Project Gutenberg 2025-08-06 Public domain in the USA. 354 Pinkerton, Allan 1819 1884 The Molly Maguires and the detectives The Mollie Maguires and the detectives $aNew York :$bG.W. Carleton, $c1877. Peter Becker, KD Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) "The Molly Maguires and the detectives" by Allan Pinkerton is a nonfiction investigative account written in the late 19th century. It chronicles Pinkerton’s covert campaign against the secretive Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region, undertaken at the request of railroad executive Franklin B. Gowen, and follows undercover operative James McParlan (alias James McKenna) as he works to infiltrate the organization amid labor strife, violence, and political intrigue. The opening of the book sets Pinkerton’s pledge to tell a factual, unvarnished story of the coal fields and a violent secret society that, he argues, has evaded justice. Gowen solicits Pinkerton to penetrate the Mollies, whose alibis, intimidation, and sway over local politics have thwarted prosecutions, and Pinkerton accepts with strict conditions of secrecy and a plan to embed an Irish Catholic operative. Pinkerton then selects James McParlan, sketches his background and disguise, and launches him under the alias “James McKenna.” McKenna begins by tramping through towns like Port Clinton, Schuylkillhaven, Tremont, Tower City, and Minersville, posing as a job-seeking laborer while building contacts: he’s refused lodging by a drunken landlord, sheltered by an Irish family (with a comic drunk blocking a door), and quietly probes opinions by discussing scathing newspaper pieces on the Mollies with men like the switchman Fitzgibbons. He cultivates leads through saloon talk (including a former member’s hints that Mahanoy City is fertile ground), descends into a working mine to learn the setting, endures a snowbound stage ride and shabby lodging, and finally settles into a modest boarding house, using evenings in bars and card rooms to deepen his cover and map the society’s haunts. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/mollymaguiresdet00pink 20230212005218pinkerton 1877 us Reading ease score: 65.5 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. en Secret societies Molly Maguires (Organization) Anthracite Coal Strike, Pa., 1875 Coal miners -- Pennsylvania Irish -- Pennsylvania HV Text Category: History - American Category: History - Modern (1750+) Category: Law & Criminology 1229294 2025-09-30T08:34:56.080104 text/html 1178762 2025-08-07T16:31:00 text/html 11651451 2025-09-30T08:35:24.200086 application/epub+zip 11647788 2025-09-30T08:35:04.672060 application/epub+zip 715708 2025-09-30T08:34:58.060210 application/epub+zip 31286540 2025-09-30T08:35:35.452029 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 31206422 2025-09-30T08:35:17.592103 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 1094212 2025-09-30T08:34:53.541195 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 1055645 2025-08-07T12:21:46 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 17734 2025-09-30T08:35:35.616961 application/rdf+xml 25127 2025-09-30T08:34:58.468117 image/jpeg 3112 2025-09-30T08:34:58.265083 image/jpeg 53264768 2025-09-30T08:34:56.634107 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia