Many of these and other “outrages” were blamed on the Molly Maguires, although McParlan attributed some to local conflicts and at least a couple to union members, and also noted that widespread opinion about the shaft fires was that they had been set by the Reading “to prejudice the public against the men who are now on a strike.”9 Regardless, the increasing violence played into the hands of Gowen, as local newspapers regularly identified the WBA, AOH, and Molly Maguires as the same entity—an assessment that McParlan reinforced with a report stating that of “about four hundred fifty Molly Maguires in Schuylkill County . . . about four hundred of them belong to the W.B. Association.”10 The newspapers thus implied that both the union and the AOH were terrorist organizations, and that the Molly Maguires, rather than being a small group of malcontents, were actually part of a conspiracy with an institutional basis in two associations.11
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church took symbolic action against the AOH. In February 1875, Father Charles McFadden of Mahanoy City refused a request to allow members of the order to enter the church in full regalia following the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parade. Three days before the parade Father Henry O’Reilly of Shenandoah said that “God’s curse, and his curse rest on all the Molly Maguires, and their families, and on every one who went to Mahanoy City to see them parade.” And on the Sunday following the parade O’Reilly read a list of names of AOH members who had been in the parade—“all the cut throats in the County”—and asked for the congregation to pray for their lost souls.12 A dedicated Catholic, McParlan would have been horrified to hear “James McKenna” near the top of that list.
• • •
Even concern for one’s immortal soul did not stop the violence. In fact, it increased as the strike continued into its fourth month and beyond and the WBA proved unable to gain concessions. The closer to starvation the miners’ families became—in the spring, with mounting bills, many stores began refusing credit—the more the pacifist union leaders lost control of those who favored action and retribution. In late April, the WBA submitted a proposal for arbitration to the Schuylkill Coal Exchange. The operators, aware that the longer they waited, the closer the union would be to collapse, did not respond for weeks. The WBA effectively disintegrated before it could make another meaningful representation.
At the same time, the union lost its ability to hold back the shootings, beatings, and arson. There was also a proliferation of coffin notices, the anonymous, crude drawings of coffins or pistols or other weapons, with threats to officials, foremen, or “blacklegs”—workers refusing to join the strike. One, for example, stated: “Mr. John Taylor—Please leave Glen Carbon, or if you dont you will suffer; by the order of the B.S.H. WE will give you one week to go but if you are alive on next Saturday you will die.”13
Meanwhile, McParlan was drawn into a variety of conspiracies for which he would later be accused of being an agent provocateur, although according to him he trod a fine line to avoid becoming a participant. For example, at the beginning of April he spoke to a man named Brennan and a pair of brothers called Welch who planned to burn the high trestle bridge near Ringtown on the Catawissa Branch of the Reading, a key point in the route for shipping coal from the upper anthracite fields to Philadelphia, a process that started when the southern operators’ excess coal ran out despite their earlier stockpiling.
The men were strangers but approached McParlan, he related, because he was a well-known Molly Maguire. Deciding that the best way to thwart the effort was to delay it until he could warn Franklin, he invited them to discuss the plan at a meeting at Number 3 Hill outside Shenandoah. He then persuaded McAndrew that they “want us to commit this outrage, and then inform upon us and leave us all in the penitentiary.” When the appointed night came, fourteen men of the Shenandoah lodge met on the cold, windswept hill, and McAndrew “used the argument just as I had used to him, only that he used it as though it originally came from himself.” Combined with Brennan not showing up, McAndrew’s argument killed the plan.14
But that was only one potential violent act; there were many more to come. The next week a car loaded with iron was let loose from a siding at Heckshers Breakers and raced downhill on the main track. Fortunately, officials happened to spot it, and telegraphed to Mahanoy Plain to delay a passenger train that would otherwise have been in its path, with a result that “the loss of life and property might have been fearful.” The railway workers then safely diverted the runaway car. McParlan had little doubt “as to the party who committed the depredation,” and less than a week later one of the perpetrators confessed and named his accomplice.15
So McParlan had solved his first crime—but what could be done about it? He and McAndrew could expel the men from the lodge, but the Reading had no legal recourse. McParlan had been promised that he would not have to give evidence, as doing so would destroy his cover and any chance of future prosecutions of more important criminals. Even if he did testify, it would be his word against the inevitable false alibis, and he realized now how weak his position was without anyone else who could reach the site of a crime to substantiate his charges. Of course, his discoveries meant “now that we know who the parties are [we could] get the evidence from another source,” but that tactic did not guarantee success.16 It was suddenly obvious that Pinkerton’s required another true field agent who would shorten his lines of communication and have the flexibility to conduct investigations, assist McParlan, make arrests when the time came, and corroborate any testimony.
