American History

The Molly Maguires

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="Twenty" anthracite="" border="0" hanged="" in="" irishmen="" maguires="" molly="" northeast="" of="" pennsylvania="" region="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAONwktAFG0FIL8hqhaGK-6SgSUzg6JExuqyiaKOl6JRCRlI4qHDnMcOrc0x8aAThux9WvpBi-atBE2tCqyM-zYEzXFpPHqBgrhh4EY1e3S1aAL0a2pkxtqCCLAQEIELFnrmtvDTnkgfuX/s1600/Molly-Maguires.jpg" t="" the="" title="The" were="" width="470" young="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Molly Maguires</td></tr> </tbody></table> Twenty young Irishmen were hanged in the anthracite region of northeast Pennsylvania in the late 1870s, convicted of a series of killings stretching back to the Civil War. The convicted men were members of an alleged secret society called the “Molly Maguires,” said to have been imported from the Irish countryside, where a society of the same name was active in the 1840s. In Pennsylvania the Molly Maguires apparently acted behind the cover of an ostensibly peaceful Irish fraternal organization called the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1173069720" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="8d16ba9e8cbf87c2b350d62d92ac3ec2" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Ancient Order of Hibernians" href="http://www.amazon.com/Hibernians-Earliest-National-Convention-Biography/dp/1173069720/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=8d16ba9e8cbf87c2b350d62d92ac3ec2&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_346137" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH)</a><img alt="Twenty" anthracite="" border="0" hanged="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_346137" in="" irishmen="" maguires="" molly="" northeast="" of="" pennsylvania="" region="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=8d16ba9e8cbf87c2b350d62d92ac3ec2&_cb=1482046616930" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" t="" the="" were="" width="0" young="" />. The case was cracked by a Pinkerton detective, James McParlan, who spent almost two years in the coal district working undercover. More than fifty Molly Maguires went on trial between 1875 and 1878; twenty were executed and twenty more went to prison. The first ten Molly Maguires were hanged on a single day, 21 June 1877, known to the people of the anthracite region ever since as “Black Thursday.” <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005818DM8/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005818DM8&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=S4QQLGKK6EJJ56OP"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B005818DM8&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Twenty" anthracite="" border="0" hanged="" height="1" in="" irishmen="" maguires="" molly="" northeast="" of="" pennsylvania="" region="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B005818DM8" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" t="" the="" were="" width="1" young="" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195116313/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195116313&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=L3IYYXA4OALYZPKN"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0195116313&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Twenty" anthracite="" border="0" hanged="" height="1" in="" irishmen="" maguires="" molly="" northeast="" of="" pennsylvania="" region="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0195116313" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" t="" the="" were="" width="1" young="" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> The Molly Maguires stood accused of killing as many as sixteen mine owners, superintendents, bosses, and workers. Their trials, conducted in the midst of enormously hostile national publicity, were a travesty of justice. The defendants were arrested by the private police force of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, whose ambitious president, Franklin B. Gowen, had financed the Pinkerton operation. They were convicted on the evidence of an undercover detective who was accused (somewhat half-heartedly) by the defense of being an agent provocateur, supplemented by the confessions of a series of informers who had turned state’s evidence to save their necks. Irish Catholics were excluded from the juries as a matter of course. Most of the prosecuting attorneys worked for railroads and mining companies. Remarkably, Franklin B. Gowen himself appeared as the star prosecutor at several trials, with his courtroom speeches rushed into print as popular pamphlets. In effect, the AOH itself was put on trial: mere membership of that organization was presented as de facto membership of the Molly Maguires, and membership of either was routinely presented by the prosecution as evidence of guilt—on charges not simply of belonging to an oath-bound society but of using that society to plan and execute diabolical crimes. Viewed in retrospect, the case of the Molly Maguires displayed many of the classic hallmarks of a U.S. conspiracy theory. Even by nineteenth-century standards the arrests, trials, and executions were flagrant in their abuse of judicial procedure and their flaunting of corporate power. Yet only a handful of dissenting voices were to be heard, chiefly those of labor radicals. To explain why something like this could happen it is important to understand why the prosecution’s depiction of the Irish defendants seemed so convincing to contemporaries. The prosecution offered no plausible explanation of motive and nor, it seems, was one expected. The explanation of Irish depravity was simply that the Irish were depraved by nature; they killed people because that’s the type of people they were. This argument, while perfectly circular, was a surprisingly powerful one in the United States of the mid-nineteenth century. Irish American violence and depravity, from the labor upheavals and urban rioting of the antebellum kurun to the draft riots of the Civil War and the Orange and Green riots of 1870–1871, were presented as the logical transatlantic outgrowth of an alien immigrant culture. In the United States, moreover, that culture was equipped with an international conspiratorial organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, whose tentacles were said to reach across both the North American continent and the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Molly Maguires>Atlantic</a> Ocean. The inherent savagery of the Irish was the guiding premise in what passed for the first wave of interpretation of the Molly Maguires, a stream of pamphlets, newspaper reports, and histories produced by contemporaries. Even a somewhat sympathetic observer like Dewees (The Molly Maguires: The Origins, Growth, and Character of the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Molly Maguires>Organization</a>, 1877) took the Irish propensity for violence more or less for granted, while the author of the other standard contemporary history, Allan Pinkerton—founder of the famous detective agency—took Irish depravity as his central theme (The Molly Maguires and the Detectives, 1877). This highly pejorative and highly conspiratorial perspective, which constituted the foundational myth of the Molly Maguires, remained dominant for the next two generations, resurfacing, for example, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Valley of Fear (1904) and providing a staple of dime novel fiction until the mid-twentieth century. By the 1930s, however, the tide had begun to turn. Anthony Bimba, a Marxist historian, was the first to offer a major revision (The Molly Maguires, 1932), placing the Molly Maguire affair firmly in the context of labor and capital. So concerned was Bimba to overturn the prevailing myth of the Molly Maguires, however, that he turned it on its head, retaining its elements of circularity, tautology, and conspiracy while transferring the burden of evil from Irish workers to their employers. Evil is not a very useful category of historical analysis, at least in cases like this, for it freezes time and character rather than trying to explain causation and motivation. Why did the employers frame twenty innocent men? Because they were evil; or, put another way, because they were capitalist. At the same time, by collapsing all workers into a single category, Bimba ignored the class and ethnic diversity among them, a consideration that is now crucial to our understanding. J. Walter Coleman, in The Molly Maguire Riots: Industrial Conflict in the Pennsylvania Coal