Hello, and welcome to cool people. Did cool stuff. You're weekly reminder of what happens when bosses drag out a strike so long that it drives people out of their homes. That's what we're gonna talk about today.
Not for nothing.
I learned this morning that it was Bob Iger's fault that they revealed the murderer of Laura Palmer too soon on Twin Peaks. So if anyone was looking for an additional reason, if you really want to get granular and petty, that was a fun one.
That is reason enough.
Yes, I'm willing to I'm willing to take it. To perceive slights, I don't care whatever turns people against this man.
Yeah, that's Jamie Loftus over there, rabble rousing. Jamie Office is my guest this week. Hy, Jamie. How you doing.
I'm I'm great.
I've been thinking about the Molly McGuire is quite a bit this weekend.
Over the weekend because.
I saw my irishest family last night, including my cousin who's Molly McGuire. Molly McGuire, and I mentioned this and she responded with huh, So I think that the whole family is going to learn a lot from my family.
She's going to think about her name after that.
I know.
It is canonically a coincidence because my grandma's maiden name, but I think she'll think it's cool that well, actually I don't know how the story ends, so maybe not it.
We'll get there.
I'll do like a Titanic situation and be like just listen to just watch VHS one, no need to watch VHS two.
Yeah, there's a little bit of the whole thing where sometimes I've fish people in Ireland are more radical than Irish people in the US, But I still think that they're They're real interesting and cool. There's just there's more asterisks in this in this episode than the previous episode. I'm prepared, but also with us is Sophie Lichterman, our producer sub so Pi so Phi.
I've agreed to record this podcast at nine am on a Monday.
Yeah. Usually we make this like cole elaborate joke where there's like only fifteen minute break between the two episodes when we record, but this time there was actually a longer break between the episodes for us than for you. Isn't that wild?
That's true.
Our audio engineers Ian Hi Ian Hi Ian Hien and our music was written for us by un woman. This is part two of a two parter. You probably figured that out. It's about the Molly Maguires. You also probably figured that out either by looking at the title or by listening to us talk. But in part one we learned about how when you try to enclose the commons in Ireland, a bunch of people put on dresses, questionable
makeup and murder you. And so now we're going to talk about what happens when some of those people moved to the United States, where spoiler alert, the working conditions are not good for people who have no money.
Hold on run that back.
The land of opportunity was the land of an opportunity to be exploited.
Right, I mean, some of these people, if that was that was that was the dream all along?
Was that probably was the dream alone to be wildly exploited. Yeah, it's a kink, I guess that. I mean, almost starving in Appalachia is better than litter released starving in Ireland. So we're going to talk about Appalachia. We're going to talk about Pennsylvania in particular, and we're going to talk about a Pennsylvania primarily in the eighteen sixties. But you know, being US will jump around a bunch. The US it
liked coal in the eighteen sixties. It still does. See the aforementioned We're all going to drown as the water's rise, and the US needed lots of coal. Fortunately it had lots of it, fortunately for the industrialization of the US of the nineteenth century. Not fortunately for US one hundred and fifty years later. Yeah, they'd never found this stuff. I'm sure we would have found some other way to fuck everything up. So the best quality coal is called
anthracite coal. Northeastern Pennsylvania has a ton of anthracite coal, is the world's biggest deposit of anthracite coal. Okay, so a lot of Irish people fleeing starvation and colonization, they show up to be settlers in a different colonized country, the United States. They show up in Pennsylvania, which I hate typing, as I'm mentioned last time, because it's annoying to spell. Specifically, they showed up in Schoukol County, which is not an indigenous name. It's Dutch for hidden stream.
This had been Lenape Land until they were forced off in seventeen seventy eight. By the eighteen forties, the area was still very very rural and or wild. This is like one of the kind of Appalachia being like still one of the least populated parts of the United States, even though it's like right in the middle of where colin you know where the United States part is. Yeah, yeah, and it's just like all around Appalachia, right, there's like
a ton of people. Right the east mid Atlantic is a very densely populated area, but you go into the mountains and that stops being the case. So where this coal is is very rural. There were two coal fields in the area. There was a northern one, which was geologically blessed with being near surface coal that was easier to mine. This was mined by large corporations. Then there's
the southern field where our Irish wound up. And this is smaller scale operations, like more like mom and pop exploiter shops with only a couple hundred employees instead of like these, you know, thousands of employees.
A small I mean, I love a small scale exploitation, yeah, Because then there's always the American dream.
You can always dream of exploiting at a higher level.
What if one day you get to put the boot on someone's neck.
We're gonna need a pair of bigger boots.
I know, on those boots m m our bootstraps, like the like the little loop on the back of the boot.
Oh my god.
I honestly think of those hideous flat Greek sandals like the cool girls wore in the early two thousands.
When I think, if I think.
There's sandal straps, I don't even think of boots.
Those shoes were evil.
That was that was out of my pay grade. Socially.
I tryed literally, I'm trying to look up what a bootstrap is. But there's like some company called Bootstrap and their horrible logo, which is just a giant purple bee is the only.
Which boots have Which boots have strapped? I associate boots with, you know, laces.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like my boots have a little loop on the back that you can use to pull the boot on. That's the best I can think.
Okay, that's I've interacted with that kind of bootstrap.
I mean, I guess it's just I don't want to see the giant purple bee.
Tell me what it is.
It's yet another way that the American dream. It's it's fake down to the language.
They're like, the answer on here is not what we want because you can't actually pull you.
I heard somewhere, and this is not in my script, so I can't like a test to this. I heard somewhere that bootstrap the whole, like pick yourself up by the bootstraps was actually like a leftist prays making fun of the American dream. It was like, oh, yeah, just pick yourself up by the bootstraps, that's possible. And then everyone's like, okay.
It almost sounds it almost sounds like how much could a banana cost ten dollars?
You know.
They're like, well, yeah, because rich people aren't wearing wearing them boots.
The parts of the I have the definition, nfo, oh it is it is the loop. It is the loop. Like for example, look at this boot. They got two of them on the side.
What a useful chart? Yeah, two different arrows pointing at the loop.
But if Yeah, the first like seven things on Google were telling me something about a popular CSS framework, and then the next one was telling me that it means advancing oneself or accomplishing something without aid.
So I interpretation, Yeah, there should be an instead of Kickstarter, there should be a site called bootstrapper, and it's a site where you sign up and you just don't get any money. Yeah, and you just can't. You actually just can't accomplish anything sport. Okay, So the southern coal fields where you have lots of bootstrappers, they dug deeper with
worse equipment and worse pay. People were getting the equivalent in like twenty twenty three money of fifty dollars a day for work that will one hundred percent murder you. Like pretty much everyone who doesn't die in the course of the violence that will be in this episode dies from black lung. The Irish who showed up there. They are some of the roughest and poorest of the Irish immigrants,
which is fucking saying something. And unlike most of the rest of the eighteen forties Irish immigrants into the United States, a lot of them don't speak English. You have a larger wave of Irish speaking immigrants in the eighteen eighties or so, But in the eighteen forties, as we talked about last time, a lot of folks who are coming from places where people still spoke Irish were able to hold on in Ireland a little bit more so, it's very unlikely that these people were like card carrying Molly
McGuire's when they show up. It's like they weren't like, let's go to America and start a chapter of Molly McGuire's. Probably they weren't even like, oh god, we have to leave, we're starving and were Molly McGuire's, so let's go do that instead. Molly McGuire Ism was as much a sort of spirit of resistance and a tactic as much as it was an actual secret society. It was also what you called every Irish person you don't like.
So is that another I mean, I know we were talking about that in the last episode as well. Where because the history like that, Because Molly McGuire could be used as a pejorative, it could be used to reference an organized group, or it could be used just to like explain it kind of just a shorthand for a resistance mentality. Does that kind of muddle up the history of like who is actually associated with what.
And how things sort of shake out?
Oh yeah, there's hundreds of there's like one hundred and fifty years of historians arguing about whether the Molly Maguires are real. Oh great, Like, it is possible that is entirely just what they were called by their enemies. It is far more likely that they existed, and a lot of the they're not real like people compare it to being like when people are like the mafia isn't real, Like, Yeah, they don't admit that they exist, but they exist, you know, okay,
but it's hard to peace out what is? What there was, however, a public society, It was semi secret society, a fraternal organization. The first organization that the Irish form in the New World is called the Ancient Order of the Hiberians. This is not actually an ancient Order, but the cool thing to call your group, Like, yeah, how.
A should we talk it? A couple couple of years ago it was.
Let's see, I want to say, eighteen thirty six. Nice, but they formed as the Ancient Order. They've been called this since. Actually, no, you're exactly right. They took the name Ancient Order in eighteen thirty eight, when they've been around for two years.
That rocks.
I think that fans of like K pop groups should start doing that. Yeah, yeah, just start calling themselves an Ancient Order. At random. Where's the harm? It sounds fucking cool.
If your group isn't a league, a lodge or an ancient order, what are you doing? That's why we're pleased to announce Cool Zone, the ancient Order of.
Pool Zone, the ancient Order of Cloth on media cool down.
Yeah cool, we should just have a place called cool Lodge.
Yeah, I'm verge.
Yeah all right, Sophi's approved it.
It's all great ideas. And as the head of the Ancient Order of the Cool Zone, let me just grabbed my.
Giant staff that I loot. Yeah, yet you got a sword, I think definitely.
Like one of those like Gandalf sword slash staff situations.
Yeah, with your sword in one hand, staff and the other.
Yeah, you're wearing a very complicated hat right now is how I would describe it.
Yes, thank you.
With the complicated hat has studio headphones built into it, Yeah, because it's a podcasting order, Yeah obviously.
Yeah, there's there's a mic at the top of the staff too. It's actually a very functional unlike a lot of yeah functional, it's very women's fashion is historically not functional, and I think that you're really you're really changing the narrat thank you yeah, yeah, yeah.
So this particular fraternal organization they're still around and they suck. Now sick. They they tried to ban gay Irish American groups from the Saint Patrick's today, Saint Patrick's Day Parade and York City. They've probably sucked for a really long time. I don't know if they sucked back in the eighteen thirties when we first started talking about them, but going back to nineteen hundred, they were the right wing side
of Irish Republicanism. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, which is the precursor to the IRA, actually always hated them for being right wing nationalists. And the Ancient Order showed their true colors in the Irish Civil War when they backed the Treaty with England and the division of Ireland, and then in the Spanish Civil War where they went and fought
for Franco the fascist. Ooh, I think that the Ancient Order of Iberians is honestly like what annoying right Wingish Americans, you know, like right wing Irish Americans think that the IRA is like right wing because as a rored Republican in it.
Oh right, yeah, this Americans are not Americans also not immune to.
This yeah, if you want. If if you're listening to this and you're a right wing Irish person, don't are Irish American. The ira is not your, guys, but the ancient order of the Hiberians is. So they might have been a right for the first few decades. I'm not sure. They formed in eighteen thirty six in New York City and Schoogle County, and they took the name in eighteen
thirty eight. And they basically existed at first to protect Catholic churches, and Catholic folks were facing a lot of like anti papist, anti Catholic sentiment, right, and so they formed to protect those institutions. In most places, it was a very peaceful, sort of boring place. In the coal fields, they had really significant overlap with the molly maguires, okay. And and the miners, especially the Irish miners, who actually
will get into this. They weren't miners, they were mine laborers, okay.
And then what was the distinction there?
Oh, I love that you actually have a functional memory.
This.
That is why it's better if I record the two things in a row. We did talk about this last time. I think it had.
To do with being outside of the mines, but still working for the mines.
Is that correct?
No? That no, that's what kids had to do.
Oh okay, sorry, I'm thinking of the miners again. Okay, yeah, really.
Yes, you have three groups. You have the miners with an E, the mine laborers, and then the miners with an o oh my god. The miners with an E. They go in and they're the skilled labor and they go in and like pick where to mine, right, and then they like sometimes do the actual sort of mining. But then they just like leave the coal on the ground.
As best as I can tell, it'll be like a little different in different minds because there's a lot of different physical methods of mining, and the mine laborers are also hanging out down there, and then they have to gather the coal and put it in the carts and carry it out and all this shit, okay, and they have the most dangerous jobs in the mine, okay. So they live off of like fifty dollars a day and modern money. Extended households lived under one roof, usually a
married couple. There are kids, some relatives, and some borders right, if not an entire second family. Many households were run by widows because a lot of men kept dying in industrial accidents. Kids, of course, worked, both boys and girls. Girls didn't work in the minds, but as domestics and doing sewing or whatever, basically anything to bring in money because you all are fucking starving.
So I'm I feel like, I'm this is I know the answer to this question already, But how do you know how young they were starting?
And I'm assuming there's like.
No form of like any organized education happening at this time, or was there.
I'm under the impression that there's not a formalized education at this time, Okay, But I actually don't know the answer to that. I know a lot of the kids were starting at like seven, but overall it was more like preteens, gotcha, okay. And so at first, the mining in the area was like surface shafts and you would just go down to hit the water level and then you stop right because it's the fucking middle of the nineteenth century. You don't got a way to get water
out of a hole. By the eighteen seventies, they moved more to tunnel mining, and they also started working below the water level by pumping water out. They also use something called room and pillar mining, which is where you mine a bunch of coal but leave some pillars made out of coal in the room of coal. Right, you can hold up the hold up the roof, but then someone has to go in and remove the pillars because that's coal too. You can't just leave that in the
ground and then the room collapses. This is dangerous. Yeah, and there are all kinds of other dangers. They had funny names for all the different smells of gases that would kill them.
Ooh, hit me.
The stink damp, the fire damp, the black damp, and the white damp.
They should be poopery variantow and so you have ahead and those are all different like shorthands for a distinct Yeah.
