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Two mornings later, the huge tanker arrived in Boston and disgorged her molasses cargo smoothly, filling the tank to a level of about thirteen feet.

  Nearly a year of frustration had ended. Arthur Jell had met his impossible deadline and USIA was in business on the Boston waterfront.

  From the first day of the tank’s completion, USIA paid the Boston Police Department for a policeman to be on a “fixed post” at the tank. Jell and USIA were taking no chances. Anarchists, who were militant radicals who opposed the war, hated government, and loathed capitalism—especially those large American corporations that fed the war effort—were making their presence known across the country with incendiary speeches, audacious threats, and violent activities.

  During November and December of 1915, there were suspicious explosions and fires at strategic manufacturing plants across the country. Fire destroyed the Bethlehem Steel Works in Pennsylvania, which was producing guns for the Allies. An explosion rocked the du Pont Powder Mill in Wilmington, Delaware, killing thirty men and injuring five. A man was arrested in Pittsburgh after threatening both to blow up the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company plant and assassinate President Woodrow Wilson. Guards were doubled at principal government buildings in Washington, D.C., including the State, War, and Navy departments after numerous bomb threats and a bomb explosion destroyed a room in the Capitol in the summer of 1915. Throughout 1914 and 1915, a rash of bombings shocked New York City. In one brazen attempt, a bomb was placed in the courtroom beneath the seat of magistrate John L. Campbell, who had convicted and sentenced an anarchist for inciting a riot. The judge was about to ascend to the bench when the bomb was discovered and disarmed.

  At the start of 1916, Jell and other Bostonians saw the danger creep closer to home. On New Year’s morning, a Massachusetts State House night watchman making his rounds discovered a wicker suitcase tied to the doorknob of the sergeant-at-arms’ office. Suspicious, he called state police to investigate. They discovered a pipe inside the suitcase filled with several sticks of dynamite—a faulty fuse had prevented the bomb from exploding. On the morning of January 2, an explosion rocked the New England Manufacturing Company in the Boston suburb of Woburn. Rumors quickly circulated that the company had received a letter two weeks before threatening to blow up or set fire to the plant unless it stopped producing goods and shipping them overseas to the warring nations in Europe.

  Beyond these incidents, Boston Police had issued warnings that Boston’s North End was fast becoming the headquarters for some of the leading Italian anarchists in America, who preached the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and the capitalist economic system.

  Jell feared that because the USIA Cambridge factory converted molasses into industrial alcohol for munitions, the Commercial Street molasses tank could be an inviting target for anarchists or others who opposed the war in Europe. After the prolonged delay in securing a location for the tank, the company had lost precious time and significant revenue. USIA’s bottom line would be strained severely if the North End tank were damaged in any way—or, worse, destroyed.

  Arthur Jell considered twenty-four-hour police protection a worthwhile investment.

  Boston, February 1916

  His first day on the job, Isaac Gonzales watched and listened intently as his new boss, William White, led him around the tank property and explained the logistical operations involved in getting molasses from the waterfront to USIA’s manufacturing plant in East Cambridge. He learned how the ten-inch-wide discharge hose from the molasses tankers was to be bolted to the permanent pipeline on the wharf using two flanges with a gasket in between. He learned how to control the flow of molasses into the 220-foot main intake pipe that traveled from the wharf to the tank to prevent clogging. He learned how to climb down into the tank when it was being filled to be sure the intake pipe opening remained clear. And he also learned to discharge molasses from the big tank to the auxiliary tank and then into the railcars when orders came in, so the trains could transport the thick liquid to the Cambridge distilling plant.

  Isaac felt at home around ships, the sea, and molasses. Born in Puerto Rico, he spent four years as a seaman and often traveled back and forth between his home island and Cuba to load molasses for the trip north. He settled in the United States after he was discharged from his ship in Baltimore, making his way to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a messenger for a lawyer specializing in international law, and later, for the U.S. attorney general’s office as an engine repairman at a D.C. office building. In 1910 he moved to Boston, where he worked at a series of laborer’s jobs before joining Purity/USIA. Like many others during the recession of 1913 and 1914, Isaac had been down on his luck. He was living at the Boston YMCA when staff members told him about this job, and he was determined to succeed.

