Part Two: The Molly Maguires: Untamable Irish Rebels Who Had a Really Direct Way of Dealing with Bosses & Landlords

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Jamie Loftus about the wild history of Irish secret societies, the fight against the enclosure of the commons, and class war in the coal fields of the US.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to cool people. Did cool stuff. You're
weekly reminder of what happens when bosses drag out a
strike so long that it drives people out of their homes.
That's what we're gonna talk about today.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Not for nothing.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I learned this morning that it was Bob Iger's fault
that they revealed the murderer of Laura Palmer too soon
on Twin Peaks. So if anyone was looking for an
additional reason, if you really want to get granular and petty,
that was a fun one.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
That is reason enough.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Yes, I'm willing to I'm willing to take it. To
perceive slights, I don't care whatever turns people against this man.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, that's Jamie Loftus over there, rabble rousing. Jamie Office
is my guest this week. Hy, Jamie. How you doing.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm I'm great.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I've been thinking about the Molly McGuire is quite a
bit this weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Over the weekend because.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
I saw my irishest family last night, including my cousin
who's Molly McGuire. Molly McGuire, and I mentioned this and
she responded with huh, So I think that the whole
family is going to learn a lot from my family.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
She's going to think about her name after that.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
It is canonically a coincidence because my grandma's maiden name,
but I think she'll think it's cool that well, actually
I don't know how the story ends, so maybe not it.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
We'll get there.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
I'll do like a Titanic situation and be like just
listen to just watch VHS one, no need to watch
VHS two.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, there's a little bit of the whole thing where
sometimes I've fish people in Ireland are more radical than
Irish people in the US, But I still think that
they're They're real interesting and cool. There's just there's more
asterisks in this in this episode than the previous episode.

(02:16):
I'm prepared, but also with us is Sophie Lichterman, our
producer sub so Pi so Phi.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
I've agreed to record this podcast at nine am on
a Monday.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah. Usually we make this like cole elaborate joke where
there's like only fifteen minute break between the two episodes
when we record, but this time there was actually a
longer break between the episodes for us than for you.
Isn't that wild?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Our audio engineers Ian Hi Ian Hi Ian Hien and
our music was written for us by un woman. This
is part two of a two parter. You probably figured
that out. It's about the Molly Maguires. You also probably
figured that out either by looking at the title or
by listening to us talk. But in part one we

(03:05):
learned about how when you try to enclose the commons
in Ireland, a bunch of people put on dresses, questionable
makeup and murder you. And so now we're going to
talk about what happens when some of those people moved
to the United States, where spoiler alert, the working conditions

(03:25):
are not good for people who have no money.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Hold on run that back.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
The land of opportunity was the land of an opportunity
to be exploited.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Right, I mean, some of these people, if that was
that was that was the dream all along?

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Was that probably was the dream alone to be wildly exploited. Yeah,
it's a kink, I guess that. I mean, almost starving
in Appalachia is better than litter released starving in Ireland.
So we're going to talk about Appalachia. We're going to

(04:06):
talk about Pennsylvania in particular, and we're going to talk
about a Pennsylvania primarily in the eighteen sixties. But you know,
being US will jump around a bunch. The US it
liked coal in the eighteen sixties. It still does. See
the aforementioned We're all going to drown as the water's rise,

(04:27):
and the US needed lots of coal. Fortunately it had
lots of it, fortunately for the industrialization of the US
of the nineteenth century. Not fortunately for US one hundred
and fifty years later. Yeah, they'd never found this stuff.
I'm sure we would have found some other way to
fuck everything up. So the best quality coal is called
anthracite coal. Northeastern Pennsylvania has a ton of anthracite coal,

(04:48):
is the world's biggest deposit of anthracite coal. Okay, so
a lot of Irish people fleeing starvation and colonization, they
show up to be settlers in a different colonized country,
the United States. They show up in Pennsylvania, which I
hate typing, as I'm mentioned last time, because it's annoying
to spell. Specifically, they showed up in Schoukol County, which
is not an indigenous name. It's Dutch for hidden stream.

(05:11):
This had been Lenape Land until they were forced off
in seventeen seventy eight. By the eighteen forties, the area
was still very very rural and or wild. This is
like one of the kind of Appalachia being like still
one of the least populated parts of the United States,
even though it's like right in the middle of where
colin you know where the United States part is. Yeah, yeah,

(05:34):
and it's just like all around Appalachia, right, there's like
a ton of people. Right the east mid Atlantic is
a very densely populated area, but you go into the
mountains and that stops being the case. So where this
coal is is very rural. There were two coal fields
in the area. There was a northern one, which was
geologically blessed with being near surface coal that was easier

(05:54):
to mine. This was mined by large corporations. Then there's
the southern field where our Irish wound up. And this
is smaller scale operations, like more like mom and pop
exploiter shops with only a couple hundred employees instead of
like these, you know, thousands of employees.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
A small I mean, I love a small scale exploitation, yeah,
Because then there's always the American dream.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
You can always dream of exploiting at a higher level.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
What if one day you get to put the boot
on someone's neck.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
We're gonna need a pair of bigger boots.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
I know, on those boots m m our bootstraps, like
the like the little loop on the back of the boot.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
I honestly think of those hideous flat Greek sandals like
the cool girls wore in the early two thousands.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
When I think, if I think.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
There's sandal straps, I don't even think of boots.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Those shoes were evil.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
That was that was out of my pay grade. Socially.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
I tryed literally, I'm trying to look up what a
bootstrap is. But there's like some company called Bootstrap and
their horrible logo, which is just a giant purple bee
is the only.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Which boots have Which boots have strapped? I associate boots with,
you know, laces.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like my boots have a
little loop on the back that you can use to
pull the boot on. That's the best I can think.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Okay, that's I've interacted with that kind of bootstrap.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
I mean, I guess it's just I don't want to
see the giant purple bee.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Tell me what it is.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's yet another way that the American dream. It's it's
fake down to the language.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
They're like, the answer on here is not what we
want because you can't actually pull you.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
I heard somewhere, and this is not in my script,
so I can't like a test to this. I heard
somewhere that bootstrap the whole, like pick yourself up by
the bootstraps was actually like a leftist prays making fun
of the American dream. It was like, oh, yeah, just
pick yourself up by the bootstraps, that's possible. And then
everyone's like, okay.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
It almost sounds it almost sounds like how much could
a banana cost ten dollars?

Speaker 2 (08:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
They're like, well, yeah, because rich people aren't wearing wearing
them boots.

Speaker 4 (08:12):
The parts of the I have the definition, nfo, oh
it is it is the loop. It is the loop.
Like for example, look at this boot. They got two
of them on the side.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
What a useful chart? Yeah, two different arrows pointing at
the loop.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
But if Yeah, the first like seven things on Google
were telling me something about a popular CSS framework, and
then the next one was telling me that it means
advancing oneself or accomplishing something without aid.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
So I interpretation, Yeah, there should be an instead of Kickstarter,
there should be a site called bootstrapper, and it's a
site where you sign up and you just don't get
any money. Yeah, and you just can't. You actually just
can't accomplish anything sport. Okay, So the southern coal fields

(09:04):
where you have lots of bootstrappers, they dug deeper with
worse equipment and worse pay. People were getting the equivalent
in like twenty twenty three money of fifty dollars a
day for work that will one hundred percent murder you.
Like pretty much everyone who doesn't die in the course
of the violence that will be in this episode dies

(09:26):
from black lung. The Irish who showed up there. They
are some of the roughest and poorest of the Irish immigrants,
which is fucking saying something. And unlike most of the
rest of the eighteen forties Irish immigrants into the United States,
a lot of them don't speak English. You have a
larger wave of Irish speaking immigrants in the eighteen eighties
or so, But in the eighteen forties, as we talked

(09:49):
about last time, a lot of folks who are coming
from places where people still spoke Irish were able to
hold on in Ireland a little bit more so, it's
very unlikely that these people were like card carrying Molly
McGuire's when they show up. It's like they weren't like,
let's go to America and start a chapter of Molly McGuire's.