I forgot to write though, like it's like not carbon monoxidecause that doesn't smell, but it's like carbon dioxide or yeah, I didn't write them down. There's a lot of different things that will kill you. But you know what true isn't trying to kill you until it gets all of your money.
Could it, by any chance be the amazing products and services that are sponsoring this fine program.
That's right, and we recommend almost all of your money on these products. And services, but holding onto a little bit. So there's still a reason that capitalism wants you alive. Here's some ads. Okay, we're back. And so I was saying, there's the difference between the miners the skilled work. The skilled miners they had apprenticeships. They actually had some independence
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century they don't once the big companies come in, and then you have mine laborers who are usually paid by the miners, and they get paid about a third of what a miner did.
Wow, the Welshian needs it's been much as it is.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the Welsh and the English got to be miners and the Irish got to be laborers. To an overwhelming degree. There was very consistent discrimination against the Irish in terms of employment opportunities and housing opportunities and all kinds of things. There was, specifically in this time and place, an ethnic hierarchy that went American, British, Welsh, German,
Irish Jesus. Okay, yeah, people get really wanting to before they figured out, like I mean, okay, they already had racism, right, but you know, before they Yeah, people really want to find reasons to hate other people over weird ethnic bullshit.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like and the fact that Irish, I mean, the Irish are at the bottom of that totem pole and just leaving other people out entirely don't even make the totem pole right.
Well, and it's like, and actually that's going to come up. This particular area didn't have any the other way lower than any white worker. And people always say that Irish weren' white, and I don't remember I talked with this last time, but it's like they were white, they were just ethnically they faced ethnic oppression, but they were far above Chinese and black workers, which there largely weren't any in this
time and place. At least according to everything I read, they would have been higher than certainly black workers and Chinese workers. Yeah, okay, only about eleven percent of Schoogle County was Irish. They were slightly less than half the foreign born population there, but in the mining towns they had a clear majority. The other big group was the Welsh,
and the two groups fought a lot. They had kind of a gang warfare going on that was ethnic because the Welsh, who were seen basically as British were given the choice jobs and so facing all this different oppression being mistreated, they formed themselves some Molly McGuire's once again, they left basically no evidence of their own and for decades in the area. There's two competing ideas about how to handle exploitation. Right, there's the British way, which is
trade unionism. This was developed during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. I think it comes from Chartism, but I didn't like fall far enough down that rabbit hole to like speak more about chartism.
Ok.
And this is using strikes and overall it is an attempt at a non violent approach. Obviously strikes, particularly in the nineteenth century, did end up very violent, but the like the larger picture strategy of trade unionism was about strikes and non violence. Okay, then there's go ahead.
Oh.
I just was curious of how much Molly mcguiresm in Irish people who immigrated to the US, how much it resembled what we were seeing or what we were talking about of what was happening in Ireland. Is it more of a continuity of thought and resistance or are there like visual or like organizing hallmarks to to the Molly mcguires.
We'll talk about it a bit more, but overall, in the US, the Molly McGuire's kept well they kept the bad makeup, and they didn't.
I was like, did they did they keep?
So they kept the makeup, they did dropped the dress the cross. Well, that's honestly disappointing. I would prefer exactly the reverse.
Yeah, what are you gonna do? All right?
Yeah, so you've got this English method of dealing with exploitation that is like polite. Then there's the Irish way, which is direct and violent action against the people who exploit you.
Yeah.
I'm not going to make an argument about which one worked better, because neither one worked in this story. Frankly, this is not a story with a happy ending, Okay, but I will say how much I love the industrial workers of the world.
A story with a happy ending.
No, See, that's the thing about cool people, the cool stuff. It's a happy middle.
Thanks.
The real treasure was the violence we enacted all along.
Wow, it really was about the violent and exploitation chated.
But okay, much like the Irish were being cheated in so eventually unionism and direct action of other sorts actually start kind of becoming a little bit better friends at different points. Eighteen forty two, the US is five years into a depression. Miners start getting paid in goods instead of money. This wasn't company store times because it's the small operators. This is like before mining gets really bad, right,
but it's still really bad. It's amazing that it could get worse from where it was so July seventh, eighteen forty two, some workers protested and they marched from a small town to the county seat of Pottsville. And they're armed with clubs. They're shutting down the mines as they pass. This is not this is all ethnicities. Soon fifteen hundred folks are marching and they try to form a union, and the operators refuse to accept it, and the strike fails.
In eighteen forty nine, they successfully form a union. It's called the Bates Union. It's run by a guy named Bait Baits. The main argument that they have is that they want to get paid in cash for the work they do instead of like promises of goods, right m hm. This union tried hard to push the idea that workers and bosses had the same interests, such as keeping the
cost of coal high. And this was like a thing during a lot of this trade unionism is basically trade unionism didn't start off trying to be like we hate you, bosses. It tried to be like, hey, what if we work together? You know. Unfortunately the guy Bates it was named after, probably he took all the union money and ran off.
No, well see that's it's a red flag to name the union after yourself.
It almost is like he unionized with himself.
Yeah, totally. He's like, everyone giving me money, I'll put it where it needs to go.
That's a good Yeah.
No one should be naming a union after themselves and not the collective that is it.
That's a major red flag, all right.
Well, not not to victim blame, but yeah, you know, maybe maybe there was chad of yeah, why did we name it after a guy?
Yeah, they don't do that again, at least in eighteen fifty eight. They do the union thing again. In eighteen fifty eight, the miners went on strike for higher wages, and during this time you get some coffin notices posted around, basically with drawings of pistols and coffins that are like, hey, you'd better not scab. Only you ever heard the word black leg for a scab. No, I hadn't either. Black leg is an old timey word for it's distinct from
a scab. A scab, at least in nineteenth century, is a hired worker from somewhere else who breaks a strike. A black leg is someone who works there already who doesn't join the strike. Okay, And so most of their stuff they're using the terminology black leg, not scab.
Okay, And interesting, Okay, I've been hearing I mean, just for no reason, all that I've been looking into, you know, like granular terms, because it's I think that there's maybe people that are getting extremely confused by how many different terms there are for uh, for I think what is now colloquially just but imagine I said it, right, yeah, just called scabbing. But now you're like, oh no, there's this there's this whole fun vernacular that we get to use.
Yeah, totally, yeah, Okay. So they set up, they start go on strike. They're spreading out the coffin notices, which is clearly there's some like Molly mcguiresm within the union. Right. So the sheriff shows up with two companies of infantry, one company of cavalry and one company of artillery to put down the strike. Okay, it works. The US sure
hates organized labor. No one was killed, but three men were sentenced to sixty days in prison for organizing the strike, and the coffin notices were signed the children of Molly McGuire. And so for the first time in the US, is that so lit? I just love how dramatic that is. It is.
I just like, bless, bless, bless.
Yeah, Irish for just being just being extreme drama queens.
I love it.
The ancient order, the children of Molly McGuire, It's just all so damn good.
