listener. Those horrific, unimaginable deaths I mentioned earlier are indeed contained within this series. The people who died in this accident suffered nightmarish fates, fates that could have been prevented if only the right people had been paying attention to the molasses.
--:-- See, admittedly, a molasses flood is a silly concept when you first think about it.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Sure.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Because the phrase "molasses flood" conjures up images of people being slowly overtaken and suffocated by a gooey dark brown liquid. It's silly.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Because also, I feel like media used to have more pictorials of dangerous, large, flowing, slow liquids.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Like the blob.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yes. There was the blob.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: That's two blobs.
--:-- Marcus Parks: That's two blobs.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: There was another big one. The stuff.
--:-- Marcus Parks: The stuff. Yeah. Yep. The ants were slow in "Them."
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: "Them." You're right. Man. Fucking molasses. I'm so excited to eat some.
--:-- Marcus Parks: I know. It's not good.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I like it.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But the phrase "slow as molasses" doesn't really apply when you're talking about 2.3 million gallons of the stuff. When you're talking about any flowing substance in that volume, much less something as thick and viscous as molasses, you're talking about a destructive power that rivals a tsunami. In some respects, a molasses flood is actually worse because one can't really swim through molasses. And that challenge went double for the victims of the molasses flood because the force of the molasses impact was strong enough to shatter bones.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Whoa, so they didn't all just turn into like Jurassic Park mosquitoes.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, that was just the super slow children. But before we get into the story of the molasses flood and ultimately the surprisingly fascinating history of molasses itself, let's acknowledge our source for today. The one that brought all this historical context together. That source is *Dark Tide* by Stephen Pileo.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Now, have you thought that Marcus has been driven into a molasses fever? Stephen Puglio is fucking patient zero of molasses fever.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, he's got fever!
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I mean, I do agree that molasses is important and it's interesting, but this guy, he puts molasses on a level of importance like with the atomic bomb. He's really into molasses. You don't want to have breakfast with Stephen Pileo because you're not gonna end breakfast.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, bring the earbuds.
--:-- Marcus Parks: The information contained within this book is fantastic, but the book itself probably could have used a stronger editor if we're being honest. It does tend to lose itself in its own context at times, which I get, this is exciting stuff. But even so, the book is still a fascinating and compelling read for anyone who enjoys the genre of nonfiction in which an author takes a seemingly inconsequential object and makes the argument that said object is extraordinarily important to world history. It's been done countless times, like at rope, cod, salt, all kinds of shit.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I agree with all three of those things, though.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah. They're very important.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, rope's great for ending your life. Cod's a really good flaky white fish. And I love salt, as you can see.
--:-- Ed Larson: Soap's big, too.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yep. Yeah, it's all massive.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You can actually take any object and be like, "Well, it's very important," but it's all intertwined. It is an entire genre of nonfiction. It's very cool. I like it.
--:-- Ed Larson: I can't wait until the Gen Alphas write their books about how Pokemon led to 9/11 or something.
--:-- Marcus Parks: That's where we're going to find out.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I thought that was Pearl Harbor.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, when most of us think about molasses today...
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: That was General Pokemon.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, when most of us think about molasses today, if we even think about molasses at all, the substance conjures up the image of a subpar breakfast condiment that kind of goes with biscuits and not much else.
--:-- Ed Larson: Shoo fly pie.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Sure.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: What is shoo fly pie?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Extremely sweet, treacly pie made by the Amish.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, and they call it shoo fly because you have to shoo the flies away from it?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yes, because it's so sweet.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, it's therefore insane to think of a world in which there was enough demand for molasses that a company built a 2.3 million gallon tank solely for the purpose of holding molasses. And they built that tank in such a place where its contents were likely to kill dozens of innocent people if it failed. They took a lot of risks for molasses. Somebody felt molasses was super crucial.
--:-- But to understand why a company called USIA built their molasses tank above one of the most crowded neighborhoods in America, therefore setting the stage for our most bizarre industrial accident, you got to first understand how important and versatile of a substance molasses was back then.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You're so excited. It's the truly. I love this shit. It's so much truly. This was the light up in Marcus's face yesterday. When I came, we were talking about the episode. I was like, "You know, there's quite a bit of historical context about molasses." And Marcus was like, "Yeah, I know." And I was like, "It just seems to me like, that's fine with me. I love it. We're turning into a jelly-based podcast."
--:-- Ed Larson: I mean, it's much better than raping girls in a trailer. So I'm like, let's do it.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Some of us got different tastes.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, this is about the wonder of the world. It's how everything fits together. It's how the world works. It's super cool shit. I love it. This is my favorite.
--:-- Now, you may be asking, as Henry asked me the other day, where the fuck does molasses actually come from?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: No, I thought it came from a tree or a bush. Is that a tree?
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, no, no. It is not, as we speculated, made from sap like maple syrup. Instead, molasses is the byproduct of sugar manufacturing.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yay, industrial byproducts!
--:-- Marcus Parks: See, when sugar cane is crushed and boiled to extract sugar, the remaining syrup, after the sugar is crystallized, that's called first molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Okay.
--:-- Marcus Parks: This is the sweetest variety. This is your grandma's original gold standard molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Unpasteurized.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the straight shit. But the sugar is not done after the first molasses. It's boiled a second time, which creates what?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Second molasses. I can't believe I didn't guess.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yep, I did.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: My second guess, molasses junior.
--:-- Marcus Parks: It's less sweet and it's cheaper, but it's still edible.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Great.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But finally, from the third extraction...
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Why are we eating that? Then why are we eating it? The first molasses? Second molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, we don't eat second molasses anymore.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Why do we make second molasses if it's not eaten or used?
