Talk:Molly Maguires/Archive 1

In need of attention
I've put this on a list of pages to the readaddmitting needing attention. It definitely needs some work. - Scooter 22:00, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I added a good deal of detail from Rhodes (1919), and a bibliography. Rjensen 11:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Lyrics
Are the lyrics to the song posted old (pre 1923) or a more recent song? If they are likely to be under copyright, they should be removed. (If no one gives info on status, I will move them here to the talk page soon.) -- Infrogmation 17:59, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Someone else already removed the lyrics as copyrighted. -- Infrogmation 21:54, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Lyrics to the Balladeer's song, "Sons of Molly", and the Dubliner's song, "The Molly Maguires". --Thisisbossi 02:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Neutralising
I personally see Oliver Chettle's "neutralising" changes on 20 April as slanting the article pro-business. I'm reluctant to let pass without comment what I perceive as painting the Mollies as the villains, sanitizing the brutality of the coal companies, or investing their hired guns with an air of authority (changing "spies" to "agents"). Comments from others? Mark Dixon 13:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * agree, but more detail and evidence should be provided rather than simply restoring what was there --Paraphelion 17:04, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ken Albers 16:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There needs to be a lot of work in this regard. I made one quick edit in the McParlan entry as it was galringly misleading (see here) and hopefully can get some more done soon.


 * The recent edits by Osioni seems to involve some editorializing and much lack of clarity.--Paraphelion 20:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This entry fails to capture the labor relations atmosphere of the Mollies' time. The article seemingly refers to Pinkertons as a noble group standing up to a terrorist organization. While the Mollies may have been a violent group, we must remember the unchecked management practices of the time, the presence of labor-exploiting "company towns," as well as the almost complete lack of any safety measures for miners. As the article currently stands, it is in dire need of a proper explanation as to the motivations of the Mollies' actions.

Images
The images in this article are too large. Can somone fix them, please? I don't know how to. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 22:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It appears that this has since been taken care of. --Thisisbossi 02:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Irish Coal mining heritage?
Seriously, what Irish coal mining heritage is there?


 * Please sign your comments. Anyway, the county of Kilkenny in Ireland was known for its anthracite coal, and it is likely that some Molly Maguires had experience in the mines there. However, this article is probably misleading in that Irish agrarian struggles were a much mroe relveant heritage to the Molly Maguires. --Brian Z 21:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Lurid and sensationalistic, violating NPOV
This really should go without saying. Using terms such as 'in the anthracite region between 1865 and 1876 the bravest of men could not forget how many of his fellows had been shot and suppress a feeling of uneasiness when he found such a missive on his doorstep or posted up on the door of his office at the mine' or 'Kehoe was crafty enough to see the advantage of throwing dust in the eyes of the public and, when the outside world was bargained with, the A.O.H. was put forward; but, as matter of fact, it was the old story of ravening wolves in sheep's clothing.' or, my favorite, 'a great many men were killed to satisfy the vengeful spirit of the Molly Maguires' is wholly unacademic, and belongs in a paperback pulp-sploitation novel, not in an encyclopedia. --70.108.56.178 04:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I don't know much about the history here, but the style of writing in parts of this article is entirely inapproprate and contrary to WP:NPOV.--Srleffler 04:15, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Not only that, but it seems ridiculously anachronistic as well; much of this article sounds as if it was lifted in whole chunks from accounts written about the time these events transpired, without the insulating effect of quotation marks. Puleez! +ILike2BeAnonymous 07:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Lurid?? well if you don't like lurid please avoid the Mollys! Ditto if you abhor POV and want cold hiostorical "facts" only. Actually the passage is from the leading historical Journal (American Historical Review) by the foremost historian of the era (Rhodes)--famous for being less POV than most. Rjensen 07:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Less "POV" (only in this god-forsaken place could that even be a valid adjective!) than most, perhaps; that may be like saying that Richard Nixon was more circumspect an anti-Communist than Joe McCarthy. In any case, the problem is that significant portions of this article are so positively bewhiskered and couched in the Victorian tones of the contemporary accounts that it's quite absurd. If this material is to be included, it ought to be judiciously gone through, and the selected passages set off as quotations. My God, man, to read this article, you'd think you have to still watch your backside while riding horseback through Pennsylvania! +ILike2BeAnonymous 08:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Editors who talk like ILike2BeAnonymous don't seem very NPOV to me., Indeed they seem to enjoy the lurid parts--(McCarthy! Nixon! Communists!) Is the passage Victorian? Well yes, but so were the Mollies. And no, it's pretty quiet in those districts these days (but in neaby Pittsburg 5 members of the Duquesne basketball team were shot this week). Rjensen 08:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Terrible NPOV
Long time listener, first time caller. I have contributed to articles before but never tried to edit a bad one. Anyone want to help me with this one? This article sounds like it was written by Sean Hannity, it has no place in an encyclopedia. Anyone with me? (want to help me?) --cfoster

Yes I'm with you, and would like to help. I like Wikipedia a lot, but I've never contributed. I've done a lot of research on the Molly Maguires and this article is bad. I've read the Wayne Broehl book in the credits, and while it has a somewhat anti-Molly bias even this work recognizes openly that contemporary sources for information were only pro-Reading Railroad (Gowen letters and Bannan articles), and Pinkerton propaganda. It raised clear questions about McParlan's credibility, although it offered no challenges. I've read much of the Kevin Kenny book "Making Sense of the Molly Maguires", and he offers a much more balanced account.

If nothing else the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment of the times, the extremely harsh working conditions of the mines, and way that the Molly trials intertwined the Molly Maguire related violence with the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (which is probably a false representation) should probably be explained.

I wanted to paste in something I found on the American Philosphical Society website, but I see that is not allowed. I also see in the discussion that someone says they re-wrote two sections but I'm not sure I see that. Can we use quotes from books with bibliographical references? or do we need author's permission? Or rather, how can I help? BLangton 15:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)BLangton
 * As the comments on this page show, it's a "hot" issue that brings out POV. The only solution is to closely follow Wiki rules and be sure every statement is solidly based on thescholarly literature. Rjensen 14:42, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The Rhodes excerpt is offensive and should not be included in this entry. In 1910, the Irish dealt with a significant amount of discrimination in this country and unfortunately this passage suffers from a common view of that day. The Molly Maguires entry needs to include more discussion of the working conditions of the Pennsylvania coal miners which led to such violent and questionable behavior. Based on Rhodes, Irish workers would kill if not given a "soft job" there is no mention of the high workplace casualty rate, poor living conditions in company towns and heavy handed treatment by mine management.Joeymag 22:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)joeymag

Coal and Iron Police
This article is definitely in need of work; to mention one area, it lacks any reference to the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, whose acts were one underlying cause for the rise of the Molly Maguires. The Coal and Iron Police were an official private police force (from 1866 to 1931, approximately) and who in some communities were accused of assault, kidnapping, rape, and murder. While the Molly Maguires were not heros, their actions cannot be placed in proper context without mentioning the other activities of the time.

DeciusAemilius 04:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * "... it lacks any reference to the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, whose acts were one underlying cause for the rise of the Molly Maguires." Actually the Molly Maguires pre-dated the Coal & Iron Police. Naturally there was friction after the Coal & Iron Police were formed, but it is idealogical wishful thinking to suppose that Coal & Iron police were responsible for giving rise to the Molly Maguires. Also, do not forget that every Coal & Iron police officer, although paid by a company, also held an official commission from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and exercised the authority of the state.  It should not be forgotten that when Pennsylvania became the first state in the nation to establish a true state police force in the early 20th century, the strongest political opposition came from organized labor, which feared that the new governmentally controlled police force would be used to suppress strikes.  Mullaghbrack 16:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite of Sections 1 and 2
I've re-written the first two sections, on Molly Maguires in Ireland and the US, almost from scratch to try and add social context while removing the rather obvious biases of the prior text. The other sections still need some work.

DeciusAemilius 21:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite Redux
I've gone through and pretty much re-written everything to try and add social context and remove POV statements. I've also removed a dead link and added a couple more. It's not what I'd call finished by any means but I think it's a major improvement on the prior text.

DeciusAemilius 05:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's better to rewrite section by section and let the editorial community comment on each change. Every new addition has to be based on the scholarly sources and be free of POV, which is not the case here. One much needed improvement is a summary that states what this is all about and why important. As for Rhodes, he's a very solid scholar from American Historical Review who's out of copyright. Rjensen 06:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I am not disagreeing per se (I've not read Rhodes and thus cannot comment) but the prior page was quite biased. I have endeavored to strip the article down do the bare facts and add in proper notices as to where controversy exists; I will add sources as time allows.

DeciusAemilius


 * deleting Rhodes (PulitzerPrize, president Am Historical Assoc, fully footnoted article in the leading scholarly journal) is uncalled for. His careful narrative was replaced with poorly written stuff that is unsourced--who knows where it came from? Better look at Wiki rules on reliable sources before making wholesale changes. Every change will have to be fully rederenced or it gets deleted. We don't go from solid scholarship down to pop history in Wiki. Rjensen 06:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

James McParlan or James McParland
There appear to be authoritative sources for both spellings. Google gives a similar number of links for each spelling (2,930 for McParlan, and 2,220 for McParland)

This individual appears in a number of places -- Western Federation of Miners and Molly Maguires for example. But with different spellings.

This appears to be a dilemma for which someone needs to make a decision-- so a page for the individual can be created. Richard Myers 10:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Richard Myers raises a good point. I think "McParlan" without the "d" has a better claim. Rjensen 11:19, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Here, finally, is some definitive information, from two footnotes:


 * His stenographer, Morris Friedman, wrote a book about him — as "McParland." [The Pinkerton Labor Spy, New York, Wilshire Book Co., 1907.]


 * [The Corpse On Boomerang Road, Telluride's War On Labor 1899-1908, MaryJoy Martin, 2004, page 10.] He "signed his name as 'McParlan' on Pinkerton reports... He added the 'D' to the end in the 1880s yet dropped it again in 1900, only to restore it in 1901."


 * best wishes, Richard Myers 08:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Lead section
This article needs a lead section to summarise its contents. Tyrenius 00:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Rhodes
The use of James Ford Rhodes as a basis for several sections in this article is a potential detriment that needs to be corrected. While the man himself may have been distinguished he was writing c.1905-1910, and (according to Kevin Kenny) was relying directly on the published accounts of the Pinkertons themselves. His account must be presented with more interrelation of other scholarship, as his natural biases -- combined with the existing political situation at the time, in which several prominent people involved with the Molly Maguire prosecution remained influential -- makes it incorrect historiography to present his account directly. It would be better to either include alternative scholarly views or, since the material is available and also PD, cite the direct accounts provided by Pinkerton.

DeciusAemilius 23:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wiki should not be in the business of condoning murder and assassinations. Rjensen 13:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Excerpt from James Ford Rhodes History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley 1877 - 1896 should be clearly delineated
The passage beginning with "Many of the Mollies were miners and the mode of working...", and ending with "... it was the old story of ravening wolves in sheep's clothing." appeared originally in American Historical Review, April, 1910, and was later reproduced in Rhodes's History of the United States... cited above, p 52 - 58 (Chapter 2). I would propose employing the Quotation template, which would furnish a clear box around the excerpt. It also furnishes a field for a full and proper citation. The treatment would look like this: ';"> I am aware there is a notice to that effect already, but it's placement, unfortunately, implies that the next three paragraphs are Rhodes. They are not. As can be seen in historical versions, they predate the excerpt furnished by Rjensen in Revision 35302183, 11:40 16 January 2006, nor is it clear in the present treatment where the excerpt ends. The block quote treatment of the template would clearly signal readers what text belongs to Rhodes, his time, place and viewpoint, and what belongs to ours.

Also, in Scholarly secondary sources, there is a link to the University of Illinois website with the chapter from which the excerpt was extracted. Though this page has been done with care, I would preferentially point to the Google Books digital facsimile of the entire reference, available since October 31, 2006. This facsimile is (very nearly almost) as good as having the book itself in one's hands, having been reproduced from a copy at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. There is no ambiguity about footnotes or paragraph breaks, since one has the original formatting and typography. While it is a facsimile, it can be searched for key words and phrases.

