‘The mendacious Irish character:’ Molly Maguire, anti-Irish sentiment, and anti-labor propaganda in the American press, 1880–1920

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates the prevalence and impact of nativist and anti-labor narratives built on the claim that the ‘Molly Maguires’, a vague 1860s and 70s militant Irish labor phenomenon of the Pennsylvania anthracite region, was still active between the 1880s and the 1910s. It finds that such narratives were widespread until the late 1890s, and still regionally significant until the late 1900s, finally fading into obscurity in the 1910s. ‘Molly Maguirism’ as a media narrative was primarily directed at organized labor and the (Irish) working class; it is best understood as a form of ethnicized proto-Red Scare tactic, but could incorporate other elements, such as broader nativist ideology and sectarianism. Based on these findings, prevailing models of Irish acculturation, such as Painter’s ‘second enlargement of whiteness’, are obsolete; the paper recommends a thorough revision of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish American working-class history, accounting for the continued and hitherto massively underestimated presence of anti-Irish sentiment.

KEYWORDS:

• Irish-American history
• labor history
• union busting
• anti-Irish sentiment
• Molly Maguires
• nativism

A scapegoat is born

The Molly Maguire affair represents without a doubt one of the most interesting and, for a long time, controversial episodes of both Irish American history and American labor history. After a series of violent incidents involving alleged secret societies of Irish-American coal miners in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania during the 1860s and 1870s, and an undercover investigation by Pinkerton agent James McParlan, 20 miners were sentenced to death, mostly on flimsy evidence and often on no other basis than McParlan’s – with near certainty repeatedly perjured – testimony (Torve, 2022). Kevin Kenny has noted the role of newspapers in disseminating myths surrounding the Molly Maguires, as well as the early forms of a conspiracy theory narrative, e.g. in Pinkerton’s 1877 assertion that ‘wherever in the United States iron is wrought, from Maine to Georgia, from ocean to ocean, wherever coal is used for fuel, there the Mollie Maguire leaves his slimy trail and wields with deadly effect his two powerful levers: secrecy – combination’ (Pinkerton 1877, as cited in Kenny, 1998, p. 30). Yet, no line of historical inquiry to this day has pursued the question of what impact the Molly Maguire affair had on labor relations in America, or the perception of the Irish community.

It is apparent that the strategy of ethnicizing labor conflict by blaming a shadowy Irish conspiracy took hold beyond the affair itself, and far beyond Pennsylvania. An 1877 pamphlet, circulated among railroad managers in Baltimore, called the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers the ‘Molly McGuires of the Foot Board’, and urged operators to ‘combine in the use of … strategy, legislation, or force, and crush them out’ (Johnson 1877, p. 3). In the following decades, as distant and distinct a range of events as the emergence of the progressive movement (Colfax Chronicle, 2 May 1891), the Homestead Strike (Buffalo Courier, 26 July 1892), and the Coeur d’Alene mining troubles (The Spokesman-Review, 7 July 1894) would be ascribed to the same kind of Irish lower-class conspiracy.

How are we to make sense of this phenomenon? Is this to be understood as a sort of proto-Red Scare tactic? Or is it an extension of the nativist sentiment that prevailed in the Pennsylvania coalfields prior to and during the Molly Maguire affair? If so, is it directed specifically at the Irish, or is it broader? Or do both these explanations fall short on their own, and is this rather to be understood as a fusion of anti-labor and Nativist propaganda?

Method and sources

In this paper, I will systematically trace the use of the Molly Maguire trope throughout the United States for the period from 1880 to 1920. The inquiry is based on newspaper articles mentioning ‘Molly Maguire’ as based on a search query in an online digital database (newspapers.com). This search yielded 11,937 results, which have been filtered into 369 individual incidents after elimination of duplicates and false positives. Only one record was made for each specific use of the narrative, wherever possible linked to the newspaper of origin. Only references to then-current events have been considered, i.e. discussions of Molly Maguirism in the past have been excluded from the analysis. These incidents have then been categorized according to which axis of social conflict (labor, ethnic, sectarian, political, ordinary crime) they describe. The incidents identified as relevant have then been mapped in QGIS, both according to source of publication and locality referred to in the respective newspaper.

As periodization, it quickly emerged that major changes in the Molly Maguire narrative are tied to significant occurrences in terms of organized labor and political violence, with the Haymarket affair of 1886, the Homestead strike of 1892, and the Steunenberg trial of 1907 signaling turning points in both quantitative and qualitative use of the Molly Maguire scapegoat. The sections of these paper are thus structured according to these events; for reasons of practicality, the year in which the respective events occurred is fully included in the respective chapter and statistic.

Existing research

The Molly Maguire affair itself has seen quite comprehensive scholarly attention during the last three decades, with the extensive monographs by Kenny (1998) and Bulik (2015) delivering as detailed and conclusive an account as is possible based on the relatively sparse and one-sided evidence; the sole remaining blind spot – the exact role of Pinkerton agent James McParlan – has since been addressed by myself (Torve, 2021, 2022). All of these more general publications note the tendencies of mythmaking and conspiracy theories, as well as the importance of the press in this context, but – with the exception of the obvious connection to the Steunenberg trial – do little to examine the afterlife of the narrative beyond the end of the Molly Maguire trials of the 1870s.

A few separate publications, which address more specifically the Molly Maguire narrative rather than the affair itself, are likewise not sufficient to answer the question posed here, and tend to pay little attention to the political and media use of the narrative beyond the 1870s. Aurand and Gudelunas (1982) were the first to note the ‘mythical qualities’ of the narrative, criticizing older partisan accounts and noting that the myth has complicated scholarly assessment. Kenny (1995) has discussed the role of Molly Maguire imagery in popular culture throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century, making a compelling argument about the long afterlife of the narrative, to which my work is greatly indebted. Both of these works, however, focus on the question of how the Molly Maguires were perceived and fictionalized in hindsight, they make no mention of media narratives claiming a continued existence of Molly Maguirism beyond the 1870s.

Labor history scholarship examining the specific events to be discussed here has largely underestimated or missed entirely the connections between nativism, the Molly Maguire affair, and media characterizations of organized labor. Recent scholarship on the Haymarket, such as Green (2006) does of course note the role of nativist tropes in the press but does not connect this to the Molly Maguire affair; publications on the Homestead strike, such as Kahan (2014), generally fail to note the ethnic component of the reaction entirely.

Research on nativism is generally affected by similar blind spots, as it tends to underestimate the role of class (Alsan et al., 2020; Beyer-Purvis, 2016; Levine, 2001). Publications on nativism typically make no mention of Molly Maguire tropes. The sole exception is Kenny (1994), but this piece focuses on an antebellum context and examines a newspaper that would later play a key role in the Molly Maguire affair, it does not extend beyond the affair itself. It must be stressed, however, that a regrettably large portion of the established work on Gilded Age- or Progressive Era nativism is quite old and predates the relevant scholarship on the Molly Maguires. For the 1890s American Protective Association, probably the nativist group most strongly associated with the use of the Molly Maguire scapegoat, Kinzer (1964) is still state of the art, nothing substantial has been published since.

Addressing the above blind spots, this paper will examine the continued use of the Molly Maguire narrative from 1880 onward in framing then-current events as the work of an ethnicized labor conspiracy. In doing so, it will discuss how nativism and anti-labor agendas were connected, and challenge prevailing theories on Irish acculturation and the decline of nativism directed at European ethnicities in favor of a generalized notion of whiteness.

The road to haymarket

As Figure 1 shows, the use of the Molly Maguire narrative remained fairly constant in the early to mid-1880s, with a slight decline from an initial peak in 1880 and rather constant levels after that. It also becomes apparent that the focus of the narrative was organized labor; this context is by far the most frequent and takes the first spot in all years except for 1881 and 1883, when it was surpassed by references to ordinary crime. Conversely, primarily ethnic or sectarian (the latter being so infrequent as to be included under ‘Other’) uses of the repertoire were largely absent during this period.

Figure 1. Type of Molly Maguire outrages by year, 1880–1886.

Figure 2 shows the spatial distribution of where alleged Molly Maguire activity was taking place. There is a heavy concentration on Pennsylvania, with the anthracite coalfield accounting for the largest number of cases, and a secondary cluster in Western Pennsylvania spilling over into neighboring parts of Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. This is hardly surprising, given the origin of the Molly Maguires, but what stands out is the smaller but relatively consistent presence of alleged Molly Maguires in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, as well as the incipient formation of additional clusters in the mining districts of Colorado and Montana.

Figure 2. Distribution of alleged Molly Maguire outrages, 1880–1886.

The places of origin for this narrative, on the other hand, were far more evenly distributed, as shown in Figure 3.¹ Excluding the South and a few other outliers – namely Montana – this approximately corresponds to the overall population distribution. Likewise with the exception of Montana, it does however not at all correspond to the distribution of alleged incidents detailed in Figure 2. In other words, the Molly Maguire narrative was one that was reproduced nationwide, but was targeted at very specific regions – mainly such that were associated with industrial labor, and especially rural and small-town industrial contexts. Rumors about Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania and Colorado in particular did, for the most part, originate outside of the respective states. Chicago stands out as by far the most prolific origin of the narrative, with 14 cases. The following section will interpret and qualify this distribution.