I love our people. They're great, you know.
And so the the first probable this is the first time that mcguiresm shows up in the US is eighteen fifty eight. The first probable killing by the mcguires was probably retributive. It's a Welshman shot and killed an Irishman and then was found not guilty. So then that Welshman was killed by a pit with a pickaxe by a man who had quote blackened his face with powder.
Okay, kind of sounds like an open shutcase.
But yeah, an irishman probably the guilty party was hanged for this, okay, and most of McGuire. McGuire is was not personal vendettas. It was class and labor focused, and the rest of their killings were class and labor focused. But it wasn't their main method. Mcguireism wasn't even the main method of these Irish immigrants. Strikes and militant labor unionism was the start until that became impossible because because of the Civil War.
Ah that.
I was like, okay, okay, tell me about this Civil war. I was taught about it all wrong at school.
Yeah. God, today's heroes are not Civil war heroes. Uh, really kind of sketchy on race overall, with their choice and their makeup?
Am I on today?
I know? I know?
Is it just nine am on a Monday?
Or are you fucking with me? Macbat It's not both. It's not as bad. I'll leave it to you all that. Okay.
So I don't know.
You wrote a sentence that says really kind of sketchy on race overall, what with.
Their choice and makeup and their militant anti draft protests.
The sentence after the Civil War?
Okay, wait, yeah, tell me more expand on that, please?
So when the Irish in the US overall, especially here in Scuogle County, when they would vote, they would vote Democrat. Nineteenth Century politics in the US are a fucking mess. The Democrats are less anti immigrant and less anti Catholic than the Republicans. They're also the pro slavery Party and the anti war party right anti the Union War effort
against the Confederacy. But until the Republican Party came around eighteen fifty four, all parties were the pro Slavery Party, and the main opponent to the Democrats before them was the Whigs, who briefly spun out into the No Nothing Party, who are Protestant Zealots who hated Catholics and drinking and immigrants. We talk about some of their like militant anti German immigrant actions that they took in Chicago on I think the very first episode of Cool People, Cool Stuff. The
No Nothings. They're not great. So the Irish have been Democrats, right, that is their tradition because the other side fucking hates them. But they are also Democrats because Democrats are kind of the working class party, because the working class are sometimes real fucking dense, and they bought into the line if
you free the slaves, they'll take your jobs. I have no quotes from many Molly Maguire's one way or the other about any of this, but they did vote Democrat, and that is the overall picture of immigrant labor being racist in the US. Okay, so the war starts and two big things come as a real of this. First, all labor actions are basically accused of being pro Confederate. It is now treason to interrupt the flow of coal
to the federal government. Second, there's a draft. I would argue that drafting people is immoral, but in this case, the draft was specifically targeting to crush both the labor movement and Maguireism in Schouogle County.
Oh so it's like turbo moral. Yeah, they're like, yeah.
Wait a second, Why is everyone who's being drafted an Irish immigrant who specifically was fighting for the union?
Wow?
Yeah, wait, you're going to want to draft everyone who's ever advocated for themselves in their entire life. That's putting immorality on a skateboard and giving it a hat, and
yeah all this other shit. Okay, Okay, so the labor movement is okay, this is so I'm thinking meatpacking again of just like being impacted by you know, I guess function executive orders that it's like, we will, underno circumstances shut down this industry where you are constantly put in peril and are just trying to unionize, and we will, you know. And it's unpatriotic of you too to not want to play ball exactly as mandated.
Yeah, awesome, So people start resisting the draft. In eighteen sixty two, a mine foreman docks the Irish workers pay and then yelled at some Irish workers for spitting on the American flag, which they probably weren't doing for a cool reason. The so the Irish workers killed the guy the gou just docked their pay and yelled at them. Also, in eighteen sixty two, miners go on strike, so the sheriff brings the militia in a battalion of two hundred
men to keep order and keep people working. When the draft comes, censuses go around to determine who to draft, and these were met with resistance from women and kids. The grown men had to hide, right, and so a bunch of women went out and threw hot water sticks and stones and hee haw, okay cool, yeah back yeah. The person who oversaw the draft was this guy named Bannon, who specifically hated the Irish Catholics and the Molly mcguires.
Something very name one good Bannon.
You know.
When the list of conscripts gets announced anyway, on October sixteenth, eighteen sixty two, it included a greatly disproportioned number of Irish workers, especially those suspected of Anyone suspected of being a Molly McGuire was drafted. So a thousand armed people blockade.
Go ahead, Sorry, I get, but it's because the definition of like, quote unquote being a Molly McGuire is so viscous and vague it almost Yeah, it's like almost like a McCarthyism kind of thing where they're like, we don't like you.
Okay, No, it's absolutely a McCarthyism thing. And it's kind of like with McCarthyism, everyone started being like, I'm not a communist, what the fuck you're talking about? But some people were like, I am a communist, fuck you. Yeah, And that's kind of how Mally maguiresm is is. It's like, you know, I'm not a Mally McGuire, and some people are like, well I am, fuck you yeah, and you're.
Like, well, no matter what, everyone's getting mistreated, and like yeah.
Okay, yeah.
So when these people are drafted, a thousand armed people blockaded the train that was leading away the draftees. I believe this led to them getting the draftees out of the train. More troops came in and put that down, But in the end, the miners actually this first draft the miners win. Lincoln himself was like, oh shit, if we stationed more troops in Schoogle County and draft more people there, we're gonna have a full on insurrection. So they forged aff A David's saying that the volunteers had
filled the necessary spots. So they still got to be like, oh yeah, no, we got everyone we need from Schoogle County. It's cool, and so they drove off the draft. Okay, most of the Molly McGuire attention during this wasn't about the draft. It was about it stayed class focused, and they had no other tool left besides direct action because labor.
You can't do a labor union during this, right, right, So a couple months later, two hundred armed mcguires raided a mine and beat their bosses and then the guys who'd been mistreating them at the mine, then they took over the mine and shut it down. Crowds attacked and beat several other mine operators in the coming months, basically anyone who was like mistreating them. In eighteen sixty three,
the draft expanse and it becomes federally controlled. This time, they suspend habeas corpus due process of law for anyone suspected of draft resistance. And now even the Republicans in the Union are mad about the draft, right, okay, because it's clearly immoral. Yeah, which is so hard in this like larger context. Is like overall, I'm like very fucking happy that the Union beat the Confederacy, right, like, of course, but this new draft law, it lets rich people off
the hook very even more directly. You could pay three hundred dollars, which is more than a year's worth of work for a minor, right, or you can go ahead.
So it's just so it's it's shifting to just I mean, it was directly targeting the poor anyways, but this just seals.
It, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's formalized now. Yeah, and so for the North as well as the South. Like in one of the first episodes we did on the show, the Civil Civil War, war the Civil War within the Civil War and the Confederacy, we talk about how Confederates
nose plead for listening to you see. We talked about how the Confederates were drafting everyone and how this led to a civil war within the Confederacy, and how Confederate soldiers viewed it as a rich man's fight and a poor man's sorry, a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. And this is true for the Union too, And this doesn't surprise me, but this is the first time I've read about it personally, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.
