Episode 627: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Part I - Killer Condiments

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left - Episode 627: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Part I - Killer Condiments

Release Date: July 18, 2025

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Introduction to the Great Molasses Flood

In Episode 627, titled "The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Part I - Killer Condiments," The Last Podcast Network delves into one of America's most bizarre industrial disasters: the Great Molasses Flood in Boston's North End. Hosts Henry Zabrowski, Marcus Parks, and Ed Larson provide an engaging and humorous exploration of this sticky catastrophe, setting the stage for a two-part series.

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The Historical Significance of Molasses

Ed Larson ([03:44]) emphasizes the multifaceted role of molasses in American history, noting, "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." The episode traces molasses from its agricultural roots to its industrial applications, highlighting its importance in everything from baking to weapon manufacturing.

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USIA and the Construction of the Molasses Tank

The episode introduces United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA), a company pivotal to the molasses narrative. Henry Zabrowski ([27:05]) humorously imagines the grandiose plans for the molasses storage, likening it to building "the world's biggest bucket." Ed Larson ([33:00]) discusses how the construction of a colossal 50-foot-tall tank was rushed to meet the demands of World War I, making it a “ticking time bomb.”

Arthur P. Gel, a subordinate in USIA, is portrayed as the embodiment of corporate negligence. The hosts critique Gel's shortcuts, such as insufficient leak testing ([33:30]) and using subpar steel plates ([34:54]), ultimately setting the stage for disaster.

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Anarchist Fears and Social Context

The podcast contextualizes the molasses flood within the broader social climate of early 20th-century America. Ed Larson ([36:34]) explains the paranoia surrounding anarchists, who were often scapegoated for industrial accidents. The North End's dense Italian immigrant population ([41:32]) added to fears of potential sabotage, leading to heightened security measures around the molasses tank.

Henry Zabrowski ([39:02]) and Marcus Parks ([41:31]) inject humor into the discussion, likening anarchist groups to chaotic entities like Satanist covens, while Ed Larson highlights the complexity of anarchist motivations and actions during the period.

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Molasses and the American Economy

The hosts explore molasses' integral role in the American economy, particularly its connection to the Triangle of Trade and the slave trade. Ed Larson ([21:12]) articulates, "The rum slave pipeline was so successful that it produced an excess of enslaved Africans," underscoring the grim historical ties between molasses production and slavery.

As Prohibition looms ([63:34]), Ed Larson ([64:06]) connects the impending ban on alcohol to USIA's desperate measures to maximize molasses use, further exacerbating the tank's already precarious state.

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Warnings Ignored and Mounting Tensions

Despite growing concerns about the tank's integrity, represented by consistent leaks and structural weaknesses, Isaac Gonzalez ([54:34]) attempts to raise alarms, only to be dismissed by Arthur P. Gel ([58:35]). The hosts illustrate the escalation of neglect, with Ed Larson ([59:37]) detailing how molasses leaks were routinely ignored or superficially addressed by painting over issues rather than implementing real fixes.

Marcus Parks ([59:19]) and Henry Zabrowski ([59:45]) add levity to the dire situation, likening the negligence to absurd bucket-related metaphors, emphasizing the ridiculousness of the oversight that ultimately led to tragedy.

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Conclusion and Teaser for Part II

By the episode's end, the stage is set for catastrophe. Ed Larson ([66:02]) summarizes the precarious balance maintained by USIA's relentless push for profit despite clear signs of impending failure. The hosts promise a gripping continuation in Part II, where they will recount the catastrophic tank failure that resulted in the deaths of 21 people.

Henry Zabrowski ([67:06]) sign-offs with a mix of humor and suspense, "The giant bucket will die in the beginning of next episode," leaving listeners eager for the sequel that will describe the full extent of the Great Molasses Flood.

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Notable Quotes

• Ed Larson ([03:44]): "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."

• Henry Zabrowski ([27:05]): "I want you all to listen to me. Boys, I have an idea. Biggest problem we have is holding the molasses."

• Ed Larson ([36:34]): "The anarchist movement believed in the 1910s, 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."

• Ed Larson ([64:06]): "The temperance movement had been trying to ban alcohol in America since 1893."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 627 of The Last Podcast on the Left masterfully intertwines humor with historical analysis, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the Great Molasses Flood's background. By examining corporate greed, social tensions, and economic dependencies, the hosts paint a vivid picture of how a seemingly innocuous substance like molasses played a pivotal role in a tragic event. With promises of more intense storytelling in Part II, the episode leaves audiences both educated and entertained, eagerly anticipating the unfolding of this unique historical disaster.