--:-- Marcus Parks: It was eaten and used back then. Way back in the 1600s when we first started making molasses. So you get your premier molasses. Premium molasses like that. That's what George Washington's eating.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. So then what Benjamin Franklin's smearing second molasses on his girlfriend?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, actually, I would say so. Cheaper, but still edible.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You know how edible panties are pretty much like fruit roll-ups?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And they're not the best fruit roll-ups, but you can wear them and eat them off of somebody. That's second molasses. Got it.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Okay. But finally, from the third extraction, you have what's called backstrap molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Wouldn't have guessed that.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Nope. This molasses is dark, nearly inedible, and used primarily for manufacturing industrial and grain alcohol.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Okay.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, the grain alcohol is, of course, used to make spirits, primarily rum. But the industrial alcohol made from backstrap molasses is far more profitable, as it was used back in the day to manufacture munitions like high explosives and gunpowder.
--:-- Now, humanity has since found far cheaper and easier ways to manufacture industrial alcohol. We don't use molasses for this purpose anymore. But backstrap molasses was in such demand prior to that discovery that it was indeed the shittiest variety of molasses that burst from its tank above the North End neighborhood to drown and crush the good people of Boston in 1919.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Backstrap molasses sounds like the cheapest stripper at the club. "Hey, yeah, you want a lap dance? Yeah, you gotta hop on my lap. My name's Backstrap Molasses. Yeah, I got the thickest back here at Candy's. I'm here from noon until three on Mondays. I do the lunch shift, specifically. You want the soup? Yeah, I have some soup. Here, look at my pussy. Backstrap molasses."
--:-- Ed Larson: No, that's what... Man, that was for me.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Like one of the... Just a horrible thing about this whole accident is that it wasn't even the good molasses that drowned the people. It was the shittiest molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I'd actually be super mad if they wasted all the good molasses and drowned all these people.
--:-- Ed Larson: I'm glad that weapon, that molasses was out to kill.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Weapons grade molasses. This is what we're talking about here. This is what we've reached. This is killer condiments. Last podcast on the live. This is all about molasses that was primed to kill. This molasses was molested. It came from a broken home.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: The cycle of pain continues down the slope.
--:-- Marcus Parks: It was kept in a tank too small.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yes! That is what's happening here. It's molasses snapping back at society. Die from your grave.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Concerning the importance of molasses to world history, this sticky substance was indeed a staple of the New England diet for hundreds of years as an ingredient and a flavor. So tons of the stuff was shipped to the American colonies starting in the 1600s. But back during colonial times, molasses was far more important to the economy of New England for its use in the production of rum.
--:-- Now, our historians out there might know where I'm going with this, but rum was a massive cog in the machine that built the American slave trade. The trade cycle that went on here was that molasses was imported to New England from the West Indies. That's the Caribbean islands. We talked about the East Indies. That was Indonesia, all that. We're talking about the West Indies here, the Caribbean.
--:-- Once the molasses was in New England, it was used to make rum. That rum would then be loaded into ships bound for Africa. The rum would then be traded to the Africans for the enslaved members of other tribes, and those slaves would then be taken and sold to plantation owners back in the Caribbean so they could produce, what else, but more molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: It almost seems like there's no point.
--:-- Marcus Parks: I know. It's a self... It is literally they've created their own supply and demand system. This cycle came to be known as the triangle of trade, and it functioned as the backbone of New England's economy prior to the American Revolution.
--:-- Now, the rum slave pipeline was so successful that it produced an excess of enslaved Africans, far more than any number of plantations or farms in the West Indies or New England could use combined. But as we'll see again and again in this story, the molasses money was too fucking good to pump the brakes. To keep the profits ever rising, slavers greatly expanded the slave trade to the southern colonies to support the South's burgeoning plantation system, which basically created a whole new economy.
--:-- As such, one could make the argument that without molasses, the southern colonies might have never gotten as hooked on slavery as they ended up getting. And if America never has slavery in the South on such a scale that people were willing to kill their fellow countrymen to preserve it, then the world looks like a very different place indeed.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I'm not eating any more molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, fuck molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: And we killed Lincoln.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Holy shit, molasses killed Abraham Lincoln. It's all fucking coming together.
--:-- Ed Larson: Thank God the grit economy never took off. Can you imagine if grits became the number one? The only thing slower than molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, God. "Hello, country breakfast? Are these 20-minute grits or 40-minute grits?"
--:-- Marcus Parks: And again, thank you to the person in Atlanta who cosplayed as Abraham Lincoln at our show.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, my God. She was wonderful, and she came to the dad's garage shows painted completely green. As an alien for Henry. She did a great job. Incredible.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, please come dressed up to our shows. We love it.
--:-- Now, molasses had become an indispensable part of the American colonial economy by the mid-18th century. You still with me, Henry?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, I know. I love this. I am here.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, I read the script. So, England figured they'd use the sticky substance to pay off their debt from the Seven Years' War by taxing molasses with the Sugar Act of 1764.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, this made a lot of guys angry.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yes, this, of course, was one of the big "taxation without representation" bugaboos that set the stage for the American Revolution, meaning molasses even played a part in the birth of our country. In fact, John Adams himself said, "I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient to American independence."
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yes, here, here. Here, here, here. Huzzah, huzzah. Oh, James, I have shit my pantaloons. I had too much second-run molasses this morning. Maybe we should rethink what we've done here.
--:-- Marcus Parks: By the time the Industrial Revolution rolled around in the late 19th century, industrial alcohol made from molasses was not just a significant part of the New England economy, but the American economy at large. The center of America's molasses empire was Boston. Boston! Because Boston had also been the center of America's slave trade back when most Americans were more or less cool with slavery, and it made sense to operate the slavery and rum businesses out of the same town.
--:-- But as a consequence of Boston's past as a hub for slave trading, our nation's most racist northern city would be the site of the great molasses flood of 1919, and it would all be the fault of a company called United States Industrial Alcohol, or USIA.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh yeah, you know how we like our molasses. Dead! You know how we like our molasses! It's in my mouth!
