Behind him he heard something else, an unnatural wail that sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather. He tried to shut his ears to the groan and the long roll of rumbling that came from inside the molasses tank. But it was no use. When the sound happened again, Isaac’s chill became an icy pang in his chest, like the flat of a knife-blade pressing against his heart.
Washington, D.C., April 2, 1917, Evening
President Woodrow Wilson strode into an antechamber in the Capitol building, shaking raindrops from his coat and wiping his glasses. He had driven through a drizzle from the White House, appropriate weather to mark tonight’s events. This morning he had called for both houses of Congress to assemble and hear his request for a declaration of war against Germany. Thinking he was alone, Wilson walked to a mirror. Concealed from view, a magazine editor later described the president: “Chin shaking, face flushed, he placed his left elbow on the mantel and gazed steadily at himself until he composed his features.” Then Wilson left the anteroom and entered the swinging doors of the House chamber.
He could not believe that events had reached this point. Wilson and America had been walking a neutrality tightrope since the outbreak of the European war, and as late as January 22, Wilson had delivered his “peace without victory” speech to the Senate. The war must be ended on terms that would establish, “not a balance of power, but a community of power, not organized rivalries but a common peace.” The only way to achieve that end was through “a peace without victory … victory would mean peace forced upon the loser” and would therefore “rest only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.”
Interventionists sharply criticized Wilson for a view that they considered at best naïve, and at worst a sign of America’s weakness. “Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight,” said former President Theodore Roosevelt. He called Wilson a spiritual descendant of the Tories of 1776 and the Copperheads of 1864, who had also demanded peace without victory. Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge rejected peace without victory, declaring that lasting peace “rests upon justice and righteousness.”
Wilson’s position was irrevocably undermined by the Germans when, on the afternoon of January 31, 1917, Count Johann von Bernstorff, German ambassador to the United States, delivered an official correspondence that as of midnight, America’s merchant ships would be sunk on sight by German submarines. The opening of un-restricted submarine warfare against Allied and neutral shipping caused President Wilson to break diplomatic relations.
The downward spiral toward war had begun.
America’s entry into the European hostilities was hastened further when British intelligence intercepted a telegram from German foreign minister Arthur Zimmerman to the German minister in Mexico. The message disclosed a plan for Germany to enter into an alliance with Mexico if the United States entered the European war. If Germany and her allies were successful, Mexico’s reward would be the return of its “lost territories” of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. When newspaper headlines revealed the existence of the “Zimmerman Telegram” and proclaimed Germany’s treachery across the country on March 1, explosive anti-German propaganda had begun in the United States, and public opinion surged toward war.
Wilson knew that the neutrality tightrope had snapped. Four days later, March 5, 1917, at his second inaugural address, he told the crowd: “We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.”
Later in March, to Wilson’s horror, several unarmed American merchant ships were sunk in the Atlantic by German submarines, and many crew members drowned. Hysteria gripped the country, and Wilson, desperate to avoid war but astute enough to realize that events had overtaken him, was forced to act.
Now, standing before a packed House chamber, all of his vigorous peace efforts for naught, Wilson spoke against German outrages, including the sinking of medical ships and of those vessels carrying relief supplies to Belgium. This was “warfare against mankind,” he said. The United States could not “choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated.” And then, bringing the House to its feet shouting and applauding, Wilson declared: “America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. The world must be made safe for democracy … We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.”
Later that night, according to authors Meirion and Susie Harries, Wilson wept openly while reliving the speech with his private secretary. “Think what it was they were applauding,” he said of Congress. “My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.”
Two days later, the Senate voted 82-6 to declare war; the House concurred two days after that, 373-50. Wilson signed the war resolution on April 6, 1917, at 1:18 P.M. The United States was joining the fight against Germany, the war to end all wars, the war that would—in President Wilson’s words—make the world safe for democracy. To be successful, she needed her industrial plants to produce goods and manufacture weapons and war materiel at extraordinary and unprecedented levels.
Like businesses across America, U.S. Industrial Alcohol stood ready to help.
FOUR
WAR AND ANARCHY
Boston, April 1917
President Wilson’s request for a declaration of war against Germany fueled a patriotic fervor in Boston during the first week of April that sent thousands to the streets to cheer at huge rallies, or to gather on downtown corners to sing the National Anthem, eyes skyward, watching as enormous American flags were unfurled from the upper floors of the city’s tallest and most prominent buildings, snapping in the wind as they billowed down the face of each structure. Boston had begun showing its support for Wilson’s decision before his speech on April 2 when nearly two hundred thousand people thronged the Boston Common at noon in a gathering remarkable not only for its size but for the fact that it was virtually unorganized. Mayor Curley had issued a simple proclamation a few days earlier asking Bostonians to join together on the Common for a flag-raising. On this day, anticipating the magnitude of President Wilson’s speech later in the evening, people arrived from every section of the city, streaming onto the historic forty-five-acre grassy parcel from all sides, as Boston shut down during the noon hour.