Transcript

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Marcus Parks]

Carl's Jr's got a new frozen Strawberry lemonade and frozen Blue Sour Berry. Tough choice.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sweet or sour? Sweet or sour?

[Marcus Parks]

Sweet or sour? The new frozen Strawberry lemonade and frozen Blue Sour Berry. Two frozen flavors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

One tough choice.

[Marcus Parks]

My Rewards members can get a free frozen drink with any purchase in the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Carl's Jr app for a limited time of participating.

[Marcus Parks]

Restaurants half registration and minimum $1 purchase required.

[Ed Larson]

There's no place to escape to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the last on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. Who's that? Molasses. Breaking molasses news. Wow. You better be ready for the most molasses you've ever heard about or consumed in your entire young lives. Most of you have never even seen a jar of molasses. Yeah, I know what you're thinking.

[Marcus Parks]

What is molasses?

[Ed Larson]

I thought for a second there you were singing the Mortal Kombat theme song. Welcome to last podcast. On the left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Park. I'm here with the thick with molasses Henry Zabrowski.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I view myself as the raiden of molasses combat. I'm just missing my Chinese hat. That's all I gotta do. Zap, zap. You just got molasses. I'm Asian, I'm electric, I'm covered in moles.

[Ed Larson]

And also of course, the. I would say pre Sticky Ed Larson.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, I am covered in goo in.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The future and I gotta.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I wanna do when I thought of this? I wanna change Jackie Onassis's name to Jackie Molasses because she was a little quicker. She would've got them brains back in that head.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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, she was pretty thick, so.

[Ed Larson]

Well, the reason why we're talking about molasses is because today we are gonna be covering the Great Molass of 1919.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is one of those topics we have hovered around for A long time. It's a. It's unusual, it's interesting, but also features a lot of the history of molasses.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And the.

[Ed Larson]

Well, don't. Don't blow it all just yet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I definitely don't want to ruin the history of the surprise.

[Marcus Parks]

I know what you're thinking of. A lot of people died and we're talking about it. Why are we calling it great? It's called the Great Molasses Flood because some guy saw what happened right afterwards.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Too much molasses.

[Ed Larson]

As a result, 21 people died, 150 were INJ 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. What's that historical context about molasses and Boston.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know, but it's mostly about molasses.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, is this the reason why Boston hates the color brown?

[Ed Larson]

You know the answer? Kind of.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, kind of.

[Ed Larson]

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. Yeah, basically, molasses is nutmeg all over again.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Work so hard to get away from nutmeg. Covered nutmeg so thoroughly and now we're up to our hairlines in another nutmeg.

[Ed Larson]

I didn't work hard to get away from nutmeg. I reluctantly let go of nutmeg.

[Henry Zabrowski]

God. I actually, it was funny that I do have a kind of a series of like, tchotchkes people have given me all over the years. I have like, on top of my, like through all the various meet and greets and I was like, one. I was going through like 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]

Yeah, Ed came in and gave us both nutmeg. Nutmeg. I know where my nutmeg comes from.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know where it comes from, too. Slavery.

[Marcus Parks]

Seems like someone doesn't want his molasses jar.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

Because the phrase molasses flood conjures up images of people being slowly overtaken and suffocated, created by a gooey, dark brown liquid. It's silly because also, you know, I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Feel like media used to have more like pictorials of dangerous, large flowing, slow liquids. Right? Yeah, yeah. Like the blob.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There was the Blob and there's two blobs. Two blobs. There's another big. There's another one. I wanted stuff. This stuff.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep.

[Marcus Parks]

The ants were slow and. Ants.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Them, them, them, them.

[Marcus Parks]

You're right. You're right, man. Fucking molasses. I'm so excited to eat some.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know it's not good. I like it.

[Ed Larson]

But the phrase slow is 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 bone.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

So they didn't all just turn into, like, Jurassic park mosquitoes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, that was just the Super Slow Children.

[Ed Larson]

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 Pillaio.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, if you thought that Marcus has been driven into a molasses fever, Stefan Pulio is patient zero. Yeah. Of molasses fever. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

He's got.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, I do agree that molasses is important and it's interesting. But this guy, like, he puts molasses on a level of importance, like with the atomic bomb. Like, he's, like, really into molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You don't want to have breakfast with Stephen Belaya because you're not going to end breakfast.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Bring the earbuds.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

The information contained within this book is fantastic, but the book itself probably could have used a stronger editor, if we're being honest, because 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 it, rope, cod, salt.

[Marcus Parks]

All agree with all three of those things.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Very important.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And it's great for end in your life. It's a really good flaky whitefish. And I love salt, as you can see.