Figure 3. Distribution of origin of alleged Molly Maguire incidents, 1880–1886.

From the outset, the Molly Maguire narrative chiefly targeted and vilified organized labor, mainly in Pennsylvania and the adjacent states. While ethnic characteristics were not always made explicit during this period, it was common knowledge that the Molly Maguires were Irish, and the message that Irish workers were a particularly unruly and violent element was implied. A strike in 1880 was described by the Harrisburg Daily Independent (28 February 1880) as follows:

It is learned that 50,000 colliers employed in the Cumberland [Maryland] and Kavauha [West Virginia] bituminous regions will strike on Monday next. This movement has been engineered by emissaries sent out to those districts. The evil spirits among the Knights, Molly Maguires, and other lawless characters, have taken advantage of the unsettled times to indulge in illicit and atrocious operations. Molly Maguireism is rampant, coal mine property is being shadowed by incendiaries, and several instances are chronicled where colliery works have fallen beneath the incendiary torch. ‘Black-leg’, or non union miners, or others who have in any way incurred the animosity of Molly Maguires, are the recipients of crudely pictured, but suggestive missiles, ‘coffin notices’, warning them to quit the country under penalty of speedy and summary deaths.

Examples of Molly Maguire allegations came from as far away as Louisiana and Nevada (Silver Reef Miner, 7 February 1880). By June 1880, a second Molly Maguire hotbed was established in the press: the Western mining regions of Colorado, soon extended to include Montana, Idaho, and to an extent Utah and Washington. A strike at Leadville, Colorado, was described by the Vermont St. Albans Daily Messenger (27 May 1880) as a lynch mob led by a dangerous Irish demagogue, trained in the Pennsylvania coalfields: ‘All prominent places are guarded. The excitement is feverish. Michael Mooney, a Molly Maguire from Pennsylvania, is at the head of the movement.’ Some papers used this as a basis to openly call for the lynching of striking miners: ‘The Molly Maguires, however, will find that they have a different class of people to deal with […] in the West from what they have in […] Pennsylvania. Lead and hemp, judiciously used, will soon teach them that they have struck the wrong field for operating with their peculiar methods.’ (New Orleans Times, 3 June 1880).

Nor was this exclusively linked to the mining industry. A New York piano-maker, confronted with a strike at his company, posted an advert for strikebreakers in the New York Tribune (6 June 1880) denouncing the strikers as ‘Molly Maguires, conspirators, and communists.’ The Louisiana ‘Molly Maguires’ turned out to be a nascent labor movement among some Black agrarian laborers in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John (The Donaldsonville Chief, 10 April 1880). A glass workers’ strike in New Albany, Indiana was also blamed on the Molly Maguires (New Albany Ledger, 18 February 1880), as was a timber workers’ strike in Cumberland, Maryland (Chicago Tribune, 3 April 1882). While this illustrates that the narrative was chiefly used to delegitimize organized labor, references to the Irish nature of the conspiracy were frequently made, as in the above quote keen to remind the reader that the strike was led by a Michael Mooney.

Ordinary crime was also frequently linked to Molly Maguirism, especially in industrial towns or mining regions. The murder of a railroad watchman in Ohio, for example, was blamed on such a conspiracy (Richwood Gazette, 29 January 1880), and a man arrested for rape in Wheeling, West Virginia, was said to be a Molly Maguire from Pennsylvania, presumably on the basis of his Irish surname (Weekly Standard, Leavenworth KS, 29 December 1880). Again, as it had been during the nativist campaigns of earlier decades (Kenny, 1994), the association of Molly Maguirism with Irishness was consistent, but flexible – while it was a common trope, there are also cases such as that of a Welsh gang in the mountains around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, being described as a Molly Maguire continuity organization (Lancaster Intelligencer, 17 January 1881). In some cases, the suspected ‘Molly Maguires’ did not have Irish surnames, but when they did, their Irishness was emphasized in the press.

The framing of ordinary crime as the work of Molly Maguires was particularly present in 1881, possibly due to a momentary decline in strike activity that year, and most prominent in Pennsylvania. For instance, when a foreman at an iron foundry in Dunbar was murdered in June that year, local papers were quick to blame the Molly Maguires (The Greenville Herald (PA), 30 June 1881), then repeat the old allegations that the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), an Irish Catholic fraternal association, was a mere cover for the murderous conspiracy. Allegations of Molly Maguirism were also leveraged as a defense for murder, both in the context of labor disputes and elsewhere. At a strike in Youngstown, Ohio, superintendent Keighly of the Youngstown Coke Company murdered a striker named John Kane. The press called the victim a Molly Maguire to justify the deed (Rutland Daily Herald, VT, 22 March 1883). In Buena Vista, Pennsylvania, one Humphrey Campbell successfully defended himself against a murder charge by claiming his victim had been a Molly Maguire, and he had acted in self-defense (Brooklyn Daily Times, 22 September 1883).

Another tendency that may be observed during this time is a fusion of the labor, ethnic, and political dimension. Candidates for local office that were Irish and/or affiliated with the labor movement were accused of Molly Maguire sympathy. Again, this was most common in Pennsylvania, with Terence Powderly, mayor of Scranton, being the target of a sustained Molly Maguire smear campaign throughout 1881. The campaign attracted enough nationwide attention to be noted in places as far away as Utah (Ogden Standard, 16 December 1881). The New York Democratic Party and particularly Tammany Hall were also linked to Molly Maguirism – though, notably, this was more frequent in papers from outside New York City than locally (Philadelphia Times, 22 December 1881). The Fitchburg Sentinel (MA, 25 April 1883) characterized

strong, wild races like the Irish and the Italian peasantry indulging in the law of their origin and doing secret crimes under the incentive of a dark autocracy, as they so readily fall under the sway of in politics. You see Tammany Hall and what blind obedience it can get out of Irishmen? Now make a secret lodge inside of that, […] teach it to kill, to use poison and nitro-glycerine, and what a tophet could be made of this smiling world.

In Pennsylvania and in some parts of the Midwest, it became common to frame the Irish working-class electorate as the ‘Molly Maguire vote’ (Parsons Weekly Eclipse (KS), 29 October 1883). The Irish-American delegates to the 1886 Democratic state conference in Pennsylvania were referred to as ‘Molly Maguires, Hoodlums and Communists’ (Hazleton Sentinel, 28 October 1886). The Springfield Globe-Republican (OH, 25 September 1885) ran a fake interview with an alleged former member of the AOH, stating that the organization still contained an element of several thousand Molly Maguires, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. While allegations of this nature were more common in the Republican press, there are some Democratic accusations of Molly Maguire electioneering in favor of the Republicans as well (Johnson County Star (MO), 3 April 1886).

The overrepresentation of Chicago on the map of newspapers may be explained by the activity of the Chicago Tribune, which emerged as the chief source for Molly Maguire rumors during the early 1880s. The Tribune spearheaded a variety of the narrative which relied less explicitly on ethnic descriptions than elsewhere, but was eager to equate communism and Molly Maguirism, and associate all organized labor activity with both. The paper described the Pennsylvania coal mining strikes in 1882 as follows: ‘The coal companies and citizens generally are of the opinion that the producing regions are upon the eve of witnessing extended, complicated, and sanguinary disorders, and consider the prevailing Molly Maguirism but the beginning of the end’ (Chicago Tribune, 31 March 1882). A few days later, it characterized a Maryland strike as ‘Molly Maguire and communistic tendencies, making the most terrible threats, […] being liberally assisted by the Knights of Labor all over the country’ (Chicago Tribune, 4 April 1882). This narrative was taken up elsewhere and resulted in some degree of popular mobilization. An ‘anti-Commune’ organization, publishing a statement in the Butte Miner (20 October 1882), speculated about ‘followers of Molly Maguire doctrines […] in this region’, and equated this with communists. In the context of a strike somewhere in the Upper South (the article does not specify a location), the Memphis Daily Appeal (13 September 1885) warned of ‘open revolt’ by socialist guards from Chicago and Molly Maguires moving into the region.

This does not mean, however, that the implied association between Irish ethnicity and Molly Maguirism disappeared. Elsewhere, there is evidence that ‘Molly Maguire’ had simply become a byword for any perceived lower-class Irish intransigence, as may be illustrated through a letter to the Indianapolis News (27 September 1882). One P. A. Ward, apparently a local businessman involved in philanthropy schemes, accused Thomas McSheehy, a local laborer, of being a Molly Maguire. Sheehy had criticized Ward for withholding relief, but – by Ward’s own admission – not threatened him. The same paper printed a letter describing ‘the Molly Maguire element of the Irish character – as it appears in this city, low, mendacious, cowardly as ignorant’ while dissociating them from ‘the better element of the Irish race in America’ (Indianapolis News, 14 August 1882) – it is quite apparent that this means working-class and middle-class Irish respectively. In the New York Tribune (15 April 1883), under the heading ‘The Irish Character’, it was claimed that to the Irish influence were to be ascribed ‘the many cold-blooded murders in Pennsylvania by the Molly Maguires and Ancient Order of Hibernians’, that ‘any picnic given by any Irish society, whether for religion, politics, or robbing the Irish servant girl of her earnings, a deadly fight is almost certain to end the festivities’, and ‘the most disorderly dens in nearly all the large cities of the United States are kept by Irishmen.’ The Chattanooga Daily Times (30 January 1886) headlined ‘The naughty Irishmen’, ascribing conspiratory tendencies to them. The seemingly separate elements of the narrative – labor activism, crime, and ethnic conflict – were frequently blended into one, as in the case of the Chicago Tribune (21 March 1882) accusing the Knights of Labor and the Molly Maguires of being responsible for an 1882 murder in Chicago, strongly implying that the two organizations were one and the same.