(10:11):
Probably they weren't even like, oh god, we have to leave,
we're starving and were Molly McGuire's, so let's go do
that instead. Molly McGuire Ism was as much a sort
of spirit of resistance and a tactic as much as
it was an actual secret society. It was also what
you called every Irish person you don't like.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
So is that another I mean, I know we were
talking about that in the last episode as well. Where
because the history like that, Because Molly McGuire could be
used as a pejorative, it could be used to reference
an organized group, or it could be used just to
like explain it kind of just a shorthand for a
resistance mentality. Does that kind of muddle up the history

(10:53):
of like who is actually associated with what.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
And how things sort of shake out?

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Oh yeah, there's hundreds of there's like one hundred and
fifty years of historians arguing about whether the Molly Maguires
are real. Oh great, Like, it is possible that is
entirely just what they were called by their enemies. It
is far more likely that they existed, and a lot
of the they're not real like people compare it to
being like when people are like the mafia isn't real, Like, Yeah,

(11:20):
they don't admit that they exist, but they exist, you know, okay,
but it's hard to peace out what is? What there was, however,
a public society, It was semi secret society, a fraternal organization.
The first organization that the Irish form in the New
World is called the Ancient Order of the Hiberians. This

(11:43):
is not actually an ancient Order, but the cool thing
to call your group, Like, yeah, how.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
A should we talk it? A couple couple of years
ago it was.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Let's see, I want to say, eighteen thirty six. Nice,
but they formed as the Ancient Order. They've been called
this since. Actually, no, you're exactly right. They took the
name Ancient Order in eighteen thirty eight, when they've been
around for two years.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
That rocks.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
I think that fans of like K pop groups should
start doing that. Yeah, yeah, just start calling themselves an
Ancient Order. At random. Where's the harm? It sounds fucking cool.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
If your group isn't a league, a lodge or an
ancient order, what are you doing? That's why we're pleased
to announce Cool Zone, the ancient Order of.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Pool Zone, the ancient Order of Cloth on media cool down.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah cool, we should just have a place called cool Lodge.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, I'm verge.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah all right, Sophi's approved it.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
It's all great ideas. And as the head of the
Ancient Order of the Cool Zone, let me just grabbed my.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Giant staff that I loot. Yeah, yet you got a sword,
I think definitely.

Speaker 4 (13:03):
Like one of those like Gandalf sword slash staff situations.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, with your sword in one hand, staff and the other.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, you're wearing a very complicated hat right now is
how I would describe it.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
With the complicated hat has studio headphones built into it, Yeah,
because it's a podcasting order, Yeah obviously.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, there's there's a mic at the top of the
staff too. It's actually a very functional unlike a lot
of yeah functional, it's very women's fashion is historically not functional,
and I think that you're really you're really changing the
narrat thank you yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
So this particular fraternal organization they're still around and they suck.
Now sick. They they tried to ban gay Irish American
groups from the Saint Patrick's today, Saint Patrick's Day Parade
and York City. They've probably sucked for a really long time.
I don't know if they sucked back in the eighteen
thirties when we first started talking about them, but going

(14:08):
back to nineteen hundred, they were the right wing side
of Irish Republicanism. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, which is the
precursor to the IRA, actually always hated them for being
right wing nationalists. And the Ancient Order showed their true
colors in the Irish Civil War when they backed the
Treaty with England and the division of Ireland, and then

(14:30):
in the Spanish Civil War where they went and fought
for Franco the fascist. Ooh, I think that the Ancient
Order of Iberians is honestly like what annoying right Wingish Americans,
you know, like right wing Irish Americans think that the
IRA is like right wing because as a rored Republican
in it.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Oh right, yeah, this Americans are not Americans also not
immune to.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
This yeah, if you want. If if you're listening to
this and you're a right wing Irish person, don't are
Irish American. The ira is not your, guys, but the
ancient order of the Hiberians is. So they might have
been a right for the first few decades. I'm not sure.
They formed in eighteen thirty six in New York City

(15:17):
and Schoogle County, and they took the name in eighteen
thirty eight. And they basically existed at first to protect
Catholic churches, and Catholic folks were facing a lot of
like anti papist, anti Catholic sentiment, right, and so they
formed to protect those institutions. In most places, it was
a very peaceful, sort of boring place. In the coal fields,

(15:41):
they had really significant overlap with the molly maguires, okay.
And and the miners, especially the Irish miners, who actually
will get into this. They weren't miners, they were mine laborers, okay.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
And then what was the distinction there?

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Oh, I love that you actually have a functional memory.

Speaker 5 (16:00):
This.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
That is why it's better if I record the two
things in a row. We did talk about this last time.
I think it had.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
To do with being outside of the mines, but still
working for the mines.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (16:11):
No? That no, that's what kids had to do.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Oh okay, sorry, I'm thinking of the miners again. Okay, yeah, really.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yes, you have three groups. You have the miners with
an E, the mine laborers, and then the miners with
an o oh my god. The miners with an E.
They go in and they're the skilled labor and they
go in and like pick where to mine, right, and
then they like sometimes do the actual sort of mining.
But then they just like leave the coal on the ground.
As best as I can tell, it'll be like a

(16:38):
little different in different minds because there's a lot of
different physical methods of mining, and the mine laborers are
also hanging out down there, and then they have to
gather the coal and put it in the carts and
carry it out and all this shit, okay, and they
have the most dangerous jobs in the mine, okay. So
they live off of like fifty dollars a day and

(17:00):
modern money. Extended households lived under one roof, usually a
married couple. There are kids, some relatives, and some borders right,
if not an entire second family. Many households were run
by widows because a lot of men kept dying in
industrial accidents. Kids, of course, worked, both boys and girls.

(17:20):
Girls didn't work in the minds, but as domestics and
doing sewing or whatever, basically anything to bring in money
because you all are fucking starving.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
So I'm I feel like, I'm this is I know
the answer to this question already, But how do you
know how young they were starting?

Speaker 2 (17:34):
And I'm assuming there's like.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
No form of like any organized education happening at this time,
or was there.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
I'm under the impression that there's not a formalized education
at this time, Okay, But I actually don't know the
answer to that. I know a lot of the kids
were starting at like seven, but overall it was more
like preteens, gotcha, okay. And so at first, the mining
in the area was like surface shafts and you would
just go down to hit the water level and then

(18:05):
you stop right because it's the fucking middle of the
nineteenth century. You don't got a way to get water
out of a hole. By the eighteen seventies, they moved
more to tunnel mining, and they also started working below
the water level by pumping water out. They also use
something called room and pillar mining, which is where you
mine a bunch of coal but leave some pillars made
out of coal in the room of coal. Right, you

(18:27):
can hold up the hold up the roof, but then
someone has to go in and remove the pillars because
that's coal too. You can't just leave that in the
ground and then the room collapses. This is dangerous. Yeah,
and there are all kinds of other dangers. They had
funny names for all the different smells of gases that