In April 1875, McParlan traveled to Philadelphia to explain his needs to Pinkerton and Franklin.17 When the operative returned to his duties, the agency’s leaders proposed a solution to Gowen.18 The Reading president was receptive to anything that would help stop the outrages, as less than a month before he had received a worrisome letter from General Henry Pleasants, the head of the Coal and Iron Police. Pleasants—once the mastermind of the plan to blow a gap in the Confederate lines at Petersburg by exploding a tunnel full of explosives under the defenders—had warned Gowen of potential assassination attempts, because the Molly Maguires “know full well that if the master spirit who planned & is carrying out the great projects of the Reading Company is removed now, that it is impossible to replace him, that these projects will be paralysed by his removal, and that the Company would probably abandon coal mining.”19
The three men quickly agreed to the formation of a “flying squadron” consisting of half a dozen Pinkerton’s men and the same number of specially chosen Coal and Iron Police. Such a combination was important, because the Coal and Iron Police could not go undercover, as they were required to wear uniforms, and the regular Pinkerton operatives did not have the power of long-term detention. The new group—eliminating the weaknesses of both—would be tasked “to arrest all parties found committing outrages.” The Pinkerton agent in charge would have direct contact with McParlan, and therefore his unit could be warned in advance. This would permit them to apprehend those committing crimes at the very point they were doing so, ensuring a conviction, while McParlan would supposedly escape each time, allowing them to repeat the process. Therefore, Franklin claimed, “there would be but little difficulty in breaking up this association, and when the arrest of a gang was made, the names and localities of all the known M.M. in the county should be published, and thus strike terror in their midst.”20
There was only one man Pinkerton trusted to lead this special unit: Robert J. Linden, then a forty-year-old assistant superintendent at the Chicago office.21 Standing six feet four inches tall, “powerful in frame and physical organization, with black, close-curling hair, whiskers and mustache of the same texture and color, blue eyes,”22 Linden had joined the agency shortly after serving in the U.S. Navy overseeing shipbuilding during the Civil War. A Brooklyn-born Episcopalian, he worked under George Smith in Philadelphia before being transferred to Chicago. In the immediate aftermath of the Great Fire, while a lieutenant in Pinkerton’s Protective Patrol,
he played an important role in the agency’s efforts to prevent looting. Before long his organizational talents, energy, and obsessive drive led to a promotion, and those same traits now meant that he wasted no time in taking on the assignment and traveling to Schuylkill Haven. There, on May 3, over whiskey and cigars, he met with McParlan and the two astute operatives made detailed plans regarding their future rendezvous sites and methods of contact.23 Shortly thereafter, Linden and his men were officially inducted into the Coal and Iron Police and headed to their new base in Ashland, four miles west of Girardville.
