Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Treacle Tears: The Boston Molasses Disaster

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

The children of North End, Boston, play in the shadow of an enormous steel tank of molasses. The thick, sticky sugar syrup is being used to make munitions for the First World War. When a worker notices dark molasses seeping from the tank he warns the company that there could be a leak. But the man in charge, Arthur Jell, has more important things to worry about: schedules to meet and profits to make. Besides, it's only sugar. How dangerous could it be? For the sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Pushkin. Boston. January 1919. Giuseppe Jantoska stands at his kitchen window, searching for his 10-year-old son. All sorts of people come and go in Boston's north end, and Giuseppe likes to keep a close eye on little Pasquale,

or Pasquilino, as he's affectionately known at home. Giuseppe doesn't speak much English. Like many of their neighbours, the Antoscas hailed from southern Italy. They're very poor. Even with Giuseppe's shifts at the Boston and Main Railroad, back-breaking work laying track, they struggle to make ends meet.

Fresh milk and meat are rareties in the Antosca house, and Giuseppe and his wife Maria worry about their six small children. Where is Pasquilino? Giuseppe surveys commercial street, a thoroughfare beneath his window that curves along the water. It's an unusually fine day for mid-January, and the harbour is bustling. Fishermen hurry to their lunch,

a plate of spaghetti at home perhaps, or a pie from Patsiale's bakery. Dock workers shout as they unload shipping crates and horse-drawn wagons hauling beer barrels mingle with peddlers' carts. Motorized trucks rattle to and from the factories that ring the north end. Giuseppe scans the elevated railroad

that swoops above commercial street and the freight trains directly beneath it. Finally, he traces the hulking storage town, that dominates the wharf. His eyes flick to a tiny figure, clad in red, and crouching in the shadow of the high steel walls. Pasquilino.

Giuseppe breathes a sigh of relief. Down on the wharf, Pasquale Antosca and his friends, Tony and Maria Dostasio, are huddling beside the enormous storage tank. 50 feet high and 90 feet wide, it's grumbled, and shudders, and its sweet, earthy scent are familiar to them.

The tank isn't designed to store diesel or grain, but of all things, a thick, dark, sugary liquid, molasses. It pools around the base of the tank, and the children like to play there, dodging stern railroad workers to scoop the sticky liquid into their pails. and hurrying home with their syrupy treasure. But today, Vasquilino doesn't feel like playing. He knows his father's watching him.

He's also very hot. Beneath his bright red knitwear, it's the second sweater his mother insisted he wear that morning. She fears him catching a cold, but the day's mild, and the extra bulk also slows him down as he gathers firewood. The tank grows, which isn't unusual.

A fresh load of the sugary substance has recently arrived from the Caribbean. Pasquilino looks up at the massive container. Fifty-foot streams of molasses seep down its sides in long, treacley tears. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Arthur P. Gell had his work It was late 1914 and had been tasked with building an enormous molasses container near Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jell was assistant treasurer at the Purity Distilling Company, part of United States Industrial Alcohol, or USIA. USAA processed molasses into alcohol for munitions like dynamite and smokeless powder. So when Europe went to war in 1914, the company had begun boosting production. Its plant in Cambridge was one of the largest in the country, but USAIA struggled to keep up with demand. It didn't have its own storage facility, so it had to source its molasses from a broker in South Boston rather than directly from the Caribbean.

This, in turn, ate into profits. To truly make hay while the sun shone, USAA needed its own tank, one that would be up and running by December the 31st, 1915. And it was decided that reliable, efficient, Arthur Jell, was the man for the job. The deadline was virtually impossible, but Jell's bosses had hinted that if he succeeded, a New York City promotion was on the cards. he was determined to give it his best shot.

As Stephen Puglio explained in his book Dark Tide, Jell had spent his professional life in a range of clerical positions. An experienced administrator, he was confident that he knew the right people. He consulted other tank manufacturers about the appropriate factor of safety for a container like this one and ordered steel plates to form the sides of the cylindrical structure. He also negotiated a lease for the perfect spot in Boston's North End. Here, steamships from the Caribbean could discharge the molasses and the sugary substance could then travel on to the Cambridge plant by railcar. Sure, the area was densely populated and there was a

children's playground right next to the proposed tank site, but Jell knew that the residents of the North End were unlikely to resist the structure. Many of them were poor immigrants from Italy's south. They didn't speak English and kept to their own tight enclave. Their political participation was scant. All the same, lease negotiations were slow. By the time Jell had secured the location, it was September 1915, and the clock was ticking. Ever resourceful, he installed electric lighting at the wharf

so that the construction crew could work through the night. But when a labourer fell inside the empty tank, Jell lost more time, so traumatised with the other workers by the dying man screams. Then a superstorm blasted Boston, and he lost a further two days. Jell couldn't afford any more embarrassing setbacks or expenses. When the time came to test the tank for leaks,

he knew that they could only fill the massive structure by tapping into the municipal water supply. This would be time-consuming and costly. So he came up with a solution. The crew ran six inches of water into the bottom of the container to just above the first joint at its base. If the first joint didn't leak, Why would the rest of them?