(18:47):
would kill them.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Ooh, hit me.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
The stink damp, the fire damp, the black damp, and
the white damp.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
They should be poopery variantow and so you have ahead
and those are all different like shorthands for a distinct Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I forgot to write though, like it's like not carbon
monoxidecause that doesn't smell, but it's like carbon dioxide or yeah,
I didn't write them down. There's a lot of different
things that will kill you. But you know what true
isn't trying to kill you until it gets all of
your money.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Could it, by any chance be the amazing products and
services that are sponsoring this fine program.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's right, and we recommend almost all of your money
on these products. And services, but holding onto a little bit.
So there's still a reason that capitalism wants you alive.
Here's some ads. Okay, we're back. And so I was saying,

(19:52):
there's the difference between the miners the skilled work. The
skilled miners they had apprenticeships. They actually had some independence
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. By the
end of the nineteenth century they don't once the big
companies come in, and then you have mine laborers who
are usually paid by the miners, and they get paid
about a third of what a miner did.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Wow, the Welshian needs it's been much as it is.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the Welsh and the English got
to be miners and the Irish got to be laborers.
To an overwhelming degree. There was very consistent discrimination against
the Irish in terms of employment opportunities and housing opportunities
and all kinds of things. There was, specifically in this
time and place, an ethnic hierarchy that went American, British, Welsh, German,

(20:42):
Irish Jesus. Okay, yeah, people get really wanting to before
they figured out, like I mean, okay, they already had racism, right,
but you know, before they Yeah, people really want to
find reasons to hate other people over weird ethnic bullshit.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like and the fact that Irish, I mean,
the Irish are at the bottom of that totem pole
and just leaving other people out entirely don't even make
the totem pole right.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Well, and it's like, and actually that's going to come up.
This particular area didn't have any the other way lower
than any white worker. And people always say that Irish weren' white,
and I don't remember I talked with this last time,
but it's like they were white, they were just ethnically
they faced ethnic oppression, but they were far above Chinese
and black workers, which there largely weren't any in this

(21:38):
time and place. At least according to everything I read,
they would have been higher than certainly black workers and
Chinese workers. Yeah, okay, only about eleven percent of Schoogle
County was Irish. They were slightly less than half the
foreign born population there, but in the mining towns they

(21:59):
had a clear majority. The other big group was the Welsh,
and the two groups fought a lot. They had kind
of a gang warfare going on that was ethnic because
the Welsh, who were seen basically as British were given
the choice jobs and so facing all this different oppression
being mistreated, they formed themselves some Molly McGuire's once again,

(22:25):
they left basically no evidence of their own and for
decades in the area. There's two competing ideas about how
to handle exploitation. Right, there's the British way, which is
trade unionism. This was developed during the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
I think it comes from Chartism, but I didn't like
fall far enough down that rabbit hole to like speak
more about chartism.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Ok.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
And this is using strikes and overall it is an
attempt at a non violent approach. Obviously strikes, particularly in
the nineteenth century, did end up very violent, but the
like the larger picture strategy of trade unionism was about
strikes and non violence. Okay, then there's go ahead.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
I just was curious of how much Molly mcguiresm in
Irish people who immigrated to the US, how much it
resembled what we were seeing or what we were talking
about of what was happening in Ireland. Is it more
of a continuity of thought and resistance or are there

(23:28):
like visual or like organizing hallmarks to to the Molly mcguires.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
We'll talk about it a bit more, but overall, in
the US, the Molly McGuire's kept well they kept the
bad makeup, and they didn't.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
I was like, did they did they keep?

Speaker 3 (23:47):
So they kept the makeup, they did dropped the dress
the cross. Well, that's honestly disappointing. I would prefer exactly
the reverse.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, what are you gonna do? All right?

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, so you've got this English method of dealing with
exploitation that is like polite. Then there's the Irish way,
which is direct and violent action against the people who
exploit you.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
I'm not going to make an argument about which one
worked better, because neither one worked in this story. Frankly,
this is not a story with a happy ending, Okay,
but I will say how much I love the industrial
workers of the world.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
A story with a happy ending.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
No, See, that's the thing about cool people, the cool stuff.
It's a happy middle.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
The real treasure was the violence we enacted all along.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
Wow, it really was about the violent and exploitation chated.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
But okay, much like the Irish were being cheated in
so eventually unionism and direct action of other sorts actually
start kind of becoming a little bit better friends at
different points. Eighteen forty two, the US is five years

(25:11):
into a depression. Miners start getting paid in goods instead
of money. This wasn't company store times because it's the
small operators. This is like before mining gets really bad, right,
but it's still really bad. It's amazing that it could
get worse from where it was so July seventh, eighteen
forty two, some workers protested and they marched from a

(25:34):
small town to the county seat of Pottsville. And they're
armed with clubs. They're shutting down the mines as they pass.
This is not this is all ethnicities. Soon fifteen hundred
folks are marching and they try to form a union,
and the operators refuse to accept it, and the strike fails.
In eighteen forty nine, they successfully form a union. It's

(25:55):
called the Bates Union. It's run by a guy named
Bait Baits. The main argument that they have is that
they want to get paid in cash for the work
they do instead of like promises of goods, right m hm.
This union tried hard to push the idea that workers
and bosses had the same interests, such as keeping the
cost of coal high. And this was like a thing

(26:17):
during a lot of this trade unionism is basically trade
unionism didn't start off trying to be like we hate you, bosses.
It tried to be like, hey, what if we work together?
You know. Unfortunately the guy Bates it was named after,
probably he took all the union money and ran off.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
No, well see that's it's a red flag to name
the union after yourself.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
It almost is like he unionized with himself.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Yeah, totally. He's like, everyone giving me money, I'll put
it where it needs to go.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
That's a good Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
No one should be naming a union after themselves and
not the collective that is it.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
That's a major red flag, all right.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, not not to victim blame, but yeah, you know,
maybe maybe there was chad of yeah, why did we
name it after a guy?

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah, they don't do that again, at least in eighteen
fifty eight. They do the union thing again. In eighteen
fifty eight, the miners went on strike for higher wages,
and during this time you get some coffin notices posted around,
basically with drawings of pistols and coffins that are like, hey,
you'd better not scab. Only you ever heard the word

(27:27):
black leg for a scab. No, I hadn't either. Black
leg is an old timey word for it's distinct from
a scab. A scab, at least in nineteenth century, is
a hired worker from somewhere else who breaks a strike.
A black leg is someone who works there already who
doesn't join the strike. Okay, And so most of their

(27:49):
stuff they're using the terminology black leg, not scab.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Okay, And interesting, Okay, I've been hearing I mean, just
for no reason, all that I've been looking into, you know,
like granular terms, because it's I think that there's maybe
people that are getting extremely confused by how many different
terms there are for uh, for I think what is

(28:14):
now colloquially just but imagine I said it, right, yeah,
just called scabbing. But now you're like, oh no, there's
this there's this whole fun vernacular that we get to use.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, totally, yeah, Okay. So they set up, they start
go on strike. They're spreading out the coffin notices, which
is clearly there's some like Molly mcguiresm within the union. Right.
So the sheriff shows up with two companies of infantry,
one company of cavalry and one company of artillery to

(28:44):
put down the strike. Okay, it works. The US sure
hates organized labor. No one was killed, but three men
were sentenced to sixty days in prison for organizing the strike,
and the coffin notices were signed the children of Molly McGuire.
And so for the first time in the US, is
that so lit? I just love how dramatic that is.

