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Report of the case of the Commonwealth vs. John Kehoe et al. : members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, commonly known as "Molly Maguires," indicted in the Court of Quarter Sessions of the Peace, for Schuylkill County, Penna., for an aggravated assault and battery with intent to kill Wm. M. Thomas, with the testimony and arguments of counsel in full.
Author
Pennsylvania. Court of Quarter Sessions (Schuylkill County). West, R. A. Kehoe, John, -- 1837-1878.
Date Added
11 January 2014
Publish Date
1876
Publisher
Pottsville [Pa.] : Miners' Journal Book and Job Rooms.
Source
ACHS Historic Papers Lloyd Family.
Topic
Kehoe, John, > 1837-1878 > Trials, litigation, etc. Coal miners > Pennsylvania. Molly Maguires (Organization). Trials.
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Disclaimers
Disclaimer of Liability Disclaimer of Endorsement
OCR
177
mine your verdict, which, as I said before, will not only convict the prisoners
of the offence with which they are charged, but in the estimation of the people
of this county, and of the whole countr » Will convict this society so that it
will never hereafter lift its head to look man in the face, and above all, that
no member will hereafter lift his hand to strike the blow that has so-often
carried terror to the community, which now looks to us as its last refuge,
This society was organized and controlled in this region by men of more
than common ability—for the men sitting around this table are not the com-
monest men, so far as natural ability is concerned—organized by shrewd, bold,
cunning, unscrupulous men for a purpose which to us to-day is as manifest as
the purpose of any organization that was ever chartered, or any society that
ever sprang into existence. What was that purpose? It was simply the
same purpose which the same society in Ireland for so many years pursued
with success. The purpose was to get the benefit of and use and enjoy the
property of others without owning it, and without paying for it. The purpose
was to make the business of mining coal in this county a terror and a fear ;
to secure for the leading men in this society profitable positions, and the con-
trol of large operations at every colliery. The purpose was to levy blackmail
upon every man engaged in industrial pursuits in this county, so that the
owners, under the terror which this organization had acquired, would gladly
purchase peace and immunity, by having one or two, or more of these men in
prominent positions in every colliery, and employ as many of their confed-
erates, members of this organization, as possible, to protect. their property
from the villainy of their own Order.
What would this have led to? .It is but little over a hundred years since
such a custom existed in Scotland. The Lowland farmers living in the neigh-
borhood of the Highlands paid money as blackmail in order that the Tlighland
chief to whom it was paid, would not only restrain his own followers from
driving away the cattle of his client, but would stand by him as his protector
for the recovery of any property which might be taken from him by the fol-
lowers of any neighboring chief, and when it was once known in that country,
that a Lowland farmer had paid blackmail to a Highland chief, that moment
his person was safe, and from that moment his property was secure. So it
would have been in this county. No industrial pursuit could have been car-
ried on except by those who employed the services of Jack Kehoe, or Christo-
pher Donnelly, or Mike O’Brien, or some of these men, either by giving them
a good job or paying them money—and_ to what condition would this county
have been driven, and what would have been the result? Just so surely as
we stand here to-day, would this county, in the course of a few years. have
been turned into the condition of the middle and lower counties of Ireland
thirty years ago. Every man of character and reputation and integrity would
have been driven into other regions, and this great theatre of industry, this
boundless deposit of mineral wealth with which God has blessed the region in
which you live, would have been, for aught I can sec, transformed into a
desert. With these conspirators in the possession of everything that was of
value, they would have driven out all honest industry, shooting down, either
? ‘¥
in the darkness of the night or in the broad daylight, as they became bolder,
any man who dared to oppose the dictates of their society or sct himself up in
the opposition to their decrees. Can you doubt this? Can you believe, if a
state of society such as has been shown to you here, upon this Witness-stand,
had continued for one or two years longer, that this county would not haye
been the pest-house and the lazar-house of the United States, controlled and
ruled by a class of men to whom human life was no more sacred than the life
of the worm they trod beneath their heel? What would have been your con-
dition, and that of all of us, but for the check which has been received from
the officers of the law who have been engaged in the punishment and detec-
tion of crime. ‘This county would have been a refuge for every outlaw in the
United States, and in the world. It would have been an Alsatia in which
every man who committed crime was safe, the moment he crossed its bounda-
ries. This organization now numbering in this county five or six hundred,
would have swelled its numbers to tens and twenties of thousands 3nd would
lave become so strong that it would have openly defied the law, and then only