  It was freezing when Isaac arrived at the Commercial Street dock early in the morning, and the deep cold continued into the midafternoon. The wind off the harbor slashed at his face and tossed cold, gray seawater onto the wharf. Isaac wore a heavy wool coat, a knit hat pulled low over his ears, thick gloves, and heavy work boots. White asked him to attach the hose into place, which forced him to remove the gloves to get a grip on the flanges, the gasket, and the nuts and bolts. Isaac made a note to wear thinner gloves the next day, cold or not.

  Looking up at the tank, Isaac saw that thick molasses was seeping from between many seams, congealing around the rivet lines and spreading slowly downward and outward. It did not flow rapidly down the sides of the tank because of the cold—molasses never really froze, but Isaac knew it developed the consistency of heavy pudding in frigid temperatures. More troubling than the seeping, though, were the noises that came from inside the tank. He heard low rumbles over the wind, like distant rolls of thunder.

  Isaac knew the sound that molasses made as it was fermenting, “boiling” as he called it, a phenomenon that became even more pronounced with dramatic temperature changes. But this sound seemed different to Isaac. Maybe it was the way the wind snapped and whistled as it bounced off the tank’s walls. Maybe it was something else. But the rumbling noises in the tank made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. It was as though the giant steel container was alive and he was hearing the low growl of an angry animal.

  President Woodrow Wilson, speaking on February 1, 1916, from the rear platform of a train at whistlestops throughout Iowa, addressed thousands of Midwesterners who braved subzero temperatures, waved American flags, and listened intently to his plan to keep the United States out of the European war. He insisted that the best way to accomplish this was for the people and Congress to support his national defense preparedness program, which involved increased munitions production for the purpose of shipping arms to friendly nations overseas. A well-supplied England and France would lessen the need for U.S. intervention.

  Munitions production was good for the U.S. economy, too. In fact, it had been the astounding growth of this sector throughout 1915 that had rescued America from economic recessions in 1913 and 1914.

  Wilson’s biggest challenge was convincing Iowans and the country that munitions manufacturers were not influencing his policy decisions. Wilson told a crowd of fifteen thousand people in Davenport: “It seems to be supposed that a small body of men, who have a chance to make money out of the manufacture of munitions, have something to do with the policy of the government of the United States. I have yet to discover any such influence.” The government, Wilson said, would control the supply and prices of munitions, “and prevent any undue profit to anybody.”

  Wilson, in part, was responding to a so-called “monster petition,” signed by more than a million people, that had been delivered to the Senate and called for an embargo on arms and ammunition production and exports from the United States to warring nations. The petition consisted of a thousand rolls of paper—each tied in red, white, and blue ribbon—that reportedly would stretch more than fifteen miles if the unrolled sheets were laid end to end.

  The petitioners were misg
uided, Wilson said. Defense preparedness at home and assistance to friendly nations abroad were the most effective ways for the United States to exert its influence to end the war. “Do you want the situation to be such that all the president can do is to write messages and utter words of protest?” he asked the crowd. “If these breaches of international law should touch the very honor of the United States, do you wish to do something about it? America can not be an ostrich with its head in the sand.”

  For Arthur Jell and U.S. Industrial Alcohol, the president’s message was important and welcomed. It meant, most likely, that munitions production, already booming, would continue to increase. Even with government oversight of production, pricing, and profits, this was good news indeed.

  Later in February, Jell formally acknowledged Hammond Iron Works’ efforts to complete the tank on time, writing, in part: “We take this opportunity of expressing our appreciation of the manner in which you rushed this work, as by completing the tank at the time you did, we saved a considerable amount of storage charges. We feel that considerable credit is due to your foreman and the men under him for the assistance they rendered in hurrying the work forward …”

  TWO

  NEIGHBORHOOD WEEPING

  Boston, Wednesday, March 15, 1916; 4:30 a.m.