(29:04):
It is.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
I just like, bless, bless, bless.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Yeah, Irish for just being just being extreme drama queens.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
The ancient order, the children of Molly McGuire, It's just
all so damn good.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
I love our people. They're great, you know.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And so the the first probable this is the first
time that mcguiresm shows up in the US is eighteen
fifty eight. The first probable killing by the mcguires was
probably retributive. It's a Welshman shot and killed an Irishman
and then was found not guilty. So then that Welshman
was killed by a pit with a pickaxe by a

(29:46):
man who had quote blackened his face with powder.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Okay, kind of sounds like an open shutcase.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
But yeah, an irishman probably the guilty party was hanged
for this, okay, and most of McGuire. McGuire is was
not personal vendettas. It was class and labor focused, and
the rest of their killings were class and labor focused.
But it wasn't their main method. Mcguireism wasn't even the

(30:11):
main method of these Irish immigrants. Strikes and militant labor
unionism was the start until that became impossible because because
of the Civil War.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Ah that.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
I was like, okay, okay, tell me about this Civil war.
I was taught about it all wrong at school.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah. God, today's heroes are not Civil war heroes. Uh,
really kind of sketchy on race overall, with their choice
and their makeup?

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Am I on today?

Speaker 1 (30:50):
I know? I know?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Is it just nine am on a Monday?

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Or are you fucking with me? Macbat It's not both.
It's not as bad. I'll leave it to you all that. Okay.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
So I don't know.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
You wrote a sentence that says really kind of sketchy
on race overall, what with.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Their choice and makeup and their militant anti draft protests.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
The sentence after the Civil War?

Speaker 3 (31:17):
Okay, wait, yeah, tell me more expand on that, please?

Speaker 1 (31:22):
So when the Irish in the US overall, especially here
in Scuogle County, when they would vote, they would vote Democrat.
Nineteenth Century politics in the US are a fucking mess.
The Democrats are less anti immigrant and less anti Catholic
than the Republicans. They're also the pro slavery Party and

(31:43):
the anti war party right anti the Union War effort
against the Confederacy. But until the Republican Party came around
eighteen fifty four, all parties were the pro Slavery Party,
and the main opponent to the Democrats before them was
the Whigs, who briefly spun out into the No Nothing Party,
who are Protestant Zealots who hated Catholics and drinking and immigrants.

(32:07):
We talk about some of their like militant anti German
immigrant actions that they took in Chicago on I think
the very first episode of Cool People, Cool Stuff. The
No Nothings. They're not great. So the Irish have been Democrats, right,
that is their tradition because the other side fucking hates them.
But they are also Democrats because Democrats are kind of

(32:29):
the working class party, because the working class are sometimes
real fucking dense, and they bought into the line if
you free the slaves, they'll take your jobs. I have
no quotes from many Molly Maguire's one way or the
other about any of this, but they did vote Democrat,
and that is the overall picture of immigrant labor being

(32:52):
racist in the US. Okay, so the war starts and
two big things come as a real of this. First,
all labor actions are basically accused of being pro Confederate.
It is now treason to interrupt the flow of coal
to the federal government. Second, there's a draft. I would

(33:13):
argue that drafting people is immoral, but in this case,
the draft was specifically targeting to crush both the labor
movement and Maguireism in Schouogle County.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Oh so it's like turbo moral. Yeah, they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Wait a second, Why is everyone who's being drafted an
Irish immigrant who specifically was fighting for the union?

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, wait, you're going to want to draft everyone who's
ever advocated for themselves in their entire life. That's putting
immorality on a skateboard and giving it a hat, and
yeah all this other shit. Okay, Okay, so the labor
movement is okay, this is so I'm thinking meatpacking again
of just like being impacted by you know, I guess

(33:59):
function executive orders that it's like, we will, underno circumstances
shut down this industry where you are constantly put in
peril and are just trying to unionize, and we will,
you know. And it's unpatriotic of you too to not
want to play ball exactly as mandated.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, awesome, So people start resisting the draft. In eighteen
sixty two, a mine foreman docks the Irish workers pay
and then yelled at some Irish workers for spitting on
the American flag, which they probably weren't doing for a
cool reason. The so the Irish workers killed the guy
the gou just docked their pay and yelled at them. Also,

(34:43):
in eighteen sixty two, miners go on strike, so the
sheriff brings the militia in a battalion of two hundred
men to keep order and keep people working. When the
draft comes, censuses go around to determine who to draft,
and these were met with resistance from women and kids.
The grown men had to hide, right, and so a

(35:05):
bunch of women went out and threw hot water sticks
and stones and hee haw, okay cool, yeah back yeah.
The person who oversaw the draft was this guy named Bannon,
who specifically hated the Irish Catholics and the Molly mcguires.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Something very name one good Bannon.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
When the list of conscripts gets announced anyway, on October sixteenth,
eighteen sixty two, it included a greatly disproportioned number of
Irish workers, especially those suspected of Anyone suspected of being
a Molly McGuire was drafted. So a thousand armed people blockade.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Go ahead, Sorry, I get, but it's because the definition
of like, quote unquote being a Molly McGuire is so
viscous and vague it almost Yeah, it's like almost like
a McCarthyism kind of thing where they're like, we don't
like you.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Okay, No, it's absolutely a McCarthyism thing. And it's kind
of like with McCarthyism, everyone started being like, I'm not
a communist, what the fuck you're talking about? But some
people were like, I am a communist, fuck you. Yeah,
And that's kind of how Mally maguiresm is is. It's like,
you know, I'm not a Mally McGuire, and some people
are like, well I am, fuck you yeah, and you're.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Like, well, no matter what, everyone's getting mistreated, and like yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
So when these people are drafted, a thousand armed people
blockaded the train that was leading away the draftees. I
believe this led to them getting the draftees out of
the train. More troops came in and put that down,
But in the end, the miners actually this first draft
the miners win. Lincoln himself was like, oh shit, if

(36:48):
we stationed more troops in Schoogle County and draft more
people there, we're gonna have a full on insurrection. So
they forged aff A David's saying that the volunteers had
filled the necessary spots. So they still got to be like,
oh yeah, no, we got everyone we need from Schoogle County.
It's cool, and so they drove off the draft. Okay,

(37:10):
most of the Molly McGuire attention during this wasn't about
the draft. It was about it stayed class focused, and
they had no other tool left besides direct action because labor.
You can't do a labor union during this, right, right,
So a couple months later, two hundred armed mcguires raided
a mine and beat their bosses and then the guys
who'd been mistreating them at the mine, then they took

(37:32):
over the mine and shut it down. Crowds attacked and
beat several other mine operators in the coming months, basically
anyone who was like mistreating them. In eighteen sixty three,
the draft expanse and it becomes federally controlled. This time,
they suspend habeas corpus due process of law for anyone
suspected of draft resistance. And now even the Republicans in

(37:56):
the Union are mad about the draft, right, okay, because
it's clearly immoral. Yeah, which is so hard in this
like larger context. Is like overall, I'm like very fucking
happy that the Union beat the Confederacy, right, like, of course,
but this new draft law, it lets rich people off
the hook very even more directly. You could pay three

(38:18):
hundred dollars, which is more than a year's worth of
work for a minor, right, or you can go ahead.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
So it's just so it's it's shifting to just I mean,
it was directly targeting the poor anyways, but this just seals.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
It, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's formalized now. Yeah, and so
for the North as well as the South. Like in
one of the first episodes we did on the show,
the Civil Civil War, war the Civil War within the
Civil War and the Confederacy, we talk about how Confederates
nose plead for listening to you see. We talked about