In 1884, the Chicago Tribune (25 June) reported the Molly Maguires resuming their activities in the ‘dark and bloody ground’ of Centralia, Pennsylvania, claimed to have ‘unmistakable evidence of the existence of Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania’, and that lodges existed all over the anthracite region committing murder at will. ‘A number of prominent citizens – railroad operators and mine bosses – have been threatened and their names placed upon the Molly Maguire death list, and their annihilation is set down for the near future.’ While the paper – contrary to its headline – admitted not to have any direct evidence for this, it stated that ‘interviews with Capt. Anderson of the Shamokin Coal and Iron Police [and] Capt. R. J. Linden, Superintendent of the Pennsylvania agency of the Pinkerton bureau, developed the fact that the statement relative to the reorganization of the infamous society is true’ (Chicago Tribune, 20 September). At least for Anderson, that claim is patently untrue – even the Chicago Tribune saw itself forced to print a small retraction notice in which Anderson denied that such an interview ever took place and that in his view, there was no evidence whatsoever for a revival of the Molly Maguires (Chicago Tribune, 23 September), but it was too late. The retraction went largely unnoticed, and the original fabricated story was reprinted in at least 80 different newspapers across the country.

Throughout 1884, speculation about a reorganization of the Molly Maguires in their original anthracite region stronghold remained widespread, fueled probably in parts by the canards originally printed in the Chicago Tribune but also explicable by a strike taking place that year (e.g. New York Tribune, 26 November 1884; Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 November 1884; Hazleton Sentinel, 1 December 1884). Only few contradictions to the Molly Maguire trope may be encountered in the years from 1880 to 1886. The local press in central Pennsylvania became somewhat more cautious, asserting for example that ‘it is not believed that the Molly Maguires have existence as a society in the coal counties’ (Wilkes-Barre Times, 22 August 1885) but the nationwide press generally did not question the narrative.

In line with the above, strikes generally represented high points for Molly Maguire rumors in the press, and any labor organization was commonly framed as an expression of Molly Maguirism, communism, or both (e.g. St Louis Globe-Democrat, 13 October 1885; New York Tribune, 18 April 1886). A strike in the bituminous coal region of Cumberland and Kanahwa (Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) in late 1884 was announced by the New York Tribune (26 November 1884) as

pushed by emissaries sent by the Knights of Labor, […] silently but surely perfecting their plans for the projected vast labor demonstration […]. The communistic element has defiantly manifested its utter disregard of the law in numerous cases. All the recent unaccountable murders […] in the middle and northern coal fields, as well as in the bituminous regions, are attributed to the ‘Molly Maguire’ hatred.

The trope was used by the governor of Kentucky, Luke Blackburn, in order to explain labor disturbances in the coalfields of the eastern parts of the state (The Miami Helmet, 8 February 1883). The Atlanta Journal (20 October 1884) even went as far as blaming a railroad strike in Ontario, Canada, on the influence of the Molly Maguires. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat (30 March 1883) characterized a strike in the Querida Valley of Colorado as ‘Molly Maguire troubles’, and printed rumors about a secret society characterized by the wearing of green ribbons, led by ‘a woman, who is often at Querida, wearing a green dress. […] This female character is supposed to be a part of this secret order and threatening association, as her dress corresponds in color with that of the badge worn by the men supposed to belong to the order.’ By 1884, Colorado was firmly established as a second ‘Molly Maguire’ stronghold besides Pennsylvania. In the aftermath of the Jokerville mining disaster, in which 59 miners died in a gas explosion after being sent to work despite the gas leak being known to the fire inspector and the superintendent of the mine, survivors calling for an investigation were branded as Molly Maguires, and the trope was use to absolve the operator of any blame for the explosion (Savannah Morning News, 20 January 1884).

Colorado was also the scene of a rather curious episode, which reveals some of the working-class attitudes towards the trope of which the press is otherwise silent. When the Molly Maguire play The Black Diamond was shown in Leadville, the performance was interrupted by a crowd of angry miners, which included Mike Costello, a member of the state legislature representing the mining community. The crowd voiced their displeasure at the portrayal by throwing stones and eggs at the stage. The press was, of course, quick to assume that this was an indication for the continued existence of a Molly Maguire organization in Colorado, but it should rather be read as an indication that Irish workers, and perhaps miners more broadly, found the underlying characterization of their communities to be offensive (Carbondale Advance (PA), 29 December 1883).

Another illustrative case may be taken from the press response to the death of John Siney, former leader of the Workingman’s Benevolent Association (WBA), a labor union that had been active in Pennsylvania during the Molly Maguire years. Siney had always strongly objected to violence, but the press reported upon his death that ‘detectives in the employ of the coal and railroad companies have discovered unmistakable evidence of Molly Maguirism in connection with the recent outrages perpetrated in the middle and northern coal fields’, and went on to assert that

It is said that the blood written death list of the infamous organization was seen by John Siney, the president of the defunct miners’ national association […] on his deathbed, however, Siney divulged the secret […] the names inscribed upon the instrument with the blood of the framers and those who were to assassinate the hated capitalists have never appeared in print. A representative of a detective agency […] has furnished a correspondent with the names and titles of the magnates that were to be victims of the Molly Maguires (Carbondale Daily News (PA), 15 September 1885).

The paper claimed that the Molly Maguires planned to assassinate multiple railroad and coal magnates and that ‘Samuel Sloan, of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad […] is more hated to this day than any of the parties now living, and the officers of the law, who are now shadowing the suspected outlaws, state that members of the Molly Maguire society follow Mr. Sloan every time he visits the coal fields’ (Carbondale Daily News (PA), 15 September 1885). The Siney case further illustrates how strongly the narrative depended on emphasizing the distinctly Irish character of this alleged labor conspiracy. Siney was indeed Irish, and no matter how strongly he denounced violent tactics throughout his political career, he was invariably blamed for them, even after his death.

The Haymarket then brought a new dimension to the narrative. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour workday at Haymarket Square. After the rally, as the crowd was dispersing, a bomb was thrown at police officers who were attempting to break up the gathering. The explosion resulted in the deaths of several police officers and civilians, and many more were injured. Despite no evidence establishing who threw the bomb, four Chicago socialists and anarchists were executed, and a fifth committed suicide in prison. Parallels between this and the Molly Maguire trials are apparent. Literature on the Haymarket emphasizes the role of the Tribune in ethnicizing the affair and highlighting the ‘foreign’ nature of socialism and anarchism (Green, 2006). While there are other predecessors and influences, such as the Chicago strike of 1867 (Green, 2006), it is not at all implausible to suggest that Molly Maguire hysteria constituted a foundational component of the Tribune’s highly influential, nativist-tinged anti-labor propaganda. The Tribune would have potential for a long-term case study on anti-labor bias. One such study exists, and finds significant bias for the 1990s (Bruno, 2009), while existing research on the Tribune in the nineteenth century, such as Mohamed (2009) is uncritical to the point of hagiography.

Throughout May and June, comparisons between Molly Maguires and the Haymarket anarchists were frequent (New York Tribune, 18 May 1886), with some papers even claiming that they were the same. Once again, the Chicago Tribune (8 May 1886) was at the center of this, calling on Illinois ‘to dispose of her anarchists as Pennsylvania did of her Molly Maguires.’ But, at the same time, the use of the trope to describe post-Haymarket events, and especially those connected to labor conflict, fell markedly, from 13 supposed‘Molly Maguire’ labor disputes in 1885 to 11 in 1886 (five of those pre-Haymarket and Haymarket itself), four in 1887, and six in 1888. For a while, Haymarket and Molly Maguires were invoked side by side – as in the case of a train-wrecking during a strike in Wyandotte, Kansas (Omaha Daily World, 9 August 1886)– but this tendency was largely confined to the later months of 1886. It is likely that in the years after the Haymarket affair, the press was just as busy chasing imaginary anarchists in every single instance of labor conflict, however nonviolent and harmless, as they were with Molly Maguires in the years prior. The trope had lost a part of its relevance. This does, however, not mean that it was finished, nor that this development was irreversible.