Region (1936), was the first to open up this line of inquiry. Despite its apparently pejorative title, Coleman’s book is among the most sympathetic and convincing accounts of the subject. The Molly Maguires, he argued, represented a specifically Irish form of labor protest, distinct from the British-inspired tradition of trade unionism in the anthracite region. If this diversity is one of the keys to understanding the Molly Maguires, another is the inherent unreliability of the evidence produced by James McParlan. He was, after all, a trained liar. Both of these points were persuasively made by Coleman but largely ignored in Wayne G. Broehl’s The Molly Maguires (1964), which, by the standards of its time, seems curiously sympathetic to James McParlan, to his employer Allan Pinkerton, and to the employer of both, Franklin B. Gowen. A rendition of the subject more in keeping with the radical ethic of the 1960s can be found in the film The Molly Maguires (dir. Martin Ritt 1970) starring Sean Connery as the satria (alleged Molly ringleader John Kehoe) and Richard Harris as the anti-hero (turncoat James McParlan). It is a revealing footnote to U.S. cultural history that the director, Walter Bernstein, had been blacklisted in the McCarthy kurun and in part saw his film as a response to Elia Kazan, who had notoriously “named names” in the 1950s, and whose satria in On the Waterfront informs against his corrupt union bosses. How, then, is one to make sense of the Molly Maguires? Clearly, what is needed is an explanation that can break free of the two existing poles of interpretation: the Molly Maguires as depraved killers and the Molly Maguires as innocent victims of oppression, whether economic, religious, or ethnic. The Mollys themselves, being socially marginalized and largely illiterate, left us virtually no evidence, which exposes the subject to all manner of conspiracy theories, from both the Right and the Left. We do, however, have plenty of evidence about them left by other people: employers, Catholic clergymen, politicians, newspapermen, pamphleteers, census takers, government officials, and contemporary historians. Read carefully, these forms of evidence can yield at least some reliable <a href=" " target="_blank" title=The Molly Maguires>information</a> about who the Mollys were. Equally important, they can tell us a great deal about the aims and motivations of those who set out to destroy them. In the end, though, some fundamental historical questions demand at least a tentative answer: Who were the Molly Maguires, what did they do, and why? The starting place in seeking an answer to these questions is the country where the Molly Maguires originated. To the historian familiar with Ireland as well as the United States, the most striking aspect of the activities in Pennsylvania is how clearly they conformed to a pattern of violent protest evident in the Irish countryside from the mid-eighteenth century onward. The Molly Maguires, who emerged toward the end of the Great Famine (1845–1851), were so named because their members (invariably young men) disguised themselves in women’s clothing, used powder or burnt cork on their faces, and pledged their allegiance to a mythical woman who symbolized their struggle against injustice. The American Mollys were evidently a rare transatlantic outgrowth of this pattern of Irish rural protest. Contrary to contemporary conspiracy theories, however, it is highly unlikely that there was any direct continuity of organization or personnel between Ireland and Pennsylvania. There is no evidence at all that a conspiratorial organization was somehow imported into the United States by Irish immigrants, nor is there any evidence that individuals convicted in Pennsylvania had been involved in violent activities in Ireland. The immigrants did arrive, however, with a cultural memory and established social traditions. Faced with appalling conditions in the mines of Pennsylvania, they responded by deploying a specifically Irish form of collective violence against their enemies, up to and including assassination. To that extent, the American Molly Maguires clearly did exist, even if they never existed as the full-fledged diabolical organization depicted by contemporaries. They were not purely a figment of the conspiratorial imagination; indeed the conspiracy theories about them could have achieved little credibility if Irish workers had not been engaged in collective violence of some sort. There were two distinct waves of Molly Maguire activity in Pennsylvania, one in the 1860s and the other in the 1870s. The first wave, which included six assassinations, occurred during and directly after the Civil War. Nobody was convicted of these crimes at the time, although a mysterious group called the Molly Maguires was widely believed to be responsible. Only during the trials of the 1870s were the killings of the previous decade retrospectively traced to individual members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. At the heart of the violence in the 1860s was a combination of resistance to the military draft with some form of rudimentary labor organizing by a shadowy group known variously as the “Committee,” the “Buckshots,” and the “Molly Maguires.” During the crisis of the Civil War, all forms of labor organizing were seen as potentially seditious. The second wave of violence did not occur until 1875, in part because of the introduction of a more efficient policing and judicial system, but mainly because of the emergence of a powerful new trade union, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association (WBA), which united Irish, British, and U.S. workers across the lines of ethnicity and skill. The labor movement of the anthracite region now took two distinct but overlapping forms: a powerful and inclusive trade union movement, half of whose leaders were Irishborn; and an exclusively Irish and largely unskilled group of workers called the Molly Maguires. Favoring collective bargaining, strikes, and peaceful reform, the leaders of the WBA publicly condemned violence, singling out the Molly Maguires specifically. Yet Franklin B. Gowen repeatedly insisted that the WBA was simply a cover for the Molly Maguires, who constituted the union’s terrorist arm. Although this claim was manifestly false, it was highly effective; by collapsing the distinction between the two organizations Gowen succeeded in destroying the power of both. Not only was the union discredited by this <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=The Molly Maguires>strategy</a>, the Molly Maguires were equipped with an institutional structure they never had. The defeat of one would now entail the defeat of the other. To gather information against both arms of the labor movement, Gowen hired Allan Pinkerton in October 1873. Pinkerton dispatched James McParlan to the anthracite region. Several other agents would follow later. Shortly after McParlan fled the anthracite region, in spring 1875, matters reached a climax. After a heroic six-month strike against Gowen and his railroad, the WBA went down to simpulan defeat. In the disarray that followed, the Molly Maguires stepped up their activities to a new level: six of the sixteen assassinations attributed to them took place in the summer of 1875, even as the leaders of the now-defunct trade union continued to voice their condemnation. In January 1876 the arrests began, and that summer the famous trials commenced. With labor utterly defeated, Franklin B. Gowen completed his conquest of the local economy, securing full control over production and distribution in the lower anthracite region. This was the goal the trade union and the Molly Maguires had long threatened, and it is quite clear that Gowen had been prepared to take all necessary means to eliminate that threat. For almost a century nobody in the Pennsylvania anthracite region was willing to say much about the Molly Maguires. The story was too painful, too divisive. Not the least remarkable aspect of this ongoing story, however, has been a dramatic renewal of interest in the anthracite region itself. Every June 21 for the last six years several hundred people have arrived in the mining region to commemorate the Molly Maguires. Descendants of the convicted men and their alleged victims have sat down together to eat, drink, and talk. The dominant note of each year’s gathering has been how to include all sides and perspectives. This ecumenical spirit, so clearly lacking in the 1870s, provides the best chance today of understanding one of the more tragic tales in the history of U.S. labor.