[Marcus Parks]

Soaps Big, too.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. It's all massive. Yeah. You can actually take any object and be like, well, it's very important, but, you know, it's all intertwined. But it is an entire genre of nonfiction. It's very. It's very cool. I like it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I can't wait to the Gen Alphas write their books about how Pokemon led to 911 or something.

[Marcus Parks]

I thought that was Pearl Harbor.

[Ed Larson]

Now, when most of us think about molasses today, it was general Pokemon. 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Shoo Fly pieces. Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

What is Shoo Fly pie?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Extremely sweet, treacly pie made by the Amish.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, and they call it Shoo Fly because you have to shoo the flies away.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, because it's so sweet. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Somebody felt molasses was super crucial.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

You're so excited.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's the. I love this shit. It's so much truly, like, this was like the light up in Marcus's face yesterday when I came and we were talking about the episode, I was like, you know, there's quite a bit of historical context about molasses. And Marcus is like, yeah, I know. And I was like. It just seemed to be like, I just, you know, that's fine with me.

[Marcus Parks]

I love it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're turning into a jelly based podcast.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, it's much better than raping girls in a trailer.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like, let's do it. Hey, some of us got different tastes.

[Ed Larson]

No, this is about. It's the wonder of the world. It's like how all. How everything fits together. It's how the world works. It's super cool shit. I love it. This is my favorite.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

Now, you may be asking, as Henry asked me the other day, where the fuck does molasses actually come from?

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I thought it came from a tree or a bush.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that a tree?

[Henry Zabrowski]

No. What? No.

[Ed Larson]

No, it is not, as we speculated, made from SAP, like maple syrup. Instead, molasses is the byproduct of sugar manufacturing. Yay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Industrial byproducts. Yay.

[Ed Larson]

See, when sugar cane is crushed and boiled to extract sugar, the remaining syrup after the sugar is crystallized. That's called first molasses. Okay. This is the sweetest variety. This is your grandma's original gold standard molasses.

[Marcus Parks]

Unpasteurized.

[Ed Larson]

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? Second molasses.

[Marcus Parks]

I can't believe I didn't guess.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yep, I did. My second guess. Molasses junior.

[Ed Larson]

It's less sweet and it's cheaper, but it's still edible.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Great.

[Ed Larson]

But finally, from the third extraction.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why are we eating that then? Why are we eating it? Because first molasses, second molasses.

[Ed Larson]

Well, we don't eat second molasses anymore.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why do we make second molasses if it's not eaten or used?

[Ed Larson]

It was eaten and used back then. Way back in, like, the 1600s when we first started making molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So you get your premier molasses premium molasses.

[Ed Larson]

Like that. That's what George Washington's eating.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So then what? Benjamin Franklin smearing second molasses on his girlfriend?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Actually, I would say so, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Cheaper still. Edible?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you know, like how edible panties, like, you know, they're pretty much like, you know, Fruit Roll Ups.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they're not the best Fruit Roll Ups, but you can wear them and.

[Ed Larson]

Eat them off of somebody that second molasses. Got it.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Ed Larson]

But finally, from the third extraction, you have what's called back strap molasses.

[Marcus Parks]

Wouldn't have guessed that.

[Ed Larson]

Nope. This molasses is dark, nearly inedible, and used primarily for manufacturing industrial and grain alcohol. Now, the grain alcohol is of course used to make spirits primarily. Rumors. 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. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Backstrap molasses sounds like the cheapest stripper at the club.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey. Yeah. You want a lap dance? Yeah, you gotta hop on my lap.

[Marcus Parks]

My name's Backstrap Molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, I got the thickest back here at Candies.

[Ed Larson]

I'm here from noon until 3 on Mondays.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I do the lunch shift specifically. You want the soup? Yeah. Look at my backstrap blasts.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's what. Man, that. That was for me, like one of the. Like just a horrible thing about this whole accident is that it wasn't even the good molasses that's drowned the people. It was the shittiest molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I actually be super mad if they wasted all the good molasses on drowning all these people. I'm glad that weapon, those that molasses.

[Ed Larson]

Was out to kill weapons grade molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is what we're talking about here. This is what we've reached. This is killer condiments last podcast. This is all about molasses that was primed to kill. This molasses was molested and it came from a broken hole. The cycle of pain continues down the slope.

[Marcus Parks]

It was kept in a tank too small.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, that is what's happening here. Molasses snapping back at society.

[Ed Larson]

From your grave.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

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 rumour. 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 there. That, that was, you know, when we talked, that was, you know, wake Indonesia, all that. We're talking about the West Indies here. This is 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?

[Marcus Parks]

It almost seems like there's no point.