--:-- Marcus Parks: The USIA bought its molasses from sugar plantations in Cuba starting in the 1800s. That molasses would be transported by steamer ship to Boston, where it would then be temporarily held until it could be transported to USIA's alcohol manufacturing facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All that?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Molasses steamer ship sounds like getting your asshole sucked out. It does. It does. The molasses steamer ship sounds like something that old backstrap would deliver in the back in the... I was trying to figure something different than the champagne room.
--:-- Ed Larson: The backstrap is not in the champagne room.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: The great alcohol room.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, the molasses junior room.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, so the molasses goes from Cuba to Boston, then to Cambridge.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Okay.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, by 1914, a small part of USIA's molasses was still being used to distill grain alcohol for rum. But the majority of the molasses was earmarked for the manufacture of industrial alcohol. The main use of which in 1914 was in producing munitions like dynamite and gunpowder.
--:-- Now, 1914 was indeed an auspicious year for high explosives because 1914 marked the beginning of World War I. And USIA was all set to make as much money as they possibly could from the carnage and misery begat from that war.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Good for them.
--:-- Marcus Parks: So began our great American legacy.
--:-- Now, USIA was selling massive amounts of industrial alcohol made from molasses to European countries even before America became involved in World War I. But the company still had to rent relatively small storage tanks in Boston at great cost to hold their molasses until it could be transported to their facility in Cambridge. So USIA figured that they could maximize their profits by building one single 50-foot tall monstrosity of a storage tank that they owned themselves. The largest tank in the region by far, capable of holding 2 million gallons of molasses at all times.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As a corporate executive] I want you all to listen to me, boys. I have an idea. Biggest problem we have is holding the molasses. And I'd say, honestly, what holds a molasses better than anything else? A bucket. So what I was thinking, boys, I listen here. We built the world's biggest bucket.
--:-- Ed Larson: God damn it. I love this man.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I'm stuck to the seat.
--:-- Marcus Parks: The task of building this abomination was given to a sniveling middle manager named Arthur P. Gell.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As Arthur P. Gell] I'm your bucket constructor. You gotta believe. That bucket will be as big as I can get it.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Jell was the treasurer for a subsidiary of USIA in Boston, but Jell was ambitious, and he had his heart set on a vice president spot in New York City at the parent company. If all went well with the construction of the industrial molasses tank, Jell believed that that corporate slot could be his.
--:-- Now, Gel was your classic, indifferent industrialist who cut corners and scoffed at the conclusions of experts if those conclusions ran contrary to his plans.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As Arthur P. Gell] All a bucket needs is walls and a hole. That's all we need to provide. I don't want to hear anything else. Should we put a rope on top of the bucket? No. How are we going to carry it? We're going to leave it alone. I'm not going to have you eggheads come in here and tell me how to make a bucket. I know how to make a bucket. We keep it in one stable, big giant bucket. It's easy to do. Quit thinking about it. Quit thinking picnics. There ain't no picnic. There's molasses. We've got a war going on.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But in true corporate form, USIA had also put gel under an enormous amount of pressure to have the tank complete in just a few months because USIA wanted their 2 million gallon tank ready when the next shipment of molasses arrived from Cuba on New Year's Eve 1915. Nigel immediately ran into a bevy of problems when he tried just leasing the land to begin construction on the tank. But the pressure only increased when a British luxury liner called the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: This is where this show has finally touched tips with my high school history education. That's the last thing I remember. It's Lusitania. Yeah, is that word.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah. Something about high school history. It always seems to end at World War I. I never got past World War I in any history class in high school.
--:-- Marcus Parks: You run out of time. You always run out of time.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, once you get to the interesting parts. For so long, it's Benjamin Franklin did this, and this other guy did that. And it's been like, I want to know MacArthur.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, well, I think one of my history teachers, I think he was just stalling because he was a Vietnam vet who had obviously gotten really fucked up, and he did not want to make it to the 70s.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, wow, yeah, because then he'd have to start wrapping his head in a headband and doing Russian roulette in front of the kids and marching the Asian ones down the hall and marching them back and forth.
--:-- Ed Larson: He's indiscriminately... I feel like I learned about the Monitor and the Merrimack every year.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, sure. It's just a boat. There's just two boats.
--:-- Ed Larson: A lot of other stuff going on.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: A lot of stuff. But boats, big part of American history.
--:-- Marcus Parks: That's the thing! Now, America had pledged to stay out of World War I entirely at its beginning. And many Americans had in fact sided with Germany in the beginning because so many of us have German heritage. But out of the 1,200 people who died on the Lusitania, 128 were American. So public opinion shifted against the Germans and closer to war. So if America was going to enter the war, the munitions were going to be in even higher demand. More munitions meant more industrial alcohol, and more industrial alcohol meant more molasses. As a consequence, the pressure to finish the tank before America entered the war was added to everything else.
--:-- Ed Larson: Why did they put it on top of a hill? Because then everybody could get at it. It's so heavy. You've got to bring it up the hill.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I think that...
--:-- Ed Larson: Just leave it at the bottom of the hill.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I think it's about pouring the molasses out of it. Actually, can I ask Mr. Joe? [As Arthur P. Gell] I am sick and tired of your little Yankee excuses. But it's just to understand the blast is so heavy we don't need to pick it up the hill. I mean the horses are tired. I think I need someone on bucket duty. Shit, hold on. So we got little buckets pouring in the big bucket.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yes, actually no, it's more of a hose operation we got going on here.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: But I view hoses as long buckets. That's a different story altogether.
--:-- Marcus Parks: So that's the history of hoses and buckets.