Homestead, ethnicized

While somewhat reduced in scope, allegations after the fashion of the early 1880s continued to be printed after 1886. For instance, the San Francisco Examiner (3 January 1887) claimed that the Knights of Labor had ‘taken the ideas and modes of the Molly Maguires, nihilists, anarchists and other kindred organisations, and have boiled them down so as to make them suit, in a measure, the taste of a portion of our workingmen.’ However, this was no longer the main direction of the trope, and the decline in quantity masks a growth in quality. From 1887 onward, the Molly Maguire narrative broadened, turning from a primarily anti-labor trope with strong ethnic undertones into a more explicitly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacist, nativist narrative. The following descriptive statistics illustrate this change. It is apparent from Figure 4 that the Haymarket riot represented a watershed. From 1887 to 1891, the Molly Maguire trope both declined somewhat in significance compared to the previous years, and what remained of it became more diverse; organized labor was no longer the consistent main target. Instead, allegations of ethnic and political nature came to play a much larger role. This pattern was then broken in 1892, because of the Homestead Strike but not limited to it.

Figure 4. Type of Molly Maguire outrages by year, 1887–1892.

This change in the narrative is also reflected on the map of alleged incidents. Figure 5 shows that the importance of Chicago as a source of Molly Maguire allegations declined massively, and Kansas emerged as the largest rumor-mill, rural Illinois and Missouri also featured commonly. This is hardly surprising given the more general ethnic and nativist turn; it foreshadowed developments of the early twentieth century in which the KKK would develop a strong base in some parts of the rural Midwest. The now-significant presence of variations of the narrative in California also corresponds to this, it is to be noted that the narrative in California was rarely directed at the local Irish community, but either at Irish workers elsewhere or projected onto ethnicities other than the Irish in California.

Figure 5. Distribution of alleged Molly Maguire outrages, 1887–1892.

Changes in the location of alleged incidents also reflect the changes in the narrative itself, as seen in Figure 6. Seemingly paradoxically, there was a stronger focus on Pennsylvania than in the years prior, while Kansas emerged as a second hotspot. Comparing the distribution of newspaper and incident locations here shows that, in a break from the general trend, it was mostly local newspapers printing Molly Maguire rumors about their own community, or communities in the vicinity. The cluster of Molly Maguire rumors in the Western mining regions remained, albeit somewhat reduced in size, and represents a break from the national trend insofar as virtually all ‘Molly Maguire’ sightings in this area continued to be labor-related.

Figure 6. Distribution of origin of alleged Molly Maguire incidents, 1887–1892.

For Pennsylvania, most of the Molly Maguire coverage in 1887 shifted to crime in the coalfields and on the railroads. A murder on a Philadelphia train was ascribed to the secret society (Philadelphia Times, 23 October 1887), as was a series of arson attacks in the anthracite region (Sacramento Bee, 21 November 1887) or the murder of a fire boss in Minersville (The Streator Times (IL), 17 September 1887). Connections with labor conflict can, for the latter two, not be ruled out entirely, but at least they were not made explicit. Whenever there was a strike in the region, some trace of Molly Maguirism would inevitably be detected – as in the case of a railroad strike at Reading in 1888, during which a strikebreaker received written threats (St Albans Daily Messenger (VT), 2 February 1888) – but it was a far cry from previous years.

The overall tone of the late 1880s was becoming more generally nativist. Rather than specifically the Irish being singled out for specifically labor-related disturbances, there was now an assertion that immigrants in general were to blame for violence and social ills, also in general. The Los Angeles Times (30 May 1887), for instance, asked the following rhetorical questions: ‘Who resisted the draft during the war, and who burned down our orphan asylums? Who were the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania? Who are the Anarchists? Who incited the mobs? Who threw the bomb in the bloody massacre in Chicago?’, stating that ‘[Foreigners] are at the head of revolutionary movements. [They] have brought us dynamite and introduced strikes and boycotts.’ Multi-ethnic labor unions were a particular target, as in a very alarmist piece about workers on the aqueduct of Tarrytown, New York, ‘hav[ing] formed a secret organization similar to the old Molly Maguires.’ The paper was keen to emphasize that the membership of several hundred included not only Irish but also ‘Italians, Hungarians, Swedes, and negroes’ (Stockton Evening Mail (CA), 26 January 1888).

This appears, at first glance, to align well with established theories on Irish acculturation, such as Painter’s (2010) ‘second enlargement of whiteness.’ If the Irish were no longer singled out, that might imply that the focus of exclusion would now shift to other groups. And indeed, examples may be found in which the Molly Maguire trope itself was applied to Poles (Memphis Daily Appeal, 4 February 1888), Hungarians (Nashville Banner, 5 April 1888), Chinese (St Louis Globe-Democrat, 14 March 1887), and African Americans (Sacramento Bee, 24 September 1889), often in the context of labor disputes. However, this trend was not universal. The western mining regions are to be exempted from it altogether, and elsewhere, the new pattern was complex and muddled. Even in the above example, at least three of the six rhetorical questions in the broader, more generally nativist piece of the Los Angeles Times are aimed at the Irish. When Poles and Hungarians were blamed for the Molly Maguirism of the day, some papers were keen to strongly contradict this and remind their readers that not these nationalities, but the Irish, were the real source of trouble (The New London Day (CT), 6 February 1888). While some held the Irish responsible for the existence of mixed-race labor unions, others blamed them for ‘forming an army of corruption, oppressing and butchering the Negro, organizing the Molly Maguire league, raising under the ruffian Kearney the banner of confusion and plunder in California and [being] regarded politically as the bane of the commonwealth’ (St Louis Post-Dispatch, 11 January 1889). The trope of the Irish vote being referred to as the ‘Molly Maguire vote’ remained present (Spokane Falls Review, 4 December 1888). Some explicit versions remained – workmen in Wilmington, Delaware, who peacefully protested against their dismissal, were described in the press as ‘ignorant Irishmen of the Molly Maguire type’ (Buffalo Courier-Express, 26 October 1891).

The Cronin murder in Chicago represented another example for the new, more explicitly ethnic, variety of the Molly Maguire trope. Patrick Henry Cronin, a prominent member of Clan na Gael, had been accused of being a British spy and expelled from the organization after criticizing its Chicago leadership for corruption; he was subsequently murdered in May 1889. Once again, the Chicago Tribune (29 May 1889) was among the first to link this to the Molly Maguires; its influence probably led to the exclusion of police officers with an Irish background from the investigation (San Francisco Chronicle, 27 June 1889). The Tribune (11 October 1890) maintained this narrative consistently well into the next year, stating that an orator from the ‘Molly Maguire region of Pennsylvania’ was responsible for the murder. Even when the case had nothing whatsoever to do with labor – Clan na Gael was not a labor organization, and both Cronin and the likely instigator of his murder were decidedly upper middle class – some papers found a way to reintroduce the Irish miner as the real culprit. Simultaneously, the death of Franklin B. Gowen, former president of the Reading Railroad and instrumental figure in the creation of the original Molly Maguire demagogy, fueled widespread speculation that his apparent suicide was staged, and the Mollies – still active, of course – had finally taken their revenge (Sacramento Bee, 18 December 1889). The year prior, some papers had also printed allegations that Jack Kehoe, the alleged Molly Maguire leader of the 1860s and 70s, was still alive (Kehoe was executed in 1878) and had returned to the region (The Hazleton Plain Speaker (PA), 3 December 1888). The pattern of the early 1880s was thus partly inverted. Where the narrative had previously been mainly about organized labor, with a strong undertone that the Irish were to blame for it, it was now mainly about questions of ethnicity and politics, with a strong implication that Irish labor was the underlying problem.

This may be illustrated through some broader applications of the narrative, which occurred particularly in the rural Midwest but were not limited to it. A new iteration of Molly Maguirism was found in the political movements of the day, namely the Farmers’ Alliance and, in at least one case, feminism. Polly Lease, a feminist and socialist activist based in Anthony, Kansas, was accused of being a Molly Maguire in 1890, once again linking Irishness to subversive political activity (The Anthony Journal, 19 December 1890).² The press both in the Midwest and the South linked the Farmers’ Alliance to Molly Maguirism (Colfax Chronicle (LA), 2 May 1891), calling it ‘a party composed of socialists, anarchists, dynamiters, state libelers and slanderers, falsifiers, Molly Maguires, defamers of government, political hypocrites’ (Ottawa Tribune (KS), 12 October 1891).

In the Northwest, meanwhile, the pattern did not change significantly relative to the pre-Haymarket period. Allegations there were consistently directed at organized labor, maintaining an undertone of the Irish element as particularly unruly and dangerous. The Inter-Mountain (MT, 5 April 1888) referred to striking miners as ‘Molly Maguires and Fenians,’ claiming also that the Irish were responsible for 80% of crime in the region. Murders in the mining districts were frequently linked to Molly Maguirism and the Irish (Butte Weekly Miner, 18 June 1891), as was any sort of labor conflict (Missoula Gazette, 14 April 1892) or union activity (Idaho Statesman, 12 May 1892).

