‘Che neturn of the Molly Maguires

Abstract The final confrontation between the Reading Railroad and the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association took the form of the “Long Strike,” which lasted from January to June 1875.The battle was fought in the context of a national economic depression. It was one of several desperate and unsuccessful efforts by organized labor in the United States to preserve the considerable gains won in the late r86os and early 1870s. All over the United States, labor was on the defensive. The defeat of Pennsylvania’s anthracite mine workers was the most spectacular and violent of a series of similar defeats for American labor during the great depression of the 1870s, including those of the cigarmakers of New York City and the textile workers of Fall River, Massachusetts.