In attempting to give precise figures some writers have undoubtedly exaggerated the number of murders by this order from 1865 to 1875 but no one can go through the evidence without being convinced that a great many men were killed to satisfy the revengeful spirit of the Molly Maguires. Some of the victims were men so useful, conspicuous and so beloved in their communities that their assassination caused a profound and enduring impression. In some cases, so Dewees (who has written a very useful story 1) asserts, robbery was added to murder; superintendents, who were carrying the money for the monthly pay of the miners and laborers, were waylaid as they drove along some lonely road in the desolate country. While the murders were numerous, still more numerous were the threats of murder and warnings to leave the country written on a sheet of paper with a rude picture of a coffin or a pistol and sometimes both. One notice read: "Mr. John Taylor - We will give you one week to go but if you are alive on next Saturday you will die." Another, to three bosses, charged with " cheating thy men" had a picture of three pistols and a coffin and on the coffin was written, "This is your home." In other mining districts and in manufacturing localities during strikes and times of turbulence similar warnings have been common and have been laughed at by mining bosses, superintendents and proprietors; but, in the anthracite region between 1865 and 1876 the bravest of men could not forget how many of his fellows had been shot and suppress a feeling of uneasiness when he found such a

1 The Molly Maguires, F. P. Dewees, of Pottsville, a member of the Schuylkill county bar, 1877.

2 Dewees, 367 et seq.; see also 123.

missive on his doorstep or posted up on the door of his office at the mine. Many a superintendent and mining boss left his house in the morning with his hand on his revolver, wondering if he should ever see wife and children again.

The young men of the order were selected for the commission of murder; above them were older heads holding high office and, in a variety of ways, displaying executive ability. They were quick to see what a weapon to their hand was universal suffrage, and, with the aptitude for politics which the Irish have shown in our country, they developed their order into a political power to be reckoned with. Numbering in Schuylkill county only 500 or 600 out of 5000 Irishmen in a total population of 116,000,1 the Molly Maguires controlled the common schools and the local government of the townships in the mining sections of the county. They elected at different times three county commissioners and came near electing one of their number, who had acquired twenty thousand dollars worth of property, associate Judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In one borough a Molly was chief of police; another in Mahanoy township, Jack Kehoe, was High Constable.2 In the elections were fraudulent voting, stuffing of the ballot-boxes and false returns; in the administration of the offices, fraud and robbery. In Mahanoy township $60,000 were drawn for the schools and eleven-twelfths of it stolen. Exorbitant road taxes were a fruitful means by which township officials robbed

1 Census of 1870, Gowen. The 5000 is an estimate of those of a voting age from census data.

2 "In Carbon county two Mollies have at different times held the office of County commissioner and a Molly also succeeded in being elected to the legislature." Dewees, 32 n.

the taxpayers and put the money in their own pockets. In August 1875 an ex-county commissioner, a Molly, and two commissioners then in office, not actually belonging to the order but in sympathy with it, had been convicted of stealing the county funds and each had been sentenced by a full bench [September 6] to two years' imprisonment. At the fall election for governor in this year [1875] the Molly Maguires, who were naturally Democrats, foresaw Republican success and sold their vote in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties to the Republicans for a certain amount of money in hand and an implied agreement that these convicted commissioners and other criminals who were called by a leading Molly "our men" should be pardoned.1 It is hardly to be supposed that the Republican politicians who made this bargain were aware of the thoroughly criminal nature of the Molly Maguires, for they had astutely covered themselves with a virtuous cloak, securing from the Legislature in 1871 a charter for the Ancient Order of Hibernians whose motto was "Friendship, Unity and Christian Charity." On October 10, 1875 in a letter to the Shenandoah Herald Jack Kehoe denied with indignation that the Molly Maguires were synonymous with the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which latter was "composed of men who are law abiding and seek the elevation of their members." 2 Kehoe was crafty enough

1 Elections in Pennsylvania were much closer then than now [1909]. In 1875 Hartranft's majority for governor over Judge Pershing, Democrat, was only 12,000 in a vote of 596,000. Although the returns show normal Democratic majorities in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties, Dewees has no doubt that the Molly vote was sold and delivered; what Pershing lost in the Molly strongholds was counterbalanced by gains elsewhere. Dewees feels sure that Hartranft was ignorant of the transaction, 222 et seq. On March 16, 1876, the three commissioners were pardoned. Pa. Legislative docs., 1877, ii. 1252.

* Dewees, 380.

to see the advantage of throwing dust in the eyes of the public and, when the outside world was bargained with, the A. O. H. was put forward, but, as matter of fact, it was the old story of ravening wolves in sheep's clothing.

Despite the large number of murders by Molly Maguires from 1865 to 1875 there were few arrests, few trials and never a conviction for murder in the first degree. The defence usually relied on, an alibi, was made fairly easy to establish as the men who did the killing were unknown in the locality of it and as there were Mollies in abundance equal to any amount of false and hard swearing at the dictation of their order.

During the summer and autumn of 1874 the Molly Maguires were at the height of their power, yet, while there was nothing in sight menacing their dominion, operations against them had been commenced by Franklin B. Gowen. Shortly after coming of age, Gowen, in company with others, had worked a mine in Schuylkill county but, owing to the aftermath of the panic of 1857, his venture had not been successful. He turned to the study of law and was admitted to the Schuylkill county bar, was elected District Attorney and later, securing a large and lucrative practice, became attorney for the Philadelphia and Reading railroad, and in 1869, at the age of thirtythree, its president. He organized the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Co. which secured an immense amount of coal land and became the largest producer of anthracite coal. He knew Schuylkill county through and through and made up his mind that a regular and profitable conduct of mining operations would become impos

1 In 1876, 3,071,000 tons; 1877, 5,183,000 tons. Pa. report on industrial statistics, 1876-1877.

sible, should the terror of the Molly Maguires continue and grow. As the guardian of the great Reading property, he felt it his duty to break up the criminal organization and, in addition to his local knowledge and experience, he possessed peculiar qualities for the work. With restless ability and indomitable energy he combined, in a remarkable degree, both physical and moral courage. He was convinced that the Molly Maguires could be exposed only by the employment of secret detectives and, with this view, he applied to Allan Pinkerton of Chicago, "an intelligent and broad-minded Scotchman." "I will secure an agent or officer," Pinkerton said to him, "to ferret out the existence of this society. Whoever I get is to be paid so much a week, no matter if he finds out nothing. He is bound to me, never under any circumstances to take a reward for his services from anybody and, if he spends five years and obtains nothing in the way of information, he must have every month or every week exactly the same compensation as if every week he had traced a new murder and every month had discovered a new conspiracy. He is never to gain pecuniarily by the success of his undertaking; but as a man who goes into this organization as a detective takes his life in his own hands, I will send no man on this mission of yours, Mr. Gowen, unless it be agreed beforehand, and I can tell him so, that he never is to be known in connection with the enterprise."1 Pinkerton chose James McParlan, a native of Ireland and a Roman Catholic, who coming to Chicago in 1867 had been a teamster, the driver of a meat wagon, a deck hand on a lake steamer, a wood-chopper in the wilds of Michigan, a private coachman in Chicago, a

1 Gowen's argument, The Commonwealth vs. Thomas Munley, 16.