Regular and frequent communications between McParlan and Linden now began, and they enabled Linden to deploy his men to prevent a series of planned attempts to derail trains, burn breakers, or blow up stations. For some reason, however, the criminals failed to appear each time, and Linden and his flying squadron returned empty-handed.24
• • •
In the same week as the decision to create the flying squadron was made, Daniel Dougherty finally went to trial for the murder of George Major. The prosecution produced a lengthy list of witnesses, all of whom swore fervently that they had seen Dougherty shoot Major. The defense responded with an equally large and impassioned set, each claiming to have seen Major shot by John McCann—who had since returned to Ireland. It was so blindingly obvious that most were committing perjury that the Lebanon Courier commented, “[I]f this is the character of testimony that prevails in the Schuylkill County courts, we do not wonder that there are no convictions.”25
The defense argued that Dougherty had been shot by Major’s brother William, who let off an indiscriminate volley in the midst of the melee. Eventually it became apparent that the defense’s best course was to prove that the bullet that hit Dougherty was not from Major’s pistol, and therefore the dead man had not shot his attacker, as the prosecution contended. The difficulty was that the bullet was still in Dougherty’s head, because doctors felt it too dangerous to extract it. Now the surgery went ahead, and the bullet was proved to be the wrong caliber for George Major’s gun. The jury was convinced, and Dougherty was acquitted.
At no point did McParlan inform the authorities that McCann had already admitted that he had shot Major. In later trials this omission was raised to show that McParlan was unethical. At one point, defense attorney Martin L’Velle asked him: “You knew he was in prison charged with that murder, you also knew that he was on trial for his life, charged with murder, and yet remained silent?”
McParlan responded: “I also knew Dan Dougherty was apprised where John McCann was, and could get out at any time. The idea was that Dougherty was innocent, and knew where McCann was, and he would be tried, knowing he could be cleared, and meanwhile McCann could escape.”26
Although L’Velle—and others since—used this to discredit McParlan, the flip side is that had the detective testified, it would have undermined his position and eliminated the chance for more important prosecutions. For the sake of an individual whom McParlan believed could clear himself, the risk was simply not worth it. But an intriguing question is what McParlan or his superiors would have done had Dougherty been convicted. Would the pending execution of a man known to be not guilty have provoked a different response? It is impossible to know, but what is apparent from McParlan’s silence is that he, Pinkerton, and Gowen had determined that to succeed they needed to be, like their enemies, “cold-blooded and heartless.”
Heartless is exactly what McParlan has been accused of being when he went to Northumberland County shortly after the trial, apparently to avoid taking part in a planned crime. McParlan first visited Dennis Canning, the AOH county delegate, before spending the night at a tavern run by Patrick Hester at Locust Gap Junction. A successful local Democratic politician and former bodymaster, Hester had been arrested in 1868 for the murder of Alexander Rea, although the charges never came to trial. At the time of McParlan’s visit, he was not long out of prison on a separate charge.27
While at Hester’s place, according to Pinkerton, McParlan played euchre through the night while flirting with Hester’s fair younger daughter, Maria.28 This interlude has been cited to criticize McParlan for dealing with the emotions of vulnerable young women in an ungallant way while using them as steppingstones to achieve his goals. However, although he demonstrated such behavior at other times, this was not an example of it. Maria was neither as young nor as vulnerable as Pinkerton indicated; in fact, she was already married to Martin Dooley, a known Molly Maguire.29
Although McParlan had hoped to steer clear of criminal activity, he was thrust into the middle of it shortly after his return to Shenandoah, when McAndrew’s departure for a job in the northern fields effectively left McParlan in charge of that lodge. John Gibbons and Thomas Hurley—two of the most impulsive men McParlan had met—immediately proposed that they execute Gomer James, a marked man ever since his acquittal for killing Edward Cosgrove. McAndrew had long supported the murder of James, particularly after he and the Welshman exchanged shots in a drunken brawl earlier in the year. At that point McAndrew had told McParlan that “as soon as the Collierys resumed work, two men must be brought from away, somewhere, and put an end to James, as it was a disgrace to the Molly Maguires to let him live as long as they have done.”30
