The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 9, 1927, Page 7

3 ~The Molly Maguires CERTAIN labor fakir by the name of George G. Korson raises the question in the “United Mine Workers’ Journal” of March 15, 1927, about the activities of the Mollie Maguires—an active secret organization of the miners in the seventies of the last century. There can be no doubt that this attack upon the Molly Maguires in the official or- gan of the United Mine Workers has the approval of Mr. John Lewis and other misleaders of the min- ers. ‘ It is a dastardly attempt to besmirch the name of those brave fighters in the early days of the American labor movement, who sacrificed their lives in order'to make it easier for the future generations of the working class to lighten their burden of toil and suffering. Mr. Korson has the audacity to represent the Mollie Maguires in the eyes of the miners as an organization of ordinary criminals and murderers, Here is what he says: “‘Ehey (the Mollie Maguires) continued their reign of terror with ever-increasing boldness un- til about 1876 when the shadows of the gallows or of prison finally fell across their conscience and crushed them. “.. . Colliery buildings were set to the torch; attempts were made to blow up bridges and to dynamite railroad trains; while men were nitir- dered often in broad daylight, the criminals flee- ing to the mountains which lay conveniently at hand. The taking of a man’s life became a trivial an act as beating had been aarlier. They found themselves riding the crest of a mighty wave of blood and the question began to be ,asked, could they stop of. their own violition? “ . . It became plain, then, that if the lawless band was to be destroyed, the inner circle would have to be penetrated. With this thought in mind, Frank B. Gowen, president of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company, hired Allan Pink- erton, head of the National Detective Agency in 1873.” And now Mr. Korsen makes accusation against the miners’ organization of the seventies taking as a basis the report of the spies and murderers of the Pinkerton’s National Agency. He takes their word for gold and brands the predecessors of the United Mine Workers’ of America as criminals! Only the meanest scoundrel can fall so low in his hate against those who dared to raise their hand against the coal barons. The Mollie Maguires were not criminals neither Enfilade Fire T was late November. The icy sheets of water which had poured down upon the area for the past three days had ceased during the night. As the grayness of breaking day showed itself, the soaked earth, littered with the debris of battle, gave off the odor of a sodden garbage dump. It had rained with the bleak monotony that only northern France knows. Five men stood in the bay ofa trench. For fourteen days they had not been out of their clothes. Saturated and numb with cold, they were im- mersed in that stupor which men fall into through extreme misery. They were one lance-corporal and four privates. . The portion of the trench which they held was situated so that they were exposed to enfilade fire; the terror of the infantryman, At any moment a sniper could, if he so minded, shoot, from his con- cealed position in the hollow of a tree half a mile distant, down the length of the trench. This unfortunate circumstance compelled them to move about the trench almost doubled over in two— much as a man does who is suffering from abdom- inal pains. Sometimes to get relief from this agon- izing attitude, they crawled like infants on all fours. It was not that death in the abstract {rght- ened them, not the ceasing-to-be, the life itself, but rather to die here, like a be torn to pieces, to linger i to seck pleasant thing. Yet at the crack of the distant rifle, or the sweep of a burst of machine-gun fire, each body bent lower in silent fear. They were clerks and laborers in uniform, drag- ged unwillingly from the small comforts of city life into the glaring indecency of violent death. The possibility of a sudden and unsightly déath pro- duced, at first, a horror, held in abeyance by the check-rain of military discipline. In the face of repeated rs, however, the showing of fear became . So they crawled about, cach man * cowering in fright and dismay. After “stand down” the daily rations were brought by a carrier who crawled on his belly to them, Now a sniper is one who sits in a concealed ele- vated position with a high-powered rifle with tele- scopic sights and shoots with unerring accuracy at the slightest movement of enemy life. Looking along his sights, his victims are brought quite close to in their hearts nor in their activities. The aim of their organization was not a criminal one, as far as the labor movement is concerned. Of course, in the eyes of the coal barons the Mollie Maguires were criminals just as today the brave fighters of West Virginia are branded as criminals and are being persecuted with sword and fire, The Mollie Maguires sprang up as a secret organ- ization and attained great prominence in the midst of the most inhuman conditions in the coal fields of the country. The anthracite coal miners led a bit- ter strike in 1874-1875 which lasted for seven months and the workers were crushed into submissien. The once militant and powerful Workingmen’s Associa- tion was. entirely disrupted. Wages were reduced and the miners found themselves in a desperate sit- uation. There could be no talk about a lewal organ- ixation of the workers. A secret action was the only thing possible. Therefore. the miners united their forces under the banner—the Mollie Maguires, a secret organization. For the Irish miners of those days a secret organization was not a new experi- ence—in the old country they, or at least some of them, had belonged to the Ancient Order of Hibern- ians which had been formed to fight the landlords. The organization of Millie Maguires developed very rapidly and reached every centre of the coal indus- try. It is said that once the Mollie Maguires had nobout 6,000 local units. The coal barons immediately saw the danger in this new movement. Now they were determined more than ever to crush any organized resistance on the part of the miners, As usual, in such cases, they sent spies and provocateurs from the Pinkerton’s Agency into the Mollie Maguires to follow the ac- tivities of the workers and to commit crimes in their name in order to hunt them down later as eriminals. These provocateurs played their role very cleverly and successfully, and