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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's a brisk morning in late February 1900. You're sorting letters at the post office in Circleville, Utah, a small farm town where you work as the deputy postmistress. You glance out the window, looking west toward the snow-capped peak of Circleville Mountain. Feels like a storm's coming.
Then you see a man approaching from the south of town on horseback. As he nears, you can tell it's the same man who visited your family's ranch a few days earlier while you were out feeding the chickens. He seemed sweet on you, but he was also nosy, asking about your family. A few moments later, he walks through the door. Morning, ma'am. Wind's picking up out there. Seems we may get a little rain soon, maybe even snow.
You give him a quick nod and return to the letters you've been sorting. He seems friendly enough, handsome too, but there's something about him that makes you wary. You need to mail something, mister? Or are you just coming to talk about the weather?
I'm headed for Arizona this afternoon. Need to leave before the weather gets worse. Won't see much civilization for the next few weeks, so I thought I'd see a pretty face before I leave. Flattery will get you nowhere, mister. Well, I can't blame a fella for trying. Well, you best be getting going soon if you want to reach the next town before sundown.
The man doesn't seem to take a hint. He stands looking at the notice board, with flyers for local events and posters for wanted men. Now yesterday you were telling me it was just you and your younger brother Dan running the family farm. Where'd the rest of the family go? You mentioned an older brother, Robert. Now you're suspicious. What did you say brought you to town again? I guess you could say I'm here on business. And what business might that be?
The man reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a small card. Well, you seem like a nice lady, so I'll come clean. He sets the card on the counter. It's got a picture of your brother on the front, wearing a bowler hat. You flip it over and read the description that says, Criminal Occupation Bank Robber.
Your blood runs cold as you realize this man is not here to flirt with you. He's here to get you to rat out on your brother. I work for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. This is your brother's mug cart. We've been looking for him for a while now, and you may know him as Robert, but I know him by another name, Butch Cassidy.
As the Pinkerton stares you down, you try to hide your nervousness. You force a smile, determined to find a way to brush this guy off and warn your brother. Butch, I don't know anyone by that name. You must be mistaken. Maybe you check the town next over. Oh, it won't do you any good to play coy. Robert or Butch or whoever, he's robbed some important people and they've paid men like me to find him. Now, when's the last time you saw your brother?
You consider stalling some more, but you hesitate. This man is glaring at you and you can see a cold determination in his eyes. It's not going to be easy to get him to give up the hunt.
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In the late 1800s, Pinkerton detectives joined other law enforcement officers in chasing down two of the nation's most audacious and elusive bank-robbing outlaws, Butch Cassidy and his accomplice, the Sundance Kid. But after the turn of the century, a new federal agency was created, the Bureau of Investigation, and its agents would overtake the Pinkertons as the nation's most trusted lawmen.
As a result, the Pinkerton Agency would return to the lucrative but controversial business endeavor of helping to counter labor unions and protecting corporate interests. But one Pinkerton operative would leave the agency altogether only to write some of the most iconic detective novels in the English language. This is the final episode in our three-part series on the Pinkerton Detective Agency, The Public Eye.
In the winter of 1887, a devastating blizzard killed much of the livestock in Wyoming and Montana, where 16-year-old Harry Longabo had been working as a ranch hand. As a result, this young man soon turned to petty crime and was arrested for stealing a horse outside of Sundance, Wyoming. And when he was released from jail in 1888, Longabo had a new nickname, the Sundance Kid.
Six years later, a bank robber from Utah named Robert Leroy Parker was also arrested for horse theft and spent two years in a Wyoming prison. He soon took on the nickname Butch Cassidy and recruited the Sundance Kid into his gang of thieves.
In the 1890s, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed banks and trains throughout the West, from Montana down to New Mexico. The two worked together, and with a revolving cast of fellow thieves with nicknames like Deaf Charlie, Tall Texan, and Flat Nose Curry. These desperados were known in the press as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang for the caverns of eastern Wyoming where they often hid out.
Sometimes known as the Wild Bunch, this loosely organized gang managed to elude the various sheriffs, deputies, and armed posses that chased them through the mountains and canyons of the western states. But in June of 1899, they used dynamite to blow up a safe inside a train car in Wilcox, Wyoming, making off with $50,000 in cash, banknotes, and gold.