The Molly Maguires

The Molly Maguires Twenty young Irishmen were hanged in the anthracite region of northeast Pennsylvania in the late 1870s, convicted of...

MK-ULTRA

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuAq7r297I8jk3E14ZH2Lp_kP8Ytsx_5pEfqX-dPyaXEnpZD0Br7aIAZYyaJljvSAAnBW_ynxTFN1_ztbxTsU0-h4C4aBrgRhEMOAAEh1SjXuaRBVHMOiWnqiotlFQ-wma5JXxHBppzZFh/s1600/mk-ultra.jpg" width="250" /></a></div> Much beloved by conspiracy theorists because it provides documented evidence to support claims that the U.S. government is involved in secret and hostile operations against its own citizens, MK-ULTRA was a covert CIA mind-control research project that lasted from 1953 to 1963. The agenda developed out of another CIA project, Bluebird (begun in 1950 and renamed Artichoke in 1951), which was principally concerned with psychological manipulation and had concerns similar to the navy’s Project Chatter, which was begun in 1947 (lasting until 1953) and which dealt with the discovery and application of truth drugs similar to those that the <a href=" " target="_blank" title=MK-ULTRA>Soviet Union</a> was alleged to have developed. Both MK-ULTRA and Chatter expanded substantially during the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Korean War</a> because of the belief that Soviet forces had successfully used truth drugs and brainwashing techniques on prisoners of war. MK-ULTRA was authorized by CIA Director Allen Dulles in 1953 and was put into effect by the director of operations, Richard Helms, as an “umbrella project” that combined the interests of Bluebird, Artichoke, and Chatter. Under the control of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb the agenda engaged in research on a range of projects relating to drugs, toxins, hypnotism, and other forms of behavioral modification. This general focus on the transformation and control of personality has led to a widespread belief among conspiracy theorists that its military applications were actually a cover for attempts to pacify and control civilian populations, most notably the citizens of the United States. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R7RBHUG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00R7RBHUG&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=GUBYPHFTXHD7FRBZ"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00R7RBHUG&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Much" because="" beloved="" border="0" by="" c="" conspiracy="" documented="" evidence="" height="1" it="" mk-ultra="" provides="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00R7RBHUG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" support="" theorists="" to="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601633580/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1601633580&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=IJOD645Q66IYULQG"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1601633580&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Much" because="" beloved="" border="0" by="" c="" conspiracy="" documented="" evidence="" height="1" it="" mk-ultra="" provides="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1601633580" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" support="" theorists="" to="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Under Gottlieb, MK-ULTRA combined the psychological concerns of Bluebird/Artichoke with the interest in drugs found in the navy’s Project Chatter. The general aim of the project was to find ways of conditioning personnel to resist interrogation by hostile powers or to achieve the opposite through the development of control of individuals through interrogation, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and use of drugs. There were many non-drug-related programs in the 149 subprojects that came within MK-ULTRA’s portfolio, some of which involved hypnosis, investigations of magic, studies of sleep patterns, research on brain concussion, research into stimulus and response in biological systems, radiation, ESP, electroshock therapy, and projects that simply involved funding actual operations or their extension abroad under the MK-NAOMI designation, for example those taking place at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. The drug programs have gained the most attention, however, in part because these were a development of overseas experiments that had already taken place regarding the use of sodium pentothal, but also because MK-ULTRA expanded the use of narcotic agents over the course of the agenda so that the CIA’s experimentation with drugs, in particular <a href=" " target="_blank">LSD</a>, has become the bestknown area of the project in popular consciousness. The development of LSD and its experimentation on members of the CIA, military personnel, and mental patients formed the early phase of MK-ULTRA’s investigation of drugs in the 1950s. Many of those involved in investigating its effects, such as Gottlieb himself, were habitual users of the drug, and stories of LSD-spiked drinks at parties form some of the most sensational aspects of this opening phase. The main body of research, however, was performed on volunteer subjects who were tested in sensory deprivation chambers, under hypnosis, or who had aural stimuli played to them while dosed with LSD or other drugs such as mescaline. Some of the subjects, however, were tested without their consent, such as Frank Olsen, whose suicide as a result of a psychotic cuilan has been attributed to the fact that he was given LSD without his knowledge. Another major part of the early phase was the testing of narcotics in government, medical, and educational institutions, with one of the first studies taking place at the National Institute of Mental Health’s Addiction Research Center in Lexington, where prison inmates serving sentences for drug violations were dosed with LSD in exchange for heroin. The most notorious feature of MK-ULTRA, and the feature that is most commonly associated with it, is the testing of LSD in CIA-rented apartments in New York and San Francisco as part of Operation Midnight Climax, which formed the tamat phase of the program. During this phase LSD was tested on unwitting subjects in everyday society by undercover agents (with the assent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) who used prostitutes to bring men back to apartments with two-way mirrors where they were given LSD and their reactions were recorded. This led to further tests and a more general <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=MK-ULTRA>distribution</a> of LSD that has led to the general perception, as Lee and Shlain argue, that the CIA helped to create the 1960s counterculture or, alternatively, as Jim Keith asserts, that the counterculture was part of a CIA plot to channel youthful dissent into passive and nonviolent areas, with some of its key figures, such as Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, acting as CIA agents or stooges to achieve this plan. The MK-ULTRA agenda was brought to an end in 1963 and most of the papers relating to it were destroyed in 1973 on the orders of CIA director Richard Helms. The agenda was subject to several hearings in the 1970s, when knowledge of CIA involvement in mind control and in the development and distribution of LSD entered the public domain. The agenda was the subject of investigations by the <a href=" " target="_blank" title=MK-ULTRA>Rockefeller</a> Commission in 1975, the Church Committee in 1976, and hearings by Senator Edward Kennedy in 1975 and 1977. The papers and reports from these investigations form the bulk of the material used by conspiracy theorists, although they usually quote from Marks’s The Search for the Manchurian Candidate or Bowart’s Operation Mind Control, rather than directly from their original source. The revelations about MK-ULTRA have led to a range of conspiracy theories, mainly involving the attempts by various agencies or conspiracy groups to pacify and control the population of the United States through mind control and the release of drugs into the environment. Keith, for example, claims that MK-ULTRA is part of a larger <a href=" " target="_blank">New World Order</a> plot and that there have already been attempts to use LSD to pacify large numbers of people in the New York subway system. The factual basis of MK-ULTRA has been used to spin other elaborate plots, particularly when in conjunction with the mythical mind-control operation called “Project Monarch,” which, according to Ron Patton, is orchestrated by Nazis, occult groups, and the <a href=" " target="_blank">Illuminati</a>, all of whom work in the service of the Antichrist rather than for any mere earthly power.

MK-ULTRA

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Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip

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Moon Landings

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcPff0BqqEpvoJ3KmrU-sRJctdS_akEDhXAmkFCUC1W4OU9GyYEI3hpG6zbRtyYv9egQlhlto6D1I7Crh_bYFWHFdw3hCodKvOISGK6ZmvmR-TF-05mnGPFe2PHyC48yqjyycLADLwigVP/s1600/moon-landing.jpg" width="470" /></a></div> Project Apollo sent six two-man teams of astronauts to the surface of the moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Roughly 10–20 percent of Americans now believe, however, that no human has ever set foot on the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Moon Landings>moon</a>, and that all evidence for the landings is part of an elaborate hoax staged by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Skepticism about the landings began to surface almost as soon as they took place and has remained steady for three decades since. Supporters of the hoax theory argue that careful scrutiny of still pictures, films, and radio transmissions reveals telltale signs of the deception. Critics of the hoax theory dismiss the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Moon Landings>idea</a> of a thirty-year-long conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of people as patently absurd. The “anomalies” in lunar photographs are, they contend, products not of a shadowy conspiracy but of the will to believe in one. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906512477/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=e869edaf85180e5535398d0a7dd982f9" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1906512477&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="1" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1906512477" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601631499/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=652e0a6e49d49a0bb4667639d605286d" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1601631499&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="1" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1601631499" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Origins and Context Belief that the moon missions were faked entails belief in two separate premises. The first is that it was possible, in 1969, to simulate a lunar landing and the “moonwalks” that accompanied it. The second is that the U.S. government deceived the public about one of the defining events of the century. Between 1968 and 1973, events outside the space aktivitas rendered both premises more plausible, to far more people, than they would have been a decade earlier. Stanley Kubrick’s film <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B0093QJSIW" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="e8ba3d26c04a7e940b5f1bc4dbd1bd18" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="2001: A Space Odyssey" href="http://www.amazon.com/2001-Space-Odyssey-Keir-Dullea/dp/B0093QJSIW/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=e8ba3d26c04a7e940b5f1bc4dbd1bd18&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9040260" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">2001: A Space Odyssey</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9040260" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=e8ba3d26c04a7e940b5f1bc4dbd1bd18&_cb=1482040369292" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (1968) signaled a revolution in movie special effects and, specifically, in the simulation of space travel on screen. <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B001IWT2FS" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="b1b699ff764c20df4a361d24b6d91e06" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="John Sturges’s Marooned" href="http://www.amazon.com/Marooned-Gregory-Peck/dp/B001IWT2FS/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=b1b699ff764c20df4a361d24b6d91e06&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_8094066" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Sturges’s Marooned</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_8094066" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=b1b699ff764c20df4a361d24b6d91e06&_cb=1482040402730" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (1969) and <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B002RPK1P0" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="8ec287833530c474e5d1663224f2c154" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running" href="http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Running-Douglas-Trumbull/dp/B002RPK1P0/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=8ec287833530c474e5d1663224f2c154&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4106605" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4106605" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=8ec287833530c474e5d1663224f2c154&_cb=1482040420544" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (1971) showed that 2001 was more than a brilliant fluke. All three films stood as far beyond <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="6305761078" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="61fdbc25311282cc88e8fafdfcfd6547" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Destination Moon" href="http://www.amazon.com/Destination-Moon-John-Archer/dp/6305761078/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=61fdbc25311282cc88e8fafdfcfd6547&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1611296" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Destination Moon</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1611296" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=61fdbc25311282cc88e8fafdfcfd6547&_cb=1482040445235" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (1950) as that film, revolutionary in its time, had stood beyond the crude Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s. The new films’ extraordinarily realistic “look” made it easy to believe that the simulated space flight could now be passed off as real. The five years between 1968 and 1973 also saw the rapid erosion of the U.S. public’s trust in the federal government. The optimistic pronouncements of politicians and generals about the war in <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Moon Landings>Vietnam</a> were repeatedly undercut by the testimony of journalists and returning veterans. The 1970 publication of