initially viewed Wilson’s inauguration and liberal policies with apprehension.
“America was already well advanced on the road to war, and she was not to be checked by the weak barriers of neutral obligations,” historian Charles Tansill wrote in 1938.
Nor was her munitions industry to be checked.
Italian immigrants in the North End
had
remained silent when the USIA molasses tank was built, and afterward, once it started to leak. Realistically, though, even if they had the political strength to speak as one, by the middle of 1916, their voices likely would have been drowned out by the roar of the munitions industry juggernaut.
Boston, Early June 1916
Patrick Kenneally, a boilermaker by trade, sat on a rigging chair suspended twenty feet above the ground, wiping away dark molasses that leaked from the tank’s seams. The chair hung suspended from ropes that were fastened to the top of the tank, and guidelines dropped to the ground to allow Kenneally’s partner to move the rigging apparatus around the tank once he signaled down that he had finished working on one section of the steel wall.
Kenneally worked with a soft rag, a light caulking tool, and a hand hammer. After wiping away the molasses, he would use his tools to flatten the steel on each side of the leaky seam to push it closer together, and then press the steel to seal the leaks.
This was his third day at the Commercial Street tank. They had begun their work on ladders, caulked as high as they could, and then staged the rigging chair to reach the spots that were further up the tank. Kenneally was unaccustomed to working so far above the ground. When he caulked boilers to make them watertight, his work was most often done in a shop. He knew from his decade of experience as a boilermaker that it wasn’t unusual for a newly constructed tank to weep. Although you did what you could to ensure that a new tank was watertight from the beginning, you never really knew whether it would leak until you filled it with water and watched.
What struck him about this tank was that some of the leaks, especially on the harbor side, started high where the walls met the conical-shaped steel cover and seeped molasses all the way to the bottom. They created a series of brackish, fifty-foot streams that meandered to the ground and pooled around the base of the tank.
This didn’t seem right. This tank was doing a lot more than weeping, Patrick Kenneally thought.
It was crying—long, thick tears of brown molasses.
USIA Facility, Brooklyn, New York, June 24, 1916
Millard Fillmore Cook, Jr. assumed the unsigned letter was a hoax. He never actually expected to find a bomb.
Since 1912, when he had become supervisor of USIA’s Brooklyn facility, Cook had operated the large plant expertly, supervising molasses shipments into the five tanks on the site and managing a hundred men in the industrial alcohol distillery on the same property. The tanks were nowhere near as large as the company’s new Boston tank; Cook was responsible for two 630,000-gallon tanks, two 180,000-gallon tanks, and one tank that held approximately 140,000 gallons of molasses. Cook also was under pressure to meet production quotas for the plant’s big customers, the du Pont Powder Company and the Hercules Powder Company. USIA considered Cook one of its best plant managers. This supervisor, whose parents had named him after the thirteenth president of the United States, never seemed to get rattled, even when the plant added a third shift to accommodate the demand for industrial alcohol production after war began in Europe in 1914.
Now, though, Millard Fillmore Cook
was
rattled. The package the policeman had given him was about five inches wide and eight inches long, wrapped in thick paper, and carefully tied and knotted with cord. From the end of the package extended a three-inch-long fuse that had, thankfully, malfunctioned and fizzled out before it burned down to the three sticks of dynamite wrapped
“America was already well advanced on the road to war, and she was not to be checked by the weak barriers of neutral obligations,” historian Charles Tansill wrote in 1938.
Nor was her munitions industry to be checked.
Italian immigrants in the North End
had
remained silent when the USIA molasses tank was built, and afterward, once it started to leak. Realistically, though, even if they had the political strength to speak as one, by the middle of 1916, their voices likely would have been drowned out by the roar of the munitions industry juggernaut.
Boston, Early June 1916
Patrick Kenneally, a boilermaker by trade, sat on a rigging chair suspended twenty feet above the ground, wiping away dark molasses that leaked from the tank’s seams. The chair hung suspended from ropes that were fastened to the top of the tank, and guidelines dropped to the ground to allow Kenneally’s partner to move the rigging apparatus around the tank once he signaled down that he had finished working on one section of the steel wall.
Kenneally worked with a soft rag, a light caulking tool, and a hand hammer. After wiping away the molasses, he would use his tools to flatten the steel on each side of the leaky seam to push it closer together, and then press the steel to seal the leaks.
This was his third day at the Commercial Street tank. They had begun their work on ladders, caulked as high as they could, and then staged the rigging chair to reach the spots that were further up the tank. Kenneally was unaccustomed to working so far above the ground. When he caulked boilers to make them watertight, his work was most often done in a shop. He knew from his decade of experience as a boilermaker that it wasn’t unusual for a newly constructed tank to weep. Although you did what you could to ensure that a new tank was watertight from the beginning, you never really knew whether it would leak until you filled it with water and watched.
What struck him about this tank was that some of the leaks, especially on the harbor side, started high where the walls met the conical-shaped steel cover and seeped molasses all the way to the bottom. They created a series of brackish, fifty-foot streams that meandered to the ground and pooled around the base of the tank.
This didn’t seem right. This tank was doing a lot more than weeping, Patrick Kenneally thought.
It was crying—long, thick tears of brown molasses.
USIA Facility, Brooklyn, New York, June 24, 1916
Millard Fillmore Cook, Jr. assumed the unsigned letter was a hoax. He never actually expected to find a bomb.
Since 1912, when he had become supervisor of USIA’s Brooklyn facility, Cook had operated the large plant expertly, supervising molasses shipments into the five tanks on the site and managing a hundred men in the industrial alcohol distillery on the same property. The tanks were nowhere near as large as the company’s new Boston tank; Cook was responsible for two 630,000-gallon tanks, two 180,000-gallon tanks, and one tank that held approximately 140,000 gallons of molasses. Cook also was under pressure to meet production quotas for the plant’s big customers, the du Pont Powder Company and the Hercules Powder Company. USIA considered Cook one of its best plant managers. This supervisor, whose parents had named him after the thirteenth president of the United States, never seemed to get rattled, even when the plant added a third shift to accommodate the demand for industrial alcohol production after war began in Europe in 1914.
Now, though, Millard Fillmore Cook
was
rattled. The package the policeman had given him was about five inches wide and eight inches long, wrapped in thick paper, and carefully tied and knotted with cord. From the end of the package extended a three-inch-long fuse that had, thankfully, malfunctioned and fizzled out before it burned down to the three sticks of dynamite wrapped
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