--:-- Now, construction on the tank began in the first week of November in the year 1915. And that didn't give the workers a whole lot of time to put this thing together properly if it was going to be done in time for the next molasses shipment due to arrive on New Year's Eve. The project, however, seemed cursed from the very start. Delays were introduced at the beginning of December when work slowed down following the death of an employee who fell 40 feet into the tank itself from a staging plank above. That worker was named Thomas DeFratis, who I only mention because his name is very fun to say.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: More like Thomas DeFratis. The worst bucket workers I've ever seen. Put the molasses on top of him. Who cares? Spice it up.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, construction came to a standstill again when a so-called superstorm swept into Boston a couple of weeks after Thomas DeFratis' death. This storm brought 20 inches of snow along with torrential rain and gale force winds. This, of course, ended work completely on the tank for days on end.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: That's how you know the bucket's working, because the snow and the rain building up inside the bucket.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, because the problems kept coming, the man in charge of building the tank, the aforementioned Arthur P. Gell, he began cutting corners in the most negligent and arrogant ways possible. Instead of testing the tank for leaks by filling it with water, as was required by contract, this inexpensive process that would have taken days if not weeks, Gell ran a far cheaper and far faster test by ordering his men to run just six inches of water into the 50-foot tank.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As Arthur P. Gell] Now, Terrence, I want you to climb down to the bucket, and I want you to just splash the water around a little bit, see if it does anything to it. You're having too much fun there, Mortimer. I'm going to have to kill your family. Thank you. Very good. Right now, can we kill him? No, no, we'll pull him up. We'll pull him up. All the insurance people are watching.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, the six inches of water brought the water level just above the first angle joint, where one would expect to see leaks first. But when no leaks sprung, Jell declared that the entire structure had passed all inspection.
--:-- But the biggest corner Jell cut, the one that got 21 people killed, concerned the steel used to construct the tank itself. See, the tank was made of seven vertical layers of rounded steel plates, which were held into place by rows of horizontal and vertical rivets. Now, the plan was sound, but the design had a very specific minimum thickness requirement for the steel plates. But, just like gel, the company who made the steel had also cut corners.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As Arthur P. Gell] Hey, buckets don't got corners. That's what I said. I said I'm cutting the corners because if it's not, it's not a bucket. All right, it must be rounded. How else will the molasses sit properly, I think?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, when the steel plant delivered the plates that were to make up the tank, the plates were 10% below the minimum thickness.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: That's nothing.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Which means that... And that means that Gel either checked the thickness and rolled the dice, or more likely, never checked at all. But no matter where the negligence lay, it still meant that the molasses tank was essentially a ticking time bomb that was inevitably going to burst. And it was all done so one corpo could get the promotion of his dreams.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, and you don't understand, promotions just lead to more work.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, you know, that's actually the big problem here.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, even though Jell had cut corners when it came to construction, he spared no expense when it came to security. Jell was adamant that an officer from the Boston Police Department be paid to stand on a fixed post at the tank, guarding it at all times.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: [As Arthur P. Gell] And I tell you right now, I'll pay you double your fee as long as you leave the slurs to an absolute minimum. You can do three slurs an hour. That's all you can do.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, Jell did have reason to do this, but when it came time to place blame for the tank's failure, Jell's reasoning for increased security also became a convenient scapegoat. Essentially, Jell had posted guards because he was afraid of anarchist saboteurs, because the anarchists were, at the time, bombing and setting fire to all manner of buildings and people all across America.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: One of the worst examples were the Freedom of Pancakes party that was going against anything. I mean, eggs. Anything that had eggs was a target. Bacon couldn't be served. They just absolutely couldn't stand the idea of someone telling people what breakfast was.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, the anarchist movement believed in the 1910s, mind you, that capitalist forces were working hand in hand with the government to make the lives of the working class poor miserable and impossible to change, which, you know, fair point. They might have been correct. But in order to break free of those bonds, the anarchists were pushing for a social revolution, and that revolution would, according to some of these anarchists, ultimately need to be a violent one.
--:-- See, in their view, the state was guilty of structural violence because it directly or indirectly prevented people from meeting their basic needs. So the violence perpetrated by anarchists in America during the 1910s was justified as self-defense against the state in big business. Interestingly, though, and I can't believe no one fucking talks about this, the leader of one of the main anarchist groups that were, in essence, defending and deposing, if you will, his name was what else?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: But Luigi.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, it is.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And you know what's funny?
--:-- Marcus Parks: And a Luigi shall lead us. Each time, which we never, no one expected. Is there a Luigi cycle? You know, they talk about like the 77, you know, they talk about like these cycles. Is there a Luigi cycle where once every 100 years a Luigi comes?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Did you think that the Yoshi cycle was when everyone was talking about eating ass for like five years? Was that that time? You know, I wonder because there was a lot of Italian anarchists. That was a huge movement in Italy. And we're going to get to why the Italians were really big into anarchism in America here in a bit. The first time I saw Antifa spray painted everywhere was in Italy. Yes. Yes.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, the anarchists rightly surmise that capitalism and warfare are inextricably linked. So to them, World War I was basically a representation of everything that was wrong with the world. So far, they're not wrong.
--:-- Ed Larson: No, I mean, that's the thing. With the anarchists, I agree with the points. Yes, it's just the way in which. It's just the methods and the conclusions on what should be done about it that I have, you know, that's like, all right, well, let's talk about it.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: All I know is that if internet forums are an example of a leaderless area, then we should maybe talk about anarchy on an extended way. Imagine if mods had guns and what that would do.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, that's the thing is that you shouldn't, even in anarchy, the mods are useless. You should not have mods.
--:-- Ed Larson: But they would always say, don't they, doesn't anarchist groups have sort of like a communal understanding of society where there are decision makers?
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I don't know. There's like nine different types of anarchists.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yes, I know. It's very complicated. It's extraordinarily complicated. And man, you think talking with a communist is tedious?
--:-- Ed Larson: Oh, I mean, I don't know. Oh, man. One night in New York, I spent a night drinking with a communist and two anarchists, and it was the most tedious night of my life.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You know, these are people you should just be doing drugs with.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: We were drinking.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah. We're definitely drinking, but the more we drank, the more tedious it got.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: It's hard. It's got to be a couple rules. That's hard. That's all me. It's our rule.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But while the anarchists were against war, they infamously used violence again and again in an attempt to bring the gears of war to a grinding halt. In particular, the anarchists liked bombs, and they liked fire.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Everyone does.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, everyone does. That is true. I mean, yeah, you look at bonfires and 4th of July. I mean, everyone loves it.
