THE "MOLLY MAGUIRES."

Evening Star, Issue 11700, 4 October 1902, Page 6

THE "MOLLY MAGUIRES."

Twonry-five years ago the icoal mountains of' Pennsylvania were dominateds by a band 1 of criminals known as the MollyMaguires, who for months maintained a reign of .terror.. Nightly, murders, mysterious, occurring now here and nowsthere,. made life in the coal region a .shuddering horror. ■Franklin* B. Qowen, .with the aid of■ a detective who joined; the ■. order for the purpose of betraying it, put an end to this distressful time, and one day-seven convicted asmsdns,- were hanged at Mauch Chunk. The Molly Maguires were not all miners. Desperate criminals took advantage of the occasion to join the; order and to carry on their war!against society with tan-fold* violence because, they .pretended to hav>. enlisted under the banner 6f organised labor. 'Harper's Weekly' regards the strike in the anthracite coal, region as a similar: coalition of .Anarchists with the bona fide miners, to the detriment of the latter. In commenting on the strike our contemporary says: "We often ask ourselves whether democracy is up to the task of governing., municipalities, but we. know that democracy, as a governing force,* disappears from the Pennsylvania coal regions the moment a : strike is declared. In this lnFtance, when the sheriff was threatened at Shenandoah, and when'his conl was actually beaten to death in defending his father, the politicians of the town, vrith one honorable .exception, so far as we have been informed, refused to ask the Governor to send' troops to the scene of disorder, giving as an excuse that they would be boycotted lr they did. This is the same as saying that thfly feared the loss of their offices ][ % did their duty in them, and is therefore; one of the most shameful confessions that can be made"by public servants. The mteßigent and drilful miners failed to do their duty; in that they, permtited thpmselvesto be frightened by the lower orders of. their craft, mostty men from bouth-easftern Europe, the most dangerous and enterprising of whom are the Poles. ■ The sort of gelatmouschric morality which pervades the coal regions is something shameful to our civilisation. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the strike question may be, there is no doubt that self-govern-ment is frreatly discredited in certain cotnv ties m Pennsylvania. *