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A recent acquisition by the Mauch Chunk Museum of a first edition of the 1877 book “The Molly Maguires and The Detectives” by Allan Pinkerton—autographed by James McParlin, renews the question of, were the Molly Maquires a band of unlawful insurgents or a myth created to allow a greedy railroad boss to take over independent mines and put an end to a developing labor movement.
The well-illustrated 551-page early detective novel tells the story of three men: Franklin B, Gowen – President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company and the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, Allan Pinkerton – the head of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, and James McParlin – the undercover detective that sent the “Mollies” to the gallows. The story tells how McParlin infiltrated the Mollies, documented their actions and brought them to justice.
The novel, the sixth of eighteen authored by Pinkerton, has on its original jacket the logo of the Pinkerton Agency—a gilded stylized owl’s eye underscored with the words, “We Never Sleep.” Pinkerton started America’s first private detective agency. The firm’s logo gave birth to the description of detectives as “Private Eyes.”
Allan Pinkerton
Although Pinkerton is credited as the author of the series, it is unlikely that he personally wrote any of the text. In an 1876 letter to his son, Robert, Allan Pinkerton wrote that there were “seven writers working on my stories.” Pinkerton described his authoring method as “sketching the outlines of his investigations” then turning them over to writers to expand the stories, create dialogue and physical and geographic descriptions.
According to the Dimmick Memorial Library, Allan Pinkerton’s novels are categorized as fiction. The eloquent style of Victorian prose used in the novel stands in sharp contrast to Allan Pinkerton’s minimal formal education—leaving elementary school at the age of eight years old.
Allan J. Pinkerton was born in 1819 in a poor section of Glasgow, Scotland. Allan’s father, a policeman, died when he was eight. Legend has it that he died from wounds received during an insurgent uprising, but historians think that this may be part of the Pinkerton myth.
Allan Pinkerton later joined the insurgency, and fearing for his life, emigrated to America to work as a cooper outside of Chicago. As the story goes, while cutting wood for barrel staves on a nearby island, Pinkerton chanced upon an operation to produce counterfeit dimes. Following that success, Pinkerton began assisting local police on other counterfeit investigations.
He moved to Chicago to help the Treasury Department pursue counterfeiters. Realizing that no agency existed to pursue criminals across state lines, Pinkerton formed a private detective agency In 1855.
Pinkerton convinced Abraham Lincoln of an assassination plot planned for his inauguration. Although it was never verified that such a plot existed, he became a confident of Lincoln and was asked to organize the Secret Service. Pinkerton’s agency was hired to perform many of the same duties that now belong to the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security.
The Molly Maguires
Pinkerton’s novel begins as follows, “Early in the month of October, 1873, I was in Philadelphia, and one day received a note from Mr. F. B. Gowen, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company … saying that he desired to see me at his place of business.”
This is at odds with research by historian Kevin Kenny who wrote, “In October 1873, a superintendent of Allan Pinkerton's National Detective Agency reported to Franklin Gowen …"the rumored existence … of an organization known as the 'Molly Maguires...”
At the time, Gowen was trying to both take over the lands of the independent coal operator and break the back of a developing union movement. Allen Pinkerton had offered Gowen a veritable “weapons of mass destruction” scenario that would allow him to pit the unionists against the independent coal operators and destroy both.
After all, the Mollies were supposedly a secret organization whose existence could neither be proved or disproved. And by labeling the Mollies as insurgents, Gowen and the Pinkertons could create their own police force and criminal proceedings to make it all come together.
Pinkerton selected James McParlan to work undercover and penetrate the secret society. He told people that he had an assignment outside the country, changed his name to James McKenna and dressed as a coal miner.
Over the following three years, he put together a case that ultimately lead to the hangings of twenty men accused of Molly activities.
Gowen Loads the Dice
Frank Gowen left his job as an unsuccessful prosecutor for Schuylkill County to help the Reading Railroad in a legal battle with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He won the case and was rewarded with the presidency of the Reading Railroad.
Over the next two years, the Reading purchased 100,000 acres of coal lands—often with money that they didn’t have. Some independent operators wouldn’t sell and the miners were beginning to organize.
After three years of investigation, Gowen had the supposed Mollies arrested and put on trail using James McKenna/McParlan as the principal witness.
Gowen took a leave from his position of President of the Reading to become the prosecuting attorney at the trail of the Mollies. He selected the judge, prevented any Irish Catholics from being on the jury and stacked the jury with Protestant German immigrants who spoke little English.
John (Black Jack) Kehoe, a saloon owner and former miner was identified as the “king of the Mollies” and accused or a murder that had happened twelve years earlier. Kehoe and nineteen other were executed. Kehoe received a posthumous pardon from Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp in 1979. Shapp wrote: We can be proud of the men known as the Molly Maguires, because they defiantly faced allegations which attempted to make trade unionism a criminal conspiracy."
In his 1994 book, “The Hard Coal Docket,” Carbon County Judge John P. Lavelle noted "Any objective study of the . . . entire record of these cases must conclude that they [the Molly Maguires] . . . did not have fair and impartial juries. They were, therefore, denied one of the fundamental rights that William Penn guaranteed to all of Pennsylvania's citizens."
Epilog
As a result of the Molly episode, the union movement was broken for twenty years. Many of the murder victims had worked for independent mines that were taken over by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
In 1883 Gowen left the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and returned to his private law practice. On 13th December, 1889, he locked himself in his hotel room and shot himself in the head.
McParlan became manager of the Pinkerton Western Division. In 1906, he was called to investigate the murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Steuneuberg. After arresting the assassin, McParlin coaxed him into a confession claiming that local union leaders were co-conspirators.
The union leaders were cleared of all wrongdoing. McParlan was condemned for coaxing the false confession.
Allen Pinkerton continued to grow his business, glorifying his successes in dime store novels while, failing to protect Lincoln from assassination, and building a private army supported by the railroads to put down the fledgling union movement.
Pinkerton’s pursuit of Jesse James and Butch Cassidy continued to bring publicity to his agency. He died in 1884 and his agency was taken over by his sons. In 1999, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became part of Securitas, a $6 billion Swedish security company with over 200,000 employees. Securitas acquired many prominent security companies including Burns and Wells Fargo.
Whether the Molly Macquire insurgency existed or was the product of a greedy anti-labor industrial tycoon and a creative detective, may never be known with certainty. What we do know is that the Molly trials were tainted and Pinkerton’s Molly novel was fictionalized. If you get a chance to read the book, remember that.
The Mauch Chunk Museum & Cultural Center is at 41 W. Broadway in Jim Thorpe, 570-325-9190.
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