Also, during this whole thing, you're not supposed to draft anyone who's not American, right, because that's the whole thing, And so you're only supposed to draft American citizens or people who have stated their intention to become American citizens, like foreigners who are working on becoming American citizens. This was completely ignored, and you know, poor migrants were drafted left and right.
Well, yeah, it's you can be an American when it's convenient to be an American, and when it's not, then fuck you you're not.
Yeah, yeah, which has no comparison to anything that happens now.
No, everything's fixed.
Yeah. Some people try to like read this kind of story to be like, oh, the spirit of the Irish or something, right, and I'm like, this is a story. I mean, yes, it's about some Irish people, but it's a story about immigration into the US, right, And so like the modern version of this, if you're looking for modern people who are fighting in similar ways, it's not the fucking Irish anymore, right, it's the people who buy stuff from our sponsors. Eho eh No, on that one actually felt immral uh so im.
Moral that it that it went back to being kind of funny.
Yeah, and once again wondering what podcast I'm on.
I have. I had a stress dream last night about starting researching someone who someone told me was cool, and I committed to doing an episode about it, and then about halfway through I found out how incredibly uncool the man was, and then I was like, I'm stuck doing the episode.
What did we say?
Did we say the magpie after we found out about that guy that was a bad husband? We read the end first when it comes to.
This, So don't worry. You're safe, just like you're safe from missing out on the ease deal deals deals deals, Wow, wowow, and we're back. So in Scuocle County someone stole all the draft records, which is cool. An officer leading search for draft dodgers found himself murdered. A lot of this was probably German immigrants, not Maguire's, because the German immigrants were just as mad about it because they had all
the same reasons to be mad about it. Census takers were driven off by gunfire, and this started becoming like really organized resistance. There were meetings held twice a week in all the townships about how all the immigrants could resist the draft. Any mind owner who turned over their list of employees would have their equipment trashed by their workers. And three thousand resistors started drilling militarily, and they're led by returning soldiers. So this rocks.
Yeah.
So like people who've either been in for nine months or three years at this point, they show back up and they're like, all right, we're going to train you all to fight so they can fight against the people trying to draft you. They managed to get light artillery. This was probably smuggled down from Canada and they were called Maguire's and they were called buckshots. That was just the other word for them at this point.
So sorry, is this still kind of exclusively Irish organizing or is it becoming more of like a multicultural group.
I am not entirely certain. I believe that the three thousand people drilling were Irish, okay, But I know that a lot of the other direct action was happening more broadly, and so I actually don't have any particular reason to believe one way or the other about there's a lot of multi ethnic organizing and there's a lot of intra ethnic fighting happening during all of this time, and it's kind of hard to piece some of it out. But
Federal troops show up and enlist them at gunpoint. It never comes to a large battle, And the whole time, the Federal troops are being like, oh, it's a Confederate conspiracy to invade the North, but it absolutely was no such thing. They were not loyal to Confederacy. No evidence of them ever having anything to do with the Confederacy ever came out, No actions were ever taken against the Union by the mcguires. It was all resistance to being drafted troops stayed in the area for the rest of
the war. A bunch of mine operators became officers in the military. The officer in the area was given permission to draft anyone he wanted and arrest anyone who resisted the draft. So this means that he can just throw anyone he wants in jail with no habeas corpus, and he uses it immediately to fight the union movement. Anyone he wants arrested is arrested. This doesn't make people like the war effort anymore. It's also probably why I know,
I know. It's also probably why the union movement tends towards mcguiresm instead of labor organizing at this point, because open actions will get you drafted or arrested. One mine owner was mistreating everyone, so workers sat down and considered considered a strike. He told them that it was during war. A strike was treason and they would be treated as treasonous.
So a bunch of people showed up on Guy Faux Night November fifth, nine, eighteen sixty three, which is generally an anti Catholic celebration, so it was probably intentional that these Catholics show up on that day. They break into his house, they kill him and they leave his body in the crossroads. One of the mcguires was killed during this action in crossfire. Okay, two generals wound up stationed
in the area, and even more troops come in. The Catholic Church threatens to excommunicate anyone belonging to a secret society. The Catholic Church is like, fuck the McGuire's right.
Yeah, sure, but it's also I mean whatever, yeah, one of the Catholic Church is one to talk, I know, I know.
Well, that's the thing is, they're like, be in our secret society's yeah.
Yeah, we've got more infrastructure we could do, and we're doing some bad shit.
Get out of here, yeah exactly. And so the Catholic Church threatens to excommunicate anyone belonging to a secret society. Okay, But and then the anti McGuire newspapers they're like, oh, most people don't support it. It's just a few bad agitators. There's just a few evil mcguires in there making all the good Irish people act bad. This is not true.
It is a broad movement made from general discontentment, right, and and in the end, like to take a larger picture of the Irish in the Union during the war, three times as many Irish fought for the Union as for the Confederacy, and this did include a ton of volunteers. There was the sixty ninth Irish Brigade, whose green flag had the slogan in Irish we will never run from
the clashing of the blades. And those who volunteered in the Union, they also a lot of them had I mean, some of it was probably like we like our new country, but like overall, I think it was well, they wanted to learn how to fight and shoot guns so they could go back to Ireland and kick the English out of their country.
It seems reasonable.
Yeah, I might as well do a like perfectly ethical war over here so that you can go back and to another perfectly ethical war.
Yeah, it's just kind of like a warm up situation. I get it. You don't want to go.
It's it's Mario rules. You don't just go for the big boss, you know. Yeah, Yeah, it's incremental.
Yeah. After the war, things cooled off in Schougle sort of. The mcguires killed several more mine superintendents, they settled some old scores, and the railroad formed a private police force basically the railroad at this point starts buying up all the mine operators in the southern coalfield. So Reading Railroad is now the big new bad, big new bad in the area.
Reading Railroad. Wow.
Yeah, and so so close to LeVar burton territory.
And yet so far because that man will never do anything wrong.
Nope, he directed Smart House? What did he possibly do? That's famous? Credit smart House?
Wait, I've never heard of smart House.
Magfie. I feel like you'd enjoy a smart House.
It's a classic Disney Channel original movie that predicts a lot top.
Three Disney Channel original movie.
And I think it ages pretty well.
It's about the kid that wins a like robot house that's controlled by this AI mom uh, and it's about it's an AI cautionary tale before Blacknology existed.
It's It's Black Mirror Junior.
It's so good and they play a smash Mouth song say it's a class Oh yeah, okay. LeVar Burton has never missed his entire life.
So anyways, Reading Railroad, I was saying it and it starts Katie siicall, so it does I totally know who is I know?
I knew LeVar Burton is. He was very important in my childhood as I grew up watching Reading Rainbow and Star Trek as like the two things.
Oh he's the best.