the murders in the coal fields became so numerous that by 1873 the time was ripe for striking a final blow at the miners’ organiza- tion. The bourgeois newspapers, the politicians, the priests and the ministers of the church created the opinion in the country that the Mollie Maguires was an organization established for criminal purposes and composed of criminals only. At the same time the spies knew by heart all the connections of the secret organization and its most active members and officials. ‘The way was prepared for the final at- tack. Of course, it is possible that these provocateurs may have ‘succeeded in inducing some members of the Woeganization to commit crimes, but nothing him visually. Slowly he elevates his weapon, looks into the glass, and sees his target as though he wete a few fect away. Sometimes it is a mud stained face—or else a “tin hat’—-or sometimes even @ laughing boyish face not yet deadened by the an- guish of war. A pull of the trigger and the laugh straightens itself in death. To be compelled to he a sniper is a terrible and lonely fate. War is 4 grecnrious interprise. Men are mangled in masses and battered in battalions. To be singled out te be an individual killer is to be unusual—a thing no soldier desires. A captured sniper is as good as It was now dawn and as soon as the day’s rations were divided, the men would go to sleep, leaving one sentry on guard duty. It was quiet, deathly quiet, as is usual in the daytime when the line is being merely “held.” ‘ The lance-corporal spread a rubber sheet along the firing step. He bent low and emptied the small sack of food into the sheet; a piece of yellow cheese, two large onions, some tea and sugar and a hunk of grayish war bread. With hungry, grimy fingers he deftly cut and sliced and divided the food. His men looked on with greedy, alert eyeS to see if justice was being done. As the diving process went on, the corporal crouched low and looked nervously A MUSIC FROM THE EAST There is a music pouring from the cast A musie wilder far than of a beast. A music sweeter far than of a bird, lt is a music that I never heard Until a hundred million slaves one night Stood up and sank the darkness into light. And since that night one chorus holds the stage. A chorus that will sing 2 trembling age Into creation and from hour to hour Will spread itself with universal power. Until that chorus is the world’s entire. Until the world itself is set on fire With the magic madngss of a mighty tune That sings the swelling song of the Commune? By ZINC —-3s— By A, BIMBA could be farther from the truth than the accusation that the aim of the organization was crimina! and terroristic. In the fall of 1875 the government made a general attack upon the Molly Maguires; many of the offi- cials and members of the order were arrested and tried as criminals. Spies, provocateurs and traitors were the only witnesses against the accused. The capitalist court would pay no attention to the de- fense, everything was set in advance to get rid of the militant miners. The result was thet 14 were committed to prison terms varying from 2 to 7 years and 10 were condemned to death and executed. “They all protested their innocence and all died game,” wrote Eugene Debs in tne “Appeal to Rea- son,” Novy. 23, 1907. “Not one of them hetrayed the slightest evidence of fear or weakening. “Not one of them was a murdercr at heart. All were ignorant, rough and uncouth, born of pov- erty and buffeted by the merciless tides of fate and chance. “To resist the wrongs of which they and their fellow workers were victims, according to their own crude notions, was the prime object of the organization of the Mollie Maguires. Nothing could have been farther from their intention than murder of crime. It is true that their methods were drastic, but it must be rethembered that their lot was hard and brutalizing; that they were the neglected children of poverty, the products of wretched environment. . . “June 21, 1877, the curtain fell upon the last mournful act in this tragedy of toil. The execu- tioner did his bidding and the gallows-tree claimed its victims. “On the day history turned harlot and the fair - face of truth was covered wiih the hideous mask of falschood. “The men who perished upon the scaffold as felons were labor leaders, the first martyrs to the class struggle in the United States.” When the working class gains control of the power in the United States and the workers write the his- tory of this country with their own hands, the or- ganization of the Mollie Maguires will be vindicated of the crimes that the bourgeoisie attached to it. A monument will be erected to the executed leaders who fell in the class struggle as martyrs, while those who condemned and executed them. as well as those who today attempt to besmirch their name, will be long forgetten. By CHARLES Y. HARRISON over his shoulder from time to time, in the direction of the concealed sniper in the distant woods, One man straightened up for a moment to get a better view of the cutting up. The corporal barked at him: “Keep yer head down or yuh won't live t’eat yer chow.” The bread, cheese and onions were now divided imto five equal parts. He looked at the five piles of food with a critical eye and if one piece looked larger than another, he righteously snipped a bit off. Each man took his share and stuffed it into his haversack. The rubber sheet was cleared now for the division of the sugar. Precious sugar, to sweeten the strong, hot tea which came wp at midnight, tea that was so strong and bitter it would curl one’s tongue. The brown sugar was dumped in a pile into the center of the sheet. The men watched the corporal in dead silence. The corroded metal spoon for dish- ing out sugar and such things stuck in the parapet between two sandbags. Glad to straighten himseif for a moment, the corporal stood up to reach for it. From nervous habit he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the woods. In that instant his head jerked back viciously from the impact of the bullet. He sagged te the bottom of the muddy, sloppy trench, his neck twisted at a foolish impossible angle. Between his eyes was a small neat hole. At the crack of the sniper’s rifle, the four privates ducked lower in the trench and looked with dull amazement as the corporal feel clumsily into their midst. They looked without resentment in the direction of the woods, animated only by the Four days later the corporal’s word that her son “was killed in :iction in defense of his country.” ~