The director of the Union Pacific Railroad, E.H. Harriman, finally had enough. He hired the Pinkerton agency to track down Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and all the other gang members, offering a reward of $10,000 for each man. The Pinkertons assigned to the case were led by James McParland, the same agent who had infiltrated the Molly McGuires in the 1870s and now ran the Pinkerton's Denver office.
McParlin sent scores of agents to pursue the wild bunch as they continued to pull off a string of robberies through Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The gang hit trains and banks in all these states and then vanished into the rough western wilderness. Bank presidents, railroad companies, and western governors all funded manhunts that included Pinkerton agents alongside sheriffs, posses, and vigilantes, but the gang constantly slipped through their fingers.
By the next year, 1900, the Pinkertons were finally closing in on the gang's whereabouts, but feeling the heat, Butch and Sundance fled from Texas to New York, and in 1901 they boarded a steamer bound for Argentina.
Determined to get his men, Pinkerton agent Frank DiMeo followed them to Buenos Aires and finally confirmed that they were hiding in a log cabin in southwest Argentina. But the U.S. Vice Consul in Buenos Aires told DiMeo to wait until after the rainy season to attempt a raid. But before that could happen, DiMeo was ordered back home. The companies that had been funding the manhunt decided Butch and Sundance were no longer a threat, and they stopped paying the Pinkertons to bring them back from South America.
By that time in 1903, most of the other gang members had been arrested or killed. But it took five more years until 1908 for the Bolivian army and police to catch up to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In a shootout in the Bolivian village of San Vicente, both outlaws were killed. The demise of the Wild Bunch finally brought an end to the era of Pinkertons chasing desperados on horseback. And as a new century dawned, the agency would become more sophisticated and more controversial.
Imagine it's January 25th, 1906. You're a prisoner being held in a jail cell on Murderer's Row at the State Penitentiary in Boise, Idaho. You're charged with rigging a bomb that killed the state's governor as he opened the front gate of his home. You know that if you're found guilty, you'll likely be hanged for the crime. Today, you've been led to the warden's office, where you once again face Pinkerton Detective James McParland. He came to visit a few days ago, and now he's back.
As you enter the room, you see he's standing behind the warden's desk, smoking a cigar and leaning against his walking cane. He points his cane at a metal chair in front of the desk and motions for you to take a seat. Then he sits down in the warden's leather chair. Well, it's nice to see you again. You get that bath you asked about?
You nod. The guards hadn't let you bathe or shave for a week, and they'd hardly fed you. McParland had offered to help if you agreed to meet with him again. "'Yeah, yeah, and they let me walk the yard for an hour, so got a nice meal, too. That all you're doing?' I told the warden it'd be in everyone's interest if you were treated well. "'Everyone's interest? Well, what's that supposed to mean?' "'Well, son, that's what I want to discuss. You know you're guilty of killing the governor. We found all the evidence we need in your hotel room. But I know you didn't act alone.'
and I was hoping you might tell me about the men who put you up to it. With his droopy gray mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and soft Irish brogue, McParland seems more like a priest than a detective. What difference does it make what I tell you? They're still going to hang me. Well, not necessarily. But the lawyers representing you work for the Union, Western Federation of Minors, and that means their job isn't to defend you. It's to protect the Union and its leaders. So you want me to snitch?
Is that it? Well, snitch isn't the word I'd use. I'd suggest just telling the truth, you know? You seem like a smart man. Are you religious? I know my Bible. What's that got to do with anything? Well, if you do know your Bible, you know the stories of St. Paul and King David. What's your point? My point is that those men were sinners too, but God forgave them. And he'll forgive you too as well, but you have to repent. Repent to who? You or God?
McParland doesn't answer that, but stands to let you know the meeting's over. Well, listen, it's a simple equation. If you come clean and I'm able to bring down the men who hired you, you get saved from the gallows. You quickly realize you won't get a better deal than that, so you decide to take it. Okay, well, come back again tomorrow and I'll tell you my story. All of it.
After the Pinkerton leaves and the guards return you to your cell, you try to pray. Maybe the man's right. Maybe it'll feel good to repent and admit you murdered the governor and at least a dozen others, and that all that bloodshed was done on behalf of the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners.
On December 30, 1905, former Idaho Governor Frank Stunenberg was killed by a bomb planted outside his home. Investigators immediately suspected the assassination was payback for Stunenberg's attempts at breaking the miners' union and the arrests of hundreds of activist miners.
