Molly Maguires In The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was a time in America between the 1870s to 1900s in which there was great improvements for becoming a global industry. During this time period, there was many union strikes because of the unfair working conditions that the immigrants were facing. The United States was trying to move forward and become an international market, but my doing so they stopped regulating safety and cleanliness for the workers. One of the famous organizations that sought to improve better working conditions were “The Molly Maguires.” The Molly Maguires was not a successful labor union, but they did inspire other labor unions to form and lead to fight against the big industrial companies to get better working conditions.

Molly Maguires was a real person. She was Irish widow, in
Molly Maguires often used murder, arson, kidnapping, and other crimes to fight to try to get better working conditions and to protest the mine owners’ rejection for them to unionize. Mine owners, then would respond by killing anyone, that they thought, was taking part in the union. The Mollies were very violent because they hoped it would strike the attention that they wanted things to change. For example, The Long Strike of 1875. It was very violent, a lot of killings, and from there came the “Pennsylvania Cossacks.” These men were police specifically asked to kill any of the violent strikes. Nothing was being done, it was just back and forth killings between the mine owner’s and the union workers. The workers did not have enough strength and money to go up against the major industrial companies, even though they tried. The Molly Maguires, did do one thing right. They encouraged new labor unions to form. The Mollies lead the path for all labor unions to follow, even though they were not successful, they opened the doors for someone to step