the officers and membership of the Knights assemblies. He also implied that there was a "gang" within the union, similar to the Mollies, whose task was to sabotage coal company property. The Knights fought back by challenging the Schuylkill County authorities to arrest the alleged terrorists, but as Gowen's charges were unsubstantiated, the matter went no further. Bankruptcies and ouster from the Reading Reading Railroad's first bankruptcy The United States was roiled repeatedly throughout the nineteenth century by financial panics and resultant economic recessions, each with transatlantic dimensions. The Panic of 1837 was pivotal for the Reading Railroad. After the road's optimistic startup on a foundation of American capital in 1834, because it was "constructed without financial stint... the income from the company's operations had to be maintained at an unusually high level just to stay in the black." During the American economic contraction following the 1837 panic, management turned in desperation to London for fresh capital and credit. The resulting influx of badly needed cash made the Reading the first American railroad to come under direct English influence as to its management. From well prior to Gowen's presidency, and continuing through it until the Reading Railroad came fully under J.P. Morgan's sway, these London interests exerted great influence. The Reading better weathered the panics of 1847 and 1857, but under Franklin Gowen's management and expansionist programs, the Panic of 1873 and its follow-on depression were once again of instrumental importance. The railroad fell deeper and deeper into debt until, finally, in May 1880, the well was dry: the Reading had gone bankrupt. Despite the harsh realities of the depression that ran from late 1873 into 1879, it was significant misjudgments on Gowen's part that led to the Reading Railroad's collapse in 1880. His determination to dominate, through the Reading Railroad, the overall supply/demand dynamic of anthracite was hemmed in by insurmountable bounds from the outset. The mining theory behind the ultimately wasteful development of the Pottsville Twin Shaft operation was not well grounded in the geologic science even of that time. But that theory alone did not make up Gowen's rationale for the massive expenditures of the Coal & Iron Co. He believed that the Schuylkill Valley—which from colonial times until the Civil War had been the center of American iron-making—would, because of the importance of anthracite iron, continue to hold that preeminent position indefinitely. He stated this belief