McKenna was one of the committee, by the request of Jack Kehoe, but had no hope, at the time, of being successful in the mission. Kehoe and others determined to take part in the celebration if they had to walk over the priest’s dead body. The detective was apparently as anxious as the rest, and managed to raise nine dollars—“from where,” he said his friends “could guess”—with which to purchase himself regalia for the seventeenth of March. They naturally supposed he had disposed of more counterfeit money. The early part of March a riot occurred at Jeddo and Buck Mountain, during which three men were shot. The Mollies, being largely in force there, were accused of bringing on hostilities. At about this date three hundred men gathered in the same vicinity to prevent the collieries from working, and extinguished the fires under the pumping boilers, the intention being to drown out the mines and bar their owners from operating them for a long time. The country was overspread with snow to the depth of a foot, on the level, and travel upon the mountains was again greatly impeded, making the work of the Mollies easy of accomplishment and their escape almost certain. About the fourth of March a so-called Anti-Monopoly Convention was appointed to take place at Harrisburg, having for its principal purpose a movement against the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, by individual and other large operators. The laboring man, excepting he might be far removed from, and a great consumer of the product of the coal fields, could have but small interest in the result of the meeting, yet many of this class attended as delegates and took part in the proceedings. Among them was Muff Lawler, who reported, on his return, that there were nearly three hundred representatives present, and it was decided to ask the Legislature, by resolution, to cause an investigation to be made, by committee, of the officers of the company, and say why their charter should not be abrogated. Lawler further said that the committee would be appointed and the investigation set on foot. All of which did not prove that there was anything wrong in the organization to be investigated. Had the Mollies been aware of the full extent of Mr. F. B. Gowen’s proceedings in the coal fields—as President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway and of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company—and the work he had instituted years before, to punish the guilty, and clear their confederates from the land, wresting from them by the strong hand of the law the great power they held over the inhabitants, it is believed that his life would have been taken—at least, attempts would have been made upon it. But the President calmly waited his time, which he knew must come, and relaxed no effort, withdrew no force—on the contrary, kept himself more closely down to his work—through all these mutterings and threatenings. His head was clear, his nerves unshaken.