Dark Tide (37 page)

And then, Hall revisited Jell’s claim that the water test on the tank would be for leaks only, not to determine the tank’s strength to withstand weight or pressure:

Hall:
Did it occur to you, did you have any idea, that the (water test) might give some idea as to the strength of the tank, as well as the leaks?

Jell:
No. None whatever.

Hall:
That didn’t occur to you?

Jell:
No, sir.

Hall:
One final time, Mr. Jell. Did you ever ascertain, prior to the erection of the Commercial Street tank, by submitting those Hammond plans to
anybody on the face of the Earth
, whether they called for a safety factor of 3?

Jell:
I did not.

Finally, Hall addressed Jell’s assertion that he relied on Hammond Iron Works’ experience and expertise to produce steel plates sufficient to hold 2.3 million gallons of molasses in a tank that stood fifty feet high and ninety feet in diameter.

Hall:
Did you have any training or experience that enabled you to determine whether they [Hammond] were skillful and competent people or not?

Jell:
I did not.

Hall:
And … did you have any knowledge or experience whatever that enabled you to tell whether the construction work was done satisfactorily, or whether the tank was strong?

Jell:
I considered the tank satisfactory for our purpose.

Hall:
If you will just answer the question … no technical experience of any kind?

Jell:
No. None.

Sitting in the Hotel Belmont in New York City, on March 25, 1921, seven months into the molasses hearings, USIA attorney Charles Choate had no way of knowing that there would be two and a half years and thousands of pages of testimony ahead in this monstrous case. He was not clairvoyant, after all.

But he was intelligent and perceptive, and he knew that it would be nearly impossible for the defense to recover from Jell’s stunningly damaging deposition—his blatant admissions that no qualified person oversaw the development of the tank’s plans or its construction, and worse, that safety had been compromised so egregiously for the sake of time and money.

With his New York drubbing of Arthur P. Jell, Damon Hall had succeeded in getting two critical pieces of testimony on the record. Earlier, he had shown that Hammond Iron Works had delivered steel plates that were 10 percent thinner than its own plans had stated. Now, Jell had acknowledged that he had relied on Hammond’s
reputation only
to assume that the tank would be safe. By definition, when Hammond had lied to USIA and the City of Boston and delivered substandard steel, its reputation had been sullied.

Hall had also gotten Jell to admit that he had not tested the tank before it was filled with molasses, not for any sound scientific or engineering reason, but simply to avoid expense and save time.

Now he needed to lock one more piece into place. The fact that the plates were too thin, and that Jell had not ordered the water test, provided enough circumstantial evidence for Ogden to conclude that the tank was structurally unsound from the beginning; but these facts,
in and of themselves
, were not hard evidence. Hall needed to introduce rock-solid evidence that the tank was poorly constructed, that it was lucky to have stood at all.

For that, he needed the report prepared two years earlier by MIT Professor C.M. Spofford on behalf of the Boston Elevated Company.

Professor Spofford’s report, the result of tests he conducted on pieces of the tank just a few weeks after the collapse at MIT laboratories, received little public attention until Damon Hall introduced it into evidence. Hall believed that the entire Spofford report would carry far more weight than the testimony of other expert witnesses, since one of Spofford’s important observations in 1919 had later been corroborated by independent court testimony: The MIT expert had stated in writing shortly after the accident that the tank’s steel plates were thinner than the plans had called for, “and were overstrained by the static pressure of the molasses.”

This fact alone enhanced the credibility of the entire Spofford report. If he was correct about the thickness of the plates, why would there be any reason to doubt his other conclusions?

In addition to his observations about the plates, Spofford found that the tank had been secured with an “insufficient number” of rivets. As a result, the steel shell was unable to withstand a capacity load of molasses, and the joints simply gave way.

“The tension in these plates should not have exceeded 16,000 pounds per square inch,” Spofford wrote, “and a stress as great as 18,000 pounds per square inch is as high as should have been permitted under
any
circumstances.” On the day the tank ruptured, the 2.3 million gallons of molasses, 44 percent heavier than water, weighed 26 million pounds and exerted pressure on the tank’s walls of
31,000 pounds per square inch
, “a figure nearly double that which should have been allowed,” Spofford concluded. Therefore, “the
factor of safety is but 1.8
, while ordinary practice would have called for from 3 to 4.”

Damon Hall now had entered into the record a credible expert’s opinion that the tank’s factor of safety came nowhere near the “3” level Arthur Jell said he had ordered from Hammond Iron Works. Jell said he declined to ask any engineer to inspect the steel plates upon their arrival, and ordered no calculations as to the weight of the molasses and the pressure it exerted on the tank’s walls. By definition, this meant that USIA erected the fifty-foot tank on the outskirts of Boston’s most congested neighborhood with
absolutely no knowledge whatsoever
of its strength or its capability to withstand pressure from the molasses within.

“In my judgment, the tank was improperly designed, and its failure was due entirely to structural weakness,” Spofford concluded. “The formation of gases in the molasses might have increased the head of the molasses somewhat … [but] the stresses due to the static pressure of the molasses alone were so great that the whole structure was in a dangerous condition …”

With Spofford’s credibility and his explicit conclusions, Hall believed that the plaintiffs had offered irrefutable proof of USIA’s negligence.