  Martin Clougherty locked the heavy wooden front door of the Pen and Pencil Club in Dock Square and started home in the early morning chill. Another good night, especially for a Tuesday. The club was a waterfront gathering spot for Boston newspaper reporters, and Martin made sure that in addition to an ample supply of liquor, his establishment had the appropriate accoutrements to satisfy his clientele: a billiard room, a recreation room, and a library with overstuffed chairs so the conversation and debate flowed as freely as the whiskey. Martin took good care of his customers, and with their regular patronage of the Pen and Pencil, they were taking good care of him.

  For the past three years, he had owned the club with two other partners, but finally in January, Martin had scraped together enough money to buy the Pen and Pencil outright. A risk worth taking; since the beginning of the war in Europe in 1914, the club had been hopping every night. Newspapermen loved nothing more than to enjoy a few drinks and smokes when there was important news to discuss and debate. Each night, amid the clink of glasses and the swirl of haze from thick cigars, Martin listened to the city’s top reporters argue about German aggression, the future of Europe, and the role the United States should play in the European war. The heartier the conversation, the more his customers ate and drank, and, particularly since the sinking of the Lusitania last year, Martin could not imagine livelier banter taking place anywhere else in the city. His patrons imbibed and swapped barbs until he closed the bar at 2 A.M., which meant that Martin could not begin cleaning and sweeping in earnest until closer to 3 A.M., when the last of them vacated the Pen and Pencil Club.

  Walking home now along Atlantic Avenue, he heard the clip-clop sound of a single-horse wagon echoing a short distance away, most likely delivering fresh fruit or vegetables to the pushcart peddlers in Haymarket, the city’s busiest produce district. It was still dark, but when he glanced out at Boston Harbor he could discern the faintest hint of pink brushed low across the eastern sky. In a few hours, sunlight would sparkle off the gray-green water, but he loved this time of the day best, just before dawn. He loved the stillness of the city’s waterfront, the odd incongruity of his day ending while most of the city’s working men were just beginning theirs, the immense satisfaction he felt from another successful night at the club.

  Martin knew the Pen and Pencil Club represented an enormous opportunity, a liberating opportunity, for him and his family. At the age of thirty-six, he lived with and supported his widowed mother, Bridget, his sister Teresa, and his feeble-minded brother, Stephen, plus two boarders, in a three-story wooden house at 534 Commercial Street, on the corner of Copp’s Hill Terrace. The family had lived there for nine years, and while it had served them well after Martin’s father passed away, it was time to look elsewhere for a more suitable home. The boxy house was neat, clean, and modernized with a new plumbing and gas system that he had installed himself, but it sat directly across the street from what had become Boston’s busiest and noisiest center of commerce—the Commercial Street wharf and the North End Paving Yard.

  All day long, stevedores shouted as they unloaded ships, and horse-drawn wagons and motorized trucks clattered onto the wharf to deliver goods that would be shipped across the world. Sometimes the cargo would be live animals, pigs or chickens, and squealing would fill the air, punctuated with the screeching of seagulls overhead. From the paving yard came the sounds of the stonecutters splitting rock to be used in the construction of subway platforms and sidewalks across the city, and the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer at the adjacent city stables, ensuring that the city-owned horses were properly shod. Adjacent to the Clougherty house was a poultry slaughterhouse, which the Italians in the neighborhood would visit early to select fresh chickens for their evening meal. The incessant clucking and squawking from inside, muffled by the wooden walls of the building, reminded Martin of the steady din of debate that took place inside his club.

  The worst of the noise, though, came from the trains. Locomotives hauled boxcars and tank cars along Commercial Street in front of the Clougherty house, groaning as they turned onto the spur track that led to the wharf. Directly above Commercial Street, the Boston Elevated Railroad passenger trains traveled between North Station and South Station, every seven minutes all day long. Martin considered it a minor miracle that he was able to get any sleep at all during the day. When he lay his head on his pillow, he was no more than thirty feet from the trains and eighty feet from the interminable wharf racket that began before 7 A.M. and continued for the next twelve hours, every working day.