(38:54):
how the Confederates were drafting everyone and how this led
to a civil war within the Confederacy, and how Confederate
soldiers viewed it as a rich man's fight and a
poor man's sorry, a rich man's war and a poor
man's fight. And this is true for the Union too,
And this doesn't surprise me, but this is the first
time I've read about it personally, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Also, during this whole thing, you're not supposed to draft
anyone who's not American, right, because that's the whole thing,
And so you're only supposed to draft American citizens or
people who have stated their intention to become American citizens,
like foreigners who are working on becoming American citizens. This

(39:39):
was completely ignored, and you know, poor migrants were drafted
left and right.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Well, yeah, it's you can be an American when it's
convenient to be an American, and when it's not, then
fuck you you're not.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah, yeah, which has no comparison to anything that happens now.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
No, everything's fixed.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah. Some people try to like read this kind of
story to be like, oh, the spirit of the Irish
or something, right, and I'm like, this is a story.
I mean, yes, it's about some Irish people, but it's
a story about immigration into the US, right, And so
like the modern version of this, if you're looking for
modern people who are fighting in similar ways, it's not
the fucking Irish anymore, right, it's the people who buy

(40:27):
stuff from our sponsors. Eho eh No, on that one
actually felt immral uh so im.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Moral that it that it went back to being kind
of funny.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, and once again wondering what podcast I'm on.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I have. I had a stress dream last night about
starting researching someone who someone told me was cool, and
I committed to doing an episode about it, and then
about halfway through I found out how incredibly uncool the
man was, and then I was like, I'm stuck doing
the episode.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
What did we say?

Speaker 4 (41:04):
Did we say the magpie after we found out about
that guy that was a bad husband? We read the
end first when it comes to.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
This, So don't worry. You're safe, just like you're safe
from missing out on the ease deal deals deals deals, Wow, wowow,
and we're back. So in Scuocle County someone stole all

(41:33):
the draft records, which is cool. An officer leading search
for draft dodgers found himself murdered. A lot of this
was probably German immigrants, not Maguire's, because the German immigrants
were just as mad about it because they had all
the same reasons to be mad about it. Census takers
were driven off by gunfire, and this started becoming like

(41:55):
really organized resistance. There were meetings held twice a week
in all the townships about how all the immigrants could
resist the draft. Any mind owner who turned over their
list of employees would have their equipment trashed by their workers.
And three thousand resistors started drilling militarily, and they're led
by returning soldiers. So this rocks.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
So like people who've either been in for nine months
or three years at this point, they show back up
and they're like, all right, we're going to train you
all to fight so they can fight against the people
trying to draft you. They managed to get light artillery.
This was probably smuggled down from Canada and they were

(42:37):
called Maguire's and they were called buckshots. That was just
the other word for them at this point.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
So sorry, is this still kind of exclusively Irish organizing
or is it becoming more of like a multicultural group.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
I am not entirely certain. I believe that the three
thousand people drilling were Irish, okay, But I know that
a lot of the other direct action was happening more broadly,
and so I actually don't have any particular reason to
believe one way or the other about there's a lot
of multi ethnic organizing and there's a lot of intra
ethnic fighting happening during all of this time, and it's

(43:12):
kind of hard to piece some of it out. But
Federal troops show up and enlist them at gunpoint. It
never comes to a large battle, And the whole time,
the Federal troops are being like, oh, it's a Confederate
conspiracy to invade the North, but it absolutely was no
such thing. They were not loyal to Confederacy. No evidence

(43:32):
of them ever having anything to do with the Confederacy
ever came out, No actions were ever taken against the
Union by the mcguires. It was all resistance to being
drafted troops stayed in the area for the rest of
the war. A bunch of mine operators became officers in
the military. The officer in the area was given permission
to draft anyone he wanted and arrest anyone who resisted

(43:55):
the draft. So this means that he can just throw
anyone he wants in jail with no habeas corpus, and
he uses it immediately to fight the union movement. Anyone
he wants arrested is arrested. This doesn't make people like
the war effort anymore. It's also probably why I know,

(44:15):
I know. It's also probably why the union movement tends
towards mcguiresm instead of labor organizing at this point, because
open actions will get you drafted or arrested. One mine
owner was mistreating everyone, so workers sat down and considered
considered a strike. He told them that it was during war.
A strike was treason and they would be treated as treasonous.

(44:37):
So a bunch of people showed up on Guy Faux
Night November fifth, nine, eighteen sixty three, which is generally
an anti Catholic celebration, so it was probably intentional that
these Catholics show up on that day. They break into
his house, they kill him and they leave his body
in the crossroads. One of the mcguires was killed during

(44:57):
this action in crossfire. Okay, two generals wound up stationed
in the area, and even more troops come in. The
Catholic Church threatens to excommunicate anyone belonging to a secret society.
The Catholic Church is like, fuck the McGuire's right.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah, sure, but it's also I mean whatever, yeah, one
of the Catholic Church is one to talk, I know,
I know.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Well, that's the thing is, they're like, be in our
secret society's yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, we've got more infrastructure we could do, and we're
doing some bad shit.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Get out of here, yeah exactly. And so the Catholic
Church threatens to excommunicate anyone belonging to a secret society. Okay,
But and then the anti McGuire newspapers they're like, oh,
most people don't support it. It's just a few bad agitators.
There's just a few evil mcguires in there making all
the good Irish people act bad. This is not true.

(45:53):
It is a broad movement made from general discontentment, right,
and and in the end, like to take a larger
picture of the Irish in the Union during the war,
three times as many Irish fought for the Union as
for the Confederacy, and this did include a ton of volunteers.
There was the sixty ninth Irish Brigade, whose green flag

(46:13):
had the slogan in Irish we will never run from
the clashing of the blades. And those who volunteered in
the Union, they also a lot of them had I mean,
some of it was probably like we like our new country,
but like overall, I think it was well, they wanted
to learn how to fight and shoot guns so they
could go back to Ireland and kick the English out

(46:34):
of their country.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
It seems reasonable.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Yeah, I might as well do a like perfectly ethical
war over here so that you can go back and
to another perfectly ethical war.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, it's just kind of like a warm up situation.
I get it. You don't want to go.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
It's it's Mario rules. You don't just go for the
big boss, you know. Yeah, Yeah, it's incremental.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Yeah. After the war, things cooled off in Schougle sort of.
The mcguires killed several more mine superintendents, they settled some
old scores, and the railroad formed a private police force
basically the railroad at this point starts buying up all
the mine operators in the southern coalfield. So Reading Railroad

(47:16):
is now the big new bad, big new bad in
the area.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Reading Railroad. Wow.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah, and so so close to LeVar burton territory.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
And yet so far because that man will never do
anything wrong.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Nope, he directed Smart House? What did he possibly do?
That's famous? Credit smart House?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Wait, I've never heard of smart House.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Magfie. I feel like you'd enjoy a smart House.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
It's a classic Disney Channel original movie that predicts a
lot top.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
Three Disney Channel original movie.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
And I think it ages pretty well.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
It's about the kid that wins a like robot house
that's controlled by this AI mom uh, and it's about
it's an AI cautionary tale before Blacknology existed.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
It's It's Black Mirror Junior.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
It's so good and they play a smash Mouth song
say it's a class Oh yeah, okay. LeVar Burton has
never missed his entire life.

Speaker 4 (48:22):
So anyways, Reading Railroad, I was saying it and it
starts Katie siicall, so it does I totally know who
is I know?