Finally, I would hope that we could eventually replace the excerpt with a fair and balanced paraphrasing of sourced references. Even with typographic flags, one can still edit the excerpt, and casual readers could never be sure if what appears to be a quote has not been corrupted by a careless editor or a really skillful vandal. The article history shows that in the year since Rjensen furnished the quote, a number of editors thought they could phrase Rhodes better than Rhodes. ;) Alas, passions still run high on this matter; time does not heal some wounds as quickly as one would like, so keeping that excerpt whole becomes a bit of a chore.

I will undertake this revision in a week or so, unless there are matters others would like to discuss. Gosgood 18:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, please don't change. we use quotes for entirely different reasons (that is we quote primary sources)., This is different: a full-scale scholarly study. It's like Wiki's common use of the 1911 Britannica that forms the core of many historical articles. The problem is that POV is very heavy on this topic and use of a standard scholarly source avoids a lot of trouble. Rjensen 19:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no strong motivation to paraphrase, but I truly do think that the Rhodes quote is not well set off, and it should be, both as a service to Rhodes and to readers. I speak entirely as a first time reader of the article who found the beginning and end of the Rhodes quote unclear, and was unnecessarily confused and unsettled by ambiguous formatting. I've placed further remarks on your talk page. Gosgood 22:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * yes I now find Gosgood persuasive and agree with his plan--with the proviso that the Rhodes article be kept permanently. The main reason is we need an anchor that's heavily fact-oriented and has been vetted by professional editors of the American Historical Review, because of the intense POV that seems to surround this topic. Rjensen 22:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The Mollies were villians?
I grew up in Philadelphia and learned about the Molly Maguries as a group Irish Catholic heroes who stood up for the rights of workers and were one of the first "unions" in the country. Feeling like I needed a refresher on an old history lesson I pulled up Wikipedia which has never let me down yet. This time I was shocked and upset at the obvious bias in this artical.

Maybe because we were regional and a Catholic school I was taught the story with a bias in the other direction, but I really don't think so. I know there was a pardon issued in regard to the Mollies and was able to find this blurb on the net:

"John (Black Jack) Kehoe, a saloon owner and former miner was identified as the “king of the Mollies” and accused or a murder that had happened twelve years earlier. Kehoe and nineteen other were executed. Kehoe received a posthumous pardon from Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp in 1979. Shapp wrote: We can be proud of the men known as the Molly Maguires, because they defiantly faced allegations which attempted to make trade unionism a criminal conspiracy."

http://www.jttoday.com/2005/2005-02/PinkertonBook/MollyMaguireMyth.html - that was the web site I found. I beleive it's the local paper in Jim Thorpe PA but am unsure. It has intersting section at the end that tells you what happened to those involved in the procecution on the Molly Maguires. I don't really know how to properly site this source or even really edit the article so I thought I'd post here and someone who knows more then me may make better use of the information.

Peg 72.81.22.118 04:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The histories are complicated by a great deal of bias, for there are two competing narratives. The more dominant narrative (the one we hear most often) is told by those who consider the Mollies to have been thugs intent upon accomplishing criminal goals by criminal means. The alternative narrative suggests that they were justified in challenging the power of the wealthy.


 * The simple fact is, the wealthy have a great deal of ability to establish laws to protect their wealth. Many of the mechanisms which might be employed to change the system are either criminalized, or remain ineffective. There are some who propagandize to protect the status quo, just as others agitate for change. These efforts extend to the interpretation of history. Whose narrative is believed is often more significant than what really happened.


 * Wikipedia is supposed to be edited from a neutral point of view. In reality, that is difficult to achieve on contentious topics. Note the banner at the top of the Molly Maguires article, stating that The neutrality of this article is disputed.


 * There are some folks who edit Wikipedia who are very much intent upon viewing this particular history, and much of union history from the perspective of those who consider the rights of ownership to be inviolable. There are others who question this perspective.


 * Some articles tend to be written from one perspective, some from another. Many of these articles are under frequent dispute, and the current tone reflects either the philosophical beliefs of the last group of editors, or possibly of the group that managed to be more tenacious and determined.


 * In this particular article, James Ford Rhodes is an absolutely awful source to use due to his obvious bias. I expect that's why the neutrality of this article is disputed. But at least one editor believes differently, and introduces the hatchet job with respectable language such as, "a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal..." Whether such garbage stands, depends in part upon who takes an interest in the article.


 * Consider that anyone can edit Wikipedia. The articles that tend to be tinkered with least often are those that are carefully researched, and painstakingly footnoted. If you are passionate about the Molly Maguires, please consider joining the effort to make the article reflect the real history. That may mean a trip to the library to check out some good books. The Wikipedia article about the Molly Maguires will be better for your participation! Richard Myers 08:53, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The Mollies were villains? Part Two. Neutrality and the Rhodes quote
I'm not sure that the "real history" of the Molly Maguires can ever be recovered. Too many principals had died before anyone had asked them anything, a tragic loss.

That said, I believe this article can be a good article, even a featured article, so long as we editors succeed in rising above the quagmire of advocating one point of view or another, and instead, undertake an inventory of the various points of view extant, and the authoritative work supporting each viewpoint. That is, if I read the neutral point of view guidelines correctly:


 * It is not the business of Wikipedia to proclaim the (overlooked) saintliness of the Mollie Maguires.


 * Nor is it the business of Wikipedia to identify the Mollie Maguires as a 19th century terrorist organization bent on the destruction of the American Capitalism.


 * It is the business of Wikipedia to report on these as dominant threads in the debate on the meaning and importance of the Molly Maguires.

I think it is fair for Wikipedia to report on a movement originating in Ireland and exported (at least) to the coal fields of Pennsylvania, and in that context, rose to U. S. prominence when eleven of their members were hanged on June 21, 1877 as murderers or accomplices before the fact, of victims drawn from the ranks of colliery employees or their agents. I think it is fair for Wikipedia to report that after the president of the Reading Railroad, Franklin B. Gowen, hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, one of its agents, James McParlan, infiltrated the Maguires in late 1873. By March, 1875 he had accumulated enough evidence to obtain the arrest of the first Molly. He was the key witness in their 1876 trials, and, after 1878 and the execution of around nine other so-called Mollies, their force as a movement was spent.

Everything else about the Mollies, including the fairness of their trials, their aims as an organization, their role as either a nascent union, or a gang of murderous thugs, the number of Mollies actually executed, the number of Mollies involved in the group, et cetera, ad nauseam are all matters of active debate. In pursuit of a neutral viewpoint, it is not the lot of Wikipedia editors to take sides, but to inventory the threads of debate, cite the references back up each significant thread, and give readers room to make up their own minds. I think if we editors can pursue this goal, then a feature article will arise, for this is a rich area of history.

I am not fond of the prominent use of the James Rhodes quote (even though I was the editor who bought it to typographic prominence. My concerns were technical). Rjensen, and, perhaps others, promotes Rhodes' work as a piece of standard scholarship intended to check edits with extreme point of view. It is compared with the use of the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition as the basis of many Wikipedia articles. It is heavily fact-oriented and has been vetted by professional editors of the American Historical Review.

I do not think it wise, nor kind to Rhodes, to ask his early twentieth century quote to function as an arbitrator to our twenty-first century debate. First, the use of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica in Wikipedia is not without caution, as the guideline to the use of this source observe. In particular, I think the cautions on old references, the absence of modern scholarship, and shifts in cultural norms are as pertinent to the use of Rhodes as it is to the use of the 1911 EB. To make a somewhat extreme analogy, I would not use a 1911 guide to radio repair to fix a contemporary table radio. The 1911 repair guide may be well written, amply illustrated, and heavily fact-oriented in regards to electronic valves, coils, and condensers, but demonstrably useless when it comes to contemporary integrated circuits.

One can argue that the field of electronics is not the same as the field of history, that the latter does not experience the rapid evolution in theory and practice known to the former. To this I reply — not without a little dark humor — that losers are rarely allowed to write in the history books. For this reason, it often falls to the lot of later historians to review the work of their older colleagues and ferret out the lives and times of people who had been denied access to the pens. The waves of revisionism that periodically wash through historical scholarship differ only in degree to what is experienced in the technologies; they do not differ in principle. In light of that, I do not believe that Rhodes can furnish a standard of scholarship for the twenty first century reader as he had done for the early twentieth century counterpart. I have little doubt that he and the editors of American Historical Review. (April 1910), worked with care and diligence. This is why I think it something of a disservice to Rhodes to use his work without his having an opportunity to revisit and update; his January, 1927 death has severely compromised his characteristic attention to detail.

This does not mean that Rhodes should be disposed of entirely. He does represent an early thread of the debate that was held, almost without question, in the late nineteenth century by affluent, well-read Americans. He was a Bourbon Democrat; Mark Hanna, a key supported to President William McKinley, was his brother-in-law, and he had made a considerable fortune in Cleveland iron, coal, and steel industries before retiring in 1885 to pursue historical scholarship. I cannot imagine him assuming a point of view markedly antagonistic to Hanna, Rockefeller, or any other captain of industry. He wrote to that culture, and, for us, furnishes a window into that culture. It is in that capacity that he can inform us why the Molly Maguires were so reviled in the 19th century press and papers of record. In light of that, I would celebrate the retirement of that large block quote back to the external reference from whence it came, so that it is afforded no greater eye space than that afforded to Howard Zinn, Philip Foner, Kevin Kenny or others. I cannot forsee the development of an article that aims at a balanced survey of the various threads of the debate, when one thread, the Rhodes excerpt, so dominates. "heavily fact-oriented" it may very well be, but facts selected in support of a viewpoint now a hundred years old, a viewpoint hardly cognizant of much historical thought that has occurred in the twentieth century. Take care. Gosgood 22:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There is no 21st century debate. No new facts on interpetations have come to light since 1900. It's a matter of celebrating/denouncing/describing the Mollies. The revisionists have a POV agenda that seems rather immune to historical evidence. So let's keep the Rhodes scholarship for the benefit of people interested in facts rather than POV  -- or replace it with even better scholarship (but that is a very hard challenge). By the way on Rhodes--he in fact sharply disagreed with his brother in law Hanna on politics and voted the other way. Rhodes was famous for looking at all sides of the issues--a model to Wiki. Zinn and Foner did not study the Mollies, they merely looked for violent heroes to celebrate for killing mine foremen. Kenny did and more from his work would be welcome. Rjensen 23:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * "Zinn and Foner did not study the Mollies, they merely looked for violent heroes to celebrate for killing mine foremen."


 * Thank you, Rjensen. You have demonstrated precisely the mentality that i was decrying above. You seek to tar all who disagree with your pro-privilege, management-can-do-no-wrong-philosophy with the same brush &mdash; that everyone who looks deeper into the history is evil, and values only mayhem and murder. You've demonstrated that your bias is of the same cloth as Rhodes, whose bigotry is apparent in the statement, "...mining bosses refused to employ Irishmen, but this did not ensure their safety, as they might then be murdered for their refusal."


 * I strongly advocate trimming back Rhodes to a sentence or two, to diminish the bigotry to a level that can be appreciated historically for what it was, rather than having this biased point of view continue to dominate the article. Am wondering who shares my point of view on the text-box abomination that pollutes this otherwise decent article. Richard Myers 04:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * actually I am opposed to terrorism and assassination and can't abide it on American soil. Actually the Mollies did not kill any capitalists and indeed they greatly strengthened capitalism by linking terrorism with labor unions. It set the union cause back 25+ years in the coal fields and elsewhere.Rjensen 04:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no 21st century debate? Interesting point of view. Kevin Kenny, in his introduction to Making Sense of the Molly Maguires tracks a number of shifts in the debate since 1900, and though he wrote that introduction about ten years ago, there appears to be no reason to think that the thought trends he was charting in 1997 lost all momentum at 11:59 PM UTC, Sunday, December 31st, 2000.


