Heroism Of The Molly Maguires

The workforce constituted mainly of immigrants. Well-connected railway networks allowed the United Mine workers of America to bring immigrants to Colorado. It surely proved to be cost-effective for the company. The migrant workers were paid too poorly for them to be able to sustain their families. Miners were forced to work 10-12 hours a day. “Mine work seemed to turn boys into drones, women into men, and manly laborers into an inferior class of beings.”The company employed women and children in arduous working conditions with inadequate pay, compromising their health and well being. This in turn reduced the wages of the miners as they became easily replaceable.

The younger boys who worked at the mines were called breaker boys. They didn’t work in the mine itself, but sat on benches and picked out the bits of rock from the coal. “These children worked in the picking room, a crowded, high-ceilinged vault, crisscrossed with rickety catwalks and crooked stairs, lit only by a wall of grime-choked windows” (Levine, Marvin J. "Mines, Mills, and Canneries." Children for Hire: The Perils of Child Labor in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 21. Print.) Within factories, small children had to work fast at the machines, being very careful unless an unfortunate body part happens to get caught in the high-powered, dangerous machinery. For several long hours in rooms without fresh air, ventilation, and sometimes, no windows, the working conditions that the children suffered through were appalling. There are children who work in hazardous industries, risking accident and injury; there are others working in conditions that take a slower but definite toll on the children’s health (Basu, Kaushik, and Pham Hoang Van. "The Economics of Child Labor" The Economics of Child Labor (1998): 412-27. Print.).

Conditions of factories were not safe for anyone, let alone a small child. Due to these conditions many children died before their prime. Many children “began work at age 5, and generally died before they were 25” (www.victorianweb.org), America was beginning to lose an entire generation due to these working conditions that so many had to endure. Children were hired at an alarming rate. “In 1870, the first time census reported child workers, there were 750,000 workers in the United States age 15 and under, not including those who worked on family farms or in other family businesses” (“Child Labor in America”), these numbers were not something that was looked over, it astonished many. “A cotton manufactory of 5 or 6000 spindles will employ those 200 children” (Bremner 232). The workforce would continuously grow, hiring more and more children each day. Factories were good for using children as a means of their productivity. “Textile factories, for the most part […] were in the forefront of this industrial revolution, and children formed an essential component of the new industrial workforce” (Bremner 232). Many times without these children working some of these factories would not have survived through the revolution.

Even if it meant, working for low wages in a crowded or an unsafe environment. “From this hour, a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried me from early until late.” The owners, Blanck and Harris would often walk through their factory, looking the other way while young teenagers worked to improve their lives. This was the first indication the owners were guilty; the owners were present with their families just a few hours before the tragic fire started. They could see factory workers worked long hours with little or no breaks. They often worked without food or were afraid to stop to eat because of the demands from their boss. The pressure was real and it came from the owners and the people they hired to run the factory. One factory employee gave this description…“The bosses in the shops are hardly what you would call educated men, and the girls to them are part of the machines they are running. They yell at the girls and they "call them down" even worse than I imagine the Negro slaves were in the South.” (Life in the Shop, by Clara Lemlich)

Lowell mill girls had a very tight schedule and did a lot of work too. They would wake up at around 4:30 and then they would have 15 minutes or so to eat there breakfast then go to work. Most of the girls that worked there would work 14 or more hours unless they went to school in the morning. “ Lowell mill girls worked 70 or more hours a week in hot and difficult workplace conditions,”( Lowell.com ). In 1836 the Lowell mill decided that they were going to lower the mill girl’s payment by 15% and increased the rent for the boarding houses too. The mill girls were outraged and they decided that they were going to go on strike,

Not only were the workers not treated well, the building was also very unsanitary and unsafe. They worked on top of each other in cramped spaces where there were just lines and lines of sewing machines. The exit doors were locked in order to stop the workers from leaving to go to the bathroom. Only the foreman had the keys to unlock the doors.There were four elevators that had access to the factory floors but only one of them were in working condition. In order to get to the working elevator, the workers had to go down a long narrow hallway. This elevator was only able to hold 12 people at a time. Factory floors had no sprinkler system and the entire building only had one fire escape that was not big enough for all of the people in