the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0553072552" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="833c71e715b0765d602b7a7e214cc70c" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Pentagon Papers" href="http://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Papers-Secret-History-Vietnam/dp/0553072552/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=833c71e715b0765d602b7a7e214cc70c&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_8622733" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pentagon Papers</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_8622733" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=833c71e715b0765d602b7a7e214cc70c&_cb=1482040500568" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" />—the government’s own “secret history” of the war—damaged government credibility further, as did the 1970 revelation of a secret bombing campaign against Cambodia. The <a href=" " target="_blank" title=Moon Landings>Watergate</a> Scandal of 1973–1974 destroyed the Nixon administration and further damaged the federal government’s credibility. The knowledge that the president and his advisors had systematically abused the power of their offices for political gain, then systematically lied about their actions, permanently soured many Americans’ attitudes toward their elected officials. The idea of a trip to the moon had, as late as the late 1950s, seemed to many Americans a distant dream at best. Many continued, in the early 1970s, to find the idea implausible. Disbelief in the moon landings coalesced around those doubts. A poll taken by Knight Newspapers in July 1970, a year after the first landing, revealed that 30 percent of those polled doubted the landings had been real. Doubts ran especially high where trust in the federal government was especially low. In poor, black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., half of those polled believed that the landings had been a hoax. Cynicism about the government diminished little after the early 1970s. The healing effects of time and fading memories were repeatedly offset by fresh scandals. Americans born since the mid-1960s thus have only vague, secondhand memories of the Apollo missions but vivid memories of government duplicity. “I’d always suspected something like that” is a common reaction among high school and college students encountering the hoax theory for the first time. The Community of Believers The hoax theory, even according to its critics, is accepted by tens of millions of Americans. It has been shaped and promoted, however, by a much smaller group of core believers. The members of this core group are responsible for collecting, analyzing, and publishing what they see as compelling evidence of government deception with respect to Project Apollo. They agree on what constitutes this body of evidence, on how the individual pieces of evidence should be interpreted, and on the idea that the public record of the moon landings was falsified. They disagree about the extent of, and the reasons for, that falsification. Some hoax theorists, like William Brian, argue that U.S. astronauts did land on the moon in 1969–1972, but that they discovered evidence of an alien civilization that has been ruthlessly suppressed. Other theorists, like David Percy, argue that the landings broadcast on television to worldwide audiences of millions were fakes. The real moon landings, they believe, were carried out in total secrecy by a shadowy “black space program,” and that there is no public record of it or them. The most popular view—narrowly believed among dedicated hoax theorists and widely among rank-and-file believers—is that humans never went to the moon at all. NASA faked the landings, according to this view, because it was incapable of actually carrying them out by the end of the 1960s, as President Kennedy had challenged them to do in 1961. The leading advocate of this “mainstream” version of the hoax theory is Bill Kaysing, who has been promoting it since the early 1970s. Ralph René’s book NASA Mooned America (1994), James Collier’s video Was It Only a Paper Moon? (1997), and Bart Sibrel’s video <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000059MCV" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="961c722bc142af0392dd75222c0a7cb8" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" href="http://www.amazon.com/Funny-Thing-Happened-Moon-moonmovie-com/dp/B000059MCV/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=961c722bc142af0392dd75222c0a7cb8&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4866618" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4866618" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=961c722bc142af0392dd75222c0a7cb8&_cb=1482040698090" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (2001) stake out positions similar to Kaysing’s, while offering similar arguments and evidence. Kaysing’s forthrightly titled book We Never Landed on the Moon (1974) was the first extended discussion of the hoax theory to appear in print. It remains in print at this writing, having been expanded and republished several times, and spawned a series of videos that present its argument visually. Kaysing’s ideas were also featured prominently in the Hollywood suspense film <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B003DGC380" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="948dfd5a639d812c967ba07ea69a96eb" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Capricorn One" href="http://www.amazon.com/Capricorn-One-Elliott-Gould/dp/B003DGC380/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=948dfd5a639d812c967ba07ea69a96eb&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9634711" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Capricorn One</a><img alt="man" astronauts="" between="" border="0" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9634711" july="" landings="" moon="" of="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=948dfd5a639d812c967ba07ea69a96eb&_cb=1482040743221" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" surface="" teams="" the="" to="" width="0" /> (1978)—the story of NASA’s attempt to fake the first manned landing on Mars. Except for the change of destination, the film’s fictional scenario is virtually identical to Kaysing’s purportedly real one. Even