--:-- Marcus Parks: See, during the same exact time period that the molasses tank in Boston's North End was being built, a series of suspicious explosions and fires broke out at strategic manufacturing plants across America. This was all a part of the anarchist playbook, because just a few months before, anarchists had sent almost 50 booby-trapped dynamite-filled mail bombs to a cross-section of prominent politicians, newspaper editors, and businessmen. Humorously, the mail bombs were sent in boxes stamped, Gimbal Brothers Novelty Samples.
--:-- But as to how all this relates back to the molasses, anarchists were, in late 1915, suspected of engaging in sabotage at various munitions and weapons factories. And the North End molasses tank certainly fit the bill as a large cog in the war machine. Molasses to industrial alcohol to gunpowder. But to add to the fears of anarchist sabotage at the tank, a steelworks in Pennsylvania that produced guns for the Allies was destroyed in a suspicious fire in November, while an explosion at the DuPont powder mill in Delaware killed 30 men shortly after. Then, on the heels of the DuPont explosion, an anarchist was arrested after threatening to blow up the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and assassinate President Woodrow Wilson all at the same time.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: That's a big plan. It's a huge plan.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But all of these events occurred at the same time that the molasses tank was being constructed. My bucket will continue to stand. Whether they are anarchists or communists or Nazis or anything, my bucket will stand the test of time. Boston, meanwhile, was becoming a bit of an anarchist hotbed. Or, at least, that's what authorities believed. See, a lot of anarchists were Italian.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: No way. It's interesting.
--:-- Marcus Parks: And the North End neighborhood where the molasses tank was being built was made up almost entirely of Italian immigrants by 1915. But Italian-Americans didn't gravitate towards anarchism specifically because they were Italian. Rather, Italians became anarchists in America because they were immigrants. Immigrants who felt like they'd been disenfranchised and exploited by the capitalist system, which again, fair point.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: They are emotional. The Italians? And spaghetti is an inherently anarchic dish. You know, you can't control spaghetti.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But in addition to their exploitation, Italians were also the most vilified group of immigrants in America in the early 20th century. They were viewed by many other Americans as lazy, violent freeloaders who refused to learn English. As a result, Italians were the second most lynched population in America at the time. The treatment that Italians received angered quite a few of them, and some turned to anarchism for answers. But most Italian immigrants, especially those in Boston's North End, they stayed out of politics completely. Those that stayed out of it were merely trying to forge a better life here in America, just like the vast majority of immigrants to America from every country ever. But since the North End was made up of disengaged immigrants who didn't vote and therefore had no voice in municipal matters, there wasn't much, if any, pushback from the neighborhood when Arthur P. Jell and USIA came in with their imposing plans for a 50-foot tall molasses tank.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And the only thing you'll ever smell ever again is molasses. And that will be the smell of Boston. And that'll be the only thing that Boston's ever known for ever again. The gapping of molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: I mean, Boston baked beans, what do you think the main ingredient is? Beans.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: First it's beans.
--:-- Ed Larson: Where do the beans come from? Mexico.
--:-- Marcus Parks: See, contrary to what you might think, the molasses flood was not an accident that occurred in some isolated industrial zone. It wasn't just workers that died here. Instead, this shoddily built tank was constructed atop one of the most crowded neighborhoods in the country. The north end at that time had the same population density as Calcutta. And this neighborhood was also conveniently filled with possible Italian anarchist scapegoats should the tank fail.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Wow. Wow. That's also kind of, well, that's just very interesting. The idea that they're all just this big bubbling thing on top of everybody. And they're all just, well, you know, at the same time, it's like, you remember when MC Hammer built the big house? On top of the, yeah. Looking down on Compton? Yeah. He did that. It's like this. He's like, so then everybody can look up to the big bucket and think about what this bucket has brought to our people and how important molasses is to the United States economy.
--:-- Ed Larson: Also, it brought absolutely nothing to the people because that the molasses was mostly worked by Irishmen. But they don't know that there. They don't understand that. Maybe.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And if you're worried about anarchists blowing up your big bucket, put the big bucket in the middle of the anarchist neighborhood. They ain't going to blow it up. Exactly. Then they're going to start working, start understanding, oh my God, you're going to start flipping anarchists to capitalists every day being like, this is what molasses can provide for you. This is the kind of future that molasses can bring to you and your families. Have you ever thought about coming to work for Big Bucket? I see your energy and I like what you do. Have you ever thought about working in the jelly industry? I'm from your brain.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, despite all the setbacks Arthur P. Jell had faced during the construction of the molasses tank, he did indeed pull off the project in time to appease his bosses. When the steamer owned by the Cuba Distilling Company arrived full of molasses just before New Year's Eve in 1915, one day early, the newly constructed tank in the North End neighborhood easily took 13 feet of molasses without incident.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, yeah, she did. Oh, yeah. Backstrap intake 13, 19, 24, whatever. The worst. Honestly, one of the hardest afternoons I had is the one time I took 36 feet. I was walking crooked for a couple of days after that one. I put the ass in molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: You want some jerky? I have it here under my breasts. Nice and warm. Reconstituted.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I really want someone to do some fan art of backstrap molasses. Oh, yeah. I want to see backstrap molasses. I want to see that realized.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Since the North End tank did not immediately explode upon its inaugural pouring, USIA declared it a success. This gave the company license to increase its production of industrial alcohol, thereby keeping up with the incredible munitions demands of World War I. Now, to give you an idea of how much money was on the table here, industrial alcohol made from molasses was, as I said, a key ingredient in the production of gunpowder. After America finally entered the war in April of 1917, this country produced more than 632 million pounds of gunpowder, equaling the combined production of England and France. You can't make that without industrial alcohol made from molasses.