“It was unorganized, nothing was prepared,” one newspaper account read. “And yet more men, women and children came to see the American flag raised … than ever came before to the Boston Common for any single event … from banks, from stores, from halls of City and State Government, they came.” Two-and-a-half centuries earlier, Bostonians had gathered on this “common land” to exercise their horses, graze their cattle, and drill their militia companies. Now they gathered to express their full-throated support of America’s entry into a European war.
Throughout the week, similar smaller rallies continued at locations around the city, as flags were raised over dozens of Boston buildings to the accompaniment of music and speeches. At a Faneuil Hall rally, Mayor Curley told fruit peddlers and meat packers that, “it isn’t necessary to talk patriotism to men who work within sight of the greatest beacon light of liberty this old world has ever known, Faneuil Hall.” He reminded the men that “the president of the United States has not asked for a declaration of war on the German people, but on the German government,” a sentiment that elicited a roar from the crowd. At another North Station ceremony, Mayor Curley praised President Wilson and predicted to a cheering crowd of about a thousand people that American blood would not have to be shed to end the war, but that
the German people would rise up and overthrow their government.
Curley’s prediction notwithstanding, Boston shifted into a war mind-set rapidly during the first week of April. The Boston Globe reminded its readers that April was “a war month” for America, noting that the American Revolution, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War had all begun in April, implying that Wilson’s call for America’s entry into the current European conflict was wrapped in a cloak of historical appropriateness and destiny. In response to President Wilson’s call for a standing military 2 million strong within two years, young men flocked to recruitment centers across the city. Lines at the Tremont Street Army and Navy recruitment centers blocked the stairways to the third-floor offices and stretched out the door, and men streamed into the Marine recruiting station in nearby Scollay Square.
At the nearby Charlestown Navy Yard, more than 1,500 men applied for enlistment within three days of Wilson’s speech to Congress. “The naval officers are much pleased with the type of young men they are getting, young, growing boys, active and alert,” one newspaper reported. “However, there is an urgent need also for the slightly older, more solidly built men, and particularly for skilled men, plumbers, blacksmiths, electricians.” Each day, papers listed the “non-slackers” for the day, praising those who had enlisted.
Along with the rush to enlist came a sharp increase in the number of people applying for marriage licenses, in Boston and across the country, as couples scrambled to marry before bridegrooms-to-be shipped overseas. In Chicago, more than eight thousand applications for marriage licenses were received at City Hall within ten days of Wilson’s speech, and in Boston, applications doubled over the previous year. Many ministers around the country spread the word that they would not marry “slackers”—men either had to have enlisted or had a good reason for not doing so.
Aside from enlistments, the first week of active war preparation was a flurry of activity in Boston. The Navy closed Boston Harbor at dark, allowing no vessel in or out. Navy divers laid mines and stretched wire netting across the floor of the harbor to thwart German U-boats. Armed patrols were established along Long Wharf, Rowe’s Wharf, and Commercial Street Wharf, the latter within a few feet of the molasses tank. German merchant ships docked in harbors across the country were seized and their crews detained, including seven large ships in Boston. Nearly two hundred German crew members were shipped to Deer Island in Boston Harbor, technically as prisoners of war, though their cells—described as “large and excellent quarters”—remained unlocked, and they were allowed free movement around the island.
Meanwhile, Boston’s district attorney was warning the city against potentially violent anarchist activity, claiming that Boston was in “grave danger from disturbances by anarchistic bands who are holding nightly meetings, planning what they can do to tear down the structure of Government while the country’s eyes are fixed on danger from without.” Joseph Pelletier urged that additional guards be stationed in every bank and that manufacturing companies increase precautions. “A few hand grenades, effectively used, would put Boston in darkness for six months,” he warned. Pelletier advocated a “thorough survey” of Boston, “that we may get the names and addresses of all who are not citizens. Then we must learn what these people are doing. We must know their purpose in being in the city.”
During the next several days, between April 8 and April 10, Pelletier’s warnings appeared prophetic as a series of activities in other cities, but not Boston, were blamed on anarchists. The Capitol Police presence was increased in Washington, D.C., after the Secret Service relayed a tip that anarchists were planning to dynamite the Capitol building, a report that proved to be false. In Pittsburgh, authorities blamed anarchists for an arson fire that destroyed a portion of the Aetna Chemical Company, one of the country’s largest munitions manufacturers and a major customer of U.S. Industrial Alcohol.
And in the most tragic event, 116 workers, many of them teenage girls, perished in a massive explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation in Chester, Pennsylvania. The explosion occurred in the pellet room of the shrapnel building, where the girls worked polishing shells. Officials believed that “foreigners” working in the factory planted the bomb, taking their own lives in the explosion. “It is very difficult to have five thousand people working in a munitions factory and not have some foreigners employed,” lamented the factory manager.
Though no violent anarchist activity occurred in Boston during this time, the city, now very much on wartime alert, remained vigilant.
