 In addition to direct work as a miner, Hapgood relied on three approaches to organize the Somerset coalfields – civil disobedience, litigation and publicity.First, in pioneering methods evocative later of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Hapgood depended heavily on peaceful, civil disobedience.Coal towns were the wholly owned, private property of corporations at the time, and so, in the eyes of these companies, simply walking the street uninvited was deemed to be trespassing.