It was at this date that there arose considerable talk among the Mollies about one Gomer James, who had not long before shot and killed a member of the order named Cosgrove, living near Shenandoah. James was arrested, but secured bail and would soon be at large. Ned Monaghan and several others were desirous that Lawler should get some men from an adjoining body and have Gomer James quietly put out of harm’s way, but, somehow, Muff could not, or would not, comply with their wishes. Therefore, ex-constable Monaghan—not Ed. Monaghan—expressed himself in favor of having an officer who would and could perform the job. Barney Dolan was sent for, and Lawler forced to send in his resignation, so that the Country Delegate might appoint a successor. To make matters more unsettled, and the Mollies more lively, a general suspension of active operations occurred on the sixth of July, all the collieries belonging to the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, as well as those the property of, or leased by, individual operators, closing business and refusing longer to keep on at a loss, with expected permanent detriment to the mining interest. Labor of nearly all kinds was at a standstill. Thousands of men were without employment. The vicious and unprincipled of these being left to idleness, and naturally ready for anything, it was anticipated that outrages would quickly follow. Such always had been the case, and probably always would be, under the prevailing system of managing the coal regions. But one or two collieries kept at work in all Schuylkill County. Many of the miners and their helpers sought forgetfulness in liquor. Among this number were several of McKenna’s associates, Hurley being notably one of the first to begin and the last to terminate a spree. He loudly and openly cursed the Modocs, and ended by saying that Gomer James, and those like him, who were responsible for hard times, must look out, as some of them would sup sorrow during that summer. How they could be chargeable with a stoppage of the works he did not pretend to explain, but put it upon them, without explanation, merely because he did not know where else to place it. On one occasion Hurley exhibited a handsome set of brass knuckles, that he had borrowed of Martin Deane, and which were intended to be used upon somebody. Shortly thereafter, Deane left for Loss Creek, and he had been gone only a few days when a man named Reilly was shot and mortally wounded, by one Anthony Shaw, known to be Deane’s butty. Suspicion fastened upon the latter as an accomplice in the shooting, but there was no evidence pointing him out as the accessory.