Just before 8
P.M.
, the twelve members of the jury sitting in Dedham, Massachusetts, indicated to Judge Webster Thayer that they were ready to deliver their verdict in the case of the two anarchists charged with murder, Sacco and Vanzetti.

In the six weeks that they had heard evidence in the case of the South Braintree killings, they had developed a sense of camaraderie that would bind them together for the rest of their lives. Today, they would deliver a verdict that would resound across the world.

“Guilty of murder in the first degree,” croaked the jury foreman when Thayer asked him for the verdict on, first, Sacco, and then, Vanzetti.

When he heard the words, Sacco shouted out:
Sono innocente! Sono innocente!
They kill innocent men! Don’t forget. Two innocent men they kill!” Vanzetti said nothing as he was led away by police officers.

The conviction of the two Italian immigrant anarchists, which could carry a death sentence, would spark a six-year global cause celebre that would include mass demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, political pleas, and legal appeals that would fill law libraries. Were Sacco and Vanzetti the deceitful, stone-cold killers the prosecution described, who were willing to resort to any crime to advance their anarchist cause? Or were they two innocent men whose immigrant status and anarchist activities made them easy targets for authorities looking to sate the passions of an inflamed public? Or was one guilty and the other innocent?

Scholars and ordinary researchers alike would study and debate the case for years. It would be the subject of legal and academic symposia, debates between conservatives and liberals, book fodder for scores of prominent authors.

Today, however, Charles Choate saw the Sacco and Vanzetti convictions as further confirmation that the public still feared anarchists and believed them capable of deadly violence. That was a glimmer of good news for USIA, which Damon Hall had been pummeling for months.

Choate must have believed that the impact of the jury’s decision in Dedham could give him a fighting chance, that it breathed a renewed sliver of plausibility into USIA’s case, which now hung by the slimmest of threads in Hugh W. Ogden’s courtroom.

As the liability portion of the molasses hearings drew to a conclusion, Hugh Ogden gathered the attorneys from both sides together to announce that he would hear the individual cases on damages forthwith, prior to issuing any decision on liability. Charles Choate argued that the damage testimony
itself
could further prejudice Ogden against USIA, thereby affecting his liability decision. Why not reach a verdict on liability before deciding on damages? If USIA were absolved from culpability, would not the damages portion of the hearings be rendered unnecessary?

Ogden held firm, saying he would render no decision until he had heard all the evidence in the case, including the damage arguments. While he never stated it, Ogden’s decision to move forward on damages had to be a signal to both sides that he believed USIA bore at least partial responsibility for the molasses disaster.

For the next two years, Damon Hall called on wives who had lost their husbands and mothers who had seen their sons die in the most horrific way possible, their broken bodies wracked with pain at the Haymarket Relief Station. He called on men and boys whose bones had been crushed and skulls fractured, and on breadwinners who had been unable to work since the accident.

He called on stonecutter John Barry, whose hair had turned white while he was trapped under the firehouse, and whose injuries had forced him to support ten children while performing light duty. “The pain in my back hurts all the time,” Barry said. “It’s as though my spine is breaking. I can’t straighten up; I feel like I am going to fall almost all the time. The doctor says there is no cure.”

He called on firefighter Bill Connor, who had been trapped near Barry, who had implored a fellow firefighter to kick debris away from a hole so the molasses could flow out, who heard George Layhe’s anguished cries as he succumbed to crushing injuries and smothered in the molasses. Connor tore his shoulder muscles and was placed on injured leave after rescuers pulled him out from under the collapsed firehouse.

Hall called on Martin Clougherty, former owner of the Pen and Pencil Club, whose mother died when her wooden frame house splintered into pieces after smashing into the overhead trestle, and whose brother died slowly in the insane hospital; Clougherty, who had clung to his bed-frame “raft” to stay atop the molasses. He had terrible nightmares after the accident and was bedridden for three months. “My ribs and my chest still hurt,” he told the court. “I can’t lay on my left side. All across my chest, where the big planks fell on me, anytime I get a touch of cold it just chokes me right up. Even without cold, when I lay on my back in bed at night, I feel like my wind is shutting off.” In addition, Clougherty’s dreams continued, “bad dreams, with buildings falling over me … and if I go into a subway, or if I go into a crowd, I feel like I’m being crowded and I need to fight my way out. I have a general feeling of depression all of the time while I’m awake.”

The testimony continued with the families of the dead—the Iantoscas, the Distasios, the Layhes, the Callahans, the Breens, and the Martins—each describing how they learned of their loved one’s death. Some watched it firsthand, like Giuseppe Iantosca, who witnessed Pasquale being swallowed by the molasses wave.

Charles Choate and the defense did their best to minimize the stories and the suffering, eliciting testimony from doctors who suggested that those who died from molasses asphyxiation did not “suffer” because they were killed so quickly. Defense attorneys even argued that the dead children, Maria Distasio and Pasquale Iantosca, who were collecting firewood near the tank, were “trespassers” and therefore, their families were entitled to no damage awards at all. “A company is under no obligation to make its premises safe for trespassers,” one defense attorney sniffed.