Cambridge, Mass., Two Weeks Later
Arthur P. Jell had taken seriously both the explosion in Pennsylvania and the Pelletier warning. Within days of each, he had hired his own guards and had them sworn in as special police, replacing the single Boston police officer who had guarded the tank on a fixed post. While the possibility of sabotage was an unpleasant thought to consider, he also had been heartened by additional news from Washington. The Council of National Defense had created a General Munitions Board to oversee munitions and equipment production for the Army and Navy, coordinate military purchases, and assist the munitions companies in acquiring raw materials for their manufacturing facilities. The General Munitions Board had enormous power, virtually Cabinet-level influence, and could also direct certain manufacturing facilities to switch from domestic to defense production if necessary.
Jell knew that this decision elevated the status of the industrial alcohol distilling business, ensured that red tape could be cut quickly if it jeopardized production or distribution activities, and virtually guaranteed USIA’s double-digit growth for as long as the war continued. He also believed that America’s entry into the war was a good chance for him to show the New York home office that the Boston tank and the Cambridge distilling plant could handle soaring production quotas.
But this morning, sitting in his tidy Cambridge office just ten days after he had hired his own guards for the Commercial Street site, Arthur Jell’s enthusiasm was waning and his irritation was increasing. The problem was Gonzales and his paranoia. USIA’s general man at the Commercial Street molasses tank stood to jeopardize Jell’s and the company’s success in the coming months if he could not be controlled.
First, there was his unauthorized visit a few days ago, complaining sanctimoniously about molasses leaking from the mammoth storage tank. Gonzales said the tank leaked from every seam every day, that workers on the dock had questioned him about it, and that the Italian neighborhood children gathered around the base of the tank each noon hour to collect molasses in their small pails. “The children also dip sticks into the pools of molasses and slurp it into their mouths; it even drips onto their clothes,” Gonzales had said. “I spread sand around the base of the tank to keep the molasses from flowing too far, but with my other duties, I can’t keep up with it.”
Gonzales then had thrust rusty steel flakes that he had collected from inside the tank into Jell’s hands, brushing the last bits from his own palms and into Jell’s as though they burned his skin. “These fall like snow into my hair and onto my clothes each time I go inside the tank,” he had said with a plea in his voice.
Jell told Gonzales there was nothing to worry about, that the tank was strong and sturdy, that some leaking was normal, especially after the large molasses shipment that the Miliero had delivered to the tank in February. He had ordered Gonzales to do a better job of running the trespassing children off of the property so they wouldn’t come back. He had not spoken angrily, though he was angry that Gonzales had traveled to Cambridge, had tracked cakes of mud from his work boots onto Jell’s office carpet, and had lectured Jell on the construction of molasses tanks, as though Gonzales were some sort of engineering expert rather than a manual laborer whose job it was to take direction from his supervisor each day.
The visit had been intrusive enough, but then Gonzales had revealed that he had been sleeping at the tank for several months, bedding down in the pump-pit shack. “I’m afraid the
tank is not safe, and if it should start to fall, I can sound a warning,” he said to Jell. Shocked by his employee’s admission, Jell had told him to go home at the end of his work shift. He reminded Gonzales that the tank had been caulked completely last year. “The tank still stands—the tank will stand,” Jell had said.
Yesterday, Gonzales was at it again. In the late afternoon he had called Boston Police in a panic reporting that he had received a phone call from a man with a raspy voice threatening to blow up the tank. “Is this the supervisor of the molasses tank on Commercial Street?” Gonzales said the man asked. When Gonzales said he was merely a worker, the caller became angry and said: “You’re a damn liar and we’re going to dynamite the tank.” Much to Jell’s chagrin and that of tank supervisor William White, Gonzales had called police, who came to the wharf to investigate. White told Gonzales that calling the police had been a foolish thing to do, and Gonzales had the audacity to reply, “I don’t care whether it is foolish or not; the police captain sees fit to give help.” Two officers had even stayed on the site throughout the night. Jell knew anarchists were a threat, but he didn’t trust Gonzales and didn’t believe there actually had been any call.
Jell had stressed to White this morning that he must do a better job of controlling Gonzales. Firing him would be impractical at this time. Too many young men were enlisting and Jell had no time to train a new man now that alcohol production was on the upswing. But Jell thought Gonzales’s behavior was bizarre—sleeping at the tank, for God’s sake!—and that he needed to be watched closely for the sake of the business. It did not serve USIA’s purposes to have Gonzales complaining about leaks to anyone who would listen, nor did it help to draw further public attention to the tank through the presence of more police. When word got out that Boston Police responded to a phone caller who was threatening to blow up the tank with dynamite, and word spread quickly along the waterfront, it could give anarchists destructive ideas. Jell had enough pressure worrying about real dangers from violent men who hated that America was at war and hated even more those businesses that would become successful by feeding the war machine. He did not have the time or energy to worry about phantom phone callers.
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