Speaker 1 (48:33):
I knew LeVar Burton is. He was very important in
my childhood as I grew up watching Reading Rainbow and
Star Trek as like the two things.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Oh he's the best.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah, I feel like both of those things prepared him
for his greatest work, Disney Channel's Smart House.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Obviously. So the Railroad shows up Reading Railroad, Uh, not
run by LeVar Burton, and they deputize a bunch of
paid mercenaries, And so you now have private police instead
of public police, which which is like even worse than
public police, which is impressive because public police are clearly
not doing a very good I have negative opinions about

(49:07):
the establishment. Soon Reading Railroad becomes everyone's landlord and boss
workers no longer own their own homes, and the Railroad
brings on Pinkertons as detectives to be part of this
classic villain of the pod, the Pinkertons.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Yeah, it's like there's certain I feel like across podcasting
in general, you're like, the Pinkertons are gonna come up.
JEdgar Hoover's gonna come out. One of these motherfuckers like
just worms their way into every damn story of Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Actually, most of what we know about the maguire's is
a Pinkerton detective.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Oh okay, so useful primary resource.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
I mean, but it's also part of why, like a
lot of the things that make them look bad. I'm like,
I don't know how true it is.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
It could be true, but never trust a Pinkerton.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Yeah. So there's no longer a draft in occupying soldiers,
and so workers are less mad overall, and with the
occupation of their area gone, an actual labor movement is
able to start up. And so this what stopped the
kind of agrarian violence mode of class struggle. The mcguireism
was the labor union, the fact that there were methods

(50:17):
by which to seek address for your grievances or whatever.
And because mcguiresm is a backs against the wall clause
out approach, which is only necessary when your backs against
the wall, they form the working Men's Benevolent Association, which
is good because it doesn't have a man's name in
the title.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
That's yeah, it means that it at least stands a
stronger chance of being equitable.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Yeah, it has some problems, but it forms an eighteen
sixty eight United Minor and Laborer English and Irish, Welsh
and German. It favored strikes and negotiation rather than midnight murder.
The leaders mostly British or opposed to the McGuire's, or
rather McGuire Ism. The rank and file had a ton

(51:05):
of McGuire's. The main founder was actually was actually Irish
born himself, but he was a He was Anglo English,
not in that his parents were from England, but he
was a guy named John Signey and he had worked
most of his life in England and spoke English as
his first or maybe only language. And there's this enormous
cultural gap between the Irish speaking Irish and the more
Anglo Irish types. This guy goes on to die on

(51:29):
from old miner's friend Black Lung, but before he does that,
they fight for the eight hour workday. They're able to
unite thirty to sorry thirty thousand of the thirty five
thousand workers in the region.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Wow. Yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
And it's particularly noteworthy because the skilled miners were paid
for what they produced, not by the hour, so for
them it was throwing in their lot with the unskilled
laborers kind of like how actually the ups strike that
like the ups drivers who are full time get paid
all right, but their part time employees get paid like shit,
and so the full time employees are willing to go
on strike for their part time employees.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
You know, I see, Okay, I do love.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
I'd say, I know it's a very tired meme, but
I just love when leftists get pissed off and invent
the weekend.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah, it's total ailling. Yeah. And they also supported what
I think is the best thing that labor unions can do,
which is they supported the idea of forming worker cooperatives.
And they go around, they start setting up cooperative stores,
and they start trying to cooperativize different minds. The railroad
won't let them, but they start doing a lot. So

(52:39):
they're cool in a lot of ways. They have two
major problems. One, they try hard to cozy up to
the owners. They're like, we abhor all violence and believe
that the owners and the workers have mutually aligned interests.
And the owners are like, yeah, I mean, we'll fuck
you up, and they use violence all the time and
do not you know.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, nice. Try.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Then the other big problem, and you guess what the
big problem is of a labor organization in nineteenth century America.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Mm Oh, there's so many no, okay. Yeah. I was like,
is it racism or is it in fighting or is
it both?

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Yeah? Yeah, I guess you know. Okay, So this labor
union brings together men and only men of different white ethnicities.
There weren't any Chinese families for them to be directly
racist against. But like all the reformist non revolutionary unions
in the US at the time, they were explicitly racist
against Chinese and black workers. It is likely that the

(53:44):
mcguires weren't any better. But I don't know. I don't
have any like statements from the mcguires one way or
the other.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
But I'm and so. So they're unionizing in areas where
there are few, to know, non white families, essentially. But
is it just because this is happening during the Civil
War era that we have insight into what their racial

(54:12):
views are. I mean, it's like, I'm definitely safe to infer,
but I didn't know where that comes in.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
So a lot of labor unions in the late nineteenth
century in the US specifically complained about Chinese people taking
the jobs they would go out of their way to do,
all the exact same thing that was happening to white
immigrants as soon as they could, they turned around into

(54:40):
the non white immigrants.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Those fucking girl bosses.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Yeah, okay, and this is like again part of why.
And there's some other unions that explicitly did work. Also
there's black unions, but there's also some unions that were
explicitly multiracial. But it's why, once again, I keep pointing
to the industrial workers the world is the people who
came on the scene, and one of their founders was
a black anarchist woman named Lucy Parsons. And they just

(55:04):
like came on the scene and immediately like they were
mostly out wet, well actually they were all over the place,
but out west they like specifically worked with like like
worked with Japanese folks who were also being by that period,
Japanese folks were the the immigrant people who are being mistreated, right, Okay,

(55:25):
So but that's not that's nice. This is this is
five years earlier. Yeah, okay, So this is a.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
Majority, if not I guess all men like white men
who are poor and from a number of Okay, yep,
well not surprising, I yeah, but it sucks, it certainly does. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
And yeah, so the union fights for the workers in
September eighteen sixty nine, a fire burn down the timbers
that hold open a mine and one hundred and ten
Menners asphyxiated, and so the union throws a rally to
try and be like, hey, we need some fucking safety here.
Some people in the crowd claim that the Irish started
the fire as like revenge against the Welsh for wanting

(56:14):
to have ended an earlier strike or whatever the fuck right,
and this is nonsense. It helped the bosses by getting
the workers to blame each other. But even the fucking
governor of Pennsylvania was like, this wasn't caused by bad
luck or the Irish. This was caused by the fucking
operators and a lack of safety, okay, And so the

(56:35):
workers fight. They get the Safety Act passed in eighteen seventy.
But this has actually some positive effects. Still, American minds
are three times more deadly than British mines at the
same time. In just this coal field, between eighteen seventy
and eighteen seventy five, five hundred and fifty six workers died.

(56:55):
This is after the Mine Safety Act passes. And the
other thing that sucks about the Mind Safety Act it's
always the double edged sword of trying to seek anything
with reform is it. It created more discipline in the mines,
and it actually centralized authority more into reading railroads hands
I see.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
But the WBA, the worker in Men's Benevolent Association, they
get pay raises, they get a minimum wage plus sliding
scale based on the level of production and the value
of coal. But all of their nonviolence and ass kissing
the bosses didn't save them. They were painted as violent

(57:35):
terrorists every time they did anything, and the government and
owners started chipping away surely but steadily, against all their gains.
By eighteen seventy three, conditions for miners worsen, so some
of them wires get up to their old tricks because
the union isn't working and they're literally again starving, so
they start setting fire at mines. They're overturning coal cars,

(57:57):
they're beating up mines supervisors. So the owners turn to
the detectives they have on higher the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons
refer to the McGuire's as a quote noxious weed of
foreign birth. And check out this quote from them. Wherever
in the United States iron is wrought from Maine to
Georgia ocean to ocean wherever coal is used for fuel. There,