the spaceships are identical to those used in Project Apollo. Kaysing has actively promoted the hoax theory on radio talk-shows and, in 1997, achieved fleeting fame by suing ex-Apollo astronaut James Lovell for referring to him as “a wacko” (a judge dismissed the suit as baseless). The Fox television network’s hour-long documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Go to the Moon? (2001) gave Kaysing’s ideas a thorough, and thoroughly uncritical, airing. The Case for the Hoax Theory The mainstream version of the hoax theory is built around three central ideas. The first is that NASA, incapable of actually sending anyone to the moon, never allowed the Apollo astronauts to go beyond the Earth’s orbit. The second is that official NASA photographs and films from the Apollo missions show telltale signs of their creation on an earth-bound sound stage. The third is that NASA, and its coconspirators elsewhere in the government, have kept those with knowledge of the conspiracy quiet for thirty years. The rest of the hoax theory consists of a web of suppositions and “likely stories” connecting those three ideas. Proof of NASA’s inability to carry off a real lunar landing lies, believers argue, in the contrast between the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Moon Landings>space</a> agency’s performance before and during the Apollo missions. NASA’s early attempts at space flight in the late 1950s and early 1960s were often spectacular failures. They achieved a measure of success with Earth-orbiting flights during the Mercury and Gemini programs, but Apollo was plagued by problems with quality control, with meeting deadlines, and with spacecraft performance. As late as January 1967, three astronauts died on the launch pad when fire broke out in the cabin of a poorly designed Apollo spacecraft during a test. Yet, beginning with the flight of Apollo 8 around the moon in December 1968, mission followed flawless mission with only one (nonlethal) failure—Apollo 13. Hoax theorists argue that real, successful lunar missions are far less plausible than faked ones in which (according to one scenario) empty Apollo spacecraft were launched and then “parked” in Earth orbit for the required number of days before being returned to Earth under remote control. Proof that the moon landings were staged on Earth rests, according to believers, on clearly visible “anomalies.” Why, they ask, is the “moon rock” shown in one NASA photo marked with the letter “C”? Why is the soil beneath the engine nozzle of the lunar module only slightly disturbed? An engine so powerful should have blasted out a crater deep enough to be noticeable. Why do photographs supposedly taken on the lunar surface show objects lit from more than one direction? There should be only one source of light on the moon: the sun. Why are the stars not visible in the lunar sky? With no atmosphere to obscure them, they should shine clearly. Why, in film footage that shows an astronaut planting the U.S. flag, does the flag appear to wave as if in a breeze? It should, on the airless lunar surface, hang limply from the rod that supports its top edge. Proof of a post-Apollo conspiracy of silence lies, believers argue, in the fact that no one connected to NASA has spoken out on the subject. They see it as particularly significant that Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first person to set foot on the moon, declines to give interviews and that other astronauts have specifically refused interviews with hoax theorists. Some (including Bill Kaysing) go further, suggesting that the three astronauts who died in the mid-1960s plane crashes, the three who died in the 1967 Apollo cabin fire, and the seven who died in the 1986 Challenger disaster were murdered by NASA to keep them quiet. The Case against a Hoax The hoax theory, according to its critics, is a tissue of faulty assumptions, specious “evidence,” and bad science. The Apollo flights to the moon, though successful, were far from the flawless exercises that Kaysing and others suggest. Apollo 11, the first to land, came within seconds of crashing on the lunar surface. The explosion that crippled Apollo 13, and many of the problems that resulted, were products of flawed or inefficient design—the same kinds of problems that NASA had faced throughout the 1960s. The purported “anomalies” on which believers rely so heavily are, in fact, readily explained without a hoax. The “C” appears only in a single copy of the photograph in question, not on the original film. The lunar module’s rocket engine fires only briefly when the ship is close to the lunar surface, and not at all for the last seconds of the descent. The shallow craters it leaves in the lunar soil reflect this. The rays of the sun illuminate objects on the lunar surface directly, but also by reflecting off the soil, the lunar module, and other light-colored objects. The stars are not visible in the dark lunar sky for the same reason they are not visible to observers standing near a bright street light: the street light (or, in lunar photography, the sun) overwhelms them. The flag moves after its pole is planted not because of breeze but because of inertia. The act of driving the pole into the ground shakes the cloth and, for a moment or two, it continues to shake. No present or former NASA employee has “blown the whistle” on the hoax, critics argue, because there was no hoax. It defies belief that the hundreds or thousands of NASA employees who would have been aware of some part of the hoax would all have kept silence for three decades. It is, on the other hand, far from surprising that astronauts would refuse to talk to hoax theorists who accuse them of being brainwashed dupes at best and bald-faced liars at worst. Neil Armstrong’s reticence about the first lunar landing mirrors his similar reticence about his combat missions in the Korean War and his test flights of the X-15 rocket plane. Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, who flew with him aboard Apollo 11, have both written extensively about their experiences on the moon. Unless the existence of a hoax is assumed, critics point out, nothing about the death of six astronauts in the mid-1960s or seven aboard Challenger suggests foul play. Space travel is, as even hoax theorists readily admit, a dangerous business.

