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In this article, Kayla Newman explains what happened during the Molasses Flood of 1919 and how it affected Boston.
A sweet Capitilistic Tragedy
A sweet Capitilistic Tragedy
By Kayla Newman
By Kayla Newman
When you think of floods, you may typically think of water or, in extreme cases, lava. (However, if you are Scroll writer, Peter Easterwood, chocolate lava cake). However, this was not the case in Boston Massachusetts. On Jan. 15, 1919, 2.3 million gallons of hot, sticky molasses flooded the North End of Boston.
Picture from Flickr
Picture from Wikimedia Commons
Molasses is the byproduct that comes from processing sugar cane. Boston would use this byproduct to make a variety of different things from rum to cattle feed. According to the Massachusetts Historical Society, molasses at one point had a part in the triangular slave: West African slaves to the Sugar Islands', molasses to Boston, then finally, rum to New England.
It all took place on Jan. 15, 1919, when a steel tank containing 26 million pounds (2.3 million gallons) of molasses burst and flooded the streets of Boston. How did this happen? How did millions of pounds of hot, sticky molasses flood the streets? Ignorance was the main contributor to the Molasses Flood. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA) constructed a 50-foot walled tank to hold the fermenting molasses (that they used for industrial alcohol). It was a known fact that this tank was leaking. According to the United States Census Bureau, “Rivets and seams leaked so profusely that families regularly collected molasses dripping down the tank walls for home use.” USIA knew that there was a problem and decided that, instead of fixing it, they would just paint the tank brown because disguising your problems just makes it magically disappear.
The tank of molasses burst on Jan. 15, 1919, around 12:30 P.M. due to an array of reasons from an abnormally warm day, a new shipment of molasses, and the metal that made up the tank being thin, inflexible and prone to cracks. The molasses flooded the North End of Boston, causing a path of destruction in its wake. The wave of molasses moved various buildings off their foundations and knocked trains from their tracks. The Boston Police Department, Cadets from the USS Nantucket, and the Red Cross rushed to rescue the citizens and clean up the sweet mess. Cleaning the molasses proved harder than many might think. Brute forcing the debris from the molasses was a difficult task, though the rescuers quickly found out that saltwater helped dissolve the sticky mess. Mass Moments, an almanac for Massachusetts history, states that "twenty-one people died, more than 150 others were injured, and property damage totaled nearly $100,000,000 in today's dollars." Animals also were not exempt from this disaster; animals such as household pets and horses died and were injured in the flood.
Picture from Flickr
After all the molasses was cleaned, legal repercussions ensued. As everyone knows, Americans love to sue everyone, and the USIA was not exempt from this. According to the City of Boston, “the tank’s owners initially blamed an anarchist plot to bomb the tank.” Instead of taking the blame, USIA decided, why not just blame the anarchists, because that would solve all of their problems. As you probably guessed, the USIA did not get away with this. After six years, it was official. The USIA was to blame for the explosion of the tank. They were forced to pay one million dollars in reparations (which is equivalent to 14 million today).
After the tank's explosion, molasses could still be smelled in Boston’s north end on hot days for decades after the disaster. The molasses flood helped shape America and the way the United States regulates industries and holds them reliable for neglectful ignorance.
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