Albert Horsley, a former miner who went by the name Harry Orchard, was charged with planting the bomb. Pinkerton agent James McParland worked with investigators to extract Orchard's confession, and in late January of 1906, Orchard admitted to being a paid assassin and saboteur for the Western Federation of Miners, whose leader was a man named William Big Bill Haywood.
With the help of Harry Orchard's confession, Haywood and other union leaders were tried in 1907, but their lawyer, Clarence Darrow, successfully argued that the case was actually part of a vast conspiracy against the entire labor movement. He accused McParland of forcing Orchard's confession and framing Haywood and the others, and he accused the Pinkerton agency of spying with the support of, as he put it, the money of all the mines and all the mills behind them.
This trial made national news and was a reckoning for the Pinkerton agency. Across the U.S., protesters rallied in support of the miners and vilified the Pinkertons. The protesters were egged on by Attorney Darrow, who scorned McParland and other Pinkerton agents as liars and mercenaries.
In the end, the union leaders were acquitted. Harry Orchard was sentenced to death, but the new governor commuted his sentence to life in prison. The case was a disappointing setback for the Pinkerton agency and a personal failure for McParland. But despite the negative publicity, the Pinkertons recovered and continued to grow.
By 1910, there were 20 Pinkerton offices employing hundreds of agents across the U.S., including Robert Pinkerton's son, Allen, the third generation of Pinkerton men to join the company. The agency also had thousands of temporary agents standing by in its reserve corps, available to work as guards and watchmen on short notice.
But critics continued to claim the Pinkertons had become an unregulated private army. Fearful that the agency could be used as a private militia, more and more states outlawed the hiring of Pinkerton guards during labor strikes. And while James McParland's star dimmed after the Frank Stunenberg assassination, other agents made names of their own.
Charles Seringo was an Irish-Italian former cowboy from Texas who joined the Pinkertons in 1886. For two decades, he worked on some of the agency's highest-profile cases. Reporting to McParland, Seringo spent most of his Pinkerton years undercover, infiltrating gangs of robbers and miners' unions throughout the West. He had briefly managed to get close to Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, posing as a murderer on the run, and he even visited Cassidy's hometown in Utah to interrogate his sister,
But despite arresting a couple of gang members, he never managed to catch Butcher Sundance.
And so by 1910, Seringo had become disillusioned with the agency and resigned to write a book about his experiences. But when William and Robert Pinkerton learned about the book, they sued to prevent its publication, worried it would bring bad publicity. As a result of this lawsuit, Seringo was forced to change the title of his book from A Pinkerton's Cowboy Detective to just A Cowboy Detective. Then he fictionalized all names and called his memoir a novel.
And when he later tried to write another expose of the Pinkertons, he was sued again. The lengths that William and Robert went to to prevent Syringo from publishing anything salacious about their business were proof that Alan Pinkerton's publicity-savvy sons knew they needed to protect the name and reputation of their 60-year-old agency.
And by now, William and Robert had established notable crime-fighting reputations of their own. William made headlines in 1901 when he convinced an art thief to return a stolen painting after chasing the thief from London to Paris to Istanbul and Brussels. But the artwork's recovery did more than garner positive press. It deepened Pinkerton's relationship with Scotland Yard, the British police force.
That same year, they invited William to England to exchange information on investigative techniques, and while there, the newspapers referred to William as the Sherlock Holmes of America. This name only became more appropriate when William also became friends with Sherlock Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had based Holmes' adversary, Professor Moriarty, on the very thief that William Pinkerton had chased through Europe. Doyle would later feature more Pinkerton exploits in his work, sometimes mentioning the agency by name.
But back in the U.S., the Pinkerton agency faced growing competition from a number of rival detective agencies, some of them created by ex-Pinkertons, as well as another challenger, a nascent federal law enforcement organization called the Bureau of Investigation. And amid this increasing competition from federal and private law enforcement agencies, the Pinkertons would soon lose one of their top agents. ♪
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In August of 1907, Robert Pinkerton died suddenly on board a passenger ship while sailing from New York to Germany. Newspapers praised the 59-year-old agent as the greatest thief-catcher in the world, but also noted that he was despised by organized labor.