Moon Landings

Project Apollo sent six two-man teams of astronauts to the surface of the moon between July 1969 and December 1972. Roughly 10–20 percent...

Moonies

Moonies

Moonies The Unification Church (known popularly as “the Moonies,” after its founder, Rev. Moon) is viewed with suspicion by the conspira...

John Pierpont Morgan

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmxEuXG-kH2r5Bi4fhix_avt4oaa6qB-1fpCZuAedJoM4zSgKuu5vaEUYQYEMFQd1zd36ofTgldpKuXLnQgJQeVABlv9PEFFlWPSneSIreuvf_j6EnfDEyBW77xlffj2iySeSJhIq19ObN/s1600/John-Morgan.jpg" the="" title="John" width="470" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Pierpont Morgan</td></tr> </tbody></table> Easily the most powerful financial figure in the nine-teenth-century United States was John Pierpont Morgan. His role in the creation of the <a href=" " target="_blank">Federal Reserve System</a>, as well as his familiarity with other figures alleged to have been involved in conspiracies, including John D. Rockefeller, put Morgan at the center of financial controversies. Populists, in particular, criticized his role in rescuing the United States Treasury in February 1895 when he and President Grover Cleveland struck a deal to provide gold to the government at a profit rate of 7 percent. More recently, conspiracy theorist <a href=" " target="_blank">Sherman Skolnick</a> has contended that J. P. Morgan and Co., the firm founded by Morgan, “with the parent holding companies of 18 money center banks” have been involved in artificially forcing up oil prices. Both the Populists and modern conspiracy theorists and others have maintained that Morgan is a part of a vast network in league with, or controlled by (depending on the source), <a href=" " target="_blank" title=John Pierpont Morgan>John D. Rockefeller</a>. The Populists went even further, claiming that Morgan was an agent of the “House of Rothschild” who was intent on oppressing the “common man.” <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802144659/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=8af462d239fccffcf128756b69deba5f" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0802144659&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" height="1" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0802144659" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805081348/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=2ffbcd9b91a1e0ff6e5f8ac603cc7c3e" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0805081348&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" height="1" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0805081348" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> More modern theorists, in contrast, link Morgan to the British monarchy and its involvement in the two world wars, and Skolnick went so far as to claim that <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B01CFGGL7W" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="2b3684d617334625bbd254dc5ee9dc86" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="J. P. Morgan & Co." href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Morgan-Chase-Co/dp/B01CFGGL7W/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=2b3684d617334625bbd254dc5ee9dc86&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1634393" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">J. P. Morgan & Co.</a><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1634393" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=2b3684d617334625bbd254dc5ee9dc86&_cb=1482035517837" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" the="" width="0" /> was part of a scheme with the British government to control the year 2000 presidential elections. J. P. Morgan was born on 17 April 1837 in Hartford, Connecticut, to a mercantile family. Junius Morgan, J. P.’s father, dealt in foreign exchange and became a merchant banker, and could afford to send his son to school in Europe. The family moved to England, and after J. P. worked for his father’s banking house in London, he returned to the United States in 1857 to establish J. P. Morgan & Co. in 1860 through a connection to the expired George Peabody & Co. He served as an agent for his father’s firm, and engaged in foreign exchange and gold speculation. Morgan’s business flourished with the expansion of the railroads, a number of which were in financial trouble by the late 1860s. Morgan formed syndicates that acquired troubled railroads, such as the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, imposing new “managerial hierarchies” on railroads that still had not adopted that managerial form. In this way, Morgan refashioned the railroads into the image of banks. He also reconstructed his firm in 1871 with a merger with a family friend, Anthony J. Drexel, as Drexel, Morgan & Company, which was reorganized again in 1895 as J. P. Morgan & Company. By that time, Morgan had formed numerous syndicates to take over troubled railroads and put them on sound managerial and financial footing. Several Jewish financial houses, such as <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1532797842" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="ffdbc769503851f01c98f579e70ead3f" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Levi P. Morton" href="http://www.amazon.com/Life-Harrison-Morton-FULLY-ILLUSTRATED/dp/1532797842/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=ffdbc769503851f01c98f579e70ead3f&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_3694480" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Levi P. Morton</a><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_3694480" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=ffdbc769503851f01c98f579e70ead3f&_cb=1482035550882" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" the="" width="0" /> and Seligman Brothers, as well as the European financier August Belmont, participated in these syndicates, fueling the allegations of “foreign influence” or “Jewish