The tank held its six inches of water, and gel announced that it was ready. It was late December 1915. He had met his impossible deadline. Business boomed. From 1914 to 1916, USAA's net profit increased nearly ninefold. The investors were thrilled. In April 1917, the US declared war on Germany, and Jell was ready to show the managers in New York

that Boston could rise to the challenge. That month, a munitions factory in Pennsylvania, was bombed, the work of foreign employees who were angry about the war. Italian anarchists were said to be behind other similar bombings. Jell took note and increased security at the Boston Tank. A couple of weeks later, Jell ran into another complication. A man called Isaac Gonzalez burst into his Cambridge office, uninvited and unapproved.

Gonzalez was also a USIA employee, the assistant to the caretaker at the Boston tank, and he was raving about some leaks in the structure. Apparently the tank oozed gallons of molasses onto the wharf. Everyone had noticed, and children even liked to play with it. Gonzalez shoved tiny pieces of steel into Jell's hands and said that rusty flex dropped into his hair each time he entered the tank. Jell did his best to keep calm.

This man was clearly paranoid, even obsessed. molasses had a life of its own and leaks were normal, especially in a relatively new structure, and especially after a fresh shipment. Plus, gel had had the tank resealed, so he knew it was being maintained. He told Gonzalez that he needed to do a better job of keeping the neighbourhood children away from company property.

That would shut him up, he thought. It didn't shut him up. Next, Gonzalez revealed he'd been sleeping. at the tank so that he could sound the alarm should it start to fall. Gel was disturbed. Company employees should be returning home after work. The tank still stands. The tank will stand. He snapped.

Then he sent the man on his way, promising to fire him if he breathed another word of this nonsense. Yes, Arthur, Jell was a reliable, efficient man. Nothing would hinder productivity on him. a productivity on his watch, not saboteurs with bombs, and certainly not some jumped-up manual labourer. Isaac Gonzalez returned to his post. Through 1917 and 1918, other Bostonians muttered to him about the tank. The men of Engine 31 Firehouse, which stood just along the wharf, commented on the obvious leaks that streaked its sides, and the strange sounds

it made. When another local worker pressed his back against the tank, he told Isaac it felt as though the steel walls were moving, pulsing in and out with the flow of the liquid inside. Gonzalez continued his nighttime vigil. In secret, of course, he knew he couldn't speak to jail again, but in 1918 he complained to his superintendent, William White. He waited to see if his bosses would do anything.

They did. In August, a crew arrived at the tank, paint in hand. Jell had ordered them to daub the grey steel walls with a dark red brown, the colour of molasses. Gonzalez had had enough. He quit his job and joined the army. Cautionary Tales will return. Close your eyes and you can hear the entire world. Come alive.

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USA had done well out of the war in Europe, but when the armistice was signed in November 1918, it faced a steep fall in profits. Assistant Treasurer Arthur Gel knew all too well that the investors wouldn't be happy. But all was not lost, as the United States looked to ratify the Asian, Amendment of the Constitution.

USIA spotted a slim window of opportunity. The prohibition of the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors wouldn't actually go into effect for another year, during which time there would surely be a spike in alcohol sales. USAIA resolved to repurpose its distilleries for the liquor industry. it would once again make hay while the sun shone. On January the 12th, 1919, a ship cruised into Boston Harbour with 1.3 million gallons of molasses.

