Note—This is one of
those epic posts that took on a life of its own and required two days of intense
work to complete. I admit it’s too long
so I have broken it into two parts. Tune
in tomorrow for part two. This is
important stuff.
I
started, as I usually do by reviewing the
Wikipedia
On this Day…feature. I scan it in a daily search of just what the hell
to write about here. Two items
leaped off the screen and punched me
in the gut.
1877—The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants convicted of murder,
are hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons.
1964—Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey
Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members
of the Ku Klux Klan.
At
first glance, these to items of historical
ephemera might seem to have little
in common occurring nearly a century apart to vastly different people under different
circumstances. But it occurred to me
that in some ways they are related, intertwined and even echo today in our chaotic and dangerous time.
You
may remember a sentence or two in your high
school American history book about
the Mollies—that they blew things up and
terrorized bosses in the Pennsylvania coal mines before be rooted out by a Pinkerton spy and given their just
deserts on the gallows. Those of a certain age and inclination
might recall the 1770 mega-budget
Paramount box office flop, The Molly
Maguires starring Sean Connery as
the tough miner bent on revenge for
a thousand injustices and Richard Harris as James McParlan the
conflicted but heroic Pinkerton
who befriends him and then betrays him.
The
shadowy Molly Maguires emerged in the anthracite
coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania in
the post-Civil War era when a rapidly industrializing nation relied
on the production of the mines for fuel and
to feed the insatiable steel blast furnaces.
Unable to find enough Yankee
farmers sons to descend into hell for
dangerous jobs with scant wages, mine owner increasingly
relied on immigrant labor—first the skilled and experienced coal miners of Wales
and Lancashire but ultimately on the
abundant unskilled displaced peasants of Ireland. Attempts to form a union, The Workers Benevolent Association (WBA), were led by the skilled American and Welsh workers were repeatedly squelched by mine owner violence and intimidation. Although as
many as 80% of the region’s miners, including the mostly Irish pit men who did the hardest and most dangerous labor, had little voice within the union largely
because the leaders shared the same disdain
of the Micks as their bosses.
Those
Irish miners died regularly in cave-ins and
explosions, who were cast aside like rubbish when injured or maimed, jammed into barely habitable shanties, in
perpetual debt to company stores, and subjected to cuts in their meager wages with every downward
economic tic—cuts that were never
restored when things began to hum
again. Yet they seemingly had no recourse.
But
they did have a tradition brought
with them from the Auld Sod. Over there a tradition of secret societies arose under the oppressive rule of the British, their imposed nobility and, large landlords. Called at various times and under various
circumstances Whiteboys, Peep o’ Day Boys and Ribbon Men these groups protested rack rents, evictions, and other injustices with frightening visits from masked
and disguised men, beatings, tar and feathering, and
occasional arson and murder.
Although hunted by authorities, strict secrecy avoided most prosecutions and the terror that they inspired in
local landlords often led to at least temporary
concessions and relief. In the rural environs of the big
cities like Dublin, Belfast, and Cork these groups also had nationalist
sympathies and character and
included both Catholic and Protestant tenants.
The Whiteboys were one of several Irish secret societies that took revenge on landlords, tax collectors, and other oppressors. |
In
the rural and Gaelic speaking west
similar secret societies sprang up in the 1840’s in reaction to a wave of
evictions and in reaction to the wide spread misery of the Potato Famine. These groups
had little or no connection to the nationalist movement and were exclusively
Catholic and sectarian in as far as many big landowners were Protestants and Anglo-Irish. By 1845 there was a document outlining the
rules of a secret society being under the name title Address of “Molly Maguire” to her
children which was published in Freeman’s Journal. By the 1850’s and ‘60’s groups identified as Molly Maguires were
operating in Liverpool, the English destination of many rural laborers fleeing devastated Ireland and
the jumping off port for many Irish
immigrants to America.
Historians are divided on whether the Pennsylvania
miners brought a formal secret society with them and simply re-established it
in the new country or if the Mollies of Ireland and Liverpool inspired a copy cat movement as conditions in the
mines deteriorated during and after an 1873 Panic. Most suspect the
latter, although some men might have been involved in the earlier societies and
been familiar with their structures and oaths. Although episodes of violence
and retribution had been retroactively blamed on the Molly Maguires since the
mid-1860’s there had been a lull, almost extinction, of outburst until the
crash and subsequent depression.
Franklin B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Co.was the man behind plans to break the Union and stir up then smash the Molly Maguires. |
At the same time the major mine bosses united under
the leadership of Franklin B.
Gowen,
the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and
of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and
Iron Company and decided to use the opportunity of widespread unemployment to break
the union at its weakest spot—the mistrust and hostility of the
conservative skilled workers for the Papist
Irish. To accomplish this Gowen
engaged the services of the Pinkerton
Detective Agency which had a well established
record of breaking unions. He
assigned the company to work with the Pennsylvania
Coal and Mine Police, a semi-private,
semi-official paramilitary police used to terrorize and persecute the
union and its supporters.
