[May 6th
marks the 80th
anniversary of the Hindenburg fire, a turning point in the use of video and newsreel footage
to chronicle tragic disasters. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of
historical disasters, leading up to a weekend post on that and other contexts
for the Hindenburg.]
Three telling
details about the
unique 1919 North End disaster, which plays a small but significant role in
Dennis Lehane’s historical
novel The Given Day.
1)
The Anarchists Did It—Or Not: When a tank
containing more than 2 million gallons of molasses burst
at the Purity Distilling Company on January 15, 1919, suspicion initially
fell—as it did so frequently in this Red Scare era—on “anarchists.” Some of the
alcohol produced by the factory was used to produce munitions, so the
accusation wasn’t entirely without cause. But after nearly three years of
investigations and hearings, the United
States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA) was held solely responsible for the
disaster; one theory is that the company was trying to work faster in order
to
outrace Prohibition, as the 18th Amendment was ratified the day
after the flood. In any case, the disaster serves as a telling reminder, in
this pre-Depression moment, that corporations were at least as dangerous to
American communities as Reds.
2)
A New Class of Response: The reason for those
three years of investigations was simple but very new as of 1919—local
residents brought a class-action lawsuit against USIA. In our famously
litigious 21st century moment, that response might seem like a
given; but in 1919, the idea of a class-action suit was largely unfamiliar, as
illustrated by this list
of six game-changing such suits that dates back only to 1925. So when these
North End residents brought their suit against USIA, when they pursued it to
victory and received an unprecedented $600,000 in settlements from the company,
they represented a potent, populist extension of the Progressive
Era’s efforts to regulate and curb big corporations.
3)
How We Remember: Adjacent to the site once
occupied by the Purity tank, and now home to the city’s Langone Park and
neighboring Puopolo Park, is a
small plaque (placed by the Bostonian Society) that commemorates the flood.
Yet I would venture that literally millions more Bostonians and tourists have
encountered this history not through the plaque, nor through Lehane’s novel
(bestseller that it was), but rather through one of the city’s ubiquitous Duck
Boats (run by Boston Duck Tours).
That dark brown boat, named
Molly Molasses, comprises a
pitch-perfect representation of the role that historic tourism plays in our
collective memories, for good and for bad. But far be it from me to critique
any attempt to better remember this unique, compelling, and exemplary historic
disaster!
Next
DisasterStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other historical or contemporary disasters you’d highlight?
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