A-Infos (en) US, Boston, Anarchist journal - BAAM #17 The Great Molasses Flood: 90 Year Anniversary by Adrienne

You may have heard the punchline: 2.3 million gallons of molasses in waves 15-40 feet high 
traveling at 35 miles an hour flooded Boston's North End in January 1919. Untold numbers of horses, 
dogs and rats were smothered, 150 people were injured, 21 working people and children were killed 
while wooden houses, a brick fire station and the elevated rail were destroyed. Surreal, bizarre, 
humorous to many, the Boston Molasses Flood is among the less remembered disasters. The event is 
recalled by the infamous Boston Duck Tours, who even have a boat named Molly Molasses, while its 
site on Commercial Street is marked by nothing more than a small plaque in Langone Park.
Why on earth was there a giant molasses tank in a densely populated urban area? After all, this is 
back when the North End was home to Italian workers instead of Italian restaurants.
With its geographic Photo depicting the af traits strategically lasses flood.
Photo by  advantageous for business, the
United States Industrial Alcohol company
chose a waterfront location in the North End
to construct its 50 foot high molasses tank in
December 1915. The War to End All Wars
was raging overseas and the war machine
demanded the distillation of molasses into
munitions to fight it. With hard deadlines in
place, zoning restrictions and safety regula-
tions were overlooked and bypassed to com-
plete the tank in a hurry. For the next three
years, the tank would groan and leak epic
amounts of molasses. Dire warnings from
USIA's employees went unheeded, retalia-
tory actions were threatened for the issuers of
such warnings, and the tank was even painted
brown to obscure the leaks rather than fix the
problems. Thus was the tank explosion an
entirely preventable disaster.
    As our readers will surely find interesting,
in the court battle that followed, USIA unsuc-
cessfully blamed the explosion not on its own
malefactions, but on anarchists. Militant labor
radicals had, after all, been targeting various
components of the war machine worldwide.
Regrettably, the only book-length treatment
of the subject of the molasses flood is Dark
Tide, from Beacon Press in 2003, written by
a newspaper journalist, rather than a trained
historian. Stephen Puleo's research on radi-
calism can most gently be described as slop-
py. A representative example of his shoddy
grasp on radicalism: he's convinced that IWW
stands for International Workers of the
World, a devastatingly embarrassing
mistake he repeats in The Boston Italians,
published four years later. While decon-
textualizing, distorting, omitting and not
looking hard enough for readily available
information on anarchists and anarchism, Puleo emulates
a fic tional narrative replete with heroes and
villains. I needn't tell you that anarchists are
his villains, whose motives and actions are
not given anywhere near the same consider-
ation as those of his other characters.
    Having just passed the 90th anniversary of
this catastrophe, I can't help but wonder if
there's a lesson to be learned in allowing po-
tentially cataclysmic and heavily under-regu-
lated projects driven by militarism and greed
to be erected in our densely populated urban
areas. *cough, BU Biolab, cough* Hmm ...
    Anyway, pick up Dark Tide, but read it with
a critical eye, as you surely read all things.
Don't forget to laugh your ass off on page
233 where Puleo writes, `With a few isolated
exceptions, the anarchist movement ... died
with [Sacco and Vanzetti].'
_________________________________________
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