The dark, viscous liquid had been warmed to facilitate its transfer and it flowed easily into the tank. By next morning, the container was very very, nearly full. It held 2.3 million gallons of the sticky substance, weighing roughly 26 million pounds. The weather in Boston had been bitterly cold, and when the warm, free-flowing molasses topped up the colder, thicker liquid already in the tank, something unexpected happened. The introduction of all that additional heat accelerated a fermentation process, producing carbon dioxide. The gas had nowhere to go,

and it began to push against the steel walls of the tank. USAIA's only responsibility, as the company saw it, was to maximise profit. Somehow that always seemed to mean profit now rather than profit later. And so Arthur Gel prioritised speed, growth and quarterly returns. If that sounds familiar, it could be because Silicon Valley has become famous or infamous for a similar corporate logic. Facebook's motto was Move Fast and Break Things,

and it became the Tech World's battle cry. A Move Fast and Break Things culture can encourage innovative. and banish fear of mistakes. After all, errors are par for the course, especially when you're making something new. And while slow and steady can bring small, consistent benefits to a business, throwing caution to the wind, might generate a single, massive payoff. But when a corporation values efficiency and growth above all else, there can be other consequences. Environmental costs, community welfare, and workers' rights fall by the wayside. Safeguards are eroded, accountability dissolves, and harm is written off as a cost of doing business.

January the 15th, 1919, is a cloudy day in Boston, but unusually mild. The weather has been punishingly cold of late, and the people of the North End take advantage at the slight thaw. At lunchtime, the harbour is a buzz. Workers eat their lunch on front steps and chatter on sidewalks. The mood is mellow. Tank Superintendent William White has just received a phone call from his wife. She has her eye on a new dress and wants to go shopping together. It'll be a quiet workday now that the new load of molasses has been safely delivered and White sees No reason not to spoil her. Just before midday, he leaves his post.

If he'd lingered, he might have noticed Pasquale Antosca and the Dostasio children sneaking onto the war to collect firewood. Instead, a railroad worker begins scolding Maria Dostasio. You shouldn't be here, he chides. This isn't a playground. Just along the war, the men of the engine. in 31 Firehouse are playing whist on their lunch break, smoking their pipes and mocking Babe Ruth's ridiculous demands for a pay rise.

The baseball star would never survive on a firefighter's wage, they scoff. 56-year-old John Barry, a stone cutter for the city of Boston Street Department, has joined them from his workshop next door. Burly and muscular, Barry is physically formidable. But his friends at the firehouse know that his ten children are never far from his thoughts. What was that? It sounded like thunder. One of the firefighters scrambles to a window. His face darkens with fear.

Oh my God! He cries, run! At his kitchen window, Giuseppe Yantoska jumps back in horror. He's been following his Pasquilino as he gathers firewood. tracing that bright red sweater as it bobs along the grey wharf. But something has just swallowed the little boy. A kind of dark, gleaming wave. Pushing forwards, tearing towards Commercial Street. The kitchen growls and shakes, and before he can move,

Giuseppe's been thrown to the floor. He hits his head. Everything goes back. At a callbox on Commercial Street, policeman Frank McManus is making a routine report to headquarters. That chilling sound. Somewhere between a thunderclap and a sickening scrape of metal makes him turn.

Receiver still to his mouth. He can't quite believe what he's seeing, but he manages to utter a few shocked words to the dispatcher. Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately. There's a wave of molasses coming down commercial street. What follows is the stuff of nightmares. The tank has burst clean open, rivets screaming through the air like shrapnel. A worker, trapped in the railroad freight office, saw the tank's steel walls fly into other buildings,

which crumpled like eggs. 2.3 million gallons of molasses has rushed onto the wharf. A syrupy tsunami, 35 feet high, 160 feet wide and travelling at 35 miles per hour. It snuffs out the daylight and rents the firehouse from its foundations. On Commercial Street, in the dining room of his second floor apartment, Robert Burnett, He is a swish like the brushing of wind. A shadow falls across the room, and he hurries to the window. A great black wave is bearing down on the house. Burnett snatches at his front door,

but the wave is already surging up the stairs in the hallway. He slams the door and runs for the roof. The wall of molasses rebounds off buildings, shattering windows and pulver on. brickwork. It twists and snaps the steel girders of an elevated railroad, obliterating the track for more than a hundred feet. Horses, carts and motor trucks are overturned. Children and adults vanish from a treacherdly deluge. Stonecutter John Barry lies in total darkness, wood and metal crushing his back. It's agony. He can barely breathe.

When the wave of molasses ripped the firehouse off its foundations, the building collapsed, and the treacherous syrup seeped through the debris. Barry is trapped, pinned face down, one cheek grinding into molasses. Only his left arm is free, and he clears the vile liquid from his face as best he can. Barry tries to call out, to scream, but his voice is thin and reading. He imagines foul rats scuttling over his body, burrowing their yellow teeth into his flesh. I'm going to die here, he thinks. He wonders, what will become of his ten children?

