The Day of the Rope
The Molly Maguires became international news on June 21, 1877, when the authorities💥 hanged ten Irish miners in a single day in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.💥
Known as #Black#Thursday, or Day of the Rope, it was the second largest mass execution in U.S. history.
(The largest was in 1862, when the U.S. government executed 38 Dakota warriors).
The authorities accused the Irishmen of being terrorists from a secret organization called the #Molly#Maguires.
They executed ten more over the next two years, and imprisoned another twenty suspected Molly Maguires.
Most of the convicted men were #union#activists.
Some even held public office, as #sheriffs and #school#board members.
However, there is no evidence that an organization called the Molly Maguires ever existed in the U.S.
James McParland, an agent provocateur who worked for the #Pinkerton#Detective#Agency,
and who provided the plans and weapons the men purportedly used in their crimes,
provided the only serious evidence against the men.
The entire legal process was a travesty:
a private corporation (the #Reading#Railroad) set up the investigation through a private police force (the Pinkerton Detective Agency) and prosecuted them with their own company attorneys.
No jurors were Irish, though several were recent German immigrants who had trouble understanding the proceedings.
Nearly everything people “know” today about the Molly Maguires comes from Allan Pinkerton’s own work of fiction, "The Molly Maguires and the Detectives" (1877),
which he marketed as nonfiction.
His heavily biased book was the primary source for dozens of academic works, and for several pieces of fiction, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s final Sherlock Holmes novel, "Valley of Fear" (1915), and the 1970 Sean Connery film, "Molly Maguires."
According to legend, there was a widow living in Ireland in the 1840s named Molly Maguire,
who hated the landlords who were abusing the poor tenant farmers.
She supposedly carried a pistol strapped to each thigh.
She, or her followers, would beat or murder the tyrannical landlords, their agents, and bailiffs, whenever they tried to evict a tenant.
No one knows if she ever really existed, but other tenant farmer activists were said to cry out,
“Take that from a son of Molly Maguire!” when protesting against unscrupulous landlords.
The old railyard at the Northern Nevada Railroad. What's so cool they let you free roam around the yard, machine shop, and engine house! (Phone photo.)
Part of the wonderful machine shop at the Northern Nevada Railroad in Ely, Nevada! I just love this place! Been here many times. It's a fully operational railyard frozen in time from the 1930s. (Phone photo.)
“There was a time in the history of France when the poor found themselves oppressed to such an extent that forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and hundreds of heads tumbled into the basket. That time may have arrived with us.”
A cooper said this to a crowd of 10,000 workers in St. Louis, Missouri in July, 1877. He was referring to the Paris Commune, which happened just six years prior. Like the Parisian workers, the Saint Louis strikers openly called for the use of arms, not only to defend themselves against the violence of the militias and police who were sent to crush their strike, but for outright revolutionary aims.
The Great Upheaval was the first major worker uprising in the United States. It began in the fourth year of the Long Depression which, in many ways, was worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It lasted twenty-three years and included four separate financial panics. In 1873, over 5,000 business failed. Over one million Americans lost their jobs. In the following two years, another 13,000 businesses failed. Railroad workers’ wages dropped 40-50%. And one thousand infants were dying each week in New York City.
By 1877, workers had suffered four years of wage cuts and layoffs. In July, the B&O Railroad slashed wages by 10%, their second wage cut in eight months. On July 16, 1877, the trainmen of Martinsburg, West Virginia, refused to work. They occupied the rail yards and drove out the police. Local townspeople backed the strikers and came to their defense. The militia tried to run the trains, but the strikers derailed them and guarded the switches with guns. They halted all freight movement, but continued moving mail and passengers, to successfully maintain public support.
Today In Labor History March 27, 1912: Start of the 8-month Northern railway strike in Canada by the IWW. Over 8,000 construction workers, led by the IWW, walked off the job at Northern Railway workcamps Wobblies picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Tacoma and Minneapolis in order to block the hiring of scabs.
Fellow workers pay attention to what I'm going to mention,
For it is the fixed intention of the Workers of the World.
And I hope you'll all be ready, true-hearted, brave and steady,
To gather 'round our standard when the red flag is unfurled.
CHORUS:
Where the Fraser River flows, each fellow worker knows,
They have bullied and oppressed us, but still our union grows.
And we're going to find a way, boys, for shorter hours and better pay, boys
And we're going to win the day, boys, where the river Fraser flows.
For these gunny-sack contractors have all been dirty actors,
And they're not our benefactors, each fellow worker knows.
So we've got to stick together in fine or dirty weather,
And we will show no white feather, where the Fraser river flows.
Now the boss the law is stretching, bulls and pimps he's fetching,
And they are a fine collection, as Jesus only knows.
But why their mothers reared them, and why the devil spared them,
Are questions we can't answer, where the Fraser River flows.
(Lyrics by Joe Hill, 1912, to the tune of “Where the River Shannon Flows.”)
What’s Missing From #Railroad Safety Data? Dead Workers and Severed Limbs.
Thanks to #government loopholes, rail companies haven’t been scrutinized by the Federal Railroad Administration for scores of alleged #worker injuries and at least two deaths.