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The great majority of immigrants in those days were Welsh, English, Irish and German, with just a few Poles and other nationalities.
Most of the bosses' jobs at the collieries went to the Welsh and English, which stirred old resentments harbored by some of the Irish who had memories of bitterness between religions and nationalities in their native land. There were complaints among the Irish that the Welsh and English bosses refused them jobs in the Schuylkill mines, and other Irishmen who were hired didn't like the way the bosses acted toward them.
There was a time when disputes were settled by "the cast of a die in the magic 24-foot ring," but times changed and the method drifted to violence. Revolvers, billy clubs, blackjacks, steel knuckles and knives were used in a reign of terror which affected not only individuals, but also business and industry, as capitalists hesitated to invest in industries that would have benefitted the county.
Innocent sufferers were the Irish who had no part in any violence, but who were looked upon with suspicion by bosses and co-workers. The name Molly Maguires was known to Schuylkill County citizens for some years before the Ancient Order of Hibernians was instituted on March 10, 1871, but the two became synonymous in the public mind because both were frequently mentioned in news stories and publications.
This was unfortunate -- and unfair -- because while the Molly Maguires revealed by the undercover Philadelphia and Reading Detective McParlan were all identified by him as members of a secret band operating within AOH, it was also a fact that the vast majority of AOH members were not affiliated with and refused to associate with the activities attributed to the Molly Maguires.
In fact, the story is told in some Molly Maguires literature about a plot by the Mollys in Shenandoah to burn down the homes in Jacksons Patch, because a group of Irishmen there had a habit of beating up members of the Mollys on Saturday nights in Mahanoy City. The plot was reportedly discouraged by Muff Lawlor, in whose Shenandoah Saloon the Mollys congregated, when he convinced them that such an act would have everybody even the Irish, up in arms against them.