 * But, interesting or otherwise, that point of view, along with the one that Rhodes scholarship is for the benefit of people interested in facts rather than POV, or that Rhodes is a bigot, or that Philip Foner is a communist historian, or that everyone seems to have a "bias" (Yes!!!!), or that Rjensen's biases do not even pass the laugh test, or that Gosgood's late, lamented dog,  Olmsted was the best darn dog there ever was, all of them, every single one of these viewpoints, are to be checked in at the door along with the gun, the live ammunition, and the various chips sitting on one's shoulders, and, before hitting the “edit” link, the checked-in Wikipedia editor is to take on just one point of view: the neutral point of view. The first three, terse, paragraphs sum up the policy nicely; one need not read my ramblings below, unless they are truly at a loss for entertainment.


 * In putting this policy in place, Wikipedia recognizes that no human being alive (including historians and Wikipedia editors) can express a subject, verb, and possibly an object, without developing some point of view, because developing a point of view is intrinsic to communication.';"> &#91; citation needed &#93; In light of that, the only admissible point of view for the Wikipedia editor communicating sentences in the main namespace is one that exhibits neither sympathy nor opposition to the subject matter at hand. Upon introducing one or more sentences into an article, the neutrally sympathetic editor is obliged by the attribution policy to seek out one or more reliable published sources that documents the point of view echoed by the freshly introduced sentences. Indeed, the freshly introduced sentences are just paraphrased summaries of an already published viewpoint, which the Wikipedia editor is, in essence, importing into the article for the reader's edification. In the absence of such sources, the freshly minted sentences can only be construed as the Wikipedia editor's original thought, reflecting the editor's viewpoint, and, being in violation of both neutral point of view and attribution policies, may be removed at any time.


 * In particular, an editor's belief that a certain source is intrinsically true, and therefore automatically reflecting “facts” is, in contrast, a point of view that violates both the attribution and neutral point of view policies. How is this so? An editor's belief in what is factual is not a reliable, published source. Readers just can't peer into the craniums of editors and independently verify the source of the editor's beliefs. As it happens, some editors may then engage in finding sources to establish a basis for their own beliefs, but such sources are better suited for articles on the contents of particular editors' heads, and, as such, would likely run afoul of  Wikipedia notability guidelines.


 * Now insofar as to Richard Myers question on whether the Rhodes quote should be shortened, I agree. I happen to like Rhodes (“Darn! wasn't I supposed to check that viewpoint at the door?”), but that is immaterial, just as Rhode's supposed bigotry is immaterial. What is material is that when some editor writes a sentence to the effect: “In the nineteenth century, American newspapers and periodicals generally regarded the Molly Maguires as inherently evil Irishmen who terrorized the anthracite region for two decades.” a citation to Rhodes establishes the sentence as something other than the editor's opinion. The editor cites Rhodes work and furnishes a link to the on-line PDF version at Google Books, so the reader can read Rhodes in context and decide for him or herself whether the sentence approaches factuality. This is a terse, effective use of this particular reference, and is in contrast to its present use: as a “factual counterbalance to editors who are pushing their points of view.” Well, that in itself happens to be a particular editor's point of view, and my understanding of neutral viewpoint requires all of us to check that kind of stuff at the door, so I am not an adherent of the excerpt's use as a check against point of view issues.  Second, I regard this large excerpt as giving undue weight to a particular point of view. That happens to be my particular interpretation of a guideline; anyone is welcome to take issue with me. Third, I see no technical sense in maintaining a word-for-word copy of a passage from Rhodes work, when there is a pristine, read-only copy in Google Books. When I put the quote in that  Richard Myers finds less than endearing, I went through letter, by letter, resyncing the excerpt to the quote, a mind-numbing, pointless exercise, because now it sits as a target to the next feeble-minded vandal looking for a place to plant a low-brow gag. I spend enough of my time cleaning up such crap; I don't have a hankering for more.


 * Oh! Sorry. That unfounded, heavily POV ladened remark about feeble-minded vandals – I should have checked that one in at the door too; so sorry — Gosgood 21:16, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Fascinating discussion about POV here. What is useful about Rhodes is that he actually talks about what happened in the 1860s --which otherwise hardly gets mentioned. Most of the discussion seems to be meta-Molly...that is, talking about how historians talked about the Mollies. An encyclopedia ouight to start out by saying what happened in the coal fields, and only Rhodes does that. Rjensen 23:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Excuse me for jumping in this way, but I just read your whole discussion to find out how credible your article is for my high school project and I think you could maybe use a reader's perspective. I felt like the infamous Rhodes quote was making up the body of the article, which seemed like a cheap cut-and-paste job.  I expect more from Wikipedia.  What I want from Wikipedia is a summary of the subject, so I know where the Mollies' history starts and ends and what happened in between, and a bunch of different sources to look at from there (including Rhodes, and also online copies of Zinns and Foner if possible).


 * I appreciate your clear dates for Mollies' existence in the US, which my history book does not specify, and your clear explanation of their relationship to the Ancient Order of Hibernians. But I have to say, I didn't notice on my own that Rhodes was writing in 1910 and might possibly have biases from his time.  I wish you had mentioned it, or I could have written a whole skit from  only his point of view and spent the rest of my life believing him and only him!  Now, thanks to your discussion, I realize that another side exists and -ughh- I have to go on Google and spend an hour dredging through teachers' lesson plans because I don't know my way around scholarly sites except from Wiki's links.


 * Please make this article work, because other stupid high schoolers like me will be looking up Mollies only once in our lives, and this is your chance to impress upon us that some people think they are villains and some people think they are heroes and, guess what, we will never know for sure exactly what happened.


 * ps, here's some undergraduate who can't write reviewing a bunch of 20th century sources on the Mollies, I don't know how much use it is to you: http://www.lehigh.edu/~ineng/paw/paw-history.htm
 * - Reader24.60.196.46 02:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Link cleanup leads to unsupported lead paragraph: Call for references
I found that a number of links in inline references and in the external link section had gone bad. Kudos goes first to One Night In Hackney who pointed me to the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. One link I could not restore was provided originally by Froid (Wikipedia diff) to a page on the The History Channel web site. I seem to recall the page was not a very good reference, announcing a television program that had aired on THC last March, rather than reproducing a web version of the program's content, so even when the link was extant, the bit about the possible origins of the name 'Molly Maguire' was not directly supported by the reference. Now the lead paragraph of this article is really unsupported. Could anyone out there furnish equivalent references? Or a rewrite of the lead? I find language like "possibly a mythical figure"  wishy-washy, as warned about in Avoid weasel words. Possibly. Possibly not. If the article cannot say anything definitely about an assertion, should it say anything at all? I think not. Take care — Gosgood 13:57, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming this will be good enough? One Night In Hackney 303 14:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The paragraph on that page beginning with The Molly Maguire story began...  supports the ancedote that a woman named Molly Maguire was evicted by a landlord. Period. It does so through the tiresome passive voice: The group's name was said to derive ... . The writer expresses no personal conviction in the ancedote; it was said somewhere. Apart from this lackluster identification of the core of the landlord eviction meme, the page does not go on to support the landlord's name, nor the follow-on contention that the landlord murdered her and leveled her house. In contrast, James Cabney McCabe reports in his 1877 The History of the Great Riots that "The principle work of the order [ Molly Maguires ] in Ireland was the shooting of the agents of the Irish landlords. It is said to have received its name [ passive voice again ] from a ferocious Irishwoman who particularly distinguished herself in this work." [ p 463 ] A hundred twenty two years on, Violence in America: An Encyclopedia By Ronald Gottesman, and Richard Maxwell Brown report that the Irish Molly Maguires "...disguised themselves in women's clothing (wearing white smocks and using white powder or burned cork on their faces) and pledged allegence to Molly Maguire, a mythical woman who symbolized their struggle against injustice." [ p 403 ] . So there you have it: Molly Maguire: mythological symbol of the struggle against injustice, or a merely evicted Irish woman, or a crusading murderess, killing landlord agents with gusto. I believe with a little diligence, one can furnish oneself with half-a-dozen ancedotes that share nothing in common apart from the core idea that there was an Irish woman named Molly Maguire. In light of this, I think it is reasonable to write a revised lead paragraph reporting that the origins of the name are not known, but suppositions have ranged from a woman murdered or evicted by her landlord, to one who had avenged herself on them, to a disembodied symbol against injustice. These three references together illustrate the asserted ambiguity of the name and it is in this fashion that I would rephrase the lead. Comments? — Gosgood 15:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ummm. Rhodes was a brother-in-law of Marcus Hanna. Apart from that, an administrative request? Could you please give your post a title to distinguish it from my request? My request is of limited nature, to wit: a call for supporting references on the article's lead paragraphs (currently festooned with "citation needed" tags)? Your post addressess a very different issue about, I gather, how the high regard that nineteenth century writers professed for McParland has been misplaced, given work by more contemporary writers. While I would like a distinguishing title to aid readers sorting various threads of discussion out, it would be presumptious of me to come up with a title myself. Thank you! — Gosgood 15:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Consider related history, and pare Rhodes to 3 or 4 inline sentences
I haven't researched the Molly Maguires. Perhaps some day i will. But i've researched enough coal mining history not only to be very suspicious, but also to form the opinion that the historical account included here may be part of an elaborate fraud perpetrated for the sole purpose of eliminating the union.

Beyond that, i believe that the Molly Maguires article cannot possibly be rescued until someone is bold enough to deal with the Rhodes abomination.

The introduction to that hack piece states:


 * industrialist and historian James Ford Rhodes published a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal

Scholarly?

There is abundant indication on Wikipedia itself that this article is written by a person likely to be biased. Rhodes was wealthy, an industrialist, a conservative, brother of the anti-radical Mark Hanna and, it appears, may have made his fortune in coal and iron. Well, the Mollies were coal miners. Across the country, industrialists were at war with miners who attempted to form their own organizations, and much blood was shed.

But forget that for a moment. Read this awful insert itself. It is an attack piece, full of vague and, sometimes, racist generalizations and accusations that are not supported.

In the meantime, i suggest that anyone interested in the veracity of the accusations against the Molly Maguires ought to follow the history of James McParland, their famed investigator and accuser. Particularly explore the recently published Corpse on Boomerang Road by MaryJoy Martin, which i have just finished reading. Later in life, McParland participated in elaborate schemes to villify union miners in Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming. In one particularly heinous and, now, well-documented case, he fastened onto a murder in order to sell Pinkerton's services to hardrock mining companies.

The files (and local newspaper accounts) record elaborately detailed stories about how the murder occurred, what was said, how the body was buried and then re-buried, the separation of the clothing from the body to hinder recognition, the need to cut off the shoes, etc. All of this was published and gossiped about, even though the body hadn't yet been located. The murder was used to justify bringing national guard troops in, who promptly forced the union out at the point of bayonets.

There was just one problem: the murdered victim was never killed, he was just shunning publicity and was conveniently absent because he wanted a divorce. MaryJoy writes an entire chapter about the victim's life "after death," his family, his subsequent personal history, even the histories of all his relatives, and the man's wife's affair with, and eventual marriage to, the hired hand (to demonstrate the breadth of her research.) Yet Pinkerton files assert the man was murdered by the union leadership, simply because he had disappeared.

But William J. Barney, the reticent "murder victim" who really was just trying to stay out of the spotlight, wasn't the only fraudulent murder that McParland and his cronies used to slander the Telluride silver miners. One fellow that they claimed the union had murdered actually returned to Telluride to sign an affidavit which attested to the fact that he hadn't been murdered. The "reign of terror" chorus immediately stopped using him as an example in their plots against the union. And MaryJoy Martin has documented other examples of false assertions as well &mdash; all contrived to villify a union that was busy building and then operating a hospital for the community.

Read, also, what McParland's own stenographer, Morris Friedman, had to say about McParland in his exposé, The Pinkerton Labor Spy. I've read it in the library, and he basically describes McParland as a charlatan, a liar and a fraud who was making the Pinkerton company wealthy by joining in cahoots with the mining companies to drive out their unions by fraud, sabotage, and thuggery.

Alright, now read McParland's own writings (which i'm just beginning to explore.) The man was a religious crusader doing God's work to stamp out evils that he accepted entirely on faith. When the mission from God required manufacturing evidence, in his later life McParland seemed eminently up to the task.

