Che “Rise of o Labor Movement

Abstract

Abstract with the return of thousands of demobilized soldiers, a continuing influx of immigrants, and the decline of coal prices and wages after the wartime boom, the immediate aftermath of the Civil War was a period of pronounced social instability in the anthracite region. Four assassinations and numerous beatings, assaults, and robberies were attributed to the Molly Maguires between 1865 and 1868. The extent to which these activities were connected to an organized conspiracy can never be known for certain, though most contemporaries had no hesitation in blaming the Molly Maguires for every incident. Like the events in Audenried and Cass Township during the early 1860s, the Molly Maguire activities in the period 1865-68 make sense only in terms of the general pattern of labor activism and social disorder that marked the history of the anthracite region in the turbulent decade of the Civil War. Much of the violence involved the settling of issues carried over from the war years; most of the rest took the form of robberies and beatings, as order and authority came close to a total collapse in Schuylkill County. But the violence subsided after 1868 for two reasons: the introduction of a new police and judicial system, and the rise of a well-organized, industrywide labor union. There were only two assassinations between October 1868 and October 1874, when the second wave of Molly Maguire violence began.