(58:21):
the molly McGuire leaves his slimy trail and wields with
deadly force his two powerful levers secrecy combination. I have
no idea what combination means in this sense.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
This is this is the and these are the drama
queens we can't stand. Yeah, this is this is drama
queen tendencies being weaponized for evil. Yeah, exactly, God losers.
All right, well, I guess that is very Pinkerton behavior.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Sure, yeah, So they send an undercover, an Irish Catholic
immigrant named James mcparlan. He joins the Ancient Order of Hiberians,
and since he's literate, he finds his way into becoming
their secretary. And basically all of the molly McGuire's were
in the Ancient Order of Hiberians. Later, there's this whole
conspiracy case that trying to claim the Ancient Order of

(59:11):
Iberians is the molly McGuire's, but it's almost certain that
it's just that all the molly mcguires are in the
Ancient Order of Tiberians because elsewhere around the country ancient
Order of Iberian people ain't doing any of this shit, okay,
and so he becomes their secretary, which, by the way,
is how Karl Marx took control the First International. While

(59:33):
I'm talking shit, he became their secretary and then started
writing everything. Okay. So mcparlin he stayed undercover for two years,
then he disappeared, only to reappear later at trial. The
other infiltrator from the Pnkersons infiltrated the union, but his
reports were like, oh, actually this isn't Molly mcguiresh at all.

(59:55):
They're all really tame. The union's actually just doing what
it says it is, okay, but that wouldn't work for
the union. For the railroad, Sorry, it wouldn't work for
the railroad. They wanted to destroy the union, so they
just lied, even though they had an infiltrator saying hey,
it's actually all peaceful here, and they were like, they're
all terrorists and Irish bastards, ye, So they destroyed the union.

(01:00:20):
The long strike lasted from January to June nineteenth, eighteen
seventy five. This was during a really nasty recession. The
bosses got ready for this. They formed a union of
their own, which happens all the fucking time. All the
minor operators get together to figure out how to fuck
over their workers collectively. And before they told everyone about
some wage cuts, they stockpiled enough coal for the long strike.

(01:00:45):
So during the strike, the boss is stoked anti Irish
sentiment and got the Welsh to attack the Irish. This
had been going on for decades, right, the gang warfare eventually? Okay,
so you ever seen like one of the I don't
know if gangs in New York has this or not.
There's this whole thing in nineteenth century New York City
where you have like firefighter gangs who get into fist

(01:01:06):
fights over who puts out a fire.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
No, that sounds like a sexy dream, my mom would have.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Yeah, well that sexy dream is alive in Scugle County.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Nice, that's all let her know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Yeah, that's my pitch for a Netflix show. And there's
firefighter warfare happening. The Brits have a fire company, I
think the Brits and Welsh, they like, live on one
side of town and the Irish have a fire company
on their own side of town. But when fires in
the middle breakout, there's fierce fighting. Often this turns into

(01:01:39):
gun battles and people are probably I don't know from
which side, probably both people are setting fires in the middle,
just so that they have an excuse to fight.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
Okay, yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
So during the strike, the industry kept saying that union
was all Molly McGuire's. The Molly mcguires are a tiny
percentage of the union. Irish people are a reasonably high percentage.
But again, I mean overall the union is the like
not McGuire method. But by the end of the strike,
as the strike is clearly not working, various folks start

(01:02:17):
dropping out and starting to work right, starting to blackleg
and more and more union workers of every ethnicity gave
up on strict nonviolence and non sabotage. So loaded coal
cars were getting dumped. Mindes started getting burned, gangs beat
up black legs. Coffin notices popped up with phrases like quote,

(01:02:39):
notice is here given to you men, the first and
last notice that you will get for no man will
go down this slope, like go into the mine after tonight.
If you do, you can bring your coffin along with you.
By the internal christ internal not they mean eternal whatever,
but they wrote internal bring your coffin along with you
by the internal christ mean what this notice says?

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
I believe them?

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Yeah, no, they meant I believe that. Yeah. In the end,
the railroad company won, the union was destroyed. The last
holdouts were mostly the Irish speaking Irish from the strongholds
of the Molly mcguires, but hundreds of British miners were
still with them too, and a thousand workers marched from
mind to mind trying to shut down work, but heavily

(01:03:26):
armed police stopped them, at one point firing into the crowd.
The workers went back to work. Some were so weak
from starvation that emergency rations had to be provided by
bosses to get them back on their feet, which is
just an example of how capitalism wants to feed you.
It literally just wants to feed you enough so that
you can go work in the mines.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Yeah, enough so that you won't I mean yeah, like
you're saying before, hawking feels too harsh because you were
effectively selling, yeah, all those amazing products and services.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Just enough so that you won't die, so you retain
labor value.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah. Within two years, wages dropped less than fifty percent.
Before eighteen sixty nine, levels okay, workers had strict discipline
now like they're treated how factory workers were being treated
in the city, which is also not how people should
be treated. Private police broke up all public demonstrations with violence,

(01:04:20):
so the Maguires were like, all right, fuck it. We
tried doing it the nice way. If you want violence,
we were born into violence by hundreds of years of
resisting colonization. Over the course of three months, they killed
six people. One Molly wrote a letter to the paper
and said, quote, I am against shooting as much as

(01:04:42):
you are, but the union has broke up and we
have got nothing to defend ourselves with but our revolvers.
If we don't use them, then we shall have to
work for fifty cents a day, and went on to
say that the other nationalities would do so but for
cowardice and quote I have told you the mind of
the children of miss us Molly Maguire. All we want
is a fair day's wages for a fair day's work,

(01:05:04):
and that's what we can't get now by a long shot.
He closed by saying they would make it quote hot
as hell for the employers that they needed to. This
is the only statement we have from the McGuire's.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Wow, okay, it's I mean, it's I don't know, I
know everyone's mileage varies, but six casualties as opposed to
the number of casualties that you know you stand to
lose by not advocating for yourself, Like, yeah, I feel
like those stories are not by you, mac Bibe. But

(01:05:41):
it's just like you hear those stories so often, even
on like podcasts I listened to. Sometimes they're like, well,
obviously killing.

Speaker 5 (01:05:48):
Is wrong, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but even then your
your mileage may very yeah, but yeah, like bring, well
they killed six people.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
It's like, but what did they stand to lose? Yeah, sure,
like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Yeah, no totally. And so that's one hundred and fifteen
people just or whatever, or one hundred and ten people
just aphixiated in a mine, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
And that's nothing to say of, you know, the losses
they suffered from the draft being stacked against them intentionally
and just all this other stuff like, yeah, six people,
all right, Sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
So Pinkerton's fed information to vigilante gangs. That's the other thing, right,
It's like we always talk about the violence that happens
in like one side of this, you know. So Pinkertons
fed information to vigilante gangs who went off on a
moral crusade to stop the mcguires. The private police turned
the other way or joined as they showed up and
anyone like at these houses of people who suspected being

(01:06:48):
Molly McGuire's and killed their families and grabbed a bunch
of irishmen. And in the end fifty people were indicted
for the murder of sixteen people over thirteen years. So
there are sixteen deaths being blamed on the Maguires. Their

(01:07:11):
mind superintendents and foremen, public officials who are all various
types of cops and marshals. They didn't just face the
structural violence of poverty and discrimination. They faced private police,
Welsh gangs, and federal troops. Right, all of the suspected
ring leaders were tavern keepers. And this may or may
not have been real. We have no idea, and it

(01:07:32):
might have been part of the Protestant anti drinking crusade
because that was this whole thing going on at the
time and the trials of farce. They were arrested by
private cops. The only evidence was a Pinkerton infiltrator who
had probably been working as an agent Provoctur. Later that
guy went on explicitly to be an agent Provoctur and
other labor struggles. No Irish Catholics are allowed to sit

(01:07:56):
on the jury. The prosecutor was a fucking railroad employee.
For fuck's sake, it was. It gets called even by
the history books that hate the mcguires, like most history
books are not on the McGuire's side. Sure, even by them,
it's called trial by corporation. Yeah, and some of them
were probably guilty, some of them were probably innocent. Several

(01:08:18):
turned snitch and became star witnesses. But one of them,
this one guy, he turned snitch. He was like, I
didn't kill a guy. It was it was these other guys.
They totally killed that guy. So his wife disavows him.
Ooh she hell yeah. She testifies in court that he
is the murderer and that he is turning on innocent men,

(01:08:39):
and she refuses to support him in prison. This is
the most real maguire in the whole fucking story, as
far as.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Sir, where's her fucking bio kick that rocks?