Now, i can't say that there were no wrong-doers among the Pennsylvania miners. No doubt crimes there were as prevalent as elsewhere. But if MaryJoy Martin can catalog so thoroughly and convincingly McParland's mendacity in later life, discovering sources that no one else had ever considered, perhaps some other historian ought to retrace his footsteps among the Pennsylvania miners.

Richard Myers 15:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Article substantially revised, with new content added
I have contributed additional material, which i think goes a significant distance in balancing the article. Some suggestions for improvements:


 * I have incorporated the James McParland section into the history section, because it is difficult to separate him from the historical details. I think that bio details could be sorted out for a separate section. I didn't want to destroy the section title for now because it might be receiving some links. I would recommend such links ought to go to the James McParland article.


 * I think the Gowen section could also be made into a separate article. There are many bio details that are not included in the section.


 * Discovered that it already exists, at Franklin B. Gowen. Richard Myers 07:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Am merging the Gowen section into the rest of the article, since most of it did not refer to Gowen. Richard Myers 06:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I still recommend paring the Rhodes article. But with more balancing content, it could perhaps be more than three or four sentences.


 * There are likely to be a few tidbits that are redundant, between what has been added, and what already existed. Eliminating these. Richard Myers 06:41, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I tried to preserve everything that was already there, but i did remove this:


 * Both the AOH and the Mollies fought discrimination against Irish and Catholics. In the case of the Mollies, the fight took the form of violence and destruction, mimicking the attacks against English landlords in Ireland, and the later sectarian intimidation of political and religious opponents in the first decades of the 20th century.


 * No objection to that being worked in again, if someone is so inclined.


 * Also removed this:


 * The address of Mr. Gowen, and those of General Charles Albright, Hon. F.W. Hughes, and Guy E. Farquhar, Esq., added just the argument which the jury required to find a just verdict of "guilty of murder in the first degree".


 * I'm not certain which of the several trials it refers to.


 * There is some content duplication with the McParland article, but i'll take care of that later. Richard Myers 00:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Have removed this content:


 * The Mollys were forced to disband in 1877 after being in existence for about thirty years because, in an effort commissioned by Reading Railroad president Franklin B. Gowen (who was also at the time the most influential mine owner in the area), Pinkerton National Detective Agency agents infiltrated the organization and informed on the activities of the members.


 * Although they are viewed unfavorably by traditional history, there are those who contend that the Molly Maguires, manifesting in the United States as a direct response to wage disputes with the coal industry, are more accurately described as a labor organization than a group of vigilantes, and that the allegations of their more violent crimes were baseless and without evidence. Howard Zinn mentions the Molly Maguires in Chapter 10 of his A People's History of the United States, citing them as an example of labor organization in response to the frequent, gross exploitation of workers by industry in the Depression-ridden days after the Civil War. Zinn mentions Philip Foner as someone who, after careful study of the evidence available, concludes the 19 members executed were done so for the simple reason that they coordinated strikes whenever wages were reduced. Foner points to the coal mine owners' own words in the Miners' Journal essentially admitting to this as their chief motive in using the law to pursue the Maguires.


 * Thirty years existence (in Pennsylvania) is unverified, and i couldn't find any source supporting the statement. Perhaps it refers to roots in Ireland, which would make it misleading here. The rest is mostly duplicated in the new content, with specific citations. Richard Myers 19:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Noticed that there's no introduction! Fixed. Richard Myers 07:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Naming convention for McParlan
I have settled upon McParlan as the naming convention for this article for two reasons: (1) that is what the article was started with, and (2) James McParlan probably used the spelling McParlan throughout the Molly Maguire period. He changed the spelling of his name to McParland, but his usage was not consistent. The text in link to the image, of course, will have to stay with the correct filename. Richard Myers 16:01, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

POV notice
I have removed the POV notice on the Molly Maguires article because the article has changed substantially. I am not suggesting there are no longer any POV issues; just that everyone who had been concerned about POV should take another look and weigh in again. Richard Myers 17:51, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Lead
At present the article doesn't have one. Does anyone want to make a stab at it? Guidelines are at WP:LEAD. One Night In Hackney 303 17:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I have written a lead. I have sources for everything there, and will add them in the next day or two. best wishes, Richard Myers 21:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't bother sourcing it, as it needs a complete re-write to remove the vast amount of POV, speculation and weasel wording. I'll re-write it some time soon. 19:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll be interested to observe your improvements. Richard Myers 19:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

reference needed, statement about Gowen
While verifying references for my own edits, i encountered this statement:


 * Franklin B. Gowen [was] "the wealthiest anthracite coal mine owner in the world"

I believe that the statement comes from here: Franklin B. Gowen

For this (Molly Maguires) article, i think it should have a specific citation. If someone can find it, that would be great. If not, i'd support either the removal of the claim, or addition of the "citation needed" tag. Richard Myers 20:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

McAllister
I preserved several references to "McAllister" from the original article and merged them with the new material. However, this is problematic because there were two McAllister brothers, James and Charles. I may try to track them both down later, but thought i'd note it here first. Richard Myers 08:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Charles McAllister was accused by Pinkertons of being "present" during Sanger death. Page 151, The Pinkerton Story.


 * Charles McAllister and James McAllister lived in the O'Donnel household that was attacked by vigilantes. Page 151, The Pinkerton Story.


 * Charles McAllister was wounded in the vigilante attack on the O'Donnel household, but escaped the attack. Page 151, The Pinkerton Story.


 * James McAllister was also wounded in the vigilante attack on the O'Donnel household, but escaped the attack. Page 157, The Pinkerton Story. Curious that these are reported on different pages. I don't have a contradiction (yet), just odd separation of details. Need confirmation, in case there's a naming error in this source.


 * James McAllister reportedly went to Australia. Page 158, The Pinkerton Story.


 * The McAllisters are not mentioned in Labor's Untold Story, which appears to list the names of all those executed &mdash; nineteen of them.


 * This will take some additional research. Richard Myers 20:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I do recall that different totals have been reported for those executed &mdash; nineteen, and twenty. There are no McAllisters in the list of nineteen. Perhaps one of the McAllister brothers was the "later" execution, changing the total from nineteen to twenty. (speculation...) Richard Myers 20:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have tentatively confirmed that James McAllister was present when the household was attacked. No confirmation yet of Charles being there and injured, for which i have a single source. This has implications for some info in the article.

Also, I have removed these lines, which were in the original article (before i started editing)


 * On February 10 1875, Captain R.J. Linden, a fellow Pinkerton operative with McParlan, captured Thomas Munley at his home in Gilberton. Charles McAllister was apprehended at the same time.


 * McAllister demanded a separate trial and George Kaercher, Esq., the District Attorney, elected to try Munley first.


 * McAllister was hanged later.

Reason: there is a list of 20 Mollies who were hanged, here (at the end):

http://home.ptd.net/~svaronka/PDF/Timeline.pdf

McAllister isn't on it. Makes me suspicious of all of these entries. I'll try to obtain additional sources, and reconstruct the info about arrests, trials, and executions. Richard Myers 03:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Problems with the article
I'll ignore the lead for now as the lead should be a brief summary of the main article, so once the main article is sorted out the lead should be a simple enough task.

Mollys in Ireland
 * The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where their semi-legendary vigilante organization fought Irish landlords for tenants' rights. How and when did they originate? Semi-legendary is weasel wording. What nature did the fighting take - legally, with violence, strikes? All this needs to be clear.
 * and were thought by some to have contributed to the ultimate partition of Ireland. Again, some is weasel wording. Who thinks that?

Mollys in USA
 * Many historians believe that Irish immigrants transplanted a form of the Molly Maguires organization into America in the nineteenth century. More weasel wording. Is this view the mainstream accepted one? If it is, we shouldn't be saying "many historians believe", we should be presenting it more boldly otherwise we're saying right at the start it might not have happened at all.
 * It is believed that the Irish miners in this organization. Weasel wording again, who believes it?

Historians disagree about the Mollies
 * If anything this section should be at the end. We should be presenting the majority view of the MMs first and foremost, and any minority views later. We've not even got into the meat of the article, and we're presenting minority views and confusing the reader.

Media attention History and sub-headings
 * While popular accounts of the Molly Maguires invariably focus on violence That's all well and good, but we've not really covered that in the article yet.
 * In Labor's Untold Story, Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais put the responsibility for creating the Molly Maguires on industrialist Franklin B. Gowen That needs to be elsewhere in the article, ideally say in the Mollys in USA section. Put all the background that let to the formation of the MMs in there.
 * There's too many sub-headings, all these could be combined into one general background section. I'm assuming that a lot of these are the events leading up to the MMs, but as there's not even a date when the MMs formed in America it's difficult to tell.


 * This isn't even everything, but it's a good starting point and once that's done other problems will be easier to deal with. To sum up. Let's start the MMs in USA section with the background in mining at the time. Then deal with the formation of the MMs, then their activities and so on. At the moment the chronology just seems to be all over the place. One Night In Hackney 303 16:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In terms of determining a majority view &mdash; how do you deal with an organization that had a legitimate history in one place, but in another where it achieved great notoriety, it never existed as an organization, its "members" never called themselves what they are referred to as, the "identity" of which was conjured entirely from the outside for the purpose of destroying an entirely different organization? And that other organization, many have believed, was the AOH, but much more probably was in fact the union? And although the first part of this appears to represent the consensus of modern scholarship, and the second part is more educated guess than certainty &mdash; for the primary sources are inadequate to make a determination &mdash; it goes against long-standing tradition, and saying so about the history as a flat statement is likely to invite attack and edit wars?


 * I haven't touched the section Mollys in Ireland &mdash; my sources don't deal with it adequately. Richard Myers 00:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I never suggested you had touched the Ireland section, at the moment I'm attempting to say what the problems are with the article not apportion blame. I don't have the sources but you do, so you're in a much better position than me to improve the article. Judging by your message above I'm quite worried though, please see WP:NPOV. You seem to be clearly of the opinion that the MMs did not exist, while using sources that said they did which is problematic. I can only suggest that you forget everything you think you know about the MMs, and write directly from the sources making sure to give the sources equal weight. One Night In Hackney 303 01:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I never suggested you had touched the Ireland section...

That's fine, i wasn't trying to be defensive &mdash; just suggesting others may wish to jump in for that section.


 * You seem to be clearly of the opinion that the MMs did not exist, while using sources that said they did which is problematic.

The situation, in my view, is more complicated than what you appear to perceive.

There is no question that a group of individuals, some of them with violent tendencies, were infiltrated and faced harsh (and probably in many cases, unfair) justice. It appears that no one can point to anything asserting that they ever called themselves, or ever considered themselves, Mollies.

The problem is partly the way different historians react differently to that reality.

Some say, fine. There never was an organization (in the U.S.) called the Molly Maguires. Analyze the history from that point of view.

Others say, well, even if they didn't call themselves that, industrialist Gowen tagged them with that name, so it sticks. Act as if they really were Molly Maguires.

This situation of two different ways of describing the history is complicated by the simple fact that calling the article Molly Maguires establishes an expectation that they existed as an organization. I expect that they existed primarily as a publicity phenomenon.

The only truly honest way to deal with that reality is consistently referring to them as "the group that has been called the Molly Maguires" &mdash; and that is just too awkward to do throughout. So i believe acknowledging disagreement among historians early in the article is essential, and a workable alternative.

Now, what is said about the specific history can be said from either point of view. And historians using both approaches are not disqualified because they adopt one point of view or the other. The problem in an encyclopedia is making the reader aware that these complications exist, and doing so in a way that isn't disruptive. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions about improvements.

BTW, i'd like to use this as a source:

http://www.colcohist-gensoc.org/Essays/hardcoaltimes.pdf

(Unfortunately the explanation in its current form, below, isn't a good citation for Wikipedia, because the only author identification is within the article itself, and doesn't provide the name...)

But i think reading it is worthwhile. From that document,


 * Several years ago I wrote the book Molly Justice. Since that time, I have had many book signings, lectures, and classroom visits. Although I wanted to talk about how and why I wrote my book, I was always bogged down by the big question, "Who were the Molly Maguires?" This was always a dilemma for me. I always wanted to answer with, "How much time do you have?" The answer is complex, complex enough to confound scholars even today. I always felt that one or two sentences did not do the question justice. The answer given may apply to one Molly but not the other. The subject is too deep and involved for a quick answer...