Now, with the bodymaster out of the county, Gibbons, Hurley, and others argued so vehemently for the killing that McParlan could not but outwardly agree. Although the situation was perhaps not as desperate as Pinkerton made it seem—“to show cowardice or hesitation, under the circumstances, would prove sure if not immediate death”31—the detective could not put a stop to the assassination without losing face and, perhaps, trust. He therefore agreed to go to the bodymaster in Mahanoy Plane to recruit men to shoot James, who was serving as a watchman at the Kohinoor Colliery near Shenandoah. Concerned, however, that something might happen before he could see Linden, he bought a round of drinks and had several extras himself before falling into a feigned drunken stupor, thus postponing the mission (a strategy that he had also successfully used only a few weeks before in stopping three Shenandoah men from leaving to kill the blacklegs at a local colliery32). The next morning he met Linden in Port Clinton, who in turn consulted Franklin and saw to it that James was temporarily relieved of his position, leaving Hurley to wait in vain to ambush him.33
• • •
Although McParlan had managed to prevent several men from being killed, there was nothing that could be done about saving the WBA from its death throes. In late May, with the blessing of Gowen, the operators began to reopen the mines and provide employment—and protection—to anyone who would agree to the 1874 basis. Men who had not been paid for six months quickly returned to their jobs, although the most radical workers—from the Shenandoah and Mahanoy City areas—continued to hold out.
On June 1, the Reading’s massive West Shenandoah colliery opened, and McParlan informed Linden that there would be trouble the next day if the strikers could not persuade the blacklegs to leave. Linden and Captain Joseph Heisler, his counterpart commanding the Coal and Iron Police of the flying squadron, took a squad of heavily armed men to protect the colliery. Late that night, hundreds of out-of-work miners drank heavily on Number 3 Hill, and the next morning “their drums were beating as early as 5 am, but they were not in sight until 7 am.”34 Heisler left to get reinforcements, while Linden formed his twenty-five men in front of the colliery “on a piece of ground about 100 ft square.”
When the throng of shouting, drum-beating miners appeared, Linden counted 613 men. Among those at the front was McParlan, “hair flying wildly in the breeze, a long, patched, gray coat, with two revolvers in his belt, beside a big hickory club which he carried in his hand. . . . By the side of the detective was a sleek bull-terrier . . . trained ready for the pit, its tongue protruding, and showing the white teeth appearing fully as murderous and ugly as his master.”35
The mob surged forward, and Linden ordered his men to level their six
teen-shot Winchester rifles. There was a moment of hesitation, as the miners wondered if Linden would actually tell his men to fire. In that instant McParlan shouted that “twenty times sixteen wor three hundred an’ twenty, an’ that was the number that must fall before them Winchesters were exhausted!”36
The strikers retreated but regrouped and headed for Mahanoy City where, their number swollen to two thousand, more trouble broke out. When the sheriff, police, and a volunteer posse ordered them back to their homes, a riot ensued. Shots were fired and at least eight rioters wounded, as were four of the posse, including William Enke, a member of the recently formed Silliman Guards, who was shot in the head. Fortunately, the arrival of the state militia signaled an end to the outbreak.37 By the next day virtually all of the region’s collieries had been reopened.
After a week of desperate negotiations, hoping to keep their organization alive, WBA leaders announced that they would make a direct appeal to Gowen for a compromise settlement. However, realizing that doing nothing was the most powerful option, Gowen squashed any such hopes. “I am not a member of the committee of the Coal Exchange,” he wrote to new union president John F. Welsh, “appointed to take charge of the subject of wages, and therefore I cannot consent to have any conference whatever with your Association.”38
Within days of Gowen’s response, the WBA had authorized a full return to work “under protest,” and Gowen knew he had effectively killed the union. Virtually all of the mine workers in Schuylkill County returned to their jobs, on average receiving wages at 26.5 percent below those of 1869.39 It was no surprise that under these conditions the trouble not only continued, it escalated.
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