Yeah, I feel like both of those things prepared him for his greatest work, Disney Channel's Smart House.
Obviously. So the Railroad shows up Reading Railroad, Uh, not run by LeVar Burton, and they deputize a bunch of paid mercenaries, And so you now have private police instead of public police, which which is like even worse than public police, which is impressive because public police are clearly not doing a very good I have negative opinions about
the establishment. Soon Reading Railroad becomes everyone's landlord and boss workers no longer own their own homes, and the Railroad brings on Pinkertons as detectives to be part of this classic villain of the pod, the Pinkertons.
Yeah, it's like there's certain I feel like across podcasting in general, you're like, the Pinkertons are gonna come up. JEdgar Hoover's gonna come out. One of these motherfuckers like just worms their way into every damn story of Yeah.
Actually, most of what we know about the maguire's is a Pinkerton detective.
Oh okay, so useful primary resource.
I mean, but it's also part of why, like a lot of the things that make them look bad. I'm like, I don't know how true it is.
It could be true, but never trust a Pinkerton.
Yeah. So there's no longer a draft in occupying soldiers, and so workers are less mad overall, and with the occupation of their area gone, an actual labor movement is able to start up. And so this what stopped the kind of agrarian violence mode of class struggle. The mcguireism was the labor union, the fact that there were methods by which to seek address for your grievances or whatever.
And because mcguiresm is a backs against the wall clause out approach, which is only necessary when your backs against the wall, they form the working Men's Benevolent Association, which is good because it doesn't have a man's name in the title.
That's yeah, it means that it at least stands a stronger chance of being equitable.
Yeah, it has some problems, but it forms an eighteen sixty eight United Minor and Laborer English and Irish, Welsh and German. It favored strikes and negotiation rather than midnight murder. The leaders mostly British or opposed to the McGuire's, or rather McGuire Ism. The rank and file had a ton
of McGuire's. The main founder was actually was actually Irish born himself, but he was a He was Anglo English, not in that his parents were from England, but he was a guy named John Signey and he had worked most of his life in England and spoke English as his first or maybe only language. And there's this enormous cultural gap between the Irish speaking Irish and the more Anglo Irish types. This guy goes on to die on from old miner's friend Black Lung, but before he does that,
they fight for the eight hour workday. They're able to unite thirty to sorry thirty thousand of the thirty five thousand workers in the region.
Wow. Yeah, that's incredible.
And it's particularly noteworthy because the skilled miners were paid for what they produced, not by the hour, so for them it was throwing in their lot with the unskilled laborers kind of like how actually the ups strike that like the ups drivers who are full time get paid all right, but their part time employees get paid like shit, and so the full time employees are willing to go on strike for their part time employees.
You know, I see, Okay, I do love.
I'd say, I know it's a very tired meme, but I just love when leftists get pissed off and invent the weekend.
Yeah, it's total ailling. Yeah. And they also supported what I think is the best thing that labor unions can do, which is they supported the idea of forming worker cooperatives. And they go around, they start setting up cooperative stores, and they start trying to cooperativize different minds. The railroad won't let them, but they start doing a lot. So they're cool in a lot of ways. They have two major problems. One, they try hard to cozy up to
the owners. They're like, we abhor all violence and believe that the owners and the workers have mutually aligned interests. And the owners are like, yeah, I mean, we'll fuck you up, and they use violence all the time and do not you know.
Yeah, nice. Try.
Then the other big problem, and you guess what the big problem is of a labor organization in nineteenth century America.
Mm Oh, there's so many no, okay. Yeah. I was like, is it racism or is it in fighting or is it both?
Yeah? Yeah, I guess you know. Okay, So this labor union brings together men and only men of different white ethnicities. There weren't any Chinese families for them to be directly racist against. But like all the reformist non revolutionary unions in the US at the time, they were explicitly racist against Chinese and black workers. It is likely that the mcguires weren't any better. But I don't know. I don't have any like statements from the mcguires one way or the other.
But I'm and so. So they're unionizing in areas where there are few, to know, non white families, essentially. But is it just because this is happening during the Civil War era that we have insight into what their racial views are. I mean, it's like, I'm definitely safe to infer, but I didn't know where that comes in.
So a lot of labor unions in the late nineteenth century in the US specifically complained about Chinese people taking the jobs they would go out of their way to do, all the exact same thing that was happening to white immigrants as soon as they could, they turned around into the non white immigrants.
Those fucking girl bosses.
Yeah, okay, and this is like again part of why. And there's some other unions that explicitly did work. Also there's black unions, but there's also some unions that were explicitly multiracial. But it's why, once again, I keep pointing to the industrial workers the world is the people who came on the scene, and one of their founders was
a black anarchist woman named Lucy Parsons. And they just like came on the scene and immediately like they were mostly out wet, well actually they were all over the place, but out west they like specifically worked with like like worked with Japanese folks who were also being by that period, Japanese folks were the the immigrant people who are being mistreated, right, Okay, So but that's not that's nice. This is this is five years earlier. Yeah, okay, So this is a.
Majority, if not I guess all men like white men who are poor and from a number of Okay, yep, well not surprising, I yeah, but it sucks, it certainly does. Yeah.
And yeah, so the union fights for the workers in September eighteen sixty nine, a fire burn down the timbers that hold open a mine and one hundred and ten Menners asphyxiated, and so the union throws a rally to try and be like, hey, we need some fucking safety here. Some people in the crowd claim that the Irish started the fire as like revenge against the Welsh for wanting to have ended an earlier strike or whatever the fuck right, and this is nonsense. It helped the bosses by getting
the workers to blame each other. But even the fucking governor of Pennsylvania was like, this wasn't caused by bad luck or the Irish. This was caused by the fucking operators and a lack of safety, okay, And so the workers fight. They get the Safety Act passed in eighteen seventy. But this has actually some positive effects. Still, American minds are three times more deadly than British mines at the
same time. In just this coal field, between eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy five, five hundred and fifty six workers died. This is after the Mine Safety Act passes. And the other thing that sucks about the Mind Safety Act it's always the double edged sword of trying to seek anything with reform is it. It created more discipline in the mines, and it actually centralized authority more into reading railroads hands I see.
Okay.
But the WBA, the worker in Men's Benevolent Association, they get pay raises, they get a minimum wage plus sliding scale based on the level of production and the value of coal. But all of their nonviolence and ass kissing the bosses didn't save them. They were painted as violent terrorists every time they did anything, and the government and owners started chipping away surely but steadily, against all their gains.
By eighteen seventy three, conditions for miners worsen, so some of them wires get up to their old tricks because the union isn't working and they're literally again starving, so they start setting fire at mines. They're overturning coal cars, they're beating up mines supervisors. So the owners turn to the detectives they have on higher the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons refer to the McGuire's as a quote noxious weed of
foreign birth. And check out this quote from them. Wherever in the United States iron is wrought from Maine to Georgia ocean to ocean wherever coal is used for fuel. There, the molly McGuire leaves his slimy trail and wields with deadly force his two powerful levers secrecy combination. I have no idea what combination means in this sense.