 * The Molly Maguires never existed.


 * I have a friend that likes to make the statement that the Molly Maguires never existed and then argue the point endlessly. He absolutely insists that the statement is true. When asked to explain his stand he goes on to say there never was an organization [in Pennsylvania] who called themselves the Molly Maguires. His statement is most likely true, but misleading... He might better say, "An organization named the Molly Maguires never existed." This, I would agree with.

The author then explains how Gowen set out to destroy the union and, it appears, conjured the Molly Maguires as a violent organization to do so. There was already lots of violence (as the article indicates.) But some of this intrigue also relates to the practices of the Pinkertons, and they continued such practices for decades after this period.

The author is Steve Varonka, who writes historical fiction. He says the primary sources are tainted because of the influence of those in power at the time. Under such circumstances, if i understand his ideas properly, he feels that he can offer a more accurate picture of what happened in the "Molly" period with fiction than with non-fiction.

Steve has recommended additional sources, which i hope to obtain. His take on the Wikipedia article as it currently stands: it is "not too bad." He thinks it may over-emphasize the union connections, while i think (but don't know yet) there's a possibility that the union connections should be stronger. More research is called for... best wishes, Richard Myers 03:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * In re-reading the article, i can see areas where it ought to be improved. Some of the comments here are valid, IMO. I have ordered additional sources, partly to get a better sense of what the "mainstream" view is, if such exists on this particularly complex subject. Richard Myers 04:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

"The Mollies radicalized the Irish political scene with sectarian violence and intimidation until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and were thought by some to have contributed to the ultimate partition of Ireland"

I don't want to get involved in the rather preposterous points made about maintaining Rhoses as the touchstone for Molly Maguire information but the sentence above need to be rewritten or taken out, in particular the 'ultimate partition of Ireland' part, it makes the article look ridiculous.


 * It would be helpful if you would sign your contributions to this talk page.


 * It appears that the sentence in question has been in the article since January of 2006, when it first appeared as:


 * The Mollies radicalised the Irish political scene with sectarian violence and intimidation up until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and were largely responsible ultimate partition of Ireland.


 * 


 * The sentence has also been awaiting a citation for some time. I believe the original contributing editor for this sentence grew up in Ireland, is still an active Wikipedian, and could be consulted, to see if there's a possible fix rather than outright deletion.


 * I hope to revisit this article in a month or two, and will take another look at that time. But i wouldn't have any problem if someone just takes out that sentence in the meantime.


 * best wishes, Richard Myers 06:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits
It always raises suspicions when a new login with no history is created specifically for doing major edits on an article, which seems to be the case here:

Special:Contributions/Mullaghbrack

The circumstances raise questions about Sock puppetry, which is an attempt to evade accepted Wikipedia policy. We find there,


 * They [sockpuppets] are also more likely to be brand new or a single purpose account when looking at their contributions summary.

But also,


 * If you have been accused incorrectly of being a sock puppet, don't take it too personally. New users are unknown quantities.  Stay around a while and make good edits, and your record will speak for itself. That is generally the only way to really prove you are not anyone's puppet...

Now in some cases the recent edits seem reasonable, particularly relating to some improvements in wording. However, in other cases, the new editor has made assumptions which are simply erroneous. For example,


 * In Labor's Untold Story, Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais put the responsibility for creating the Molly Maguires on industrialist Franklin B. Gowen, observing that,


 * A good number of historians now concede that there was never any organization in Pennsylvania known as the Molly Maguires—although any militant miner might have been called a Molly Maguire after the newspapers had spread Gowen's charge far and wide.

...has been changed to:


 * It is sometimes claimed, incorrectly, that the term "Molly Maguires" was created by Franklin B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in order to stir prejudice against Irish Catholic miners and the Workers' Benevolent Association.

The original statement in the article exists under Mollys in USA, and mentions in Pennsylvania. The new editor has modified this with the assumption that the statement is global, and then, of course, it would be claimed incorrectly. But the change ignores the context from the original source, and this re-interpretation is not in any way faithful to the original, it creates and then knocks down a straw man argument that loses the original meaning entirely. The orignal never dealt with the term Molly Maguires, it dealt with their alleged presence in the Pennsylvania coal fields. The edit is either mistaken or dishonest.

It would be a shame for someone to lose all of the effort they're putting in, just because of suspected sock-puppetry and some poor assumptions while editing. Whoever you are, new editor User:Mullaghbrack, please come and talk to us about what you're doing. Richard Myers 19:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * User:Mullaghbrack continues to edit the article, and it is getting worse. Mullaghbrack has added the following unreferenced statement:


 * Some labor historians, such as Bimba, Boyer and Morais, have claimed that the term "Molly Maguires" was essentially fabricated by capitalists and the Pinkerton Detective Agency for the purpose of stirring up prejudice against Irish miners and the coal miners' union, then known as the Workers' Benevolent Association.


 * Where is the source for this? It is, in fact, a false attribution. Bimba states,


 * "The appellation 'Molly Maguire' seems to have been imported from Ireland..." on page 12 of The Molly Maguires.


 * In the case of Boyer and Morais, a legitimate quotation from their book has been replaced with a re-statement that is flat dishonest.


 * Meawhile, Mullaghbrack continues to edit, while declining to address the question of sockpuppetry, long after notification here.


 * For these reasons and more, i find the editing of Mullaghbrack to be unfriendly and unhelpful. Richard Myers 21:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Recent Edits- Response
Someone has quickly removed all of my edits to this article within hours of my posting them, and without giving me a reasonable chance to post any explanation or comments. Since my edits are apparently unwelcome here, I will attempt to post comments on the current text on this discussion page. First, however, I assure all interested parties that I am not a Wikipedia “sock-puppet,” as I have never posted or edited anything on Wikipedia before, under this or any other log-in name. I do not understand why a person has attacked and criticized me and accused me of dishonesty for trying to improve this article, unless they are merely trying to prevent me from touching their work by name-calling. In its present state (IMO, of course), the article is deficient. Organization and readability can be improved. it uncritically adopts the pro-labor POV on many points, and advances a number of assertions that are demonstrably inaccurate or misleading. I find quite a few simple factual errors. The article is lopsidedly loaded with POV quotations, and it devotes excessive attention to tangential or secondary matters while ignoring basic facts central to the subject. In the latter category it is odd, for example, to focus on hardships experienced by Irish coal miners without paying equal attention to the Mollies’ murder victims and the outrages by which they were dispatched. Likewise, the article makes frequent reference to miners and unionism at length, but oddly neglects to mention the fact that most of the executed men who held leadership positions in the so-called Molly Maguire organization were neither miners nor union officals, but self-employed saloonkeepers. The important topics of politics and the position of the Catholic Church are ignored. The article, at present, does not provide even an accurate list of the condemned men or their crimes. Since my edits are unwelcome, I will post suggestions which others may consider or ignore as they wish. I am not able to compose and post all comments at one time, so they will probably be spread out over a number of postings and a number of days.Mullaghbrack 20:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Introductory Paragraph


 * Article:    “…the evidence that a group calling itself the Molly Maguires was responsible for these coalfield crimes rests largely upon the allegations of one powerful industrialist, and the testimony of one Pinkerton detective.”

The above sentence adopts the misleading argument often employed by Molly apologists to minimize the evidence of the Mollies’ existence. Gowen and McParlan did not assert that the group *called itself* the Molly Maguires. These are weasel words which overinflate the importance of what a group *calls itself* at the expense of the basic historical facts showing a criminal organization. (Does the Mafia cease to exist if Mafia dons don’t call themselves the “Mafia”??). A large body of evidence from a wide variety of sources, including newspapers and books published between 1857 – 1877, Irish-Catholic clergymen, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, coal egion attorneys, and many local residents who testified in the Molly trials, including local citizens who testified as defense witnesses, supports the fact that there was an organization in the coal region commonly known as the “Molly Maguires.” It is misleading to pretend that this large body of evidence does not exist.


 * Article: “Violence during the period of the Molly Maguires sensation was widespread, with the Irish  Catholic miners who allegedly made up the secret order frequently falling victim.”

The second half of this sentence has no apparent purpose except to induce sympathy for the Mollies. It ignores miners who were English, Welsh, German, Italian, Polish, etc., and singles out only “Irish Catholic miners who allegedly made up the secret order” as victims. There is no evidence, however, that Irish miners were victims of violence more frequently than members of any other ethnic or religious group. The sentence is not POV neutral.


 * Article: “That the coal, iron, and railroad trusts focused almost exclusively upon that group for criminal prosecution cannot be divorced from a simple reality: the Irish miners made up the core of militant union activism during a bitter strike provoked by a twenty percent wage reduction.”

This assertion shows a slanted POV and is historically unsupported. (1) During the Molly era, there were more non-Irish miners in the union than Irish miners. (2) The W.B.A. did not favor “militant” unionism as that term is generally understood; it favored arbitration, peaceful strikes, and eschewed violence;  (3) Although there were no doubt some Irish “militant union activists,” the Molly Maguires who were prosecuted and punished were not among them;  the 20 executed Molly Maguires did not include a single known union officer or union activist, which goes to the heart of the historical debate and should be pointed out. (4) This sentence implies the existence of a cause/effect relationship between the wage reduction/strike and the Molly prosecutions. However, Gowen initiated the Molly Maguire investigation in 1873 and the wage reduction/strike took place in 1875. The implied cause/effect relationship is false and misleading.


 * Article: “The industrialist, standing to gain financially from the destruction of the union upon which he had personally forced a strike, was also the prosecutor of the union men at their capital trials.”

This sentence adopts a slanted pro-labor POV insofar as it states that Gowen “personally forced a strike,” as if the workers and union had no role, and refers to the Molly Maguire defendants as “union men,” which uncritically assumes the truth of a controversial claim.

Mollies in Ireland


 * Article: “The group named itself after a widow, Molly Maguire, who was possibly a mythical figure. According to legend, Molly was killed by her landlord Billy Kilgannon, who instructed her to get out of town, and when she refused to vacate the premises, he levelled the house she was in. Tales of that incident incited violent anti-landlord agitations in the 1840s. The organization was established officially in 1843.”

As indicated in my previous edits to the article, which have been deleted, the myth of a widow named Molly Maguire is only one of several different explanations for the name which can be found in the literature. This sentence takes one romantic myth (probably apocryphal) and presents it as fact. It is also nonsense to state that the Molly Maguires in Ireland were “established officially in 1843.” Such groups were illegal in Ireland and were not “officially established” at any time. No one knows exactly when this secret organization was “established.”

Mollies in USA


 * Article: “The Irish coal-mining heritage of the Mollies may have contributed to the wave of violence, which continued well over ten years in the late 19th century in the United States.

What “Irish coal-mining heritage”? Few Irish immigrants in the Pennsylvania coal region possessed any “Irish coal-mining heritage” because very little coal was mined in Ireland. A far more likely factor in the violence was a very long heritage of violent secret societies in Ireland, which I attempted to describe in my edits and which have been deleted. Also, the “wave of violence” mentioned here, and the reference to the “late 19th century in the United States” are vague and unhelpful. The article should describe specific types of violence that occurred in specific coal region locations during specific time periods between the Civil War until the about 1875.

Historians Disagree about the Mollies


 * Article: “But historian Aleine Austin believes,


 * ‘The facts show that there was much more terror waged against the Mollys [sic] than those illiterate Irishmen ever aroused.[1]”




 * “For example, Joseph Rayback's 1966 volume A History of American Labor states that the "identity of the Molly Maguires has never been proved."[2]




 * “Even authors who accept the existence of the Mollies as a violent and destructive group acknowledge a significant scholarship that questions the entire history. In The Pinkerton Story, authors James D. Horan and Howard Swiggett write sympathetically about the detective agency and its mission to bring the Mollies to justice. Yet they observe,


 * ‘The difficulty of achieving strict and fair accuracy in relation to the Mollie Maguires is very great. Sensible men have held there never even was such an organization... We do believe, however, that members of a secret organization, bound to each other by oath, used the facilities and personnel of the organization to carry out personal vendettas...[3]

This selective use of quotations, all of which support a minority viewpoint, and the failure to include even one quotation that illustrates the opposing viewpoint, is not a balanced or neutral POV. The use of quotations is unnecessary to convey the point that there is disagreement among historians, and they can be replaced by a balanced, NPOV summary. I suspect that the quotatinos are used here simply to load the text with a certain POV. If written works are to be quoted, the quotations should at least be balanced in number and kind.