Just prior to the Homestead strike, there were some indications that ethnic sentiments were becoming more complex and contested. A resolution of the AOH in the Pennsylvania mining regions, protesting its alleged associations with the Molly Maguires, was at least circulated in the press (The Yonkers Herald-Statesman (NY), 12 February 1891). The St Louis Globe-Democrat (28 May 1892), at the forefront of Molly Maguire hysteria ten years earlier, printed a (false) statement that the original Molly Maguires were made up from ‘lawless men of all nationalities’, and asserted that the 1877 trials ‘put an end to the American institution’ while the society was said to still exist in Ireland under a different name. Still, the German-speaking Luxemburger Gazette (IA, 21 April 1891) saw it necessary to publish a protest note of its own against allegations made in the nativist press, stating that militancy and lawlessness were not foreign characteristics, and for every Molly Maguire and Highbinder there was a native Whitecap, hoodlum, or lyncher. This larger diversity of opinion, in which the nativist sentiment underpinning the Molly Maguire narrative was questioned, had already been present to some degree in the wake of the Cronin murder, but the early 1890s saw an increase in such scrutiny.

The reaction to the Homestead Strike of 1892, however, broke with the changing patterns of the post-Haymarket years. The conflict arose when the company, led by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, attempted to cut wages for skilled workers at the plant. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, representing the workers, refused to accept the proposed wage cuts and called for a strike. In response, Frick, who was managing the company’s operations, locked out the workers and fortified the plant with hired Pinkerton agents to break the strike. A violent confrontation ensued between the striking workers and the Pinkerton agents, resulting in casualties on both sides (Kahan, 2014).

Whatever progress had been made towards nuancing and tempering labor-related anti-Irish tropes was undone by the Homestead coverage, which reached levels of vitriol and conspiracy theories not seen since the early 1880s. The press seized upon the Irish background of one of the strike committee leaders, Hugh O’Donnell, and linked the strike to Molly Maguirism on this basis; despite O’Donnell having verifiably attempted to deescalate (Kahan, 2014). The Indianapolis Journal (23 July 1892) asserted that ‘every large strike has shown that these labor organizations murder and destroy property out of sheer wantonness and revenge.’ The Buffalo Courier-Express (26 July 1892) circulated rumors that the strike leader Hugh O’Donnell was the nephew of one of the notorious Molly Maguires of the same name, and had used Molly Maguire tactics to assassinate Frick: ‘It was the policy of the Molly Maguires to import their assassin when they wanted a murder committed. Hugh O’Donnell knew of the methods of the Molly Maguires. Berkman came from New York. O’Donnell was in New York shortly before he came. Consequently, O’Donnell arranged with Berkman to kill Frick.’³ This level of ‘old’ Molly Maguire propaganda was not sustained nationwide beyond 1892, but, crucially, it was picked up in the Northwest, where papers like the Weiser Semi-Weekly Signal (ID, 28 July 1892) were keen to link local labor organizing to both the Molly Maguires and the Homestead Strike.

Going west

In the 1890s, the focus of Molly Maguire sightings started to shift westward, as patterns diverged even more strongly. East of the Mississippi, association of labor unions with Molly Maguirism largely ceased after 1892, a few isolated examples from Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia notwithstanding. As shown in Figure 7, ethnic and, increasingly, sectarian versions of the narrative did continue to some degree, with much similarity to the previous years – for instance, assertions that ‘the Molly Maguires were angels compared with many of these yellow devils’ (Louisville Courier-Journal, 28 January 1893) regarding panicked reports of 90.000 Chinese now living in San Francisco, next to assertions that the Molly Maguires, after killing Gowen in 1889, had now also claimed the life of his deputy Charles G. Eddy (The Valley Virginian, 17 August 1893). During the turbulent year of 1894, which saw a series of strikes as well as inter-ethnic violence across the Pennsylvania and wider Appalachian coal regions, some papers accused Poles and Hungarians of having formed new secret societies after the fashion of the Molly Maguires (Savannah Morning News, 28 January 1894), others – above all the Chicago Tribune (20 January; 3 February 1894) – insisted that the old, Irish, Molly Maguires were still active and responsible for the troubles. Figure 8 illustrates the new westward shift, with Idaho now featuring nearly as many ‘Molly Maguire’ sightings as Pennsylvania; Figure 9 shows that the origin of the narrative, too, was becoming more western, with Washington, Montana, and California as focal points.

Figure 7. Type of Molly Maguire outrages by year, 1893–1900.

Figure 8. Distribution of alleged Molly Maguire outrages, 1893–1900.

Figure 9. Distribution of origin of alleged Molly Maguire incidents, 1893–1900.

During the years of 1894 to 1896, there was a significant surge of explicitly sectarian tropes which had not been present before. Nativism always contained an element of anti-Catholic sectarianism, but this had so far played at most a secondary role in the Molly Maguire trope, owed perhaps to the strong and highly visible public objections of the Catholic Church to both secret societies and militant labor. This sectarian spell may be closely linked to the presence of the American Protective Association (APA), an anti-Catholic secret society founded in 1887, which briefly grew into a mass movement during the mid-1890s (Kinzer, 1964). In New York, it had a strong overlap with the Orange Order, and its leadership was well connected in the press. The APA tended to target Irish Catholics in particular, and publicly equated Catholicism with Molly Maguirism (Boston Globe, 20 August 1895). Several papers across the country publicly declared their support for the APA. The Brooklyn Citizen (23 July 1894) gave a platform to the Orange Order leadership which they used to publicly equate the AOH, and Irish labor, with Molly Maguirism. After a countermovement to the APA was formed in Nebraska, the Great Falls Leader (MT, 20 June 1895) framed this as ‘headed by the Ancient Order of Hibernian leaders, the Clan-na-Gael chieftains, the Molly Maguire sachems and the grand political pushers among alleged Protestants.’ The Sacramento Union (26 March 1896) maintained that ‘the foreigner brings with him his hates, his home quarrels and opinions and preserves and fosters them. Such associations are the Order of Hibernians, the Clan na Gael and the Molly Maguires. The best friends that Ireland has today are – first, God, second, England, and third, the American Protective Association.’ Newspapers associated with the APA published allegations that the Catholic Church secretly supported both the radical labor movement, the Molly Maguires, and the AOH (The Omaha American, 17 August 1894). In California, the nativist press branded the Democratic candidate for governor in the 1898 election, James Maguire, as ‘Molly’ Maguire (Oakland Enquirer, 12 July 1898) – anti-Irish sentiment probably being the decisive factor in such a close contest. The Baltimore Sun (30 July 1896), likewise supporting the APA and equating the AOH with the Molly Maguires, called for the remigration of Irish and German Americans to Europe.

Regarding the western mining regions, on the other hand, the narrative remained as focused on organized labor as it had been in the 1880s – both in the local and the nationwide press. Labor troubles at Cripple Creek, for instance, were described in the Meriden Daily Republican (7 December 1895) as caused by ‘largely Pennsylvania Molly Maguires and Cornishmen, born labor agitators, who had come in to make trouble.’ The Butte Times (8 January 1898) ran the headline ‘MOLLY MAGUIRES IN POWER’ to describe labor conflict in the Coeur d’Alene region of Idaho, stating that ‘there is not a native-born American amongst the Anarchists and Molly Maguires in the northern part of Idaho, but they are the cut-throats and cast-offs from society in the downtrodden countries of Europe.’ The Spokane Chronicle (23 May 1899) reported that ‘the early labor leaders of the Coeur d’Alenes were Molly Maguires from Pennsylvania.’ The Butte Times (10 June 1899) echoed the same sentiment, stating that ‘men who were suspected of association with the Pennsylvania band of murderers […] have been residents of the Coeur d’Alene country for a number of years.’ However, the new quality of the phenomenon nationwide merged seamlessly with, and reinforced, the core ethnicized anti-labor narrative here. The APA had widespread support among the business elites of Montana and Idaho, and several newspapers in the region echoed this support (The Spokesman-Review, 7 July 1894; Great Falls Leader, 20 June 1895, The Butte Examiner, 5 March 1896).

After the nativist period in the mid-1890s, coverage began once again to develop a greater degree of nuance once again towards the very end of the century; this began somewhat earlier and was more consistent in the German-speaking papers. The Illinois Staats-Zeitung (7 November 1897), historicizing the Molly Maguires, described them as resistance to intentional attempts by coal barons to decrease wages. The Philadelphia Times (15 May 1899) asserted that the old theory of Gowen having been killed by the Molly Maguires ‘lack[ed] any substantial basis.’ Still, the same paper’s coverage in alleging ongoing links between the AOH and the Molly Maguires was sensationalist enough to cause the Philadelphia AOH to call its membership to a complete boycott of not only the paper but also everyone that sold it (Philadelphia Times, 9 July 1899). Conversely, the Boston Evening Transcript (20 June 1900) argued that the descendants of the Molly Maguires who were once ‘given to acts of violence’ were now ‘in the more comfortable walks of life, [and] the Irish element there is now in every way identified with the American. The sons of the Molly Maguire miners of other days are independent artisans, railroad men, professional men, business men – some of them mineowners and directors in corporations – little Carnegies of their own account.’ The last holdout among the major newspapers was the Chicago Tribune (31 May, 21 September 1900) which continued to equate peaceful marches of striking miners in Pennsylvania with Molly Maguirism into 1900.

