Pinkerton’s Great Detective

by Beau Riffenburgh

  Before long, being on the inside began to pay dividends. Two weeks after his initiation McParlan was able to provide Franklin with a list of ten Schuylkill County bodymasters. Two days later he explained how Molly Maguire violence was planned without the knowledge of the majority of the members:

  [W]hen there is a “job” to be done (man to be beaten or murdered) the question or matter is never brought up in open Lodge—but the Bodymaster receives the grievance and complaint and appoints the man or men privately and secretly notifies them of what they are required to do, and then the “job” is done, and the very members of the Lodge are never made aware of the transaction or who the “avengers” are, which must be kept a profound secret by the principals lest they might be given away. That if any member is caught in a fuss and arrested, he can always prove an alibi.27

  This was the first written indication by McParlan that perhaps the Molly Maguires and the AOH were not synonymous. Rather, he now understood that the bodymasters and a limited number of other members formed an “inner circle” that acted without general knowledge or approval to mete out justice. It was not the membership but this inner circle that formed the Molly Maguires and that McParlan referred to when he wrote: “[T]hey are held in such terror that all the office holders and politicians are on their side, and they can always command both money & influence.”28

  The next stage of McParlan’s plan therefore was to infiltrate the upper echelons of the AOH, from where the corruption, violence, and murder stemmed. It didn’t take long to impress the foot soldiers, from whom he was hoping for introductions to the local officers. “I told them I was a counterfeiter, from the fact that I always had money, and did not seem to work any,” he testified later. “[I]t had come from some other source; and from the fact of being able to kill a man; a man that was able to do that, and get away with it, seemed to be a man highly prized by those parties that I associated with; and they thought more of me, the more crimes I had committed and got away with.”29

  As a result, only days after his initiation he had gained such acceptance that the “boys all swear by him & say that they would like to see anyone come there to follow him.”30

  Little did McParlan know that while he was associating with these rough elements, Gowen and Pinkerton decided to expand their undercover operation by infiltrating the WBA. In February 1874, Pinkerton selected for this task P. M. Cummings, a Scottish immigrant who had once served in the Dublin police. Cummings had moved to Dundee, Illinois, in the 1850s, gained mining experience, and was “in good standing with the National Union Working-Mens Association in Illinois.”31

  After entering the anthracite region, Cummings went directly to St. Clair, where he found John Siney at a cockfight. As he walked with Siney on his way home, he explained that he had been victimized in Illinois for his union activities and was looking for a new job.32 In the previous few months Siney had helped found the Cleveland-based Miners’ National Association, of which he had been elected president, but he concurrently continued for six months as president of the WBA. He tried unsuccessfully during this time to amalgamate the WBA with the national union, which already had effectively organized bituminous (soft-coal) miners and gained a solid footing in the northern parts of the anthracite region.33

  Siney took an immediate liking to Cummings and was only too willing to help him find work. During the next year and a half they developed a close relationship—at just the time when Siney was becoming progressively less popular with the members of the WBA. Many of them disagreed with Siney’s growing reluctance to use strikes during negotiations, as he came to believe that harmony, in the form of arbitration, was more productive than conflict. Other WBA members simply believed he had abandoned them for a more powerful role with the national union.34 Nevertheless, Siney earned the respect of Cummings, who eventually was elected vice president of the WBA’s St. Clair local, and whose reports noted the union’s leaders were unbendingly opposed to violence and were working toward amicable agreement with Gowen. He did not give extensive information about the Molly Maguires, because, he wrote, in St. Clair they “were kept down by the secret society known as the ‘Chain Gang,’” and he had been warned that it “would be foolish to go up the mountain where nobody knew him—and he being a total stranger it would be almost certain death.”35