[Ed Larson]

I know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a self. It is. Literally. They've created their own supply and demand.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. No, no. 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 plantation 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 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 Zabrowski]

I'm not eating any more molasses.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, fuck molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Who ain't killed Lincoln? Holy shit. Molasses killed Abraham Lincoln. It's all coming together. Thank God the grit economy never took off. Can you imagine if grits became the number one? God. The only thing slower than molasses. Oh, God. Hello, country breakfast.

[Marcus Parks]

These 20 minute grits are 40 minute grits.

[Ed Larson]

And again, thank you to the person in Atlanta who cosplayed us, Abraham Lincoln, at our show. Oh, fantastic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She was wonderful. And she came to the dad's garage shows, was painted completely green for.

[Marcus Parks]

As an alien for. For Henry.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She did a great job.

[Ed Larson]

Incredible.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Please come dressed up to our shows.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We love it.

[Ed Larson]

Now, molasses have become an indispensable part of the American colonial economy by the mid 18th century. You still with me, Henry?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I am here. No, I read the script.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

Yeah, this made a lot of guys a yes.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient to American independence. Yes. Hear, hear. Shit, my pantaloons. I had too much second run molasses this morning. Maybe we should rethink what we've done here.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Boston.

[Ed Larson]

Because Boston had also been the center of America 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 Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. You know how we like our molasses, dad. You know how we like our molasses. It's in my mouth.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Follow that.

[Ed Larson]

That.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Molasses steamer ship sounds like getting your sucked.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It does, it does. The molasses seamer ship sounds like something that old back strap will deliver in the back. I was trying to figure something different than the champagne room.

[Marcus Parks]

Great alcohol.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So it's. So the molasses goes from Cuba to Boston, then to Cambridge.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Good for them.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So began our great American legacy.

[Ed Larson]

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 and 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 Zabrowski]

I want you all to listen to me. Boys, I have an idea. Biggest problem we have is holding the molasses. Honestly, what holds a molasses better than anything else? A bucket. So what I was thinking. Boys. Now listen here. We build the world's biggest bucket. God damn it.

[Marcus Parks]

I love this man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm stuck to the seat.

[Ed Larson]

The task of building this abomination was given to a sniveling middle manager named Arthur P. Gel.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm your bucket constructor. You gotta believe that bucket will be as big as I can get it.

[Ed Larson]

Jell was the treasurer for a subsidiary of USIA in Boston. But Gel 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, Joe believed that that corporate slot could be his. Now, Jell was your classic indifferent industrialist who cut corners and scoffed at the conclusions of experts if those conclusions ran contrary to his plans.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All a bucket needs is walls and a hole. That's all we need to provide. And I don't want to hear anything else.

[Marcus Parks]

Should we put a rope on top of the bucket?

[Henry Zabrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

How are we gonna carry it?

[Henry Zabrowski]

We're gonna leave it alone.

[Ed Larson]

I'm not gonna have you eggheads come in here and tell me how to make a bucket.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know how to make a bucket. A lot of containable airs. And we keep it in one stable. Big giant bucket. It's easy to do. Quit thinking about it. Quit thinking picnics. This ain't no picnic. This molasses. We've got a war going on.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

This is where this show has finally touched tips with my high school history education. That's the last thing I remember.

[Ed Larson]

Remember It's Lusitania.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Is that word?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Something about high school history. It's like 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]

Run out of time.

[Ed Larson]

You always run out of time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Once you get the interesting parts. For so long as Benjamin Franklin did this and this other guy to this, and it's been like, I want to know. MacArthur. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I think. Honestly, I think that one of my history teachers, I think he was just stalling because he was a Vietnam vet who had obviously gotten really up and he did not want to make it to the 70s.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, wow. Yeah. Because then he'd have to start wrapping his head in a headband and fucking doing Russian roulette in front of the kids and marching the Asian ones down the hall and marching them back and forth. He's indiscriminately.

[Marcus Parks]

I feel like I learned about the Monitor and the Merrimack every year.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just a boat. There's just two boats. They got in a fight. A lot of the stuff going on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

A lot of stuff.

[Ed Larson]

But boats. Big part of American history.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a thing.

[Ed Larson]

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 1200 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Why did they put it on top of a hill?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because then everybody could get at it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so heavy. You gotta bring it up the hill.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think that.

[Marcus Parks]

Just leave it at the bottom of the hill.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The ends up about pouring the molasses out of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, can I ask Mr. Gel, I'm.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sick and tired of your. Of you. I am sick and tired of your little Yankee. He excuses.

[Marcus Parks]

But the blast is so heavy, we don't need to pick it up the hill. I mean, the horses are tired.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think I need someone on bucket duty. Yeah, hold on.