This is this is the and these are the drama queens we can't stand. Yeah, this is this is drama queen tendencies being weaponized for evil. Yeah, exactly, God losers. All right, well, I guess that is very Pinkerton behavior.
Sure, yeah, So they send an undercover, an Irish Catholic immigrant named James mcparlan. He joins the Ancient Order of Hiberians, and since he's literate, he finds his way into becoming their secretary. And basically all of the molly McGuire's were
in the Ancient Order of Hiberians. Later, there's this whole conspiracy case that trying to claim the Ancient Order of Iberians is the molly McGuire's, but it's almost certain that it's just that all the molly mcguires are in the Ancient Order of Tiberians because elsewhere around the country ancient Order of Iberian people ain't doing any of this shit, okay, and so he becomes their secretary, which, by the way,
is how Karl Marx took control the First International. While I'm talking shit, he became their secretary and then started writing everything. Okay. So mcparlin he stayed undercover for two years, then he disappeared, only to reappear later at trial. The other infiltrator from the Pnkersons infiltrated the union, but his reports were like, oh, actually this isn't Molly mcguiresh at all. They're all really tame. The union's actually just doing what it says it is, okay, but that wouldn't work for
the union. For the railroad, Sorry, it wouldn't work for the railroad. They wanted to destroy the union, so they just lied, even though they had an infiltrator saying hey, it's actually all peaceful here, and they were like, they're all terrorists and Irish bastards, ye, So they destroyed the union. The long strike lasted from January to June nineteenth, eighteen seventy five. This was during a really nasty recession. The bosses got ready for this. They formed a union of
their own, which happens all the fucking time. All the minor operators get together to figure out how to fuck over their workers collectively. And before they told everyone about some wage cuts, they stockpiled enough coal for the long strike. So during the strike, the boss is stoked anti Irish sentiment and got the Welsh to attack the Irish. This
had been going on for decades, right, the gang warfare eventually? Okay, so you ever seen like one of the I don't know if gangs in New York has this or not. There's this whole thing in nineteenth century New York City where you have like firefighter gangs who get into fist fights over who puts out a fire.
No, that sounds like a sexy dream, my mom would have.
Yeah, well that sexy dream is alive in Scugle County.
Nice, that's all let her know.
Yeah, that's my pitch for a Netflix show. And there's firefighter warfare happening. The Brits have a fire company, I think the Brits and Welsh, they like, live on one side of town and the Irish have a fire company on their own side of town. But when fires in the middle breakout, there's fierce fighting. Often this turns into gun battles and people are probably I don't know from which side, probably both people are setting fires in the middle, just so that they have an excuse to fight.
Wow.
Okay, yeah, that's crazy.
Okay.
So during the strike, the industry kept saying that union was all Molly McGuire's. The Molly mcguires are a tiny percentage of the union. Irish people are a reasonably high percentage. But again, I mean overall the union is the like not McGuire method. But by the end of the strike, as the strike is clearly not working, various folks start dropping out and starting to work right, starting to blackleg and more and more union workers of every ethnicity gave
up on strict nonviolence and non sabotage. So loaded coal cars were getting dumped. Mindes started getting burned, gangs beat up black legs. Coffin notices popped up with phrases like quote, notice is here given to you men, the first and last notice that you will get for no man will go down this slope, like go into the mine after tonight. If you do, you can bring your coffin along with you.
By the internal christ internal not they mean eternal whatever, but they wrote internal bring your coffin along with you by the internal christ mean what this notice says?
I believe them?
Yeah, no, they meant I believe that. Yeah. In the end, the railroad company won, the union was destroyed. The last holdouts were mostly the Irish speaking Irish from the strongholds of the Molly mcguires, but hundreds of British miners were still with them too, and a thousand workers marched from mind to mind trying to shut down work, but heavily armed police stopped them, at one point firing into the crowd.
The workers went back to work. Some were so weak from starvation that emergency rations had to be provided by bosses to get them back on their feet, which is just an example of how capitalism wants to feed you. It literally just wants to feed you enough so that you can go work in the mines.
Yeah, enough so that you won't I mean yeah, like you're saying before, hawking feels too harsh because you were effectively selling, yeah, all those amazing products and services.
Just enough so that you won't die, so you retain labor value.
Yeah.
Yeah. Within two years, wages dropped less than fifty percent. Before eighteen sixty nine, levels okay, workers had strict discipline now like they're treated how factory workers were being treated in the city, which is also not how people should be treated. Private police broke up all public demonstrations with violence, so the Maguires were like, all right, fuck it. We tried doing it the nice way. If you want violence, we were born into violence by hundreds of years of
resisting colonization. Over the course of three months, they killed six people. One Molly wrote a letter to the paper and said, quote, I am against shooting as much as you are, but the union has broke up and we have got nothing to defend ourselves with but our revolvers. If we don't use them, then we shall have to work for fifty cents a day, and went on to say that the other nationalities would do so but for cowardice and quote I have told you the mind of
the children of miss us Molly Maguire. All we want is a fair day's wages for a fair day's work, and that's what we can't get now by a long shot. He closed by saying they would make it quote hot as hell for the employers that they needed to. This is the only statement we have from the McGuire's.
Wow, okay, it's I mean, it's I don't know, I know everyone's mileage varies, but six casualties as opposed to the number of casualties that you know you stand to lose by not advocating for yourself, Like, yeah, I feel like those stories are not by you, mac Bibe. But it's just like you hear those stories so often, even on like podcasts I listened to. Sometimes they're like, well, obviously killing.
Is wrong, yeah, yeah, yeah, but but even then your your mileage may very yeah, but yeah, like bring, well they killed six people.
It's like, but what did they stand to lose? Yeah, sure, like yeah.
Yeah, no totally. And so that's one hundred and fifteen people just or whatever, or one hundred and ten people just aphixiated in a mine, you know.
And that's nothing to say of, you know, the losses they suffered from the draft being stacked against them intentionally and just all this other stuff like, yeah, six people, all right, Sorry.
So Pinkerton's fed information to vigilante gangs. That's the other thing, right, It's like we always talk about the violence that happens in like one side of this, you know. So Pinkertons fed information to vigilante gangs who went off on a moral crusade to stop the mcguires. The private police turned the other way or joined as they showed up and anyone like at these houses of people who suspected being Molly McGuire's and killed their families and grabbed a bunch
of irishmen. And in the end fifty people were indicted for the murder of sixteen people over thirteen years. So there are sixteen deaths being blamed on the Maguires. Their mind superintendents and foremen, public officials who are all various types of cops and marshals. They didn't just face the structural violence of poverty and discrimination. They faced private police, Welsh gangs, and federal troops. Right, all of the suspected ring leaders were tavern keepers. And this may or may
not have been real. We have no idea, and it might have been part of the Protestant anti drinking crusade because that was this whole thing going on at the time and the trials of farce. They were arrested by private cops. The only evidence was a Pinkerton infiltrator who had probably been working as an agent Provoctur. Later that guy went on explicitly to be an agent Provoctur and other labor struggles. No Irish Catholics are allowed to sit
on the jury. The prosecutor was a fucking railroad employee. For fuck's sake, it was. It gets called even by the history books that hate the mcguires, like most history books are not on the McGuire's side. Sure, even by them, it's called trial by corporation. Yeah, and some of them were probably guilty, some of them were probably innocent. Several turned snitch and became star witnesses. But one of them, this one guy, he turned snitch. He was like, I
didn't kill a guy. It was it was these other guys. They totally killed that guy. So his wife disavows him. Ooh she hell yeah. She testifies in court that he is the murderer and that he is turning on innocent men, and she refuses to support him in prison. This is the most real maguire in the whole fucking story, as far as.