 * Article:“While popular accounts of the Molly Maguires invariably focus on violence, the history unfolded primarily as a struggle between industrialists and a miners' union.”

This sentence uncritically adopts the simplistic, pro-labor POV, which is far from universally accepted. Many would argue that during the Civil War period, the Mollies were draft resisters. Many would point out that most of the Molly leaders were saloonkeepers, not miners, and that they stood to profit from strikes which kept their saloons full of customers. Some would argue that various Molly crimes were motivated by robbery, greed, ethnic hatred, religious hatred, political ambition, and other factors. The notion that it all boils down to capital versus union is a highly oversimplified and slanted POV.


 * Article:"Leaders of the American Miners' Association (AMA) and others, "accused of being Mollies, were arrested and charged with crimes... [amid] lurid newspaper sensationalism."[1][5]”

None of the men prosecuted in eastern Pennsylvania as Molly Maguires during 1876-1878 were members of the American Miners’ Association. The use of this pro-labor POV quotation is misleading insofar as it implies that members of the AMA were prosecuted as Molly Maguires.

Media Attention


 * Article: “In Labor's Untold Story, Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais put the responsibility for creating the Molly Maguires on industrialist Franklin B. Gowen, observing that,


 * A good number of historians now concede that there was never any organization in Pennsylvania known as the Molly Maguires—although any militant miner might have been called a Molly Maguire after the newspapers had spread Gowen's charge far and wide.[6]

Labor’s Untold Story by Boyer and Morais is a pointedly pro-labor POV and its discussion of the Molly Maguires is of questionable accuracy at best. The repeated loading of this article with quotations from pro-labor POV sources needs to be eliminated.


 * Article: “The suggestion that Gowen simply fastened upon the Molly Maguires theme as a means of damaging the reputation of the miners' union may be further bolstered by his testimony before a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature in 1875, declaring that the union leaders were "advocates of the Commune and emissaries of the International."[7] Whether the Irish miners were, in fact, Communists or Molly Maguires may have made no difference. They advocated union, and they had become Gowen's enemies.”

Placing this passage under “Media Attention,” is confusing, since this passage has little or nothing to do with media attention. The commentary accompanying the Gowen quotation also mischaracterizes Gowen’s statement and reflects a pro-labor POV. Gowen’s quotation does nto even mention “Molly Maguires” and “Irish miners,” yet the text following the quote lump these categories of persons together with union leaders, thereby engaging in the very kind of blurring that the author attributes to Gowen.
 * Article: "Although newspapers sensationalized accounts of the Mollies,[8] not all media accepted the popular reports. The New York publication The Irish World denied that any secret fraternity existed in Pennsylvania, and declared that such an organization was the creation of railroad leaders and the Pinkertons.[9] The Labor Standard, a newspaper of the Workingmen's Party, believed that Pinkerton agent James McParlan, who infiltrated and testified against the Mollies, was an agent provocateur.[9]

Once again we have selective references inserted to support the pro-labor POV, but nothing on the other side to balance them. All mainstream newspapers (presumably including the New York Times, the New York Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, etc.,) are dismissively described as “sensationalized accounts,” but two small newspapers that supported unions and Mollies are cited by name and their positions are detailed in the text. Bias is again clearly showing.

Mullaghbrack 20:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Disaster Strikes

Although it is a disputed fact, persistent stories have survived since the Avondale disaster that the fire in the shaft was deliberately set by strikers. See, e.g., http://www.citizensvoice.com/site/news.cfm?wsid=17330607&BRD=2259&PAG=461&dept_id=571464&rfi=6 The text discusses how the coal company was blamed, but does not mention possible fault or sabatage by workers. Why?

Mine owners move against the union


 * Article: “Franklin B. Gowen, the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, a protestant and "the wealthiest anthracite coal mine owner in the world,…." ....  “Gowen owned two-thirds of the coal mines in southeastern Pennsylvania.”

These statements are inaccurate exagerations typical of Boyer and Morais and other pro-labor POV. It is not true that Franklin Gowen owned the coal mines, they were owned by a large publicly owned corporation of which he served as president. Unlike some industrialists, Franklin Gowen did not own the businesses he ran. As a lawyer he was hired as general counsel of the Philadelphia & Reading RR and was promoted to the presidency of that corporation in 1869. As such, he was a salaried employee and his annual salary in 1871 was publicy reported as $30,000 /yr, which is roughly the equivalent of about $500,000 in today’s dollars. By today’s standards for CEO compensation his salary was modest. Also, the anthracite coal mines are not located in southeastern Pa. Finally, If Gowen’s Protestant religion is deemed relevant to this article, why not include the fact that his father immigrated from Ireland and that he attended a Catholic school.

Union, Mollies, and Ancient Order of Hibernians

Comment: The relationships between the Mollies, the AOH and the union are indeed important subjects. This section barely scratches the surface.

Union Leadership Imprisoned

Comment: This section is misleading insofar as it gives the impression that John Siney and miners' union officers were arrested in connection with the Molly Maguire investigation. There is no evidence that the Molly Maguire investigation targeted union officials. The section should elucidate that Siney and other union officials were arrested outside the anthracite coal region in Clearfield County, and the arrests had nothing to do with Franklin Gowen, McParland, or the Molly Maguire investigation. Also, this section fails to mention that Siney was acquitted and released. It also fails to mention that Siney was represented in court by ex-attorney general Frank Hughes, who later helped prosecute the Mollies.


 * Article: “When he sentenced two of the union officials, Judge Owes addressed them, ‘I find you, Joyce, to be president of the Union, and you, Maloney, to be secretary, and therefore I sentence you to one year's imprisonment.[8]”

As is typical with Boyer and Morais, who are cited for this statement, the quotation is taken out of context and is highly misleading. Once again we have text loaded with POV quotes.

The strike fails


 * Article: "The union was nearly broken by the imprisonment of its leadership and by attacks conducted by vigilantes against the strikers. Gowen "deluged the newspapers with stories of murder and arson" committed by the Molly Maguires. [8]

This passage, again citing Boyer and Morais, is highly slanted and misleading. The idea that the Long Strike was broken by vigilante attacks against strikers” is unsupported nonsense. The claim that Gowen himself “deluged newspapers” is an ahistorical canard repeated often by pro-labor Molly apologists. This material is not NPOV.

Mullaghbrack 21:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Mullaghbrack, welcome to editing Wikipedia.


 * Editing Wikipedia is a collective effort for a very good reason: one person's knowledge is frequently limited by the bias of their own experience. I'm going to give you one quick example of how this might be so.


 * You have stated,


 * ...the article makes frequent reference to miners and unionism at length, but oddly neglects to mention the fact that most of the executed men who held leadership positions in the so-called Molly Maguire organization were neither miners nor union officals, but self-employed saloonkeepers.


 * Let us go on a quick little tour of knowledge. The Molly Maguires story unfolds in the period 1875-1877. The dominant union federation of the period from 1874 to 1890 was the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor were producerist, which means that they supported "the cooperative employer-employee ownership of mines, factories, and other businesses..." In other words, in 1875, someone could be a self-employed saloon keeper and belong to the union.
 * Where was the Knights of Labor first formed? In Pennsylvania. In short, it meant something different to be union in 1875 than it means today; this may have been particularly true in the area of the Pennsylvania anthracite mines; and, this possibility must be taken into account in our understanding of the history.


 * Now, that background doesn't prove that you are wrong in your assumption that the Molly saloon-keepers were not union. But it suggests that we need to look at this history a bit deeper than just based upon our surface knowledge, our prejudices, or our understanding of current unions.


 * In fact, one authority on the Molly Maguires whose book i've just received has stated that all of the Mollies belonged to the union.


 * By Mullaghbrack 19:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC) . Richard:  I do not wish to get into a general discussion of U.S. labor history. However, some of these assertions require a reply.


 * (1) The "Molly Maguires" were active at least as early as the Civil War. Jack Kehoe, the so-called "King of the Mollies," was hanged for a murder that occurred in 1862. A book was published in 1865 publicly accused the "Molly Maguires" (by name) in Schuylkill County of murdering a mine boss. Other Mollies were hanged for a brutal robbery/murder that occurred in 1868. Artificially restricting an analysis of the Molly Maguires to the period of 1875-1877 may help make them fit more neatly with F.B. Gowen and certain strikes, but it unjustifiably truncates the facts and distorts the history.


 * (2) I don't follow the point of your "background tour" regarding the Knights of Labor; the KOL was not established until 1869 and played virtually no role in anthracite mining prior to the Molly prosecutions. The anthracite miners in the Coal Region belonged to the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA) founded by an Irish miner, John Siney, in St. Clair, Schuylkill County, PA in 1869 (after 1870 called the Miners' and Laborer's Benevolent Association).  It was John Siney's WBA/MLBA that led the strikes in the anthracite region between 1869-1875, not the Knights of Labor.


 * (3) A history of the Knights of Labor written by Terence Powderly, its President (Thirty Years of Labor published in 1889) informs us that Knights of Labor forbade liquor dealers or saloonkeepers from holding membership. Terence Powderly (himself raised by Irish Catholic immigrants)wrote that some of the the Molly Maguires got into trouble because of their associations with "rum sellers."


 * (4) I did not state that saloonkeepers could not belong to the miners' union. I said that nearly all the Molly leaders at the time of the prosecutions were self-employed saloonkeepers, not miners, and that not one of the "Mollies" who were executed was a union officer, union official or union activist. Molly apologists are very determined to avoid mention of this. Obviously, if Gowen plotted to discredit and destroy the miners' union by framing "Mollies," common sense says he would have targeted union leaders, not saloonkeepers. Mullaghbrack 19:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Your edits were overturned because of errors that you introduced, one or two of which were posted above. But many of the observations that you bring to this editing process are valid. Organization and readability in this article can be improved, as you observe. Some of the wording in your edits was an improvement over what was in the article. I'd like to see such changes introduced in a manner that everyone can agree upon.


 * I suggest, please try to work with the community that has already been involved with this article. That's much more likely to result in better content, and your edits are much more likely to survive the collective process.


 * In the meantime, thanks for the list of suggestions. I'm going to give them all some consideration soon, and i'm sure that other editors of this article will do the same. best wishes, Richard Myers 23:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Molly apologists? I have no connection whatsoever to the Molly Maguires. I'm not Irish, i'm not Catholic, i'm not a coal miner, i'm not from Ireland or Pennsylvania, i've never once met anyone with a connection to the history, except through email or researching in books. However, when someone chooses to create a new identity for the express purpose of editing the Molly Maguires article on Wikipedia, and they pick as their login ID the name of the home parish of James McParland &mdash; the detective who infiltrated the Molly Maguires, and who left a lot of descendants who are hypersensitive about his reputation &mdash; it certainly suggests that there is some sympathy weighing heavily on one side of the scales. As for the "facts" that you cite, several jump out at me as being contradicted in the literature.


 * So i suggest that we'll have to go through improving this article the Wikipedia way, by examining each fact individually, to see what we can agree upon.


 * One more thing &mdash; it distrupts the flow of the discussion for other readers when you insert your reply into the middle of someone else's reply. Best not to do that. But since you say that you're new to Wikipedia, no harm done, and again, welcome. best wishes, Richard Myers 19:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * By Mullaghbrack . By no means is it my intention to characterize you, personally, as a "Molly apologist." I do not possess any personal information about you, nor do I know who authored the various portions of the article that I have been commenting on. I was only referring to a certain argument that one often sees repeated by Molly apologists.    Mullaghbrack 20:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the Wikipedia Bold → Revert → Discuss Cycle. Similarities to Fold → Spindle → Mutilate cycles are only somewhat exaggerated
Welcome to Wikipedia, Mullaghbrack. Just because one editor reverts your contribution, don't leap to the conclusion that your edits are unwelcome. The actions of one editor should not be confounded with the consensus of a bunch of editors. Indeed, perhaps without planning on such, you have initiated a BRD cycle. You've done the bold bit. You've seen the revert bit. I commend you on initiating the discuss bit. It's a damnably silly way to write articles, but it happens to be the way a good number of articles get written around here. Now hang in there, don a thick version of your skin and, above all, keep your sense of humor handy.

