New-York tribune., 1877-06-26

Asa stroke Of policy, the hanging OF the
Mollics has not proved cilcctual. Two men
were assassinated the night after the eXecu-
tion. O her witnesses against them myster-
ously disappeared. Coffin notices are pla-
carded with the usual frequency; bands OF
armed and masked men still march openly
through the mountains, and residents OF the
infested districts are sending their women
folk and children into the towns for protec-
ton. The Mollies belong to race with
more wholesome and probably unreasonable
terror of law than any other 1t has, unfor-
tunately, been whipped into them for centu-
ries. The cunning of resistance has been
whipped into them, too: they are usually sure,
if slow. in their Ievenges. Ii the Pennsyl-
vanians intend to ciyiize them by terror, it
will need other and more wholesale slaughters
than that OF last week to do it.
Is there 10 other way to ciyllize theml 1t
is no time to talk at this moment of moral
siasion. When a murderer has society by the
throat the Jail and gallowS are the proper imne-
Giate remedy; not the Bible and primer. But
after these Pennsylvania Thugs are terrified
into inaction, it would he safer, to put the case
mildly, for the Pennsylvanians to cure them OF
their propensity 10 mGrder-cheaper, too, than
to keep up an armed police force and relays OF
Pmkerton's men mt every cOa!ng station. II
the Mollies were Thugs in reality, the churches
would 90 to work at them zralOusy lndla's
ancient plains and Africs golden sands offer
back kgronnds which throw the ghastly dolngs
OF the heather into a picturesque light. But
when it comes to gangs OF coal-dlggers III
Luzerne and LehIgh, with a beastly taste for
whisky and blood, the miserable common
placeness OF the thing revOlts even the mission
ary spirit. This is rough truth, but it is true
One-quarter the money sent out to convert the
Jews in the last five wears would have bult II
church and schoo-house on every hillside i'll
PENNSYLVANIA and reduced the Mollies If not to
a Christian state ut least to ordinary humanity.
We have nothing to say against missions to
the Jews or any other people These ought
We perhaps to have DONE only this other should
not have been left undOne. We know too
that good, Jealous men have been at work in
those districts, devoted priests, both Protest
ant and Catholic, who have lived scantily,
going on foot often into almost inaccessible
regions, through snow and Ice, to carry the
consultations of religion to those who needed
them. But ten dead men hanging by the neck
in one day prove whether enough has been
done or not.
1t should be remembered too, that the Slol-
lie Magures were originally a band of decent
men leagued together partly for political,
partly for beneficiary motives, certainly not for
robbery and murder. They belong to people
quick -witted, afectionate, devout. Yet they
have sunk into brutes, because no adequate effort
has been made to keep them human. Nobody
IA, lny tba aln oth Loon
wonder that the utter stagnatiOn and misery
of his life makes whisky or crime relief to
! it. He lives and breathes III the coal, eats his
salt pork, sleeps like the pigs, goes to work
in the coal again. A few hardened ruiians
thrown out of employment when the war
closed found here good material to manipu-
late. Hence the Molies and their murders.
1t is time they were manipulated differently.