Two days after ten alleged Molly Maguires were hanged in Pottsville and Mauch Chunk, a letter signed “Fiat Lux” appeared in the New York Sun—and it turned the headlines of the day on their head. Instead of cheering the executions as many contemporary newspapers did, the writer blamed the Reading Railroad, coal operators, and a rigged system that kept immigrant mineworkers in brutal poverty, arguing that not all the guilt lay with the men on the gallows. It’s a sharp, early indictment of corporate power in the Coal Region. Read the full story.