  As McParlan discovered, it could be dangerous even if one were not a stranger. One warm spring day he traveled to Big Mine Run with Lawler to get the new quarterly “goods.” Stopping on their return for a drink with Hugh Mulligan—“once a great M.M.”—they were just settling in when a man named Dick Flynn “came in with a carving knife in one hand and a revolver—full cocked—in the other” to kill Lawler. McParlan jumped up and grappled with him while Lawler escaped out the window. Once Lawler was gone, McParlan convinced Flynn to put down his weapons and have a drink. Flynn agreed, but after tossing down a shot of whiskey, announced that he would kill McParlan instead, and reached for his pistol. However, “the operative placed his revolver full cocked close to the ear of the man and remarked that . . . if he dare move his hand or feet, he would blow his brains out. The party then begged like a child for mercy.”36

  In the following months, despite regular carousing with AOH members and an investigative trip into the upper anthracite region, McParlan made little headway. In June, he met Franklin in Philadelphia, where he produced a list of those he had discovered to be Molly Maguires. However, his health took a downward spiral after he caught a bad cold at an initiation “on the mountain” on an unusually frigid night. Combined with heavy drinking, lack of sleep, general dissipation, and the heavy mental strain he was under, it led to ague and lethargy, and he spent increasingly frequent periods in bed, too weak to leave his room. Moreover, his hair began to thin noticeably, and he was described as looking “thin and cadaverous.”

  The summer saw a number of struggles within the AOH, and in July McAndrew replaced Lawler as bodymaster in Shenandoah. Because McAndrew was virtually illiterate, McParlan was immediately appointed secretary in order to deal with correspondence. Shortly thereafter, county delegate Barney Dolan was removed from his position and dismissed from the order for misappropriating funds. He was replaced following a vote of Schuylkill County bodymasters by the region’s rising star—John Kehoe.

  Kehoe’s ascendance coincided with more troublesome times. McParlan’s reports—which had earlier told of weddings, dances, and boisterous drinking sessions—became heavy with crime as the summer neared its end. In August, several brutal fights broke out between Welsh and Irish miners, with Germans entering the brawls on the side of the Welsh. One man was killed and several others severely injured. Then a riot at Ringtown Park ended in the stoning of a constable by drunken ruffians.37

  In September, James McHugh, a Shenandoah AOH member, became blazingly drunk, following which he attempted to shoot first an innkeeper and then a liquor dealer. Two days later McAndrew, normally relatively controlled, caught a man who had thrown two stones through his window and beat him over the head with his revolver; several of McAndrew’s friends then trounced the man until he was at death’s door.38

  A few days further on, Lawler himself was set upon and seriously beaten by members of the Shenandoah AOH. Lawler’s offense was a failure to respond quickly or aggressively enough. In August 1873, Edward Cosgrove, a member of the AOH, had been killed in Shenandoah. A tough Welsh miner, Gomer James, was tried for the crime but acquitted.39 It was not simply the verdict—helped, some said, by brazen lies—that infuriated the Molly Maguires, but James’s blasé attitude, which led the judge to reprimand him: “The next time you are on trial for your life, take a little interest in it.”40 James became a marked man, and pressure was put on Lawler to have him killed. Lawler seemed to prevaricate for months—although he told McParlan he had assigned Cosgrove’s cousin to do it, only for the man to back out.41 Finally, though he was no longer bodymaster, a few members decided to teach Lawler a lesson ab
out being decisive.

  Later that month McParlan had his own scare, when he was told by a post office clerk that a letter from Philadelphia addressed to James McParlan appeared to be written in the same hand as those that “McKenna” regularly received. McParlan “thought of ten thousand things at once,”42 particularly what might happen if his cover story was blown. Nevertheless, keeping his voice casual, he responded that McParlan was a friend in Wilkes-Barre, and that he would take the letter to him; the unsuspecting clerk handed it over.

  • • •

  The rise in violence throughout the autumn incited a serious backlash from a disapproving Catholic Church.43 As far back as 1862, when he intervened in the conscription troubles in Cass Township, Bishop James Frederic Wood of Philadelphia had opposed the Molly Maguires. Two years later he composed a pastoral letter condemning secret societies, which he required to be read in every church of his diocese.44 Other Catholic bishops in Pennsylvania had not been as openly opposed to the Molly Maguires—Wood’s diocese included the coalfields where most of the violence was occurring—but they were beginning to follow his lead.