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Yeah, he snitched and he got double stitch. Yeah no, yeah,
no job in jail, No, wife.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Yeah, yeah, sad for him.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
He does, he gets set free. The five many testifies
against We're not at least one of the snitches gets
a thousand bucks from the prosecution to help them leave
the country. So they're literally just being paid by the company.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
And these sound I mean, they sound like show trials,
Like were they like heavily covered and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Yeah, the mcguires, I didn't talk about it enough. The
mcguires are like big news everywhere about this haven of
terrorists in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Basically okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
And and it's basically like all labor organizing is given
a bad name by being compared to mcguires, which is
very frustrating because I'm just like, well, I don't know whatever,
Like I'm sure some of what they did was like
not the best, but overall, I'm like, Molly McGuire's did
nothing wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
But like you're like, but consider the context. Yeah, like
drop in the bucket.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
We should aspire to be the kind of people who
go claws out when people try to destroy us, Like right,
I just genuinely believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Well, it's it's like with I mean, within this story,
there's you know, examples of how the how the opposite
approach was was tried.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
And was not. I mean, I guess that in this
case both were not extremely effective.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
But it's you and I keep thinking about it because
I've been thinking about this the story really even more
than often. It impacted me and let me thinking about
a lot of things because you have these two approaches
and neither one is working, and it really depends on
what we call working, because like, ooh, okay, I think
that there is something to be said about just living

(01:10:47):
your life in a way where you don't roll over
and die. And sometimes like that's all we can ask
for is to be part of communities who support us
as we choose to not roll over and die. And
like again and again, they would try to not go
claws out, they would try to join unions, they would

(01:11:07):
try to do things the other way. I believe that
man when he said that we don't like killing any
more than anyone else, but all we have now is
our revolvers.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
You know, well, it's it's and it's like if they
enjoyed killing, they probably would have killed more than six people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Sixteen but yeah, yeah, sixteen, I mean but over the
course of eleven years, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Exactly, exactly like these.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
It's not the behavior of a movement that relish isn't killing. Yeah,
so I mean I completely believe that. And wow, Yeah,
the molly mcguars did nothing wrong. They were doing except
their their fucking best except, oh, I mean, except their
opinions on race, which seemed to be almost universally.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Rot from what we do, which we don't know much of,
but we can infer twenty men were hanged, at least
one of whom has been proven posthumously humor whatever after
his death was proven innocent.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
And this was meant to be this like glorious of
restoration of law against mob rule, but it wasn't. One
judge later said of it, quote, the Molly maguire trials
were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated
the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police
force arrested the alleged defenders defendants, and private attorneys for

(01:12:25):
the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the
courtroom and the gallows, and so they go down in
history as evil terrorists of violent ethnic mafia. It wasn't
until about fifty years ago that historians started really looking
into their history as part of labor history. I wouldn't
say they're perfect. I wouldn't say midnight retribution is how

(01:12:45):
to get things done. But yeah, better to go down
with your call.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
So I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Agree, heard, agree, And it's so interesting, Like I mean,
you referenced this earlier in the episode of how this
see this history, and this like labor history still seems
inherently tied into stereotypes around Irish Americans.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Yeah, totally, Yeah, I feel like that's where so much
of that comes from, like the but I mean some
of those stereotypes that come back even to like the
way that I've read a lot of history in the
past year and a half working on this show, probably
more than I had and the rest of my life
put together right again, And I think a lot about

(01:13:33):
how like the Irish like myth of like oh, like
there's this sort of English myth of like the Irish
as like crazy backwards people or whatever, and then there's
the sort of inversion of that myth, the like how
the Irish safe civilization? You know, all of these sorts
of things, And the thing that I keep running across
is that it's like, well, actually, in a lot of

(01:13:56):
ways the Irish culture was more interesting and chaotic and
pagan and all of these things. And that's part of
why it's cool. And I think that's part of why
people get really excited about it. I think the other
reason people get excited about it is like white people
really want to cling to some level of oppression so

(01:14:17):
that they can feel like.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
I mean, that's the other thing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:21):
It's like that the resistance to because I know, I
mean there's like people my own family that are, you know,
like definitely guilty of this of like they're there's such
a there's such a tendency to cling to like no,
this it was this group of people, this specific group
of people, and not just like a wider claiming of

(01:14:44):
like no.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
It's it's labor.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
It's people that have a vested interest in labor movements
and who are being actively oppressed. But no, one not
not not spicy enough branding for for some Yeah, and
and and thus evil persists.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
And that's the only reason I think, so I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Yeah, but if people don't want evil to persist, this
isn't an ad transition.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
This is I was like, Magfie, you're already flying pretty
close to the senter.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Let's get more ads in here now, now this is
a this is a move to plugs.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Okay, wow, okay, well actually again this this I mean,
obviously you know better than anyone that so much of
this hasn't changed, but so many of so much of
this reminds me of the of meatpacking plants that I

(01:15:42):
researched in the history of unionizing and how in similar ways,
like we were talking about earlier today, how some meat
packing unions were interracial and they were very inclusive and
very effective, and then there were others.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
That weren't that way.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
And also in not quite this I mean about thirty
years after the McGuire's, I guess we're active. But yeah,
there's just like so many parallels and what we were
talking about today in like current meatpacking unions. If you
want to learn more about that, you should read my.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
Book Raw Dog, A Naked History of Hot Dogs. And
you can get it wherever you get books, which.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
Is hopefully an independent bookstore or you know whatever not
fucked up way you acquire books. You could steal it,
whatever you want to do. I just if you want
to read it, I would love that, and you can,
you know, bug me online.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
I'm around except for TikTok too Loud.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
Yeah, I can't wait to leave all of those things,
but I haven't yet what I want to plug. I
work with a publisher called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness,
and we're an anarchist collective publisher, and we're putting out
an book that's available for pre order right now. It's
called to the Ghosts Who Are Still Living. It's by

(01:17:04):
Ami Winetrub, and it's it's not actually entirely dissimilar to
what we're talking about. Well, it's completely disimilar in a
lot of other ways. It's about learning about ones like
Jewish ancestry in Eastern Europe and kind of as an
anti Zionist trans anarchist talking about what it means to

(01:17:25):
be dispossessed from family history and what it means to
reconnect to it. And it's a really good book. We
only put out books that we're really excited about, and
this is our third book that we're putting out. It's
called to the Ghosts We're Still Living by Ami Winetrub,
and it's available at Tangled Olderness Dot. A work eventually
be available at any more books are for sale, but
right now it's pre order and if you pre order it,

(01:17:45):
you get an eleven by seventeen colored poster that's silk screened.
That's super cool. That's what I got.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
That.

Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
Cool Zone Media Okay bye A Cool People Who Did
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