[Marcus Parks]

So we got little buckets pouring in the big bucket?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Actually, no. It's more of a hose operation we got going on here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But I view hoses as long buckets that's a different story altogether. That's the history of hoses and buckets.

[Ed Larson]

Now. Construction on the tank began in the first week of November in the year 1915. 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 40ft into the tank itself from a staging plank above. That worker was named Thomas Defratus, who I only mention because his name is very fun to say.

[Henry Zabrowski]

More like Thomas Defladis. The worst bucket workers I've ever seen.

[Marcus Parks]

Put the molasses on top of them.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Spice it up.

[Ed Larson]

Well, construction came to a standstill again when a so called superstorm swept into Boston a couple of weeks after Thomas Defratus 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 Zabrowski]

That's how you know the buckets working, because the snow and the rain building.

[Ed Larson]

Up inside the bucket because the problems kept coming. The man in charge of building the tank, the aforementioned Arthur P. Gel. 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, Gel ran a far cheaper and far faster test by order, ordering his men to run just six inches of water into the 50 foot tank.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, Terence, I want you to just. Now 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, see if it does anything to it. Yeah, too much fun there, Mortimer. I'm gonna have to kill your family. Yeah. Thank you. Very good. Right, now can we kill him? No, no, we'll probably pull him up. We'll pull him up. Every. All the insurance people are watching the.

[Ed Larson]

6 inches of water that brought the water level just above the first angle joint where one would expect to see leaks first. But when no leaks sprung, Gel declared that the entire structure had passed all inspection. But the biggest corner Gel 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 ribbon 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, buckets don't got corners.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's what I said. I said I'm cutting the corners. Because if not, it's not a bucket. All right? It must be rounded. How else will the molasses sit properly?

[Ed Larson]

I think when the steel plant delivered the plates that were to make up the tank, the plates were 10% below the minimum thickness.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's nothing.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

Yeah, and you don't understand. Promotions just lead to more work. Yeah, you know, that's actually the big problem here.

[Ed Larson]

Now, even though Gel had cut corners when it came to construction, he spared no expense when it came to security. Jail 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 Zabrowski]

And I tell you right now, I'll pay you double your fee as long as you leave the slurs to an absolute minimum. All right? You can do three slurs an hour. That's all you can do. Right.

[Ed Larson]

Jill 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 Zabrowski]

One of the worst examples were the Freedom of Pancakes Party. That was going against anything. I mean, eggs. Yeah, 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.

[Ed Larson]

What 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They might have been correct.

[Ed Larson]

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 but Luigi.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And you know what's funny? There's. And a Luigi shall lead us each time which I. We never. No one expected.

[Ed Larson]

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 like once every like hundred years a Luigi comes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did you think that the Yoshi cycle is when everyone was talking about eating ass for like five years was at that time. You know, I wonder because there was a lot of Italian anarchists that was a huge movement in Italy.

[Ed Larson]

And we're gonna, we're gonna get to why the Italians were really big into anarchism in America here in a bit.

[Marcus Parks]

The first time I saw antifa spray painted everywhere was in Italy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, yes.

[Ed Larson]

Now the anarchists rightly surmised that capitalism and warfare are inextricably, literally linked. So to them, World War I was basically a representation of everything that was wrong with the world.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So far they're not wrong.

[Ed Larson]

No, I mean that's the thing I. With the anarchists. I agree with the points.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

It's just the method. 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 Zabrowski]

All I know is that Internet. If Internet forums are an example of a leaderless area, then we should maybe talk about anarchy on an extended way when imagine if mods had guns would do.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well that's the thing is that you shouldn't that even with in anarchy the mods are useless. You should not have mods.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But they would always say don't they in our. And isn't an anarchist groups have sort of like a communal understanding of society where they're decision makers. I don't know.

[Ed Larson]

There's like nine different times of types of anarchists.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, I know it's very complicated.

[Ed Larson]

It's extraordinarily complicated in man, you think talking with a communist is tedious?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't man.

[Ed Larson]

One night in New York I spent a night. I spent a night drinking with a communist and two anarchists and it was the most ted night of my life.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, and these are People you should just be doing drugs with.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, we were drinking. We were definitely drinking. But the more we drank, the more tedious it got.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's hard.

[Marcus Parks]

It's got to be a couple rules.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's hard. It's all rule.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it is true.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, yeah, you look bonfires and fourth of July. I mean, everyone loves it. 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 mailbombs were sent in boxes stamped, stamped Gimbel 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 Novemb, 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 Zabrowski]

That's a big plan.

[Ed Larson]

It's a huge plan. But all of these events occurred at the same time that the molasses tank was being constructed.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My bucket will continue to stand. Whether they are anarchists or communists or Nazis, my bucket will stand the test of time.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

No way.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's interesting.

