This is the seventh excerpt from Labor’s Untold Story printed here by permission of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The book can be purchased for $6.95, plus $2 postage for single orders from the UE by writing to their headquarters at 2400 Oliver Building, 535 Smithfield Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222.

The first big trial got under way in May, 1876, when McGeehan, Carroll, and Duffy, as well as two other militant miners, James Boyle and James Roarity, also members of the AOH, were charged with the murder of Benjamin Yost, a patrolman in the mining community of Tamaqua. Gowen, who ran the whole Reading Valley, saw nothing peculiar in the fact that he had had himself appointed as special prosecutor in this and other trials, his pleasant duty being to ask for the executions of his labor antagonists.

Never had he enjoyed himself so much, his voice sometimes a challenging baritone, sometimes a solemn whisper, his handsome profile thrilling his acquaintances who crowded around him during each court recess. Just as he dominated the anthracite fields, so did he dominate each of the half dozen trials, which resulted in the executions of nineteen miners. He had defense witnesses arrested for perjury as they stepped from the stand. He had the various courthouses and courtrooms filled with the bayonets of the militia while he contrived to give the impression that at any moment a rescue of the defendants might be attempted by Irish foreign agents dedicated to the forcible overthrow of society.

In the first trial, which charged the miners’ leaders with the murder of Yost, the actual murderer was apparently Jimmy Kerrigan, who won his own freedom by testifying against the defendants. Kerrigan’s wife testified from the stand during the trial that her husband had committed the murder and that he was testifying against the five miners in an agreement with the State and Gowen that he would go free if he aided in convicting the union leaders. Not even Gowen himself, who took over her cross-examination, could shake her story.

Q. You have never seen your husband since that time, have you? A. No, Sir.

Q. Have you refused to send him clothes? A. Yes, sir.

Q. And do anything for him? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did you come down from Pottsville, voluntarily, and of your own will, some time ago, to make a statement or affidavit that your husband had killed Yost; did you not do that of your own motive? A. I made my statement before I came to Pottsville.

Q. You made it before Squire O’Brien? A. Yes.

Q. You went there voluntarily? A. Of my own accord.

Q. To get your husband hung? A. To tell the truth.

Q. To have the father of your children hung? A. Not when I was telling the truth.

Q. Why did you not send him clothes when he was lying in prison? A. Why, because he picked innocent men to suffer for his crime.

Q. Because he picked innocent men to suffer for his crime? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Why did you refuse to go and see him when he had sent word that he wanted to see you?

A. Because any man that done such a crime that he done, why should I turn around then and---

Q. And what; go on. A. That is all.

Q. What crime had he done? A. What crime did he do?

Q. Yes. A. The crime of Yost.

Q. The murder of Yost? A. Yes, sir.

There was other testimony describing Kerrigan as the actual murderer of Yost. The only testimony against the five miners, all of whom had been active in the 1875 strike and later, was that of Kerrigan himself, and the Pinkerton spy McParlan, who was engaged to Kerrigan’s sister-in-law, Mary Ann Higgins, and who swore that each of the five men had carelessly confessed to him. Little mention was made of the fact that McParlan and Pinkerton were in Gowen’s pay although defense attorneys did declare that the trial was Gowen’s revenge for the role the defendants had played in the strike of 1875. But such were the time’s hysteria and Gowen’s power that the jury sent five innocent miners to their deaths.

The same verdict of guilty was handed down in the cases of other innocent miners. Mike Doyle and Ed Kelly received the death sentence. Jack Kehoe was convicted for the murder of one, Langdon, a breaker boss, who had been killed fourteen years before. Langdon had been stoned by a crowd of miners and died three days later. Despite Kehoe’s own testimony that he had not been at the scene of the stoning, others said that he was in the crowd of miners although there was not testimony that he actually threw a stone. Yet the jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree.

Four other miners were tried and condemned to death for a murder of which they had been previously acquitted and declared innocent. The testimony against them came entirely from McParlan and Kelly the Bum. McParlan said that the four had also happened to confess to him. Kelly the Bum was brought to the stand from the cell where he was being held under a charge of murder, and here he had been heard to say, according to testimony, "I would squeal on Jesus Christ to get out of here." After his testimony the murder charge against him was dismissed.

Gowen had need of all his eloquence in the trial of big Tom Munley, one of the most militant of the union leaders, as there was virtually no evidence against him save McParlan’s oft-repeated story of a defendant confessing to him. Even the state’s own witnesses declined to identify Munley as the murderer of Thomas Sanger, a mine foreman, and his friend, William Uren, on Sept. 1, 1875. Richard Andrews, called by the state, had been an eyewitness to the slayings. He gave a detailed description of the murderer and was asked:

Q. Did you see his face? A. I saw his face.

Q. How was his face as to whiskers? A. He had a mustache; a small mustache.

Q. Can you tell the color of his hair or eyes? A. No sir, I cannot.

Q. Had you ever seen that man before? A. I never saw that man before that morning.

Q. Did you know him at all? A. No, I did not know him at all.

Q. Have you ever seen him since? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Munley, stand up. Is that the man? (The defendant stands up and the witness looks long and hard at him before replying.) A. That is not the man I can recognize at all.

In addressing the jury Munley’s attorney cried, "For God’s sake give labor an equal chance. Do not crush it. Let it not perish under the imperial mandates of capital in a free country."

As Gowen advanced to the jury rail to make his final plea in Munley’s case he must have known that he had to rise to real heights since there was scarcely any evidence against the defendant. He did. Never had he been in such fine form. He thundered and roared, quoted poetry and plays, took a noble stance facing the courtroom audience and defied the Molly Maguires to kill him then and there if they dared. He had been through much, he said, but he had not quailed in the face of danger and, continuing, he told the jury:

"I feel, indeed, that if I failed in my duty, if I should shrink from the task that was before me, that if I failed to speak, the very stones would cry out. Standing before you now with the bright beams of victory streaming over our banners, how well I can recall the feeling with which I entered upon the contest, which is now so near the end. Do not think it egotism if I say with the hero of romance,

"When first I took this venturous quest

I swore upon the rood,

Neither to turn to right nor left.

For evil or for good ...

Forward lies faith and knightly fame

Behind are perjury and shame;

In life or death I keep my word."

It was magnificent, or so the jury apparently thought, and nothing could stand against it. Certainly not the life of an Irish miner. Munley, too, was sentenced to death and so it was with all the others until nineteen men faced the scaffold.