--:-- Now, at the same time that the USIA was making more and more money off the war, Boston's district attorney was becoming more and more worried about the anarchist threat and he said so publicly. The DA claimed that Boston in particular was in grave danger from disturbances of quote anarchistic bands who hold nightly meetings to plan the eventual destruction of America from within while our eyes were fixed on danger from without.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Again, applying a lot of planning to the anarchists. Yeah. Saying that they're very organized.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, they were organized and they did plan. But it's sort of like Satanists. When you try to put together a group of Satanists and everyone talks about, oh, these Satanist groups and Satanist covens and shit. Where it's like Satanists are like herding fucking cats with Reddit flair. Like this is what we're talking about. Like they are like they are. It's hard to put them together.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I think if the anarchists planned less, they'd be more effective.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, dude.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, dude. That's what the fucking. Agents of chaos.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah. I think they tried that too.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, sure. Anarchists kind of try anything. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Then that way, that's cool. I like them. I think they're fun. I think they're fun. I'd like to hang out with them.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah. It would be fun to do. But I am going to go home at night.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Oh, very much. I'm not sleeping on a mat. I'm paying my bills. I'm paying my taxes.
--:-- Ed Larson: I'm still a small business owner, but at the same time, I like the energy.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Interestingly, it's actually quite difficult to tell which of the industrial accidents at munitions factories during World War I were the work of anarchists, and which were merely the result of negligence from capitalist bosses like Arthur P. Gell. For example, four days after America declared war on Germany, 116 workers were killed in a massive explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation in Chester, Pennsylvania. Tragically, the staff at the plant was mostly made up of teenage girls, so they also made up the majority of the victims.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Cute! I didn't know you could staff a munitions factory with the cast of brats. All the gossip there must have been brutal.
--:-- Ed Larson: Oh, yeah. Back then, the munitions factories were staffed by all manner of children.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Yeah. Back when kids had spines.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yes. They need the little fingers to get in the bullet cases. Now they're allergic to gluten and shit. Back in the day, kids were building guns. Kids were awesome.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, the blast had originated from the pellet room in the shrapnel building, which sounds like the most dangerous place on Earth in 1917 outside of the actual battlefields of World War I.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Do you want to go talk to Tina and Tiffany? They're running the shrapnel building. I can definitely see midriff girls showing up here. You got the candy necklaces and the big jeans. Are you in the pellet room today or the glass room? I'm in the shrapnel area. It's kind of cool. Something Brad started working there. I work in screws and nails. I work in poison gas and bitch lumps. Bitch lumps is a whole new thing.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But even though there was no proof of anarchist involvement in this explosion, which killed 116 people, the official line from the company and the police was that the Chester explosion was an inside job perpetrated by foreigner anarchists who'd suicide bombed themselves in an attempt to damage the war effort. Because that was kind of the problem with the anarchists at the time. Because anytime something went wrong in a munitions factory or an industrial, the bosses could always say, it was anarchist. And the public, for the most part, would be like, all right, I get you.
--:-- Ed Larson: So this wasn't anarchist. This was just like them not doing their job right. Normal anger. As far as we know, it was probably just an accident. It was probably just shitty conditions, things weren't safe, so on and so forth. But the corporations could always say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We didn't fuck up. The anarchists were the ones who did this.
--:-- Marcus Parks: It's super crucial. It's a great thing. And that truly is an American tactic.
--:-- Ed Larson: Oh, yeah. Always have that scapegoat. Always have that enemy.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, Arthur P. Jell did indeed receive that vice president promotion after he got the molasses tank built on time. But since he was the one who built it, Arthur P. Jell was also made the tank guy at USIA from there on out. As such, Jell seemed to take the protection of the tank very seriously. See, as I said earlier, the tank certainly was a target for anarchists in theory. So after the Boston DA sounded the alarm on anarchists and the Chester factory exploded, Arthur P. Gel hired extra guards and had them sworn in as special police tasked solely with guarding the molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You will never find a more motivated person than a middle management piece of shit little guy that's looking for any sort of power to give him a reason to flex. Oh, the power, the reason to be like, oh, now I'm big and bad because I've hired all of these goons because I and I need to. now have this moral imperative, quote unquote, to hire these goons. I just imagine like 10 dudes with rifles marching around a giant bucket.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, it's literally all this. Hup, hup, hup, hup, hup.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, hup, hup, hup, hup. Back and forth. One, two, one, two, one, two. And now a part of the hell is out there. Someone's trying to put more molasses in the bucket. Someone shoot that bird. It's looking at the molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But while Joe was getting so worked up about anarchists, he wasn't paying the least bit attention to the USIA employees who were stressing day after day that something was very wrong with the North End tank structurally. In other words, Arthur P. Jell was very good at appearing as if he gave a shit about the safety of the tank when it came to security, but if the safety of the tank involved anything that might disrupt production, he didn't want to hear about it.
--:-- See, just after Jell hired his extra molasses guards, the tank supervisor's assistant, a guy named Isaac Gonzalez, he gave gel some distressing news while the tank had been doing fine on paper in the two years since it had been built it had in reality leaked molasses from every seam every day from the very beginning and that's bad that's not good it seems like that's good you scoop up that leaky molasses and you put it back on the top of the bucket do I have to tell everybody I had to do that job here use other buckets and put the buckets of molasses back into the bigger pocket. You, give me that gum. Put it in the seam.
--:-- The leaks were in fact so consistent that neighborhood children gathered around the base of the very dangerous tank every day to collect molasses in pails and old cans so they could take it home, even though it was the shittiest molasses.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: You shit that you shoot that street urchin in the head. You shoot that street urchin in the head. They're not allowed to eat our industrial weapons grade molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, your molasses sucks asshole. Shoot him down.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Shoot him in the dick. Yeah, fuck you. Shoot him in the belly. Yeah, I'll see you in hell.
--:-- Ed Larson: But some of the kids, they just bring sticks to the tank. They would... They dip their sticks into the puddles of molasses that gathered on the ground around the tank, and once dipped, the children would slurp the sticky, bittersweet syrup straight from the source.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I better not eat all this syrup at once. I gotta take it back to my wife and kids.