[Ed Larson]

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, they are emotional, the Italians.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And spaghetti is inherently anarchic dish. You know, you can't control spaghetti.

[Ed Larson]

But in addition to their exploitation, Italians were also the most vilified group of immigrants in America in the early 20th century. 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, every 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. Gel and Usia came in with their imposing plans for a 50 foot tall molasses tank.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And the only thing you'll ever smell ever again is molasses. And that will be the smell of Boston. And now that'll be the only thing that Boston's ever known for ever again. The capital. Molasses.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, Boston baked beans. What do you think the main ingredient is?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Beans.

[Ed Larson]

Molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

First. It's beans. Where do the beans come from? Mexico.

[Ed Larson]

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 shodly 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 Zabrowski]

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. Oh, you know, at the same time. It's like. You remember when MC Hammer built the big house on top of the.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Looking down on Compton. Yeah, he did that. It's like, 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But they don't know that there they don't understand that maybe.

[Marcus Parks]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Exactly. Then they're going to start worrying, working, start understanding, oh my God, you're gonna start flipping anarchists to capitalists every day. Being like, this is what molasses can provide for you. This is the kind of future the molasses can bring to you and your families.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you ever thought about coming to work for Big Bucket?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I see your energy and I like what you do. Have you ever thought working? Have you ever thought about working in the jelly industry?

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[Henry Zabrowski]

Now.

[Ed Larson]

Despite all the setbacks Arthur P. Gel 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 13ft of molasses without incident.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, she did.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Backstrap can take 13, 19, 24, whatever. The worst. Honestly, one of the hardest afternoons I had is the one time I took 36ft. I was walking crooked for a couple of days after that one. I tell you, I put the ass in my last. You want some jerky? I have it here under my breast, nice and warm, reconstituted.

[Ed Larson]

I really want someone to do some fan art of backstrap molasses. I want to see backstrap. I want to see backstrap molasses. I want to see that realized. 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 guns. 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. 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 animals 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 Zabrowski]

Again applying a lot of planning to the anarchists.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Saying that they're very organized.

[Ed Larson]

Well, they, they were organized and they.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did plan, but it's sort of 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 where it's like Satanists are like hurting cats.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

With. With Reddit flare. Like this is what we're talking about. Like they are like, there are. It's hard to put them together.

[Marcus Parks]

I think if the anarchists planned less, they'd be more effective.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, dude. Yeah, dude. That's what the agents of chaos.

[Ed Larson]

I think they tried that. That too.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, sure.

[Ed Larson]

Anarchists kind of try anything.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's kind of cool then that way. That's cool. Yeah, I, I like them. I'd like to hang out with them. Yeah, it would be fun. To do.

[Marcus Parks]

But I am gonna go home at night.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, very much.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm not sleeping on a mat.

[Ed Larson]

I'm paying my bills, I'm paying my taxes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm still a small business owner. But at the same time. You like the energy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now, interestingly, it's actually quite difficult to tell which of the industrial accidents at munitions factories during World War I were the work of an and which were merely the result of negligence from capitalist bosses like Arthur P. Gel, for example. Four days after America declared war on Germany, 116 workers were killed in a massive explosion at the Eddys Stone 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 Zabrowski]

Cute. I didn't know you could staff a munitions factory with the cast of br. How? The gossip there must have been brutal. Oh yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Back then, the music. Munitions factories were staffed by all manner of children.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Back when kids had spines. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

They need the little fingers to get in the bullet case now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They're allergic to gluten and shit. Back in the day, kids were building guns. Kids were awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Well, the blast had originated from the pellet Room in the shrapnel Building. Sounds like the most dangerous place on Earth in 1917. Outside of the actual battle, the battlefields of World War I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Do you want to go talk to Tina and Tiffany? They're running the shrapnel midriff. Girls show up. They got the candy necklaces and the big jeans.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you in the Pellet Room today or the glass room?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm in the shrapnel area, kind of. Kidney and Brad started working there.

[Marcus Parks]

I work in screws and nails.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I work in poison gas and bitch lumps. Lumps is a whole new thing.

[Ed Larson]

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 Times. Because anytime something went wrong in a munitions factory or the bosses could always say I was anarchists. And the public for the most part would be like, all right, like, I get you.

[Marcus Parks]

So this wasn't anarchist. This is just like them not doing their job right.