  In October 1874, Daniel McDermott, the priest at New Philadelphia, a patch east of Pottsville, delivered and then published a diatribe against secret societies. Father McDermott noted particularly the AOH and the Emerald Brotherhood of America, which he declared “evil of their very nature” and “a conspiracy against the souls of men, against our neighbor, against our country, against religion, against Christ.” A week later a follow-up article by seven priests in the region condemned the AOH as run by “men of notoriously infamous character,” engaging in “works forbidden by the Commandment thou shalt not kill.”45 These were significant declarations—as AOH members were concerned about being named publicly from the pulpit or, worse, excommunicated. Yet even such potential perils could not stop the outrages.

  The next major incident occurred that same month. Seven miles east of Shenandoah, the rapidly growing town of Mahanoy City was a center of rival gangs. The heavily immigrant town was divided down the middle by Main Street, and for an individual to “cross the dead line” and enter the section controlled by a rival ethnic group was asking for a severe beating or worse. Not only did the Molly Maguires engage in frequent altercations with the Welsh gang known as the Modocs, they also did battle with the Kilkenny miners who formed the Chain Gang.

  A fire in town was a frequent occasion for a clash between the rival groups. Each side of the town had a volunteer fire company that served its own section, but when a fire broke out in the center, both crews inevitably arrived ready for a fire and a fight. In fact, some blazes were set just to bring the opponents together. Cummings wrote in one of his reports that “another fire will be gotten up by the Sheet Iron gang, at which they will go around and clean the MMs out.”46

  On the night of Saturday, October 31, a fire started in a stable just east of Main Street. Both fire companies showed up, and it was not long before a serious brawl developed. George Major, the thirty-three-year-old chief burgess (the equivalent of the mayor) and foreman of the Citizens Fire Company, tried to get the situation under control. As he stepped into the street with his two brothers, he shot a dog that was adding to the general confusion, in the hope of getting people’s attention. But in the chaos that followed, more shots were fired, and Major was hit in the chest while shooting twice himself. At the same time, Daniel Dougherty, a member of the Mahanoy City AOH, was struck under the left ear by a bullet. Major died on Tuesday, following which Dougherty was arrested on the assumption that Major had hit him while returning fire.

  The situation quickly became a cause célèbre. Robert Ramsey, who had succeeded Bannan as editor of The Miners’ Journal, attacked the Molly Maguires as the cause of the “carnival of crime” in Schuylkill County. He noted an easy solution to such problems: “One good, wholesome hanging, gently but firmly administered, will cure a great deal of bad blood, and save a great many lives in this community.”47 Meanwhile, the members of the AOH lined up behind Dougherty, insisting that he was being persecuted for political and ethnic reasons.

  The following Monday, having been directed by Franklin to investigate, McParlan traveled to Mahanoy City, where he tracked down an Irishman named John McCann. In the confusion following Major’s first shot, McCann admitted, he had struggled to wrest the gun from the chief burgess, but instead it went off and shot Major. When Major died, McCann made himself scarce, taking with him Dougherty’s alibi. And for reasons that would not be explained for almost two years, McParlan was not about to tell what he had just learned.48 He did by all accounts file a report with Franklin, but unfortunately his reports from the time are missing. Meanwhile, Franklin, like McParlan, chose not to advise the Schuylkill County authorities that they had arrested the wrong man. So Dougherty stayed in jail for the time being while the local lodges of the AOH raised more than six hundred dollars for his defense.49