Sir, where's her fucking bio kick that rocks?
Yeah, he snitched and he got double stitch. Yeah no, yeah, no job in jail, No, wife.
Yeah, yeah, sad for him.
He does, he gets set free. The five many testifies against We're not at least one of the snitches gets a thousand bucks from the prosecution to help them leave the country. So they're literally just being paid by the company.
And these sound I mean, they sound like show trials, Like were they like heavily covered and all that.
Yeah, the mcguires, I didn't talk about it enough. The mcguires are like big news everywhere about this haven of terrorists in Pennsylvania.
Basically okay, okay.
And and it's basically like all labor organizing is given a bad name by being compared to mcguires, which is very frustrating because I'm just like, well, I don't know whatever, Like I'm sure some of what they did was like not the best, but overall, I'm like, Molly McGuire's did nothing wrong.
But like you're like, but consider the context. Yeah, like drop in the bucket.
We should aspire to be the kind of people who go claws out when people try to destroy us, Like right, I just genuinely believe that.
Well, it's it's like with I mean, within this story, there's you know, examples of how the how the opposite approach was was tried.
And was not. I mean, I guess that in this case both were not extremely effective.
But it's you and I keep thinking about it because I've been thinking about this the story really even more than often. It impacted me and let me thinking about a lot of things because you have these two approaches and neither one is working, and it really depends on what we call working, because like, ooh, okay, I think that there is something to be said about just living your life in a way where you don't roll over
and die. And sometimes like that's all we can ask for is to be part of communities who support us as we choose to not roll over and die. And like again and again, they would try to not go claws out, they would try to join unions, they would try to do things the other way. I believe that man when he said that we don't like killing any more than anyone else, but all we have now is our revolvers.
You know, well, it's it's and it's like if they enjoyed killing, they probably would have killed more than six people.
Sixteen but yeah, yeah, sixteen, I mean but over the course of eleven years, Yeah.
Exactly, exactly like these.
It's not the behavior of a movement that relish isn't killing. Yeah, so I mean I completely believe that. And wow, Yeah, the molly mcguars did nothing wrong. They were doing except their their fucking best except, oh, I mean, except their opinions on race, which seemed to be almost universally.
Rot from what we do, which we don't know much of, but we can infer twenty men were hanged, at least one of whom has been proven posthumously humor whatever after his death was proven innocent.
Okay.
And this was meant to be this like glorious of restoration of law against mob rule, but it wasn't. One judge later said of it, quote, the Molly maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders defendants, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows, and so they go down in
history as evil terrorists of violent ethnic mafia. It wasn't until about fifty years ago that historians started really looking into their history as part of labor history. I wouldn't say they're perfect. I wouldn't say midnight retribution is how to get things done. But yeah, better to go down with your call.
So I mean.
Agree, heard, agree, And it's so interesting, Like I mean, you referenced this earlier in the episode of how this see this history, and this like labor history still seems inherently tied into stereotypes around Irish Americans.
Yeah, totally, Yeah, I feel like that's where so much of that comes from, like the but I mean some of those stereotypes that come back even to like the way that I've read a lot of history in the past year and a half working on this show, probably more than I had and the rest of my life put together right again, And I think a lot about how like the Irish like myth of like oh, like there's this sort of English myth of like the Irish as like crazy backwards people or whatever, and then there's
the sort of inversion of that myth, the like how the Irish safe civilization? You know, all of these sorts of things, And the thing that I keep running across is that it's like, well, actually, in a lot of ways the Irish culture was more interesting and chaotic and pagan and all of these things. And that's part of why it's cool. And I think that's part of why
people get really excited about it. I think the other reason people get excited about it is like white people really want to cling to some level of oppression so that they can feel like.
I mean, that's the other thing.
It's like that the resistance to because I know, I mean there's like people my own family that are, you know, like definitely guilty of this of like they're there's such a there's such a tendency to cling to like no, this it was this group of people, this specific group of people, and not just like a wider claiming of like no.
It's it's labor.
It's people that have a vested interest in labor movements and who are being actively oppressed. But no, one not not not spicy enough branding for for some Yeah, and and and thus evil persists.
And that's the only reason I think, so I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, but if people don't want evil to persist, this isn't an ad transition.
This is I was like, Magfie, you're already flying pretty close to the senter.
Let's get more ads in here now, now this is a this is a move to plugs.
Okay, wow, okay, well actually again this this I mean, obviously you know better than anyone that so much of this hasn't changed, but so many of so much of this reminds me of the of meatpacking plants that I researched in the history of unionizing and how in similar ways, like we were talking about earlier today, how some meat packing unions were interracial and they were very inclusive and very effective, and then there were others.
That weren't that way.
And also in not quite this I mean about thirty years after the McGuire's, I guess we're active. But yeah, there's just like so many parallels and what we were talking about today in like current meatpacking unions. If you want to learn more about that, you should read my.
Book Raw Dog, A Naked History of Hot Dogs. And you can get it wherever you get books, which.
Is hopefully an independent bookstore or you know whatever not fucked up way you acquire books. You could steal it, whatever you want to do. I just if you want to read it, I would love that, and you can, you know, bug me online.
I'm around except for TikTok too Loud.
Yeah, I can't wait to leave all of those things, but I haven't yet what I want to plug. I work with a publisher called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, and we're an anarchist collective publisher, and we're putting out an book that's available for pre order right now. It's called to the Ghosts Who Are Still Living. It's by Ami Winetrub, and it's it's not actually entirely dissimilar to what we're talking about. Well, it's completely disimilar in a
lot of other ways. It's about learning about ones like Jewish ancestry in Eastern Europe and kind of as an anti Zionist trans anarchist talking about what it means to be dispossessed from family history and what it means to reconnect to it. And it's a really good book. We only put out books that we're really excited about, and this is our third book that we're putting out. It's called to the Ghosts We're Still Living by Ami Winetrub,
and it's available at Tangled Olderness Dot. A work eventually be available at any more books are for sale, but right now it's pre order and if you pre order it, you get an eleven by seventeen colored poster that's silk screened. That's super cool. That's what I got.
That.
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