  The noise was only part of the problem. Martin hated the smell and the dirt and the darkness, too. The coppery stench of blood from the slaughterhouse mixed with the pungent odor of manure from the horse stables could make his eyes water if the wind was blowing right. And Martin hated to watch his sixty-three-year-old mother hang wet laundry out to dry on the front porch, only to see her white linens coated with a thin layer of soot a few moments later, as fine black dust from the street and the trains clung leech-like to the damp fabric. Each day when he climbed into bed, he crawled between sheets gritty with Commercial Street dirt.

  But the darkness was the worst. His mother woke at 5 A.M. each morning to prepare breakfast and begin her household chores, but she never got a real chance to see the sun rise over the harbor. For years, the overhead train trestle blocked most of the light, and now, within the last few months, the five-story steel monstrosity that contained millions of gallons of molasses snuffed out the rest of the morning sun. Prior to the tank’s completion two months ago, Martin could look out the kitchen window and glimpse patches of ocean between the support girders of the overhead train trestle. Now, when he looked out that same window, he had a full frontal view of the gray molasses tank.

  All of this made Martin ready to move his mother and siblings somewhere else. It had been their home for nine years, but the pace of activity at the Commercial Street wharf had made living conditions close to intolerable. Besides, the neighborhood had changed so much that it didn’t even feel like home anymore. Most of the Irish were gone. The few that were left huddled in small pockets near Battery Street and Salutation Street along the waterfront, or near Thacher and Endicott streets on the northern side of the neighborhood facing Charlestown. The Italians had virtually taken over the North End, and while Martin had never encountered any problems with them, he had to admit their bizarre customs and strange language were unsettling. His mother, who had emigrated from Ireland and whose brogue was as heavy today as it was when she arrived forty years ago, had told him many times that living among the Italians made her feel as though she were the foreigner.

  Martin thought he would like to move to Quincy or Revere, somewhere cl
ose enough to give him easy access to the city, the club, and his friends, but far enough removed to enjoy occasional peace and quiet. He had seen advertisements for homes costing between $2,000 and $3,000 that were large and comfortable enough for his family. He had been working hard to save while paying all of the Clougherty household bills. A powerfully built and athletic man, he had once been a club boxer, and now was a boxing referee. He worked bouts between Irish fighters or Irish and Italian fighters (the Italians usually changed their names to Irish names to attract the predominately Irish crowd that patronized boxing matches), and the income he received had supplemented the money he and his partners had made at the Pen and Pencil Club. Now that he owned the club, he believed he could accelerate his timetable for moving out of the neighborhood—perhaps within three years.

  It was nearly 5 A.M. when Martin approached his house. He had made the mile-and-a-half walk at a brisk but unhurried pace, savoring the early morning silence. He paused on the top step. Wharf deliveries had not yet begun. Boat traffic was still. No trains moved. The horses were asleep in the city stables. This was how quiet it would be all the time once he moved out of the city. He inhaled deeply; the strange combination of horse dung and seawater and molasses hung on the damp air, an oddly pleasant mixture at this hour. The early-morning stillness made everything better. He nudged the door open and stepped inside, hoping sleep would come before the Commercial Street waterfront awakened and interrupted his dreams.

  Boston, Later That Morning

  Thirty-four-year-old Boston firefighter George Layhe stepped off the ferryboat from East Boston and onto the Commercial Street dock. The ferry had fought the late winter Atlantic chop all the way across the inner harbor, and the morning papers had forecast cold rain or snow, but today neither turbulent water nor inclement weather could dampen his spirits. Today was his fifth anniversary as a member of the Boston Fire Department, and his knowledge of marine engineering and boats made him one of the most valuable members of his company. His latest pay raise had brought him up to $1,400 per year, and save for a three-day suspension for fighting with a hoseman one night in 1913, his record was unblemished, and he had the full respect of his superiors and colleagues. His deputy chief, Edward Shallow, would say later that Layhe was a “strong, able fellow, in good condition, who attended to his duties strictly, all the time.”