Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania (1)

IT seems likely the Molly Maguires of Donegal, a county along the border between Northern and Southern Ireland, were the source of those Molly Maguires who first made an Irish presence in Cass Township of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, around 1850. When Pinkerton agents were later hired to deal with labor violence in the hard coal region, their first step was to send an agent to Donegal to study Molly Maguire methods -- and surnames. A handful of families, perhaps only one extended family, were likely transatlantic transmitters. The secret society of men sometimes disguised in women's clothing, spread a tale of grievances to Irish neighbors and even further; eventually the whole industrial labor movement over-reacted, either adopting violence or vehemently opposing it. Most Mollies were proudly illiterate, making their appeals in local taverns through folk songs about ancient martyrs. Even today, a tourist who wanders into Irish taverns there senses hostility to strangers; the bartender may advise you to leave. Although rough behavior by new immigrants always was something to guard against, by 1850 the country was reasonably accustomed to experiencing it. Assimilation was the American way of life.

However, resistance to conscription during the Civil War gave newcomer clannishness more serious consequences. This was particularly true when it inserted a surprising pro-slavery (or at least anti-emancipation) protest into the very center of the Northern Union, around Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Whatever the South was fighting for, the North was primarily fighting to preserve the economic benefits of greater trade in larger markets -- a concept loosely described as "preserving the union". A second twist to anti-Mollie repression was later added after the war was over, when the 19th Century Industrial Revolution created another untamable tribe, the Robber Barons, for whom uncooperative behavior was a tendency not to be trifled with.

Basic behavior of the Molly Maguires in action followed a simple pattern. Males dressed as females in blackface made extortion threats against members of dominant society, protesting that their own subsequent violence was merely justice for heartlessness toward widows and orphans. Since the Mollies out of costume mingled cheerfully with those they secretly called oppressors, for actual assassinations they either called in the help of distant outsiders or drew lots to choose the assassin locally. The community would then unite to provide a vocal alibi, and profess to be offended by the accusation. To increase intimidation, death threats were pinned to the doors of many more potential than actual victims. Because the local industry was anthracite mining, and the original main goal was to increase wages, the targets selected were mine owners or supervisors, sometimes guards. Over a period of thirty years, perhaps thirty murders were actually committed. About the same number of conspirators were later hanged. Until Civil War conscription came along, the goal of this violence was not to close down the coal mines, but to shorten hours and increase pay in a dirty, dangerous occupation. When the wartime issue of the draft came up, however, there was an unfortunate switch to economic warfare, so Abraham Lincoln responded by stationing thousands of troops in the region to keep the mines running. More moderate labor leaders in the region were soon tarred by suspected collaboration with the now unpatriotic Mollies, and for a time the labor movement evaporated. The Catholic Church, which has always sternly opposed secret societies (Masons, Communists, Knights Templars, etc) also took a long step toward opposing labor union violence at this time, as Bishop Wood, the leader of the local church headquartered in Philadelphia, took an active role in exhorting Catholic resistance to the Molly Maguire secret society. To some extent, violence in the anthracite region was between Irish and more highly skilled Welsh coal miners. The rhetoric, however, was of oppressed Irish against English mine owners. To a considerable extent, it was actually a battle between peasant Irish and upper-class Irish, just as was once also true in Ireland. The Mollies attempted to project the image of representing all Irishmen against the hated English, who in their depiction had carried oppression to the extreme of forcing other groups to adopt the English language. One might say this immigrant group attempted to maintain its foreignness, to the point of resisting its own rise out of the peasant class.

This struggle to maintain a lower class within a nation that hoped to eliminate all classes, became a struggle between the violent labor movement and the moderate one, particularly after the Civil War to eliminate slavery the lowest class of all. Moderate labor representatives, led by Bannan the editor of a local newspaper, were a remnant of the former Whig party. On this level, the Molly Maguires did win an enduring victory. The general thesis of American Whigs was that labor and management were allies, both having a need to help local business thrive. Newly arrived immigrants would commonly be poor and start at the bottom, but would in time rise through the ranks of management to the point where they, too, could become owners and entrepreneurs. Whigs were baffled why anyone would wish harm to business; labor and management were merely different stages of national assimilation. Lincoln and the Republican Party had also evolved out of the remains of the collapsing Whig party, but they were now responsible for preserving the Union. Dissension over conscription, draft riots, and a peculiar Molly antipathy to emancipation of the slaves were to sour organized labor about the Republican party, although it took another sixty years for organized labor to migrate definitively into the Democratic party. Meanwhile, although many working-class Americans continuously enter the middle class, they mostly have to change their politics as they change their belief systems. Even today, some enduring remnant of Molly Maguire violence assures that the dominant rhetoric of the labor movement puzzlingly rejects the logic of Whig upward mobility. Labor resolutely maintains a class-oriented voice as it strives to better itself. For example, credence is given to stories of unsuspecting Irish immigrants -- right off the boat -- being offered citizenship only to be promptly conscripted into a war they never heard of; the rest of the community treats this as a refusal to acknowledge the duties of citizenship. Other depictions of the Civil War draft riots emphasize unfair ability of the upper classes to purchase draft substitutes, and the use of Irish soldiers as mere cannon fodder by the regular army. One can only marvel at the durability of these sentiments, generation after generation. Labor grievance in the coal fields would be more plausible if it concentrated less on national and religious enemies, and more on specific individuals who might justify outrage, even if that undermines an ethnic stereotype. One such is next described.

(1709)