Workers Benevolent Association,John Siney And The Molly Maguires

On September 6,1869,disaster(fire with only one exit) at the Avondale mine,just south of Scranton,P.A.,carried 179 miners to the heavens above.At the time of the disaster, the Workers Benevolent Association(WBA),the areas first miners' union,had thirty locals and thirty thousand members.John Siney,an Irish immigrant,was the founder of the WBA and Samuel G.Turner,state senator,pushed through the Pennsylvania Mine Safety Act of 1870,which,among many other features,demanded that every mine have at least two means of entrance and exit.Despite the legislation,between 1870-75,more than 556 mine deaths occurred with more than a thousand men left injured or maimed.Technology(digging machines) made life more dangerous for the workers.The company expected a miner to extract 9 tons per day as opposed to 2.5 tons before the machines.

Siney's union(WBA) helped establish the first miners' hospital in Schuylkill County,arranged for union funds to pay sick or injured miners,burial costs and support for widows/families of men killed or stricken.The Ancient Order of Hibernians(AOH) were also active in the social and cultural life of the region. The leading members of the AOH owned popular crossroad saloons and helped the community with many social/economic needs.In the WBA,the Irishmen tended to be the most defiant,lobbying the union to take strong positions.The fierce Irish American resistance to authority was associated with a political group known as the Molly Maguires.The Maguires were a legendary nationalist rebel,anti-landlord association that committed anti-British attacks,sometimes disguised as women. In America,The Molly Maguires entered labor matters in the mines of Pennsylvania.They invaded a mine,roughed up scabs and shut down a company store in 1862.Between 1863-67,Schuylkill County had fifty unsolved murders.The WBA brought relative stability to the area and its leadership denounced the violence of the Molly Maguires.

On Jan.1,1875,the WBA announced a general strike against the Philadelphia and Reading RR Company,controlled by its president,Franklin B. Gowen. The baron(Gowen) wanted a 20% pay cut in all Reading controlled mines.Gowen's mines were protected by the Coal and Iron Police created by the president of Reading to combat the WBA.He had twenty-six members of the WBA arrested and imported scabs to work the mines.Conditions in the mining towns were atrocious that winter,as bosses worked to literally starve the strikers and their families(very Christian) into submission.The "Long Strike" lasted six months and eventually the union weakened and collapsed.With this,a new round of violence broke out between former WBA rank and file and Gowen's police. Gowen and Allan Pinkerton,worked on RR security,choose to see little difference between unions and criminals(as did Reagan,Bush and every Republican since).Pinkerton's "cinder dicks" distinguished themselves on the sprawling railroads,including the Reading,and increasingly were hired for workforce-oriented espionage and union-busting.Gowen and Pinkerton vowed to crush the Molly Maguires in the labor movement.Gowen had 347 union people investigated through espionage and eventually in 1875 ordered two dozen men arrested and accused them of belonging to a terror group. A secret AOH membership list mysteriously was made public by Gowen's goons.The appeal of the Molly Maguire allegations was that they piqued existing public fears that labor organizations,particularly clannish ones based on ethnic identity,were radical and dangerous.Gowen tried to peddle that the Hibernians were communists.The Irish World,Labor Standard and the Knights of Labor denounced this perspective as hallucinatory.Eventually, ten Mollies were hanged(juries stacked) in Pottsville on June 5th,1876 as the executions were heavily guarded by armed soldiers to discourage possible rescue.Soon after,nine other men were executed and two dozen were sent to prison.It was common knowledge that Gowen had brought the prosecutions"for the purpose of breaking up the a labor organization that was hurtful to his business interests" and had allowed popular prejudice against the Irish to do the rest.

More from"There is Power In A Union" by Philip Dray.