On his kitchen floor, Giuseppe Yantoska comes to. His wife Maria is crying in the corner of the room. One of their daughters is comforting her. Bruised, stunned, Giuseppe pulls himself up and goes shakily to the front door. He will find Pasquilino if it kills him. Cautionary tales will be back shortly. Five months, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence.

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IHeart Radio. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming. music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. In the first moments of the disaster, the molasses flowed through the streets of Boston

like water, or perhaps like ketchup being jiggled out of a bottle. Like ketchup, molasses flows freely when being violently shaken, and exploding out of a high-pressure tank is certainly a violent movement. But when molasses cools, it thickens. On January the 15th, the temperature in Boston had climbed a little, but the winter air was still much cooler than the syrupy liquid. And as it flowed out of the tank and through the streets, it began to slow and congeal.

Like quicksand, it tracked its victims. As the Boston Post explained, Snared in its flood was to be stifled. Once it smeared a head, human or animal, there was no coughing off the sticky mass. To attempt to wipe it with hands was to make it worse. It plugged the nostrils almost airtight. Horses thrashed around in the gloomy mass,

like so many flies on sticky flypaper. They couldn't be freed and were shot dead. At a local relief station, nurses and orderlies streaked with molasses treated the injured. They carried patients on sticky stretches, cut away clothing and cleaned gaping wounds. Anguished Bostonians clamoured to know if their missing relatives were there. A lucky few were relatively unscathed.

Five-year-old Albert Janshi had been picked up by the wave and drenched in molasses but was miraculously unhurt. Once it had been cleaned up and had something to eat, he was allowed to return home. Others were taken straight to the local morgue. In the ruins of the firehouse, John Barry's back, Seared with pain, despite his incredible strength, he couldn't move. He couldn't see anything either. It was pitch black. But he could hear something. With the shred of energy he had left, he strained his ears. There it was again. A man's voice. He wasn't alone down here. His friends were imprisoned with him in the debris. And then John Barry heard something else,

the unmistakable sound of sores on wood and metal yielding to flame. Someone knew they were down there. Someone was coming to get them. Giuseppe Yantoska spent hours searching for Pasquilino, but to no avail. Maria Dostasio had been found. She'd been right.

in the path of the monstrous wave and had suffocated immediately. But her brother Tony had survived. He had been thrown against a lamppost and suffered a fractured skull, but a firefighter had managed to pull him from the morass before he drowned. Could Giuseppe's boy have been rescued? Had he been swept into the harbour? Or perhaps he was trapped beneath the debris on the wharf? In broken English, Giuseppe

frantically questioned the dazed and injured along commercial street. But no one had seen a little boy in a red sweater. Firefighters had rallied to reach their trapped colleagues from Engine 31. Chopping and digging through the wreckage was perilous work. With every move they made, the remains of the building shifted around them. They found some of their fellows in time, but 34-year-old father of three, George Leahy, was dragged from the wreckage dead. After three hours and as many injections of morphine into his back,

John Barry heard a saw slicing away at the wood near his head. It was getting closer and closer. And then, quite suddenly, it stopped. And he felt the great weight be heaved from his back. The exhausted stone cutter was lifted onto a stretch, and rushed to hospital. When his stricken daughters reached the ward, they didn't recognize him.

Their powerful father had vanished. In his place was a fragile old man. Arthur Jell visited the waterfront. He was aghast at the devastation, but kept calm. There would be a plausible explanation for the disaster, one that absolved USIA and himself of any responsibility. In the days that followed the flood, the cleanup operation began. Businesses had been decimated,

and the harbour police picked all sorts of objects out of the water, rolls of cloth, barrels of ale, tubs of lard. Firemen spread sand on the pavements and dispersed the tenacious molasses with jets of salt. water. On January the 17th, USIA issued a statement. The company knew beyond question that the tank was not weak. This calamity was the work of an outside influence. It was another three days before Giuseppe and Maria Yantoska learned the fate of their son. Rescue workers pulled the body of a little boy in a red sweater from the wreckage, a railroad car. A railroad car.

carried 50 feet by the wave had crushed him into a wall. Giuseppe was asked to identify the child. He was slicked with molasses and his face was horribly disfigured. Weeping, Giuseppe lifted his red sweater and saw a second sweater underneath. His heart-breaking, he gathered Pasquilino

tiny body in his arms and hugged him close. 150 people were injured in the molasses flood and 21 people lost their lives. It was months before all the bodies were recovered. At the inquest into the disaster, Judge Wilfred Bolster rebuked USIA. It was also scathing about the Boston Buildings Department. The city had bypassed the proper permit process.