Meanwhile, the western mining regions continued to move in the opposite direction, as Molly Maguire rhetoric was becoming ever more radical. The Salt Lake Tribune (22 May 1897) referred to Ed Boyce of the Western Federation of Miners as ‘a cheap edition of Herr Most,’ but at the same time more dangerous and accused him of ‘openly advocating Molly Maguire tactics.’ The Spokane Chronicle (23 May 1899) insisted that virtually all labor leaders in Idaho were old Pennsylvania Molly Maguires who had escaped the gallows in the 1870s. Their rumor mill was given support by the Pinkerton Agency. When manager A. L. Collins of the Smuggler-Union mine in the Telluride mining district of Colorado was murdered in 1902, the papers printed statements by William Pinkerton alleging that ‘an organization similar to the Molly Maguires’ was responsible (Fort Collins Express, 26 November 1902). In becoming involved, however, the Pinkertons inadvertently would help to bring about the demise of the narrative they had helped to craft thirty years before.

The return of McParlan

The Molly Maguire sensationalism directed at the Western mining regions finally came to a head with the Steunenberg assassination trial. Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, was murdered on 30 December 1905, outside of his home in Caldwell, Idaho, by a bomb that was planted at the gate. The bombing was blamed on a miners’ union that had been stylised as the second coming of the Molly Maguires for at least eight years at this point, the Western Federation of Miners (Salt Lake Tribune, 22 May 1897). A suspect, Harry Orchard, was quickly apprehended, and Orchard implicated the leadership of the WFM, Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood, who were then abducted from Colorado by the Pinkertons to stand trial in Idaho. This had been orchestrated by none other than James McParlan, of original Molly Maguire investigation notoriety.

When the news of the arrest of Moyer and Haywood broke, the press immediately jumped at the occasion, and McParlan’s involvement fueled the rumor mill to new heights. The Mansfield News Journal ran the headline ‘The Revival of the Order of the Molly Maguires’, arguing that the case established that ‘the organization known as the Molly Maguires is still in existence’, that immediately after Steunenberg’s death, ‘no one who was well informed charged union labor with the crime’ but ‘those who remembered the Molly Maguires’ were able to track down Orchard (Mansfield News-Journal, 10 February 1906). The Sidney Daily News (OH, 20 March 1906) titled ‘Governor Frank R. Gooding of Idaho threatened by the Molly Maguires’, alleging that the current governor had received letters threatening him with the same fate as his predecessor. The following description is quite indicative in its sensationalism and was echoed in many other contemporary papers:

Driven from Pennsylvania after a period of violence that horrified the nation, the Molly Maguires left a trail of wreck, ruin and murder wherever they went. With bloody axes they blazed a path across the continent. With dynamite they blew up the station at Independence, Colo., and other structures. Ultimate defeat has met them everywhere, and at times they have seemed extinct, but the murderous spirit of the Molly Maguires appears to be unquenchable. When one died or was imprisoned another rose to take his place. Secret recruiting went on constantly. In every mining camp, those favorite hiding places for criminals who are eluding the penetrating eye of the law, there were always men who were willing to attend midnight meetings, bind themselves to appalling oaths and accept commissions to add still further to their burden of guilt. (Mansfield News-Journal, February 10, 1906)

Neither the renewed role of McParlan nor the accusations against the WFM came particularly abruptly. McParlan, for one, had been omnipresent in the papers since the late 1890s. Whenever public interest in the affair had seemed to die off, the Pinkertons published a new aggressively marketed semi-fictional account; the Vicksburg Evening Post (e.g. 2 December 1896) alone must have run one such advertisement well over 100 times in 1895 and 1896. Sensationalist pieces about McParlan’s exploits, which generally echoed the narrative of the 1877 The Molly Maguires and the Detectives, were widespread, as a constant reminder to the public of the background of these events (e.g. Lewiston Sun-Journal (ME), 16 June 1900), as were reports on the death of former Molly Maguires, which likewise never failed to mention the danger the society had posed or the heroic role of McParlan (The Buffalo News, 15 December 1900). Notably, this was rarely linked to current events outside of the Western mining regions. These accounted for well over a third of the total Molly Maguire sightings from 1900 onward, and nearly two thirds of the labor-related ones.

There, however, the association of the WFM with the Molly Maguires had been cultivated for eight years before Steunenberg’s death, and five years before the Pinkertons ever even acknowledged it, and it had spread far beyond the regional papers. By 1903, even papers in the eastern states claimed that ‘when the Molly Maguires were broken up, the disorganized fragments drifted to the Coeur d’Alene districts in Idaho, and inaugurated there the same reign of terror enacted in Pennsylvania’ (The Buffalo Commercial, 27 June 1903). During the Colorado labor wars of 1803–4, when strikebreakers were killed during a bombing at the Independence depot, the Chicago Tribune (9 June 1904) had titled ‘HANG THE COLORADO MURDERERS’ and did not fail to remind its readers of the supposed Molly Maguire connections.

Only a fraction of the – mostly local – press protested. The Butte Evening News (10 June 1904) complained that the Missoulian had ascribed labor troubles in Colorado to ‘a handful of Molly Maguires, murderers, cut-throats and anarchists, who had no standing among fair men and against whom every man’s face should be hot and raised.’ The Missoulian was owned by local Congressman Joe Dixon, which prompted the Butte Evening News (18 October 1904) to retort that ‘Joe Dixon’s paper convicts [those Colorado miners] of the heinous crime of “angering the managers and mine owners”. And Joe Dixon has the nerve to ask the people of Montana to send him back to Congress!’

1906 and 1907 thus served as a final reprise of all themes connected with the Molly Maguires. Newspaper headlines promised a ‘Molly Maguire Tale with Modern Trimmings,’ a sensational story ‘unlike anything [you] have ever read’ and declared that ‘the methods [of the Molly Maguires], like other things in the world, have been subject to evolution, and here we have their latest development’ (The Pittsburgh Press, 16 May 1907). More sensational accounts of the original Molly Maguires and hagiographies of McParlan’s career were published on a weekly basis (e.g. The Commercial Appeal (TN), 8 May 1906, Warrenburg Daily Star-Journal (MO), 4 June 1907, Fitchburg Sentinel (MA), 10 June 1907), as every detail of the trial was reported minutely (Spokane Chronicle, 13 June 1907). It should be noted that McParlan himself – unlike the press, and unlike William Pinkerton three years prior – never suggested any link between the Molly Maguires and the Western Federation of Miners, even going on record stating that ‘the deeds of the Molly Maguires were as nothing compared with them’ (Boston Globe, 12 May 1907). However much one may blame the Pinkertons for stoking media sensationalism in earlier decades, and fanning the flames when sensationalism appeared to lapse, no such charge can be made here.⁴

Yet, it all came to nothing, and in the most ironic turn of events possible, it was precisely the firm association of the Western Federation of Miners with the Molly Maguires in the minds of the public which ensured, in no small part, that the case of the prosecution would collapse. The attorney for the defense, Clarence S. Darrow of Chicago, argued that ‘the mine owners and Pinkerton detectives used Orchard as their tool in a conspiracy to implicate officials of the federation in all the crimes alleged with a view to causing the disruption and ultimate destruction of the miners’ union’ (Chicago Tribune, 28 July 1907). Darrow questioned Orchard on the stand, strongly creating the impression that he had been promised immunity, perhaps even a monetary reward, for a confession as sensationalist and Molly Maguire-esque as possible (Spokane Chronicle, 13 June 1907). The narrative provided by Orchard was riddled with inconsistencies, and when it collapsed and Moyer and Haywood were acquitted, the press reaction, at least in some parts, was – for the first time – with the defendants. The Lancaster Teller (WI, 1 August 1907) summed up the narrative of Orchard as ‘Whenever he was going to commit some great crime or had committed any he would manage to visit or in some way connect with Haywood. He was doing McParlan’s Molly Maguire stunt. He would get the Federation involved in the crimes and he himself would not only get free but would get fame as McParland did.’

The local pro-business press was outraged – the Spokesman-Review (2 August 1907) ran a lengthy interview with a local policeman attempting to tarnish McParlan’s reputation, declaring that McParlan ‘jumped into print prematurely with Orchard’s confession’ and suggesting Moyer and Haywood could have been convicted if he had been more cautious. The Idaho Statesman (19 September 1907) attacked Darrow for being a socialist firebrand, while continuing to assert the guilt of the defendants for months after the trial. It did little to affect either McParlan’s reputation or the public perception of the case, which was summed up by one paper as ‘everybody connected with the Haywood trial seems to be so well satisfied with the result of it that there is nothing more to be said’ (Appleton Post, 8 August 1907). Hagiographic pieces for McParlan continued to appear, with the narrative being spun in the direction that he had secured the confession and conviction of Orchard. Conspicuously, allegations of Molly Maguire links or any sort of wider conspiracy were now absent from these (Omaha Daily News, 21 February 1908).

McParlan’s testimony under the cross-examination of Darrow, during which he repeatedly clarified that the Molly Maguires and the AOH were not the same, probably helped to discredit that particular trope, as this was – like every other detail of the trial – widely circulated in the press (Arizona Daily Star, 14 November 1907). There was a brief flash of such allegations in early 1908, prompted by the refusal of one Catholic priest to recognize the AOH (Buffalo Commercial, 7 January 1908), which prompted the Irish Standard (25 January 1908) to publish a lengthy clarification, but they were mostly confined to the more sensationalist outlets and did not receive a fraction of the attention they would have a few years prior. It became increasingly clear that the narrative had run its course.

