It could be argued that the rise of the WBA also contributed to the advancement of the man who would later lead the fight against it, and who would be as responsible as anyone for raising the specter of the Molly Maguires in the public consciousness.

Franklin B. Gowen, portrait

His name was Franklin B. Gowen and like many of the men in the pits, he was an Irishman, the son of an immigrant. But unlike those men, Gowen was a Protestant, and was thus more acceptable to the Know Nothings and others in a position of power at the time.

Gowen's early years were undistinguished, said Joseph Wayne who has spent decades researching the Molly Maguire phenomenon. He had made a failed attempt at operating a small coal company, Wayne said, "never mined it himself," Wayne said, "he just owned it, andit went under."

After failing as a mine boss, Gowen "read law, got someone to sponsor him, and he becomes an attorney."

A self-consciously elegant man, Gowen is said to have affected a clipped faux-British accent, all, Wayne believes, in an attempt to gain entry into the upper classes who gave the "Gilded Age," its name. He was, in short, a cunning man, "very meticulous in his appearance," a man who knew which "side of his bread was buttered, and he ingratiates himself in with the powers that be."

When he was still in his 20s, Gowen became an assistant district attorney and later rose to the top prosecutorial office in Schuylkill County. It was while he was serving in that post, Wayne said, that Gowen became acquainted with the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and its subsidiary, the Philadelphia Coal and Iron company, a burgeoning monopoly that would ultimately control not only the railroad which both consumed and shipped vast quantities of anthracite coal, but also had vast holding in the mines that produced it.

The story of how Gowen ultimately came to control the railroad and all its holdings is either a tale of steely determination and swashbuckling corporate intrigue, or it is a glimpse into conscience of a man whose soul was as deep and black as the mines themselves.

"The president of thecompanytook him under his wing and brought him in as the chief counsel for the railroad," Wayne said. "The same man who had befriended him, took sick and asked the board to let Gowen serve in his stead until he recovered. Gowen gets enough votes on the board, and engineers a coup and ousts his benefactor and took over the board."

In 1868, the same year that the WBA, the nascent union, was founded, Gowen, then just 33-years-old, took control of one of the most formidable industrial machines in Pennsylvania.

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