procedures. No one in the building's department had been qualified to assess whether the steel structure was fit for purpose, and they'd accepted the paper design simply because it bore the name of a civil engineer. This single accident has cost more in material damage than all the supposed economies in the building department. Laws are cheap of passage, costly of enforcement. They do not execute themselves, Bolster declared. Despite Judge Bolster's rebuke, a grand jury found that

there was insufficient evidence to return an indictment of manslaughter. The people of Boston were appalled. USIA was getting away with it. A group of Bostonians prepared to sue the company. If nobody would go to jail for their carelessness, they could at least be made to pay a price,

but USIA had some tricks up its sleeve. Today it's generally believed that the Boston molasses disaster was the result of brittle fracture, the sudden catastrophic failure of the tank structure due to poor design. To withstand the strains they would experience, the tank walls needed to be at least twice as thick. Over time, as the tank was repeatedly emptied and refilled, the steel fatigued.

The fatal fracture probably began as a circular hatch at the base of the tank. Engineers balance efficiency, resource allocation and safety. Arthur Jell, who oversaw the tank's rapid construction, was a skilled administrator, but he wasn't an engineer. His focus wasn't the complex harmony of function and long-term public safety, but short-term profit. USIA regarded the residents of Boston's North End, not as vulnerable individuals worthy of dignity,

but as factors in a business model. The company had taken advantage of a power imbalance, knowing that the Italian Americans who lived near the harbour were unlikely to resist the building of the molasses tank. USIA also knew that people were suspicious of Italian Americans, and in its next move it sought to capitalize on that fear. In the wake of the disaster, 119 Bostonians sued USIA, arguing that the great vat of molasses had been structurally deficient

and built without proper safeguards. Former caretaker Isaac Gonzalez, who'd warned after jail about the tank and been dismissed, took the stand and told of how molasses had oozed incessantly through the tank's riveted joins. John Barry, his hair now white from the stress of his ordeal, also testified. He could no longer work as a stone cutter because he couldn't stand up straight. My back hurts all the time, he said. It's as though my spine is breaking.

The doctor says there's no cure. Giuseppe Yantoska described the earth-shattering moment his Pasquilino was engulfed by a dark wave. USIA countered that Pasquale Yantoska shouldn't have been there at all. A company is under no obligation to make its premises safe for trespasses, snarled one defence attorney. USAIA held that at lunchtime on January the 15th 1919, unknown anarchists, probably Italian, had dropped a bomb in the tank. The company had spent more than $50,000 on expert witnesses to support its claims. It continued to take this line, even after a professor from MIT testified that the tank had been of insufficient thickness.

to withstand the pressure of the molasses inside. Auditor Hugh Ogden listened to nearly a thousand witnesses and heard over 20,000 pages of testimony. The proceedings took five years, but in the end, he rejected USIA's claims of sabotage. I cannot help feeling that a proper regard for the appalling possibility of damage to persons and persons, property contained in the tank in case of accident, demanded a higher standard of care in

inspection from those in authority, Ogden declared. He recommended that the plaintiffs receive damages. Her private agreement was reached, and in 1925, USAA took a charge against profits of $628,000 due to the Boston Tank accident, about $11.5 million today. That's not nothing, but split between 119 traumatised and grievously injured plaintiffs,

it's also not very much. USIA closed its Cambridge plant and fired the people that worked there, But Arthur P. Jell seems to have got his New York City promotion. He took the vice-presidency at another USIA subsidiary, the American Solvents and Chemical Association. Jell remained a company man through and through. In 1931, he was named in a federal grand jury indictment against USIA

for violating prohibition laws. He died in 1963, at the Ripeauld Air. age of 84, survived by his wife, daughter and four grandchildren. Isaac Gonzalez had warned Jell about the tank, and when his warnings had been repeatedly ignored, he'd quit and joined the army. After the war, he faced yet another test of his courage. He scaled a burning building to rescue a woman and her three small children, wrapping them in bedclothes and carrying them out. When they were safe, he returned to the blazing apartment

just in case anyone had been left behind. The fire cut his exit off, and he had to jump to safety from an upper window. Gonzalez was a hero. But it's hard not to wander if his time at the molasses tank might have left him with some survivor's guilt. If only Arthur Jell had found,

felt the same sense of responsibility. The key source for this episode of Cautionary Tales is Dark Tide, the great Boston molasses flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at tim Harford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and a real design, and a real.

original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Keiraposey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.

It really makes a difference to us. And if you want to hear the show, add free and get access to exclusive content, sign up to the Cautionary Club. That is over at patreon.com slash cautionary club. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.