[Ed Larson]

As far as anger, as far as we know, it was probably just. It was probably just an accident. It was probably just, you know, shitty conditions, you know. Things weren't safe, so on and so forth. But the corporations could always say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, we didn't fuck up. The anarchists were the ones who did this.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's super crucial. It's a great thing. And it's like. And that true, truly is an American tactic.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah. Always have that scapegoat, always have that enemy. Now, Arthur P. Jail 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. Jail was also made the tank guy at USIA from there on out. As such, Gel 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 Zabrowski]

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, 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 I have this moral impairment imperative, quote, unquote, to hire these goons.

[Marcus Parks]

I just imagine like ten dudes with rifles marching around a giant bucket. Someone's trying to put more molasses.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Someone shoot that bell. It's looking at the molasses.

[Ed Larson]

But while Joe was getting so worked up about anarchists, he wasn't paying the least bit of attention 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. Gel 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 Gel 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And that's bad. That's not good. It seems like that's good.

[Marcus Parks]

You scoop up that leaky molasses and.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You put it back to the top. Put the top of the bucket.

[Ed Larson]

Do I have to tell Everybody how to do their job here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Use other buckets and put the buckets of molasses back into the bigger bucket. You give me that gum.

[Marcus Parks]

Put it in the seam.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

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. Yeah, your molasses sucks, asshole. Shoot him down. Shoot him in the dark. Yeah, fuck you. Yeah, I'll see you in hell.

[Ed Larson]

But some of the kids, they just bring sticks to the tank.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They would.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

I better not eat all this syrup at once. I got to take it back to my wife and kids.

[Marcus Parks]

I bet every one of them lived to 100.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the ones that are like, they always. What's his name? The. The old guy that used to go talk to the old people. What's his name? Child of the.

[Marcus Parks]

George Bur.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The guy from the. The. They used to do 100. When you got to be George Willard. George Willard just showed up.

[Ed Larson]

Scott.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They're always the. These other people, they're like, yeah, I was there for the great molasses F. In 1919, I launched it from my apartment. Every day I have a glass of whiskey, one cigar, like it's my favorite type of old person.

[Ed Larson]

I spent mornings as child sitting in a molasses puddle, just eating bucket after bucket after bucket, watching my mouth.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My mother, she washed rags for the gun makers I love.

[Ed Larson]

No. 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 Zabrowski]

No, that's the tank breathing. That's the tank settling.

[Ed Larson]

Now, the leaks and vibrations and groans, they terrified the aforementioned tank supervisor's assistant. Isaac Gonzalez Gonzales, 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 Zabrowski]

Please hold dear Tank. Putting his hands against the tank, staring.

[Ed Larson]

At him like with the sheer force of will.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Please do not let this sweet death come upon the wonderful city of Boston.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Or.

[Ed Larson]

Or he'd be sent out to chase off the kids when too many began gathering around the molasses puddles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This just reminds me of whoever was Gerard depradeaux's assistant for so long. You know what I mean? Just like every day waking up every day being like, I pray to God Gerard hasn't pissed in another airplane. Tell me, Mr. Jeff, are to tell me that you didn't. You didn't attack another actress, did you? You know, filled with molasses.

[Ed Larson]

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, he had to make. He threw the pieces of steel at him.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's just Sabbath going like, you know, smoking his long cigar.

[Ed Larson]

No. Gel waved off his concerns. Gel told Gonzalez that some leaking was normal for any tank of that size.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Everything leaks. You should follow me around for a day. That tank's leaking. You should see how I'm leaking. Did you worry about your own leaking? Plug it up. That's what I say. If it's leaking, plug it up.

[Ed Larson]

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 Zabrowski]

If I was you, I'd get a couple of other buckets there. We have to fill up the main bucket. Fill those buckets up with rigatoni. Let the kids attack the buckets of ricadoni. I think it's the only way to do it. We got to distract them.

[Ed Larson]

Attack the buckets of riccatoni. And then when you do. Do you know what a Molotov cocktail is?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Then you set them on fire one by one.

[Ed Larson]

No. All at once. I'm trying. I'm trying to tell you how to do this. And efficiently, in the corporate USIA way. Gonzalez was not the only person who noticed that something was wrong with the tank.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Everyone did.

[Marcus Parks]

It moaned. The tank was screaming.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm gonna die soon.

[Ed Larson]

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. It was his fucking mo. Massage chair.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, my wife likes it, too. For you. She rubs a clitoris against it. We're all loving the new tank, Mr. Joe. Everybody's coming by rubbing their butt on the vibrating tank. Nothing's wrong with it.

[Marcus Parks]

Each one of these soldiers have come three times today.

[Ed Larson]

But Gel, meanwhile, again made a predictable, if pointedly aggressive move. Instead of addressing Isaac Gonzalez's concerns about the leaks, Gel brought in a crew to repaint the tank a rusty brown color. So has to make the tank itself indistinguishable from the molasses seeping from. It seems.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, that does work.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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. Oh, yeah, they just paint over that.