Richard, Please don't bite the newcomers. The sockpuppet bit is uncalled for. Even if you are better than 50% sure of it, keep it to yourself: such is the nature of assuming good faith. Unless you've got a confirmed case of malicious sockpuppetry, don't even breath the word. It makes editors go crazy, stop editing, and start yelling at each other. What suffers? Wikipedia, the encyclopedia (remember the encyclopedia?) that we're all supposedly trying to improve.

I trust we all understand that we're not writing these articles to inflate our little bits of ego; impress our significant others that we know a thing or three? There's a readership out there, and one aspect of this article that I believe needs to be conveyed to the readership is that there is no consensus on Molly Maguires, that among published sources there are contradictory threads. So be it. It's not our lot to take sides in that discussion, and hit each other over the heads with dueling references, but to report the nature and extent of disagreement in a dispassionate, seemingly disinterested tones. To that end, in my occasionally humble opinion, I think there is way too much writing from the hip in this article, with no diligence toward using inline citations. Given the nature of this topic, no significant assertion should be inserted in the mainspace article without an inline cite. If it takes time to find the cite, well, so what? Nobody is holding us to deadlines, here: that's for real-life, paying jobs. Can't find an inline cite? Then it's an editor's opinion and editor's opinions have no place in the main namespace: (no original research).

Also, unless its obvious vandalism, usually characterized by references to reproductive anatomy, fecal matter, posterior parts of animals, or blanket deletions, please let edits stand for a week or so, even if it seems vile. Other of us would like to have time and the opportunity of making up our own minds about vileness. I, for one, have a day job, (keeping to deadlines), and I can't visit articles every day. With rapid fire reverts, one has to go crawling through article histories to find out what all the fun's been about and that's a pain in the arse — damn! a reference to the posterior part of an animal! Oh, please, dear sirs, don't tag me with ! — Gosgood 00:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Gosgood! In trying not to hit the new editor with too many complaints at one time, i left out one important issue: the deletion of twenty thousand bytes of existing article text in the edits that were reverted. This violates Wikipedia guidelines, specifically EDITING POLICY:


 * If you make deletions, you should try to explain why you delete their contributions in the article talk page. This could reduce the possibility of reverting wars and unnecessary arguments.


 * So, whatever you do, try to preserve information.


 * Editing_policy


 * Now, all of the text in the article is certainly open for discussion in regards to possible deletion. But just as it is laborious to see what positive changes were made by the new editor by wading through the article history, it is likewise time-consuming and frustrating to go back and see what has been lost in these massive deletions of text.


 * Please note that i haven't deleted one word of Rhodes, even though i question having that monstrosity in the article. I'd like to see us come to some sort of agreement on replacing Rhodes with a similar point of view, but with better scholarship. But in my judgment not enough different folks have weighed in.


 * Back to the current discussion &mdash; as you may have noticed from my earlier edits, when i deleted information from the article, i transferred it to this TALK page to let other editors know what i was taking out, and to allow for discussion/feedback. Hopefully others will follow similarly friendly practices when doing deletions that may be contested. best wishes, Richard Myers 01:12, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Recent Edits-- More Responses and Comments
Continuing my comments on the existing text of this article--


 * McParlan penetrates the Inner Circle


 * This section heading and text distort the chronology of historical events. Specific dates would help.


 * The executions


 * “On June 21, 1877, ten men were hanged in the prison at Pottsville, in Schuylkill County, and four were hanged at Mauch Chunk, in Carbon County. A scaffold had been erected in each prison.”

This is incorrect. Six, not ten, men were hung in Pottsville on 6/21/1877, and the gallows at Pottsville were erected outside in the yard, not inside ithe jail.


 * “Tom Munley's aged father had walked more than ten miles from Gilberton to assure his son that he knew of his innocence.”

This syntax seems to confirm that Munley was innocent - a disputed fact. It would better be changed to “… to assure his son that he believed in his innocence.”


 * “Four members of the Molly Maguires, Alexander Campbell, John "Yellow Jack" Donohue, Michael Doyle and Edward Kelly, were hanged on June 21, 1877 at a Carbon County, Pennsylvania prison in Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), for the murder of mine bosses John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, following a trial that was later described by a Carbon County judge, John P. Lavelle, as follows:


 * 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, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows."

In fact, Doyle, Kelly, Campbell and Donahue had separate trials; they were not tried in one trial as stated here. And the quoted passage about the trial actually originated in Harold Aurend’s book, “From the Molly Maguires to the United Mine Workers” (1971). If Judge Lavelle, whom the AOH made honorary head of the Patrick’s Day Parade in Carbon County a few years ago, did not credit Aurand as his source (which I am not sure of), he certainly should have.

It can be noted, as well, that Harold Aurand's (Judge Lavelle's?) quotation is obviously wrong in asserting that the state “provided only the courtroom and gallows.” It is undisputable that the state of Pennsylvania provided elected county district attorneys, various public police officers, elected sheriffs, deputies, bailiffs, elected jury commissioners and citizen jurors, publicly elected trial judges to conduct all the trials, an elected Supreme Court to hear their appeals, a Pardons Board comprised of elected officials to decide their pardon and clemency applications, an elected Governor to review their sentences and issue death warrants, and in some of the cases, publicly paid defense counsel. This list can probably be expanded. By comparison, private corporations provided an undercover detective and several assistant prosecuting attorneys.


 * “Michael J. Doyle and Hugh McGeehan were the first to be led to the scaffold. A moment before the trap was sprung, they joined hands and Doyle said to McGeehan, "Hughie, let's die like men."”

This scene is quite interesting, considering that Doyle was hanged in Carbon County and Hugh McGeehan was hanged in Schuylkill County. The remainder of the list of the executed Mollies is also incorrect as follows: It should include Dennis Donnelly (hanged June 1878), Martin Bergin (hanged  January 1879) and Peter McManus (hanged October 1879). It should not include Andrew Lanahan, who is not considered a Molly. (Lanahan was hanged in Luzerne County on June 21, 1877, the same day as ten Mollies were hanged, but he was not part of the Molly investigation and was not accused of being Molly Maguire or AOH member. Boyer and Morais got this wrong.)

The Question of justice

This section contains one quotation supporting the justice of the trials, and five quotations questioning the justice of the trials. Once again, the text has been overloaded with one-sided POV quotations. Why?

Mullaghbrack 18:59, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * On the question of the state “provided only the courtroom and gallows.”


 * This is obviously hyperbole, but it is also a quotation. I didn't add this to the article, i am not opposed to taking it out... Judging from the style of the citations, this quotation has been in the article for a very long time. An alternative might be to remove only the last sentence. Anyone else have feedback?


 * I'd also like to invite you, Mullaghbrack, to go ahead and do some editing. But do not transform the article entirely, especially not by changing or removing in large chunks what is already there. I think it is always best to allow other people time to consider each change individually.


 * I will add, however, that as far as adding additional content &mdash; you mentioned the politics, the church, the details of the executions, etc. &mdash; please feel free to add such information as you see appropriate.


 * The arguments that i had with your earlier edits were: violating Wiki policy by massive deletions; a couple of instances of mischaracterizing existing content when you restated it; and, such massive, rapid changes in existing content that it entirely changed the character of the article in ways that could not possibly be followed by other editors.


 * In short, if we aim to improve the existing text gradually, over a period of weeks and months, rather than by one person overnight, i think we are much more likely to reach some sort of equilibrium. best wishes, Richard Myers 21:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Regarding the Lavelle (Aurand) quotation, I would rather delete the entire thing since it not only exaggerates, but also reflects a serious misunderstanding of 19th century criminal law enforcement. Professor Aurand clearly had no appreciation for the longstanding reliance on private prosecutions in Anglo-American jurisprudence or the 19th century paucity of public law enforcement resources when he penned those words. Be that as it may, it is (as you point out) a quote. Just a misguided one.


 * With respect ot spending weeks and months editing the existing article, I am not really sure I can spend that much time on it. I have already spend more time addressing comments than it would take me to re-write the entire article from scratch.  We'll see. Best wishes, Mullaghbrack 21:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Improving the article, step by step
I suggest that we try to improve the article, step by step, by examining and comparing some of our different sources. Mullaghbrack has stated that,


 * A book was published in 1865 publicly accused the "Molly Maguires" (by name) in Schuylkill County of murdering a mine boss.

I don't have this book, and offhand, i don't know what it is. Mullaghbrack, could you please provide the name of the book, author, the quotation that you're referring to, etc.? thanks, Richard Myers 19:24, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As you wish. The following text is on pages 447 – 449 of New America by William Hepworth Dixon. I am quoting this from my copy of the Third Edition which was issued by Lippincott in Philadelphia, in 1867.


 * “William Dunn of Cass Township, Pottsville, was a manager of mines for the New York and Schuylkill Company; a gentleman and a man of science, with a great command over the coalfields of that picturesque and prosperous region of Pennsylvania.  I have spent some days in that fine district where I heard this story from the lips of his successor.  Dunn was going about his duty, in the public street, in open day, when an Irish workman met him face to face, and with an insolent gesture asked for a holiday.  “You cannot have it,” said Dunn;  “go back to your work.”  Without a word more, the Irishman drew a pistol from his belt and shot him dead.  The murderer, taken red-handed, in the public street, standing by the body of his victim, was brought to trial in Pottsville and – acquitted.  In that great coalfield, with towns and cities which have grown up in the forest in a dozen years, the Irish are sixty thousand strong.  They are very poor, they are grossly illiterate; but every man has a vote, and the sixty thousand vote together as one man.  Hence they carry all elections in the coalfield;  elect the judges, serve on juries, control the courts.  Among these men is a secret society called The Molly Maguires, the name and habits of which they have introduced from Ireland.  The judge who tried this murderer was elected by the Molly Maguires;  the jurors who assisted him were themselves Molly Maguires.  A score of Molly Maguires came forward to swear that the assassin was sixty miles from the spot on which he had been seen to fire at William Dunn.  Counsel submitted that this was one of the many cases of mistaken identity which adorn our legal annals;  the judge summed up the case in the spirit of the suggestion; and the jurors instantly returned a verdict of Not Guilty.  That ruffian is still alive.  The great company whose servant had been slain could do nothing but engage another in his place.  One gentleman to whom they offered the post, replied that he would not take it unless he could be armor-plated.


 * “When you speak of this case to the eminent men of the Pennsylvania bar, they answer that these people cannot be punished, and you must wait and work for a better state of things. “These criminals,” they say, in substance, “are not American; they come to us from Europe;  squalid, ignorant, brutal;  they drink, they quarrel, they form secret associations;  in their own country they paid their rent with a blunderbuss, in this country they ask for a holiday with a pistol, and demand an advance of wages with a blazing torch. But what are we to do?  Can we close our ports against these immigrants?  Should we change our judicial system, the pride of thirty-six millions of solid and steadfast people, to punish a mob of degraded Irish peasants?”  So they allege, with a noble confidence in moral growth, that this evil must be left to cure itself;  as they reckon it will do in five-and-twenty years.  “The children of these Molly Maguires,” says the keen and brilliant mayor of Philadelphia, Morton M’Michael, “will be decent people;  we shall put them through our schools and train them in our ways;  their children, again, will be rich and good Americans, who will hardly have heard of such a society as the Molly Maguires.”

