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 Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., 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. Hapgood in Somerset County was arrested more than a dozen times on the picket line and at the head of marches, as the strike unfolded. (Hapgood, Gregory and other also took picketing directly to various corporate headquarters on Wall Street, where they did not invite arrest but achieve considerable positive publicity and access.)