From green to red scare

From 1909 onward, instances of direct associations of present union activity, or the Irish in general, with Molly Maguirism became exceedingly rare in major newspapers – and where they occurred, they were commonly as vague as the assertion of the Lexington Herald (23 August 1911) that ‘the American Federation of Labor [was] a greater menace to Christian civilization than the anarchists, Black Hand, [and] Molly Maguires.’ The narrative of ‘Molly Maguirism’ in the West would still be upheld in some new cases. There were attempts to justify the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado by falsely claiming that the strikers had shot first, and that ‘labor agitators under different names, in Pennsylvania as Molly Maguires, in Idaho and Colorado as Western Federation of Miners, have openly taught and freely practiced the use of […] murder as proper means of inciting class hatred and class war’ (Colorado Chronicle-News, 1 June 1914). A Black, but strongly pro-business paper in the Denver Star (3 October 1914) echoed this almost verbatim, but changed the last phrase to ‘race war’, the logic being that most strikebreakers were Black, and added the sensationalist claim that it was ‘no longer a question to whether non-union men shall be allowed to WORK in Colorado, it is a question as to whether or not any man shall be allowed to LIVE without permission from the labor union.’ The Spokane Press (6 June 1918) was convinced that the ‘criminal syndicalism’ of the IWW was but a direct continuation of the Molly Maguires, but this was then unusual, isolated, and largely confined to the most rabidly pro-business papers of the Western states.

At this point, the press was more likely to go hunting for imaginary Molly Maguires in Ireland and Britain than in the United States. Sometimes, this was a thinly veiled political message directed at conditions in the States – the Oxford Register (KS, 26 March 1914) was keen to remind its readers that ‘The Molly Maguires, the Land League, and the National League all were Irish political socialists,’ and the Oroville Weekly Gazette (WA, 10 May 1918) claimed that ‘the so called Sinn Feiners are the old Molly Maguires of the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania.’ But more often, it was ill-informed, curious, slightly sensationalist coverage of the emerging physical force republican movement an ocean away (Kansas City Journal, 11 February 1912), and little else. It might have reinforced broader stereotypes of the Irish as clannish, violent, and conspiratorial, but it usually did nothing to implicate the Irish in America (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 19 July 1914). A remnant of true anti-Irish and sectarian vitriol existed, but it was largely confined to the nativist fringe, such as the Kansas Crusader (1 May 1914) printing assertions that Congressman Eugine Kinkead of New Jersey was a Molly Maguire – by virtue of his AOH membership – and claiming to have discovered a vast Popish conspiracy to topple the US government. But even when the Molly Maguire-AOH controversy was revived in 1916 by the resignation of a Philadelphia priest, Daniel McDermott, over the decision of the Catholic Church to recognize the AOH (Carbondale Daily News, 10 August 1916), papers outside of Pennsylvania hardly took notice.

Somewhat more common was the continuation or reiteration of old myths, including by Governor James Hawley of Idaho, who had then been a district attorney, recalling a strike in the 1880s during a political debate (Boise Evening Capital News, 15 December 1912) and Molly Maguire specters of the past. The Los Angeles Times (26 March 1914) still told the story that the Homestead strike was organized by the Molly Maguires, albeit without the more sensational tales around O’Donnell’s ancestry, McParlan hagiographies also still enjoyed a certain – if much reduced – popularity (The Waterloo Courier (IA), 30 November 1911), but overall, the fictional Molly Maguires were largely consigned to the past.

The arrival of the Red Scare in 1917/18 then spelled the definitive end for the Molly Maguire prototype of this tactic. One last time, the old tales would be dragged out – in 1919, when McParlan died, a wave of larger papers recounted his biography (e.g. The Des Moines Register, 19 May 1919, The Minneapolis Journal, 8 June 1919) – but the specter of Molly Maguirism died with him. For the years of 1908 to 1917, only 17 cases of current affairs in America being linked to Molly Maguirism may be found; followed by 2 in 1918 and none thereafter. After four decades, the scapegoat of organized Irish labor was finally laid to rest. The Red Scare tactics of the day, however, would mirror many of the dynamics established under the Molly Maguire trope; it is not implausible to suggest a certain degree of continuity.

Discussion

The rise and fall of the Molly Maguire narrative did have a general trajectory. Widespread in the 1880s, it entered a gradual decline by the mid to late 1890s. By 1910, it was largely confined to explicitly nativist fringe publications, often from regions that would gain notoriety for being KKK strongholds a few years later, as well as grudging holdovers in the Northwest that could not accept the defeat of the prosecution in the Steunenberg trial. However, the trajectory was neither strictly linear nor universal. Backlashes occurred – the most notable being Homestead and the build-up to the Steunenberg trial – and the shape-shifting character of the narrative ensured that even when its erstwhile main target, labor unions with plausible Irish-working class credentials, was no longer tarred with the Molly Maguire brush, the brush would find other targets. The same could be said, however, for interests that mainly sought to use the Molly Maguire narrative to smear labor unions: when there was a trope more suitable to their agenda, they moved on.

It is – with a few exceptions – difficult to say how this was perceived by working-class Irish Americans or the lower classes in general. Some newspapers published letters to the editor which may provide some insight; one of these indicates that the widespread Molly Maguire trope was seen as ‘a broad and malicious charge against coal miners in general, but the Irish miners in particular’ (The Columbus Times (KS), 25 August 1881). The disruption of a theater performance in Leadville illustrates that some Irish workers found the omnipresent Molly Maguire trope deeply offensive; however, others may have embraced it and attempted to use elite fears towards their political aims. In the context of an 1887 strike at the Excelsior mines in Oskaloosa, Iowa, one miner was quoted as saying: ‘Do they think the Molly Maguires are all dead? Or do they think that there is no more dynamite to be got? Or do they think their shafts are incombustible?’ (The Waterloo Courier (IA), 20 April 1887). In most other newspapers, the authenticity of this quote would have to be strongly doubted, but this was a local paper whose coverage of the strike was largely fair and objective.

What is certain, however, is that it affected policy throughout the late nineteenth and in some areas well into the twentieth century. Papers like the Chicago Tribune were well connected and influential, the paper’s nativist, anti-labor stance may have directly contributed to discriminatory workplace policies among the Chicago police force. Molly Maguire narratives got a justice of the peace in Pittsburgh arrested and indicted for performing his duties and enforcing a gun law against strikebreakers (Boston Globe, 29 March 1891). And, of course, they were partly responsible for the hysteria and political reactions surrounding the Haymarket, Homestead, and the Steunenberg trial; in the latter case, the Molly Maguire scapegoat was the core narrative leading directly to what was probably the second-most spectacular case of union-busting across the late nineteenth and early twentieth century after Gowen’s destruction of the WBA in 1875.

Ultimately, the two sides of the narrative became disjointed. There were still specific allegations of Molly Maguirism made against organized labor, and there were still more broadly nativist narratives about a grand Irish conspiracy, but by the 1910s, these existed in entirely different circles, in different parts of the country, with no overlap. The success of the narrative, it appears, had rested in no small part on being able to integrate different ideological perspectives to whom the Molly Maguire scapegoat was useful, and co-opt more explicitly ethno-nationalist and sectarian interests like the APA for the cause of the western mining operators; it collapsed when it was no longer able to do so. It speaks volumes that by 1914, none other than James McParlan himself found the current iteration of Molly Maguire scare tactics to be quite ludicrous and downright offensive (Torve, 2022).

With regards to race, there is a dual tendency in the press record. The Molly Maguire trope was deployed to both accuse striking workers or the Irish in particular of racism, and to construct racist narratives about Blacks and Asians as well as stirring up general WASP anxieties about miscegenation. The Rutland Weekly Herald (VT, 22 January 1885) characterized an apparent KKK murder as being the work of ‘Florida Molly Maguires.’ The New York Evening Post (22 May 1882) described a confrontation between striking workers in the Wyoming region of Pennsylvania and Black miners brought in as strikebreakers as follows: ‘The miners have fully determined that the colored laborers […] must go, and the latter, if not removed by the operators, will become the objects of Molly Maguire hatred, and bloodshed must be inevitable.’ No evidence of either a physical altercation or a racial motive is recorded for this case. The Meriden Daily Republican (2 June 1883) not only characterized a strike in Des Moines as ‘recall[ing] the Molly Maguire outrages in Pennsylvania’, but also framed a confrontation between local workers and strikebreakers brought in by the company as being motivated by the desire that ‘no nigger should work in Des Moines.’ It is well possible that the latter phrase was used at some point during the confrontation, but no evidence outside of the Meriden Daily Republican can be found for it, and in any case, racism was certainly not the core motive in calling for the removal of strikebreakers. It was emphasized, if not outright fabricated, purely to construct the violent and belligerent nature of the Irish Other.