  Major’s death brought the Molly Maguires back into the limelight to a greater degree than any time since 1868, as both The New York Herald and The World published articles about unrestrained violence in Schuylkill County.50 In the meantime, the ugliness continued, and in late November a clash between “a party of roughs” from Jackson’s Patch and the Modocs culminated in shots being fired into the Mahanoy City Catholic Church.51 Then, on December 18, fifty-seven-year-old Frederick Hesser, the night watchman at the Hickory Swamp Colliery near Shamokin in Northumberland County, was beaten to death with a machinist’s hammer and a four-foot wooden club.52 Although the motive for the murder was unknown, it was widely attributed—as was much of the other carnage—to the Molly Maguires.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE LONG STRIKE

  As the outrages in the anthracite region reached new heights, so did Gowen’s determination to crush any opposition—starting with the union. At the beginning of 1874, the WBA and the Anthracite Board of Trade had agreed to hold wages at essentially the same level as the previous year. But before they met again, Gowen prepared for a showdown. He organized the remaining independent operators into the Schuylkill Coal Exchange, which, under his direction, limited coal production and shipped an agreed quota, thereby crushing the union’s last hopes of controlling those functions. Then, during the autumn, the Reading and other operators built up stocks so they could continue supplying customers through the winter regardless of production.

  With Gowen pulling the strings, the operators then issued harsh wage offers for 1875. In Schuylkill County, miners’ pay was reduced 20 percent and laborers’ 10 percent. The minimum basis was abolished and a 1 percent cut in wages instituted for each 3¢ coal dropped below $2.50 per ton. The operators refused to negotiate with the union, maintaining that the individual miner could accept the offer or lose his job. As there was no doubt the union would advise its members to reject the offer, a strike was inevitable. This was just what Gowen wanted, for he believed that a protracted strike would break the union.1

  As expected, the miners in the two southern fields voted to strike, and throughout December 1874, mines shut down, initiating what became known as the Long Strike. But the miners in the Northern Field—most of whom did not belong to the WBA—accepted the cuts and continued to work, once again reducing the chances of a union victory.

  Meanwhile, new Pinkerton’s operatives infiltrated the union. William McCowan became an officer in the Shamokin branch in Northumberland County, while an agent identified as “WRH” was based in Frackville. Gowen was also served by H. B. Hanmore, a reporter who offered to pass information to the Reading president—for a price.2 Several months later, when a new legislative investigation was launched into the Reading’s dealings in the railroad and coal industries, Pinkerton’s supplied three more detectives to investigate those bringing the charges.3

  During this time McParlan charted shifting viewpoints meticulously, noting in February, for example, that the operators were “nearly all willing to sign the basis, but were
afraid of the Reading Rail Road Company.” Three weeks later, “The men . . . declared that the P&R treated them a great deal better” than the independent operators. But in late March, he stated to Gowen that “all classes of people in the coal region are very much embittered toward your Company and openly denounce the course you have pursued” and that “when the Miners . . . committed their first depredation, they were censured for it by all classes of people, but now . . . they are universally praised for the actions.”4

  Early in the strike, McParlan also regularly noted that the miners felt confident and showed high spirits.5 But as it dragged on for months, with its attendant hardships, homelessness, and hunger, the optimism disappeared, and with that came an increase in violence by what The Pottsville Standard termed the “turbulent” minority.6

  Throughout the spring of 1875, Schuylkill County proved a dangerous place. In a four-day period, McParlan reported that a man named Dixon was shot and killed in Mine Hill Gap, that a Sheet Iron Gang member aiming for a Molly Maguire hit a young woman instead, and that a man named McAneeny was shot by a Welshman, “Bully Bill” Thomas, in Mahanoy City.7 At the same time, the violence began shifting from random and diffuse to direct and targeted—particularly at operators. In February there was a fire in the shaft of the Reading’s East Norwegian Colliery, followed shortly by another in the shaft of the West Norwegian Colliery. The next month watchmen at several collieries were beaten and robbed, coal was dumped on the tracks, a telegraph office was burned down, train crews were stoned, toolhouses were robbed, and a train with about one hundred loaded cars was released down the grade near Excelsior.8