[Marcus Parks]

I remember one time our. Our fridge at Hooters was all up, and then we didn't. 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Inspection pass. That's where food was also. They're like, man of brown. Oh, you got brown streaks on it. That's the problem with streaks. Brown. You paint the whole damn thing brown. That's how you hide it right there. Look at. It's all molasses there.

[Ed Larson]

Now. This targeted you. This was the last straw for Gonzalez because he obviously knew this was pointed straight at him.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. So I'm going to go. A volunteer for World War I.

[Ed Larson]

That's exactly what he did. He's like, I would rather were. I would. Would rather die in the fields of Flanders than work for usia. For another fucking second.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I saw too many guys lose their noses and eyes for me. Does not say, I gotta be in there. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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 and because circuses are fun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You get distracted by how fun all the corpses must be having inside the circus. They're not worried about burying them.

[Marcus Parks]

You heard of a flea circus? It's a flu circus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, it's fun to do. Hey, It's a funny old joke.

[Ed Larson]

USIA and Arthur P. Gel, 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, probably subsided after the war, thereby saving dozens of lives in 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 Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

So much sense.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so funny how, like, it is just the truth. I know that we were making fun of you, but it is wild.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Ye. Like, none of it makes sense.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I didn't realize that until I was trying to tell Eddie about it on the other day. And he just kept asking questions, oh.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, it's a problem. This is the issue. Just say, I built the bucket that failed. You can just say that, but it doesn't really make sense.

[Ed Larson]

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 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 of the Kaiser. So ban alcohol.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We already beat him. Leave us alone. No, but anyway, you know, Prohibition was a massive.

[Ed Larson]

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. Gel 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. 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I promise you, when we come back next week, these people are gonna drown. They're gonna drown thickly, they're gonna drown badly, and we're gonna tell you all about it.

[Ed Larson]

More the crushing than the drowning.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Crushing and drowning.

[Ed Larson]

And I would say more suffocation than drowning.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think drowning is just a more aquatic version of suffocating.

[Ed Larson]

It is.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. It is.

[Ed Larson]

It is. But it's more suffoc. Your mouth is covered and you can't.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Aquaman drowns. Yeah, drowning widow suffocates.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So just know that. Guess. The giant bucket.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, the. The, the bucket is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that's number one.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean, technically the first death is Thomas Defratus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Honestly, no one's blaming the, the molasses, so.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it's not the molasses fault.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Do you blame the tiger? Do you blame the lion?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, sometimes.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, fine. Do you blame the alligator? Do you blame the orca?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he's just like, he's just like blaming things.

[Ed Larson]

He does, he does, like assigning blame.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All this talk about stick thicky brown liquid is really making me have to take an absolutely massive.

[Ed Larson]

Nice well. Patreon.com lastpodcast on the left. You can 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 Zabrowski]

I am my own giant Boston based bucket. You can also watch Chock Full to the Brim with Human Made Molasses.

[Ed Larson]

You know, the more jokes you make, the longer this is going to take.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I know.

[Ed Larson]

You can also watch Last Stream on the left live if you are a Patreon member, that is every Tuesday at 6pm PST. Don't forget to follow us on our socials at LP on the left on TikTok and Instagram. And don't forget to go check out all our new YouTube channels. Someplace underneath LPN Romantasy, who's the Bee? The Foreign Report, no Dogs in Space, and of course LPN TV at Large for those wonderful, wonderful programs like funhouse and HGX2 we're all coming back to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So, you know, we have a bunch announcements of also coming up of material that we are currently working on that I think you're really gonna like.

[Marcus Parks]

Trying some new.

[Ed Larson]

Got some cool coming up. And don't forget to come see us on tour. Can't wait to see y' all out there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, baby.

[Ed Larson]

Across America.

[Henry Zabrowski]

We'll see you tonight at Wise Guys in Salt Lake City. No.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, that's if they, you know, depends on who they are.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But you know, 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 Last podcast on the left dot com.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, go to Last podcast on the left dot 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. Yeah, 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.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because we can't fight StubHub. I don't know what to do about that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Stop Hop event.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All of them.

[Ed Larson]

Like all the fucking middlemen. We can't fight it. We can't do. 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 doing but performing live and we love it.

[Marcus Parks]

Absolutely.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hail sweet Satan.

[Ed Larson]

I love you. No one hanging.

[Marcus Parks]

Hail Backstrap Molest.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, hail my big ass.

[Ed Larson]

I picked up another shift Wednesdays, noon to 6.

[Henry Zabrowski]

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