--:-- Ed Larson: I thought every one of them lived to 100 oh yeah yeah yeah these are the ones that are like what's his name the old guy that used to go talk to the old people what's his name George Burks they used to do 100 when you got to be George Willard Willard Scott they're always these other people they're like I was there for the great molasses flood in 1919 I launched it for my apartment Every day I have a glass of whiskey, one cigar. Like, it's my favorite type of old person.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I spent mornings as a child sitting in a molasses puddle and just eating bucket after bucket of molasses. It just poured into my mouth. My mother, she washed rags for the gun makers.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, by 1918, the leaks were only getting worse. Because after production of industrial alcohol reached peak wartime levels that year, the tank reached its 2 million gallon limit seven times. And the tank would vibrate and groan every time a new shipment of molasses was pumped in from the Cuban steamers.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: No, that's the tank breathing. That's the tank settling.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, the leaks and vibrations and groans, they terrified the aforementioned tank supervisor's assistant, Isaac Gonzalez. Gonzalez, in fact, became so worried about the tank's safety that after work he would return to the site at all hours of the night just to ensure that the whole thing hadn't exploded while he was gone. The man couldn't sleep.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Please hold your tank. Every night he's coming, putting his hands against the tank. He's just staring at him with the sheer force of will. Please do not let this sweet death come upon the wonderful city of Boston.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But in the end, all Gonzalez could personally do was spread sand around the base of the tank to keep the molasses from flowing too far into the neighborhood. Or he'd be sent out to chase off the kids when too many began gathering around the molasses puddles.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: This just reminds me of whoever was Gerard Depardieu's assistant for so long. You know what I mean? Just like waking up every day being like, I pray to God Gerard hasn't pissed in another airplane. I pray to God. Tell me, Mr. Jeff Ardu, tell me that you didn't attack another actress, did you? Filled with molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, with all his other duties, Gonzalez said that it was becoming impossible for him to take care of the increasing amounts of leaking molasses. So he went above his boss's head, straight to Arthur P. Gel to air his concerns. Predictably, though, even when Gonzalez brought flakes of rusty steel to Arthur P. Gel from inside the tank, proof that the structure was weakening.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: He threw the pieces of steel at him. He's just sitting there going like, you know, smoking his long cigar.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, Jell waved off his concerns. Jell told Gonzalez that some leaking was normal for any tank of that size.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Everything leaks. You should follow me around for a day. You worry about all that tank's leaking, you should see how I'm leaking. You should worry about your own leaking. Plug it up. That's what I say. If it's leaking, plug it up.
--:-- Marcus Parks: So Jell told Gonzalez that if he knew what was good for him, he'd best focus on keeping all those pesky Italian children from trespassing on USIA property.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: If I was you, I'd get a couple of other buckets. We have to fill up the main bucket. Fill those buckets up with rigatoni. Leave them on a tree, all right? Let the kids attack the buckets of rigatoni. I think it's the only way to do it. We've got to distract them. Attack the buckets of rigatoni, and then when you do, do you know what a Molotov cocktail is? Then you set them on fire one by one. No, all at once. I'm trying to tell you how to do this efficiently in the corporate USIA way.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Gonzalez was not the only person who noticed that something was wrong with the tank. Everyone did.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: He moaned. The tank was screaming. I'm going to die soon.
--:-- Marcus Parks: During the summer of 1918, a fellow worker said that it sounded as if the molasses was bubbling or boiling from the heat. And another worker said that he liked leaning against the tank because the vibrations caused by the movement of the molasses were strong enough to ease his back pain.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: It was his fucking massage chair. Yeah, my wife likes it too. She rubs her clitoris against it. We're all loving the new tank, Mr. Jell. Everybody's coming by rubbing their butt on the vibrating tank. Nothing's wrong with it. Each one of these soldiers will come three times today.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But Jell, meanwhile, again made a predictable, if pointedly aggressive move. Instead of addressing Isaac Gonzalez's concerns about the leaks, Jell brought in a crew to repaint the tank a rusty brown color so as to make the tank itself indistinguishable from the molasses seeping from its seams.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I mean, that does work. It's an amazing, that's called the landlord move. I don't know if anybody's had mold in their apartment in New York City.
--:-- Ed Larson: Oh, yeah. They just paint over that shit.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I remember one time our fucking fridge at Hooters was all fucked up, and then we didn't have the money to replace it, so I just got a bunch of metallic paint and painted the fridge metallic, and I'm like, it looks great. Fucking crazy. Inspection pest. That's where food was.
--:-- Ed Larson: This is also, they're like, man, it's brown. Oh, you got brown streaks on it? That's the fucking problem with streaks brown? You paint the whole damn thing brown. That's how you hide it right there. Look at it. It's all molasses there.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, this targeted fuck you. This was the last straw for Gonzalez because he obviously knew this was pointed straight at him.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. So I'm going to go volunteer for World War One.
--:-- Marcus Parks: That's exactly what he did. He's like, I would rather work. I would rather die in the fields of Flanders than work for USIA for another fucking second.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I saw too many guys lose their noses and eyes for me to not say I got to be in there. Yeah.
--:-- Marcus Parks: And what Gonzalez didn't know was that by the time he returned to Boston in March of 1919, his worst fears about the tank would indeed have come true.
--:-- Now, the molasses tank surprisingly made it through the war. But just as World War I was winding down, the Spanish flu began ripping its way through the North End. In Boston, so many people died of the flu that circus tents were used to cover the stacks of unburied coffins left in the local cemeteries. because gravediggers had become scarce.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: And because circuses are fun. You get distracted by how fun all the corpses must be having inside the circus. They're not worried about burying it. You heard of a flea circus? It's a flu circus. It's fun to do. It's a funny little joke.
