Page 73 - All About History - Issue 56-17

Lawmen of the Frontier

the pinkerton school for strike-breakers

Employed by factory owners, undercover
detective agency Pinkertons tried to influence labour union
decision-making, forcing out union officials
and replacing them so that they could alter
years active: 1850-present jUrisdiction: nationwide union policy. Agents tried to create internal
strife whenever possible, setting rival
inFamoUs coLLars: adam worth, the reno gang, the molly maguires
factions within unions against each other.
The Northwest Mounted Police and US Marshals its Pittsburgh mill. This resulted in a fire fight If strikers committed crimes like sabotage,
began as official law enforcement bodies. The in which 16 men were killed and 23 others undercover agents gathered the evidence.
Texas Rangers, originally paramilitary, became an were wounded. It took two brigades of the Many people were jailed as a result and
official body. The Pinkerton Detective Agency, Pennsylvania militia to restore order. some were even executed.
however, remains a private company with far less The agency also hunted outlaws with decidedly Pinkerton security guards would also
public oversight and a much darker past. mixed results. The Reno Gang were smashed protect workers refusing to support strikes,
The agency’s founder, Scottish immigrant Allan after numerous shoot-outs. Butch Cassidy often providing armed escorts into picketed
Pinkerton, famously foiled a plot to assassinate evaded Pinkerton and left the country, dying in workplaces. Violence was commonplace.
President Abraham Lincoln at his inauguration in Bolivia beside Harry ‘Sundance Kid’ Longabaugh. These security guards were also often
1861. However, his agency became synonymous Pinkerton’s hunt for Jesse James was disastrous. provocative and confrontational, frequently
with union busting using very dubious methods. After Jesse’s gang killed agents Joseph encouraging violence and blaming striking
“By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the Whicher and Louis Lull in March 1874, Pinkerton workers for the bloodshed.
need for greater control over their employees; declared a personal vendetta. In January 1875,
their solution was to sponsor a private detective his agents raided the James homestead, throwing
system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after an incendiary bomb into the building. Jesse’s
consulting with six Midwestern railroads, created mother, Zerelda, lost an arm and his brother
such an agency in Chicago,” explains Frank Morn, Archie, aged only 14, died. Pinkerton publicly
a criminal justice historian. denied intentional arson but his private letters
Pinkerton’s Pennsylvania campaign typified clearly state his intent to “burn the house down”.
his attitude to unions and strikers. In the 1870s, Business suffered accordingly and worse
agent James McParland infiltrated the Molly was soon to follow. The 1893 Anti-Pinkerton
Maguires, a group of Irish-American agitators in Act outlawed government employment of
Pennsylvania’s coalfields. McParland’s testimony private detectives and mercenaries, specifically
saw several Mollies hanged and many jailed. naming Pinkerton’s agency: “No employee of the
But before pursuing prosection, McParland Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar agency,
attempted to intimidate the Mollies, sending shall be employed in any Government service
masked men to beat them up in their homes. or by any officer of the District of Columbia.”
Pinkerton men at the 1892 Homestead Strike, © Alamy, Getty, Shutterstock
Later, on 6 July 1892, 300 Pinkerton detectives All told, the Pinkertons’ history isn’t as clean- as depicted on the cover of Harper’s Weekly
from New York and Chicago were sent to protect cut as it seems.

A Pinkerton flyer appealing for
information on a suspect

Allan Pinkerton served as President
Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War spymaster
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