     There are many ideas about how the “Molly Maguires” got their name. One of the most popular is that Molly was a poor widow, who was evicted from her home after the landlord’s agent apparently, “severely abused her and her daughter”. The group adopted this name in homage to the Molly and her bravery. Another theory is that Molly’s home was used as the first

The 1920s were a time of social injustices, primarily revolving around racial discrimination. With the revival of the Ku Klux Klan only a few short years before, African Americans lived in fear of lynching and other forms of racism during this period. This form of social injustice was widespread and known by all in the United States, but there was another issue during this time that was not as well known. The West Virginia mine wars had begun in 1920 due to the injustices that the miners had faced for decades. Miniscule wages and dangerous work conditions were only a few of the hardships that the miners had to face. The author of the book Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher, was able to capture these hardships perfectly in her poetry to help shine light on the terrible treatment and the resulting consequences that the miners and their families received during this time. Many of her poems, such as, “Dear Diary,” “Pearlie Tells What Happened at School,” and “Walter and His Mama Talk about Angels,” show the negative impact that growing up during this period of violence and injustice had had on the miners’ children.

The decades between 1860 and 1880, a small Irish gang emerged in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Due to the prejudice and maltreatment of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants in the United States, the Irish forced into working in horrible conditions for such little pay and barely any security or fair compensation when they were injured. The legacy the Mollies left behind was not only the gory truth about what happens when prejudices get in the way, but their battles were only the beginning in creating unions and labor strikes. The Molly Maguires serve as they martyr for the battered and abused workforce of the 19th century.

In the coalmine, it was rare to come across a boy that was in decent shape. “From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men” (Document A). From this, many kids had hunches at the age of 12. For a 12 year old boy, a workday included hard work “for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day” (Document A). Not only that, but the job was very dangerous. Cuts and bruises from the col happen all the time and cleanliness is never thought about. Infections take place, and even worse, often “a boy is mangled

According to the document, the Lowell girls lacked “the means of health and comfort” and “bathing-rooms fitted in the basement of each mill” (Document E). Those were just two of the many complaints about what should and need to have been fixed about the Mills. There were also complaints of the lack of proper house ventilation and the fact that the girls barely got any time for their breakfast and lunch breaks and their passing times. None of the workers at the Lowell Mills had adequate working conditions and were not treated very fair for the work they were doing for the

One problem in the 1900s was child labor, which was not an uncommon sight in the factories. The children who worked at these factories would be exposed to harsh chemicals and could possibly lose and arm or limb to the machineries. Children as young as 16 years old would work in those unsafe, overcrowded factories instead of going to school to receive an education. To resolve the child labor issue, many states begun passing laws that made child labor illegal. As shown in the illustration in document 7, the state of Georgia passed the Georgia Child Labor laws, which took children out of Georgia Factories and into schools for education (document 7). Also shown in document 2, in

That being said, the worker's problems did not end once they found steady employment. Employers were harsh and unforgiving in how they treated their employees. For example, if an employee was one minute late they were penalized an hours pay. If they were 20 minutes late they forfeited their employment. Worse yet, if they were injured or hurt on the job the company takes no responsibility and the worker is forced to recuperate on their own time without pay

This book is full of stories of the men who descend into the mines, and their women and children who wait for them to come out safe at the end of each shift are the subject of a, poet Diane Gilliam Fisher’s collection, Kettle Bottom. Set in 1920–21, a period of violent and brutal act against miners known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, the topic of the poems in Kettle Bottom. The stories includes the miners, their children, and most importantly their wives who suffered the consequences of their husband’s deeds. In Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher probes the emotional truth of coal camp history, and then extracts it, holds its darkness in the light of her brilliant poetic lines. Racism, Blood sheds, economic injustice, inhumane way to treat

That being said, the worker's problems did not end once they found steady employment. Employers were harsh and unforgiving in how they treated their employees. For example, if an employee was one minute late they were penalized an hours pay. If they were 20 minutes late they forfeited their employment. Worse yet, if they were injured or hurt on the job the company takes no responsibility and the worker is forced to recuperate on their own time without pay (i.e.; when Jurgis sprained his ankle and had to recuperate at home for 3 months). The final insult to the workers was that even if they were always on time, worked hard and maintained their health they could lose their job due to the