Born in Lanarkshire, in Scotland, to an Irish family, McLaughlin worked as a coal miner in Maryhill from the age of nine.
[2] McLaughlin worked to secure Alexander Macdonald's 1865 election as secretary of the Scottish Miners' Union.
[3] In 1869, he emigrated to the United States, staying briefly in Boston, then settling in Braidwood, Illinois, a town with many Scottish miners, which Macdonald had visited two years earlier.
However, in 1874, McLaughlin back a strike in Braidwood, after the Chicago, Wilmington and Vermillion Coal Company locked out workers.
However, in 1877, the company imposed wages cuts and introduced contracts which barred workers from joining a union.