Irish
born operative James McParlan was
assigned to go undercover and infiltrate both the union and any
secret societies operating in the region under the alias James McKenna. McParlan, in
his detailed reports to his superiors, claimed that he easily gained the full
confidence of both Union leaders and certain Irishmen with influence over their
fellow workers. But he rued slow
progress—he was unable to make any connection to a secret society and violence
in the region continued its long lag.
That
ended soon enough with a sharp rise in assaults, and even murders. Some historians believe that at least some of
this violence can be attributed to Pinkerton and Coal and Iron Police activity
in order to arouse alarm about an alleged Molly Maguire threat. They point out that many of the victims were
leading union men and Irishmen who were painted as informers. The deaths of the
union men increased the alienation between the union leadership and the
Irish. Others believe that McParlan and
other agents acted as agents provocateurs goading miners
into the violence. A minority of ideologically business friendly historians
totally buy McParlan’s claims that
he eventually ferreted out a major
conspiracy without contributing to it.
Pinkerton spy James McParlan in the 1880's. |
McParlan
identified a secret organization with the Ancient
Order of Hibernians, an open and legal benevolent
society similar to many others established by immigrant groups. He inferred That the AOH and the Mollies were
in reality one and the same organization and acted in concert with the Union to
attack its enemies. Others believe that
the miners used the cover of the Hibernians, who could meet openly, to conduct
the separate affairs of the secret society.
The trouble is no trace of that secret society, not a single document,
confirms the existence of the Mollies or another society. The AOH, which is still in existence, has always
stoutly denied that their Pennsylvania lodges and the Molly Maguires were
associated. All we do know is all of the
men eventually arrested and charged via McParlan’s investigation were members
of the Hibernians.
McGowan,
according to documents, decided to force the union into a strike which began on
January 1, 1875 and then break it by a combination of brute force by the Coal
and Iron Police, and dividing the men along ethnic lines. Alan Pinkerton himself suggested the
formation of vigilantes to attack
supposed and identified Mollies. After a
spate of killings and assaults, including the suspicious murders of union men,
a vigilante group did stage an attack on a home killing one man and one woman
and wounding two who got away. The house
had been identified by McParlan in his reports as belonging to a Molly. The spy, however, was so outraged that the
vigilantes had used his intelligence to kill a woman, that he angrily turned in
his resignation. Pinkerton mollified him
with claims that they had not shared his information and was induced to stay
on.
Meanwhile
the Coal and Iron Police arrested and imprisoned most of the union leadership on
charges of conspiracy in May. By July miner’s families were starving and
vigilante attacks on union men were spreading fear. The strike was broken and the men forced to
return to work with a devastating 20% pay cut.
McParlan
noted that only after the strike did many rank-and-file
Irish miners swing their allegiance to the supposed Molly Maguires. Even after continue attacks by vigilantes,
the Mollies were slow to respond.
McParlan, now claiming to have “infiltrated their inner circle,” likely
egged on plans for revenge. Finally
there was a spate of killing attributed to the Mollies.
Four of the accused Molly Maguires are marched to their execution on June 21, 1877. |
Based
on McParlan’s testimony a number of men were arrested by the Coal and Mine
Police. Three men accused of killing Benjamin K. Yost, a Tamaqua Borough Patrolman, went on
trial separately. One, James Kerrigan,
who was the brother of McParlan’s fiancĂ©,
turned state’s evidence and implicated
three more men. Franklin Gowan
personally prosecuted the cases which hit a snag when Kerrigan’s wife testified
that he had committed the murder and had tried to save himself by pinning it on
innocent men. The trial ended in a
mistrial. At a second trial Mrs.
Kerrigan was mysteriously unavailable to testify and all five men were
sentenced to hang while Kerrigan was set free.
McParlan’s
testimony also resulted in the conviction of five men in other cases. In all ten men were sentenced to hang. The sentences were carried out in two groups
on June 21, 1877—six men were hanged in the prison at Pottsville, and four at Mauch
Chunk in Carbon County under the protection of heavily armed Pennsylvania Militia.
But it was not over. Ten more
men were hanged over the next year.
Labor
“peace” was thus restored in Pennsylvania coal fields—at least until the rise
of the United Mine Workers and the
work of Mother Jones led to new
campaigns—and suppressions—in the 1890’s and beyond.
McParlan,
celebrated as a great hero in the popular
press, had a long career with Pinkerton, by the turn of the century he was
in charge of western operations out
of the Denver office. He employed cowboy/gunman Tom Horn who killed ten men and a boy for Wyoming cattle barons at war with small
ranchers. Horn was famously hanged, but
McParlan and the Pinkertons escaped blame for the murders. Later he famously Kidnapped Big Bill Haywood and two other officer of the Western Federation of Miners and
transported them in sealed train from
Denver to Idaho to serve time for
the bomb murder of ex-governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905. But his plan to frame
the men for a conspiracy was foiled by defense attorney Clarence
Darrow. They were acquitted and the
actual, undisputed bomber, known as Harry Orchard who had been induced
by McParlan to implicate them, was convicted of the murder.
Tomorrow Part Two—The Mississippi murders of
Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner.
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