Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kevin Kenny convincingly revises previous accounts of the Molly Maguires that viewed them as just Irish miners who terrorized the anthracite coal region of eastern Pennsylvania in the 1860s and 1870s. Kenny argues that the Molly Maguire violence was a form of "retributive justice" common in rural Ireland between 1760 and 1850 that "was adapted in Pennsylvania to the conditions of industrial exploitation" (p. 8) that many Irish miners faced. Although his evidence suggests the Molly Maguries were conspiratorial, he claims that mine owners and other contemporaries greatly exaggerated the conspiracy to discredit enemies which actually had no ties to the Mollies. These included Irish miners, Irish organizations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), and the powerful Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA).

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Kenny's evidence shows that many miners came to Pennsylvania from exactly those parts of north-central and northwestern Ireland where secret agrarian societies like the Whiteboys and the Molly Maguires had retaliated against disruptive landholding practices earlier in the nineteenth century. (The Molly Maguires apparently derived their name from the practice, perhaps borrowed from mummery, of disguising themselves as women.) They eked out meager lives as unskilled miners in Schuykill County and fumed because the better jobs went to their Scotch, German, English, and Welsh neighbors. The violence attributed to Molly Maguires erupted during the Civil War. The Mollies were blamed for two assassinations, attacks against draft officials and mine owners, and even robbery and brawling. "By the end of the war," Kenny writes, "the term Molly Maguires was being used in the lower anthracite region to describe any and all forms of violence and disorder involving Irish mine workers" (p. 85).

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