Conversely, the Memphis Daily Commercial (1 August 1890) was using the Molly Maguire trope to justify the murder of F. M. B. Cook, a Republican politician in Mississippi who was killed by the KKK in 1890, as legitimate because ‘[his] object was to stir up race feeling and strife, […] he was worse than the Chicago anarchists, […] Cook in Illinois would have been a dynamiter and in Pennsylvania a Molly Maguire.’ Tropes of Molly Maguirism were used to brand the Chinese community in California (Oakland Sunday Times, 6 December 1885), rudimentary mixed-race labor unions, or an alleged conspiracy among Black soldiers in Arizona. The Boston Evening Transcript (21 May 1881) a Northern Democratic paper, went as far as asserting that ‘the Molly Maguires and the Pittsburg riot; the outrages perpetrated on the Chinese […] clearly prove that the tendencies of slavery in the South were to not only modify race prejudice, but promote kindly feeling.’

This is most apparent in elements that go beyond the immediate anti-labor narrative. Northern, Republican newspapers were quick to equate perceived Irish lawlessness with the KKK and ascribe (Irish) labor protest to racial motives wherever possible. Southern or Democratic papers resented working class protest precisely for not being racial enough, and railed against the mixed character of some nineteenth century unions, while also using the ‘Molly Maguire’ trope in slightly reduced but nonetheless significant quantity.

The inherent nativist element of the narrative must have been apparent to the non-English-speaking papers.⁵ With very few exceptions (the only consistent one being the Baltimore Der Deutsche Correspondent, e.g. 12 July 1888), they either did not engage with the Molly Maguire narrative at all,⁶ or were explicitly critical of it. Even the highly conservative Swedish Skaffaren (9 June 1880), associated with the Lutheran Church – and thus a potential ally for more sectarian interpretations of anti-Irish sentiment – was skeptical.

Conclusion

The Molly Maguire narrative is best understood as a proto-Red Scare; a primarily and originally anti-union trope with heavily nativist, anti-Irish implications, which allowed its adaptation to a variety of contexts and contributed to its longevity, but also – by means of overreaching and straining credibility – its demise. Anti-Irish sentiment remained a significant force throughout the late nineteenth and into the early years of the twentieth century, and it was used by a broad variety of actors to describe whatever characteristics were perceived as undesirable. This ‘flexible but consistent’ (Kenny, 1994, p. 326) ideological approach closely matches Kevin Kenny’s case study of an 1850s nativist newspaper editor. Kenny suggests that class-based resentment was always at the core of nativist agitation then, while being cautious about generalizing this conclusion. It now appears reasonable to suggest that, at least for specifically anti-Irish nativist agitation, Kenny’s conclusion is valid much more broadly, at least until the early 1900s.

This fusion of anti-Irish sentiment with anti-labor narratives also illustrates that nativist sentiment was a socially relevant phenomenon for much longer than most existing research would concede. The prevalence of ‘Molly Maguire’ narratives is a very minimal estimate in this regard, as it is difficult to imagine that this would have been the main or the only expression of anti-Irish sentiment in the press. The titular ‘mendacious Irish character’ was surely described in other ways than this narrative, and what has been discussed here is almost certainly still a massive underestimation of anti-Irish sentiment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A future study, perhaps based on a few newspapers identified as relevant here, would have to close the gap in examining how common more broadly negative portrayals of the Irish in general and Irish workers in particular were, and at which point in a certain region the balance began to shift towards neutral or positive representations.

Nevertheless, even based on this minimal estimation, prevailing models of Irish acculturation are untenable. This includes ideas such as the Irish becoming ‘Americans under fire’ in the Civil War as suggested by Samito (2011) or being fully accepted as a part of white America by the last two decades of the nineteenth century as part of the ‘second enlargement of whiteness’ (Painter, 2010). These narratives probably describe the trajectory of a significant minority of Irish immigrants; the conspicuous underrepresentation of the Deep South, Boston, New York City, and initially California on the maps of newspapers (Figures 3, 6 & 9) indicate that wherever an established Irish middle class existed, anti-Irish narratives in the press faded sooner than elsewhere. However, even California, cited by O’Neill (2017) as the prime example of early Irish acculturation, experienced a significant resurgence of anti-Irish sentiment between the late 1880s and the early 1900s; a resurgence strong enough to sway a closely contested gubernatorial election against the Irish-born candidate. The disappearance of anti-Irish sentiment and the process of the Irish ‘becoming white’ was neither linear nor universal, but varied, complex, and most of all strongly dependent on class and occupation. It was not completed during the nineteenth century anywhere outside the Deep South, New York City, and perhaps Boston.

This leaves us with the task of revising large tracts of both American labor history and Irish-American history. The United States in the nineteenth century were characterized by what can be described as a ‘segmented class formation’ (Barrett, 1992), that is, a structure of the working classes fragmented among ethnic and racial lines, at times with a clear hierarchy based on race and/or ethnicity. This has, for a while, been largely a consensus position, but most recent research has massively overstated the agency of the working class, and particularly the Irish, in creating and upholding segmentation. Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness (2018) and Ignatiev’s How the Irish became White (2012), explicitly built on emphasizing such agency, are still largely considered state of the art. Kelly’s (2018, p. 175) observation that ‘the barrier which nativism erected between the Irish and social reformers led Irish immigrants into a semi‐formal alliance with the most conservative current in American politics […] which combined proslavery apologetics with an explicit appeal to immigrants and demagogic appeals to white workingmen’ is fundamentally confirmed, but also complicated, by these findings – the fact that parts of the Democratic press participated in Molly Maguire scapegoating well into the twentieth century, albeit less intensively than Republican papers, shows how precarious even this conservative alliance was for the Irish lower classes. The role of nativism and anti-Irish sentiment, their close relationship with organized union-busting and anti-labor propaganda, and their impact on both individual and collective action of the Irish lower classes during the four decades from 1880 to 1920 have thus been profoundly and systematically underestimated.

Sources (selection)

All newspaper sources used taken from newspapers.com.

Buffalo Courier, Buffalo, New York.

Butte Evening News, Butte, Montana.

Carbondale Daily News, Carbondale, Pennsylvania.

Chattanooga Daily Times, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois.

Fitchburg Sentinel, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Great Falls Leader, Great Falls, Montana.

Johnson, W. H. (1877). The ‘Molly McGuires’ of the Foot Board. The Hagley Collection, Wilmington, Delaware. Reading Company File, mollymag_pams_0001.

New York Tribune, New York, New York.

Ogden Standard, Ogden, Utah.

Philadelphia Times, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington.

The Donaldsonville Chief, Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

The Missoulian, Missoula, Montana.

Richwood Gazette, Richwood, Ohio.

Rutland Daily Herald, Rutland, Vermont.

Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California.

Savannah Morning News, Savannah, Georgia.

Silver Reef Miner, Silver Reef, Utah.

St Alban’s Daily Messenger, St. Alban, Vermont.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St Louis, Missouri.

Weekly Standard, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [NINE DTP].

Notes on contributors

Constantin Torve

Constantin Torve (MA, Uppsala) is a PhD student in history at Queen’s University Belfast. His ESRC-funded research project investigates the adaptation of agrarian secret societies in nineteenth-century Ireland to changing socio-economic environments, particularly their expansion from agrarian into industrial contexts.

Notes

1. Discrepancies in the number of incidents recorded in Figures 2 and 3, as for all subsequent maps (Figures 5 and 6, 8 and 9), stem from the fact that not all uses of the Molly Maguire narrative could be linked to a specific place.

2. Lease is probably an anglicized version of McLeish. The paper’s attack on Polly Lease, however, is indicative of the variability of the narrative. Lease was most likely Irish, as the paper suggested, though most likely not Catholic. The name is of Scottish Gaelic origin and strongly associated with the Plantation of Ulster. McLeish, including variations, was most commonly found in the counties of Antrim, Down, Tyrone, Donegal, and Kildare, and only about 25% of its bearers were Catholic (1901 Census of Ireland, National Archives). While anti-Irish sentiment did have a pronounced sectarian element at times, class and political affiliation were significantly more important in defining undesirable forms of Irishness (see also Kenny, 1994). This is demonstrated here by the almost simultaneous alliance of the Orange Order with American nativism, while a woman of likely Ulster Protestant descent was attacked in the press as a Molly Maguire.

3. Reprinted in many papers of various political affiliation, for instance in Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), 27 July 1892.

4. For a detailed assessment of McParlan’s biography and individual motivations, see Torve, (2022). Unlike the Pinkerton family, and unlike a majority of newspaper owners and editors, it does not appear fair or reasonable to suspect that McParlan was, as a matter of principle, hostile or driven by resentment towards the working class, organized labor, or his own Irish roots.

5. Languages evaluated are German, Swedish, Danish, and French. A few search results in other languages, such as Polish, Czech, and Welsh, were found. While these could not be analyzed, they were so extremely infrequent as to justify a generalization of the conclusions based on the other languages.

6. They sometimes reprinted translated versions of Molly Maguire rumors from the English-speaking papers, often qualifying them with varying degrees of scepticism (e.g. Skaffaren, 9 June 1880) but with the exception mentioned above, non-English papers did not regularly participate in the creation of such rumors.