Robert's older brother, William, now 62, became the sole head of the agency and would be responsible for leading it through another new era of change. A year after Robert's death, in 1908, the federal government created its first nationwide police force. The Bureau of Investigation, later named the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was created to investigate interstate crimes, and in time, the FBI would deeply cut into Pinkerton's business.
A few years earlier, William Pinkerton had played a supporting role in creating the FBI's predecessor, the National Bureau of Criminal Identification. That agency was launched in Chicago in 1897 by the National Police Chiefs Union in order to share information on criminals nationwide.
William donated his company's massive collection of criminal photographs to this new agency, which moved to Washington in 1902. The Criminal Identification Bureau was later folded into this new bureau investigation, part of the Department of Justice.
and the FBI quickly adopted many methods of criminal investigation that had been pioneered by the Pinkerton agency. One revolutionary contribution was the Pinkerton's so-called Rogues Gallery. This was a collection of mugshots and case histories used to track wanted men, the predecessor of the FBI's Most Wanted list.
The agency printed these on small index cards, each with a wanted man's photo on the front and a list of physical attributes, distinguishing marks and scars, aliases and crimes on the back. The Pinkertons also kept detailed case files containing news clippings, rap sheets, known associates, and areas of expertise for every criminal in its system. These files were an early model of what later became the FBI's criminal database.
The FBI also took the new art of fingerprinting from the Pinkertons, something William had learned during his visits to Scotland Yard. But though the Pinkertons gave the FBI many of its tools and resources, the rise of a federal investigating agency posed a direct threat to the Pinkertons' bottom line.
Criminal cases that had been the Pinkertons' bread and butter were now handled for free by the FBI. This forced William Pinkerton to once again grow the security side of the business. And he soon landed two lucrative contracts, one which provided Pinkerton guards to the American Bankers Association and its network of 3,000 banks. The other contract expanded the agency's work for a national alliance of jewelry sellers.
Pinkerton agents also began to specialize in specific types of investigations, such as jewel heists and gambling fraud at casinos and racetracks. As William put it at the time, the evolving work of the modern Pinkerton agent takes more brains and less muscle, although we have some good hard fights to fight, too.
So slowly, as they returned to their crime-fighting roots, the public's memory of the Pinkertons as violent strikebreakers receded. Then, in 1914, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear. This story featured a Pinkerton agent named Bertie Edwards, who was based on James McParland and his undercover infiltration of the Molly Maguires. Doyle had learned about McParland from William Pinkerton personally when they sailed together across the Atlantic.
But William Pinkerton was furious that Doyle used this confidential information without asking permission. He even threatened to sue Doyle, though he eventually backed down. Doyle wrote letters of apology, but the friendship between the two men never recovered. William Pinkerton professed his hatred of all fictional depictions of his agents and called Doyle's stories bunk. He once told a reporter, "...that sort of rot gives people the wrong idea about the way we work."
Still, the publicity from Doyle's book contributed to the revival of the agency's public image. It also bolstered the reputation of the agency's longest-serving agent, James McParland. And soon, McParland would get another boost from even more detective stories.
Imagine it's November 23rd, 1921. It's a cool morning as you walk along Pier 35 at the San Francisco Wharfs. You and your wife live nearby in a small apartment on Eddy Street. And after spending time in a hospital recovering from a persistent case of tuberculosis, you're just returning to work. You've been thinking of quitting the Pinkerton Detective Agency, but your wife is pregnant and rent is due, so you decided to take on one last case. You just hope your weakened lungs will hold out.
Now you're about to board the steamship SS Sonoma, which left Sydney, Australia six weeks ago. When it docked yesterday, the crew discovered that $125,000 of gold was missing from the storeroom.
Your boss has sent you and another operative to search the ship and find the gold. You're the lead agent, but the other guy is younger and eager, and you're trying your best not to get too annoyed by his enthusiasm. Should we start by questioning the passengers? No, no, the city police already questioned them. How about the crew? City police are on it. Maybe we should take a look at the strongboxes. Didn't one of them have a brand new lock on it, but the captain's key couldn't open it? Yeah, that's right. Why would the thieves put a new lock on an empty lockbox?
Why were the other two strong boxes untouched? My guess is the gold was stolen early in the journey, but the thief didn't want anyone to notice during the crossing. Well, if we can't interview people or examine the evidence, what are we supposed to do? We need to search for the gold. The crew checked everyone getting off and didn't find the loot. That means it must be on the ship. And you heard the boss. If we can't find it today, we're supposed to stay on board and return with the ship to Australia.