--:-- Marcus Parks: USIA and Arthur P. Gell, they couldn't have cared less about the people who were dying in the pandemic. They were far more concerned that the deaths of their workers were disrupting their production schedules at the same time that production demands were dropping due to the end of the war. So the pressure on USIA is increasing. Now, the extra pressure being put on the tank for all those years as a result of munitions production, that would have probably subsided after the war, thereby saving dozens of lives and Boston's West End by dumb luck. But that wasn't how USIA wanted to play it. See, like any big corporation, USIA was desperate to keep its profits ever climbing at all times no matter what. So the company's executives believed that their operation could switch back to producing grain alcohol for rum to keep the bottom line rising. But there was another major shift in American history that would contribute directly to a sudden and massive increase in the tank's capacity and therefore the tank's destruction. That shift, ironically, was prohibition.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Wow that makes so much sense it's so funny how like it is just the truth I know that we were making fun of you but it is wild that all of this one thing to the next to the next to the next you can't explain what happened here without going all the way back to fucking 1600
--:-- Ed Larson: Well I didn't realize that until I was trying to tell Eddie about it the other day and he just kept asking questions oh no it's the issue you can just say a man built a bucket that failed You can just say that, but it doesn't really make sense.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Now, the temperance movement had been trying to ban alcohol in America since 1893, but this movement finally found its footing during World War I. Anti-German sentiment had swept the nation during the war, and since the majority of beer brewers had German heritage, the temperance movement successfully used the war to further prohibition. They would say, a glass of beer is a glass for the Kaiser. So, ban alcohol.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: We already beat him. Leave us alone.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, but then, you know, prohibition was a massive mistake. Well, they had gotten people over to their side during the war. So by the time the war was over, there were already all these people that were like, yeah, yeah, prohibition. Sounds like a fucking great idea. Let's do it.
--:-- Now, Arthur P. Gell and the USIA, they knew that if the 18th Amendment banning alcohol was ratified, they'd have a one year grace period until the law finally came into effect in early 1920. That meant that they had a very narrow window to distill as much grain alcohol as possible in the first quarter of 1919, because that gave them enough time to ship the alcohol to brewers who could make their products and distribute them to saloons and stores before they were all closed by prohibition. Serendipitously, there was indeed a huge shipment of molasses expected to arrive from Cuba in mid-January 1919. so the USIA gave orders to fill the North End molasses tank to absolute capacity, higher if need be in order to keep profits going for as long as possible that shipment of molasses, of course, would be the one that would brutally kill 21 people in a crushing wave of sweet, sticky, viscous liquid and that is where we'll pick back up next week for the disaster itself
--:-- And I promise you, when we come back next week, these people are going to drown. They're going to drown thickly. They're going to drown badly. And we're going to tell you all about it.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: It's more the crushing than the drowning. Crushing and drowning. And I would say more suffocation than drowning.
--:-- Ed Larson: I think drowning is just a more aquatic version of suffocating. It is. It is. It is. It is.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: But it's more suffocating is more when your mouth is covered and you can't. Aquaman drowns. Black widow suffocates. Drowning is when your lungs fill with water. suffocation is just when it's covered. So I think suffocation would be more appropriate.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Unfortunately, the bucket will die in the beginning of next episode. So just know that.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: First death gets the giant bucket.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, the bucket is, yeah. That's number one.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, I mean, technically the first death is Thomas DeFratis.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Honestly, no one's blaming the molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, it's not the molasses' fault.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Do you blame the tiger? Do you blame the lion?
--:-- Ed Larson: Yes. Sometimes.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Okay, fine. Do you blame the alligator? Do you blame the orca?
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah. He's just like blaming things. He does like assigning blame.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: All this talk about thick, thicky brown liquid is really making me have to take an absolutely massive shit.
--:-- Ed Larson: Oh, nice.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Well, patreon.com slash last podcast on the left. You can go join our Patreon if you want to see the pained look on Henry's face right now as he keeps that turtle head in.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I am my own giant Boston-based bucket. I am chock full to the brim with human-made molasses.
--:-- Marcus Parks: You know, the more jokes you make, the longer this is going to take.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: I know.
--:-- Marcus Parks: You can also watch Last Stream on the Left live if you are a Patreon member. That is every Tuesday at 6 p.m. PST. Don't forget to follow us on our socials at LPOTL on TikTok and Instagram. And don't forget to go check out all our new YouTube channels someplace underneath LPN — Romantic, Who's the Bee, The Foreign Report, No Dogs in Space, and of course LPN TV at large for those wonderful programs like Funhouse and HGX2.
--:-- Ed Larson: We're all coming back to see, you know, we have a bunch of announcements also coming up of material that we are currently working on that I think you're really going to fucking like.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Trying some new shit. Got some cool shit coming up. And don't forget to come see us on tour. Can't wait to see y'all out there across America. We'll see you tonight at Wiseguys in Salt Lake City.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, well that's if they, you know, depends on who they are.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah, depends.
--:-- Marcus Parks: But we are coming to Charlotte, Durham, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Oakland, Cleveland, and Portland this year, so come see us on the road. You can get tickets at lastpodcastontheleft.com.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah, go to lastpodcastontheleft.com and follow the ticket link from there. I think we need to make a PSA. The people out there need to understand in America how to buy concert tickets. Don't just click on the first link that comes up because it's going to be the crazy expensive one. Go find the venue website. Go to the actual artist website first and then follow that link from there and get reasonable prices for your ticket. Because we can't fight StubHub. I don't know what to do about that.
--:-- Marcus Parks: Yeah, StubHub, all of them. All the fucking middlemen. We can't fight it. We can only do what we can do, which is tell you, go to the website. And please come see us out on the road because we love performing live.
--:-- Ed Larson: We love it, absolutely.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Hail Sweet Satan, I love you.
--:-- Marcus Parks: No, and Hail Gein.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Hail Backstrap Molasses.
--:-- Ed Larson: Yeah! Love her.
--:-- Henry Zebrowski: Yeah. Hail my big ass. I picked up another shift Wednesdays, noon to six.
--:-- Ed Larson: Hey, what if I just shit on you?