Comments? Mullaghbrack 21:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Fascinating. I'm going to see if i can obtain a copy. Richard Myers 21:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Mollies in Ireland
I have removed the following two paras from the Mollies in Ireland section:


 * The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where their clandestine organization fought Irish landlords for tenants' rights. The group named itself after a widow, Molly Maguire, who was possibly a mythical figure. According to legend, Molly was killed by her landlord Billy Kilgannon, who instructed her to get out of town, and when she refused to vacate the premises, he levelled the house she was in. Tales of that incident incited violent anti-landlord agitations in the 1840s. The organization was established officially in 1843.


 * In the 1880s, the Molly Maguires in Ireland slowly merged with a newly evolving society, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, becoming a secret society retaining the second front name of The Molly Maguires, or The Mollies. They spread under the cloak of the Hibernians and with the approval of the Irish Parliamentary Party, expanded into every Irish county. Their strongest opponents were the All-for-Ireland League. The Mollies radicalized the Irish political scene with sectarian violence and intimidation until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and were thought by some to have contributed to the ultimate partition of Ireland.

The new content relies heavily on Kevin Kenny, and adds a number of links to related Wikipedia content. I think the Irish Parliamentary Party and the All-for-Ireland League could be worked in again, if appropriate. I may do that in a bit; taking a short break now. Richard Myers 03:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The Irish Parliamentary Party was not formed until 1882, and the All-for-Ireland League existed from 1909 to 1918. After a quick overview i've concluded that these do not belong. Neither one is mentioned in Kenny's index. The All-for-Ireland League article is, well, let us say polemical. I expect they were originally added to this article as anti-AOH fodder. If someone can give me a rationale for a relationship, i'll read it. But i'm skeptical. Richard Myers 03:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've reviewed a number of the points made by Mullaghbrack, above. I find many of the observations persuasive. I'll continue to try to incorporate his valid criticisms of the article in my own editing. But i'm not going to change the entire article all at once, because that's too much for other editors to keep up with.


 * Also want to note that i find Kevin Kenny to be a very good resource, much better than some others who are quoted in the article. Richard Myers 17:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I've removed this paragraph, i think the point has already been adequately made about Gowen's views:


 * The suggestion that Gowen simply fastened upon the Molly Maguires theme as a means of damaging the reputation of the miners' union may be further bolstered by his testimony before a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature in 1875, declaring that the union leaders were "advocates of the Commune and emissaries of the International." Whether the Irish miners were, in fact, Communists or Molly Maguires may have made no difference. They advocated union, and they had become Gowen's enemies.

Richard Myers 20:56, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Bias, Windy, and Poorly Organized.
1) Bias - Reads more like pro-business propaganda than a neutral summary of the situation. Possible Solution: First section as a neutral accounting of the facts, then include sections for each view of the events - the company's & the miners'. Little to no coverage of the circumstances that contributed to Unionization of the Coalminers. Company towns, company store, and company script in addition to safety.

2) Windy - This article uses more space to quote sources than giving a coherent account of the times, history, contributing factors, etc. Possible Solution: Instead of peppering with quotes, summarize & reference. Many people look at Wiki for a relatively quick explanation of a topic and references. It's an Encyclopedia; Not a Book! Use stubs if you have to.

3) Poorly Organized - What can I say that people haven't already said? I agree, organization needs work. Kdavi 14:07, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Henry Dunne was the name.
18:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)68.54.134.65Hello Mullagnbrack and Richard Myers

I found your discussion on William Dunn very interesting. Unfortunately, the William H. Dixon text is flawed. The facts of that matter, from the top of my head are that:

1. The name of the man was Henry Hawthorne Dunne who was murdered on January 10th, 1866 between Minersville and Pottsville. Nine men were apprehended by the authorities for suspicion of the murder, but a lack of evidence resulted in the men being releasaed.

2. Buckshots was a more common term at that time rather than Molly Maguires. Yes the name Molly Maguires appeard in the Pottsville Miners Journal in 1857, but it did not become a popular label until later in the 1860s and early 1870s. The term was far more common in the Philadelphia area at that time.

3. The author refers to an Irish American population of 60,000 in the great coalfield. This gives some readers the idea that the population of Irish in the Pottsville area is 60,000 but it may reflect that population in the region from Pottsville to Scranton. Shades of exaggeration. The Schuylkill County population in 1860 was about 92,000. (Again, a quote from memory.)

4. There was no trial for Henry H. Dunne murderer(s), while this article provides great details on the Molly Maguire involvement in the trial.

5. The article reminds me of the "Know Nothing" propaganda of the era preceeding the Civil War. I would not use this article as a primary, secondary or even tertiary source for a scholarly discussion of the Molly Maguires.

68.54.134.65 18:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Mark T. Major June 21 2007(The day of the rope)

Wiggan's patch error
Under Vigilante Justice we read the following:

On December 10, 1876, three men and two women were attacked in their house by masked men. Lukas observes that the attack "seems to reflect the strategy outlined in Pinkerton's memo." The victims had been secretly identified by McParlan as Mollies. One of the men was killed in the house, and the other two Mollies were wounded but able to escape. A woman, the wife of one of the Mollies, was taken outside of the house and shot dead.

This is incorrect. The date was December 10, 1875. The woman who was shot, Ellen O'Donnell McAllister was shot dead inside the house.68.54.134.65 18:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Mark T. Major

Yost Murder Trial Mistakes
Under The Trials we have this:

The first trial of defendants McGeehan, Carroll, Duffy, James Boyle, and James Roarity for the killing of Benjamin Yost commenced in May, 1876. Yost had not recognized the men who attacked him. Although Kerrigan has since been described, along with Duffy, as hating the night watchman enough to plot his murder,[68] Kerrigan became a state's witness and testified against the union leaders and other miners. However, Kerrigan's wife testified in the courtroom that her husband had committed the murder. She testified that she refused to provide her husband with clothing while he was in prison, because he had "picked innocent men to suffer for his crime." She stated that her speaking out was voluntary, and that she was interested only in telling the truth about the murder. Gowen cross-examined her, but could not shake her testimony. Others supported her testimony amid speculation that Kerrigan was receiving special treatment due to the fact that James McParlan was engaged to his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Higgins.[69] The five defendants were sentenced to death. Kerrigan was allowed to go free.

This first trial was declared a mistrial because one of the jurors, Levi Stein, had died. A new trial was called for and held in July. During that trial, Kerrigan's wife did not testify. The five men received a guilty verdict. The idea of McParlan's engagement to Mary Ann Higgins is suspect.68.54.134.65 18:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Mark T. Major

The Executions
I changed this section to remove the fiction, ie. Doyle and McGeehan holding hands (they must have had long arms that reached from Pottsville to Mauch Chunk) I also better defined those hanged on June 21st and those hanged over the next two years. Several sections within this article are tainted by fictional accounts. By intermingling fiction with fact, the true story of the Molly Maguires fails to be told. The fact that there are two ideological camps on this issue results in the story becoming more muddied and more confusing.68.54.134.65 18:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Mark Major Pottsville PA!

A round of edits
I came across the page and found it to be severely lacking. There was the beginning of a good discussion a few months ago but it's clear that it has been forgotten or nothing came of it because the article is still pretty much a mess. I've began a series of edits that try to begin to address the major faults with the article. As the tags correctly state, the article is too long and not NPOV. The language in both style and substance reads strongly pro-union. For example, in the history section we're treated to about 3-4 blockquotes about poor working conditions in the mines. Fine and good, and well-cited. But do we need that level of detail in an article about the Molly Maguires? Even after my edits there are over 500 words in "History" before a single mention of the Mollies.

Finally, the historical narrative is all over the place. We get general background of mining in the area, then a disaster, then a depression, then suddenly Gowen hires the Pinkertons to "deal with the Molly Maguires." Why does he do that? The "controversy" section falls all over itself to imply that they may not have even existed, the historical background barely mentions them and suddenly they're being investigated. I may try to do my best to synthesize the rest of the article and make some improvements, but it may not be possible. --Matches10 (talk) 10:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm wondering if you're cognizant of the damage you're doing to this article by such incessant hacking. Have you looked at the broken references that you've left behind? Richard Myers (talk) 05:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Editors who don't understand the concept of compressed notes ought to avoid editing articles that have been compressed, until they learn how these things work. In brief, there are primary notes, and secondary notes that rely upon the primary notes. If someone deletes the primary notes without paying attention to what they're doing, all of the secondary notes are destroyed. Makes an otherwise decent article exceedingly ugly, and damages the contributions of others. Who wants to go find all those sources again? 4.228.120.116 (talk) 18:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * If it's better the other way by all means revert back to it. Matches10 (talk) 21:02, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the edits and deletions that damaged the footnotes. I am not in any way passing judgment on those changes, except for the fact that the footnotes were damaged as a result of those changes. Richard Myers (talk) 14:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

James Ford Rhodes
The article has been tagged as "very long". I propose removing the James Ford Rhodes section with its boxed quotation entirely. It stands primarily as an example of bigotry and bias among scholars of the period. Removing this section would substantially reduce the size of the article. Feedback, please. Richard Myers (talk) 14:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

John Siney and Xingo Parkes
All reference to the arrests of John Siney and Xingo Parkes should be deleted here. The strike in which they were arrested took place in Clearfield County, in the bituminous coal fields, not in the in the anthracite region. The Clearfield labor dispute was seperate from the Long Strike in the anthracite region, and involved a different union. Siney was no longer head of the anthracite union when he was arrested. The case has no bearing on the story of the Molly Maguires. Eliminating it will help to shorten this article 68.39.238.66 (talk) 23:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC) M. Bulik

Welsh point of view ?
I was just quickly skimming the article ( I don't know much about the subject ) because I had read this review of a joint Irish - Welsh tv documentary that I missed the other night on S4C - http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/whats-on/tm_headline=how-the-welsh-oppressed-the-irish&method=full&objectid=18125122&siteid=50082-name_page.html - and there seems to be little mention of the Welsh dimension here, but I'm only qualified to suggest it. I'd like to observe that dressing up in women's clothing and blackening faces to disguise them was known in both Wales and England atleast as far back as the 18c eg the Rebecca riots in the 1840's, and that an Irish coal mining tradition could be argued from the idea that in Wales at least men would work several months in a mine and then return home to help with the harvest - it's feasable that migrant labour could have crossed from Ireland to the western British coalfields to do this. In 19c Wales the heirarchy of English industrialists over Scottish engineers over Welsh skilled over Irish unskilled over all the other immigrant labourers was a widespread phenomena.DaiSaw (talk) 16:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

By chance, I've just been to 6th Annual Public Lecture of Welsh American Studies, which was given by Ronald L Lewis an authority on coal mining history in the USA. It was based on his forthcoming book 'Welsh Americans : A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields ' Ronald L Lewis, University of North Carolina Press, isbn 978-0-8078-3220-2. He mentioned the Molly Maguires and described the employment circumstances in which the Irish were complaining of receiving a third of the pay collected by their Welsh collier masters who were subcontracting to the colliery. The Welsh colliers were being directly recruited in Wales by agents acting on behalf of the American collieries who wanted skilled men to ensure the success of their enterprises and paid a premium to get them. The Welsh however transplanted their whole culture, including their tradition of enforcing solidarity in a strike - which the Irish fell foul of, being more economically stressed. At home in Wales there had also been long-standing antipathy towards Irish immigrant labour that included the anti-catholic sentiments of a nation that boasted of its extremely devout non-conformist protestant identity. Whilst the Molly Maguires may have been attacking merely those who stood against them, the Welsh may have viewed themselves as the target of Irish vengeance. DaiSaw (talk) 22:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Sock puppet edits
I believe that Pure mercury is a sock puppet. I have verified that Pure mercury's edits in other articles falsify information from the original sources. I note that one of his/her edits here corrects a misspelling, but some others also appear to be made from an ideological point of view, and if they're like those in other articles, they're done without regard to the source material. Someone else may wish to undo the appropriate Pure mercury edits in this article. I don't currently have all of the sources to verify. Richard Myers (talk) 14:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

POV problems
This article has serious POV problems, clearly supporting one side of issues over the true nature of the Mollies and the actual behaviour of the coal owners and Pinkertons. 4.152.102.225 (talk) 19:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

No kidding. This is one of the worst-written Wikipedia articles I've come across. It's one thing to be biased, it's another thing to do it in such a hamfisted way. Mtraven (talk) 17:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)