control.” Morgan also got in the habit of bailing out the United States government in times of need, as in 1871 when he financed the army payroll with no guarantee of repayment after Congress adjourned without passing an appropriation bill. Drexel, Morgan & Company also refinanced the U.S. debt in 1877. Through his social contacts, especially his trips to Europe where he was on the same vessel as William H. Vanderbilt, who owned a substantial interest in the New York Central Railroad, Morgan expanded his empire. Not only did Morgan acquire critical <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=John Pierpont Morgan>information </a>from magnates such as Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, but each time he sold securities for their firms, Drexel, Morgan & Company made healthy profits. As the primary historian of railroads in the United States, Albro Martin, has noted, “No banking firm in America, publicly chartered or private, had a bigger stake in the smooth operation of the American railroad system than Drexel, Morgan”. After the Populists succeeded in pressuring Congress to pass the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1356336116" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="2261c1e019ac9137961251a2d70c59b7" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Sherman Silver Purchase Act" href="http://www.amazon.com/Purchase-Clause-Sherman-Repealed-Coinage/dp/1356336116/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=2261c1e019ac9137961251a2d70c59b7&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_7455201" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherman Silver Purchase Act</a><img alt="Easily" border="0" figure="" financial="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_7455201" in="" john="" morgan="" most="" nine="" pierpont="" powerful="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=2261c1e019ac9137961251a2d70c59b7&_cb=1482035673096" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" the="" width="0" />, which artificially overvalued silver to gold, the nation’s gold stocks plummeted and its banking system plunged into a panic. In stepped Morgan, who, with a syndicate involving Belmont and the Rothschilds, essentially prevented the bankruptcy and collapse of the U.S. government. President Grover Cleveland had to swallow his (and the nation’s) pride and accept the bailout, but the populist press crucified both him and Morgan as betraying the “working man.” Ultimately, the criticism of Morgan was irrelevant: in the 1896 election, William McKinley, running on a monometallic gold standard platform, defeated <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">William Jennings Bryan</a>, the Democratic candidate who had also enjoyed the endorsement of the Populist Party for his support of “free and unlimited coinage of silver at 16:1.” McKinley’s election substantially ended all debate about a bimetallic standard, but not all questions about the U.S. banking system. Already a number of commissions and panels, most of them formed by bankers, had made recommendations to strengthen the nation’s financial system. Their recommendations were not directed at Morgan, but rather at the necessity to have Morgan repeatedly step in to rescue the Treasury. After the panic of 1907, Morgan himself made clear that the country’s financial needs had grown so extensive that, even with a syndicate, he could not possibly save the country a third time. Following a secret meeting on <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="091298645X" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="45a01b1a8f51e1814cb7be707f8df599" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Jekyll Island" href=" " target="_blank">Federal Reserve System</a>. Morgan had not been present at the deliberations, nor had he participated in any meaningful way in the actual drafting of the bill, yet he was almost entirely responsible for the legislation. In late 1912 and early 1913, the House of Representatives formed a select committee under Representative Arsene P. Pujo of Louisiana to investigate the “money trust,” with Morgan under Pujo’s scrutiny. The committee sent out questionnaires to 30,000 banks and trust companies, and took testimony from prominent financiers such as George F. Baker and Morgan, and when the smoke cleared, the committee claimed to have found evidence of extreme concentration of the nation’s money in the holdings by New York banks, via consolidations, stock investments, and securities arrangements. Morgan, the committee asserted, had control of 10 percent of the nation’s wealth and controlled 43 percent of the nation’s money. (It is worth noting that the Rockefeller conspiracy theorists maintain that Morgan was a “puppet” of the Rockefeller interests.) The Pujo Committee’s report helped the drafters of the Federal Reserve bill diversify power among twelve regional banks, many of them in the West and South—well outside of New York’s influence (they thought). Meanwhile, between the two panics (1893 and 1907), Morgan had continued his acquisition and reorganization of railroads and then, in 1900, struck a famous deal with steel titan Andrew Carnegie to purchase Carnegie Steel company for $480 million. Morgan subsequently reorganized it as United States Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company, and turned it over to Elbert H. Gary to run. J. P. Morgan died in March 1913, before the Federal Reserve System became operational, but with him passed an kurun of “finance capitalism” that remained submerged until the arrival of Michael Milken in the 1970s. Morgan’s son, J. P. Morgan, Jr., took over the management of the company and continued to arrange financing for numerous countries, but never became the target of vitriol that his father engendered.

John Pierpont Morgan

John Pierpont Morgan Easily the most powerful financial figure in the nine-teenth-century United States was John Pierpont Morgan. His r...