The kid's eyes open up wide. You can tell he kind of likes this idea. All right, I'm game. Hey, let's climb up that smokestack. Take a good look around from up high. I think the crew already looked up there. That's what they said. Maybe this was an inside job. We should check it out. You know the young agent is right. You're just not sure you can climb a ladder a hundred feet above deck, finding it hard to breathe. Well, okay. Go ahead. I'll be right behind you.
Young Agent sprints up the ladder and reaches the top of the smokestack before you've made it even halfway. He shouts down to you. Hey, I found something. You look up and see he's standing on a small ledge, reaching his arm into the sooty opening of the smokestack. I think I got it. He pulls up a rope, and at the end of it is a filthy canvas bag. All right, what is it? It's here. It's here. Young Agent struggles with the heavy bag, but manages to bring it down to the deck.
Both open it and see it's filled with gold coins. The kid is beaming. You know your boss will be pleased and you're relieved you won't have to travel across the Pacific to Australia. You're also thinking, maybe it's time to retire. To stay home and do the thing you've been dreaming about. Write books.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in 1894 in rural Maryland to an alcoholic father and a mother who suffered from tuberculosis. Eager to escape a rough and impoverished childhood, he replied to an ad for a job with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Hammett joined in 1915 at the age of 21. He worked out of the Baltimore office, mainly on cases requiring surveillance and stakeouts. And then, after serving in World War I, he worked for Pinkerton in Spokane, Washington, and San Francisco.
In his last case as a Pinkerton, Hammett helped investigate the theft of gold coins from a passenger ship docked in San Francisco. Later, Hammett would fictionalize this incident in his best-known book, The Maltese Falcon, in which private detective Sam Spade solves the case of a stolen figurine on board the passenger ship La Paloma. But suffering from tuberculosis and disillusioned with the agency's strike-breaking work, Hammett left the agency in 1922 and picked up writing.
His first story was published that year, and in 1923, he began writing gritty detective stories for the pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett later said that writing reports for Pinkerton taught him how to write pithily and with appreciation for the language of street characters. In his work, he managed to avoid the trap that other ex-agents fell into when trying to write about the agency.
Rather than name the Pinkertons, Hammett called the agent in his early stories and first books the Continental Op, or just the Op, who worked for the Continental Detective Agency. The name was inspired by Hammett's first office with Pinkerton in Baltimore's Continental Trust Building, and he set his first novel, The Glass Key, on Baltimore's gritty streets. His character, the Continental Op, bore a resemblance to Hammett, a sometimes sickly aspiring writer with a taste for cigarettes and whiskey.
and Hammett's stories reflected the real-life experiences with the Pinkertons. They featured miners and mine bosses in the fight against strikers and strikebreakers. He brought a dark poetry to the language of the gumshoe. Speeding getaway cars leaked gunfire, and streets were the color of smoke. A grimy sky above a mining town looked like it came from a smelting stack. Cops were bulls, and crooks were muckers.
One Hammett biographer said his Pinkerton experiences were like a set of tools he rummaged through and sharpened when he needed them for his stories. But Hammett's co-workers also inspired many of his fictional characters. In his first novel, Red Harvest, the Continental Op worked for a supervisor referred to as just the old man, someone who had no more warmth in him than a hangman's rope.
It was James McParland, who died in 1919, that was the inspiration for the old man. In Hammett's words, the fictional McParland could spit icicles in July and was known among agents as Pontius Pilate for sending his men out to be crucified on suicide missions.
But just as Alan Pinkerton had been accused of fictionalizing his exploits in so-called true crime detective books, Hammett would face claims of embellishing his Pinkerton work. He'd later defend his far-fetched recollections of his Pinkerton years, claiming they were authentic enough.
Hammett's hard-boiled detectives were gritty, flawed, hard drinkers, impetuous, violent, and bitter. Far from the cerebral and refined Sherlock Holmes, Hammett's detectives would become American icons, idolized in literature and film. But soon, the great detective dynasty that helped create that stereotype was again in transition.
In late 1923, a year after Hammett's departure from the agency, 77-year-old William Pinkerton died. He was buried in the family plot beside his brother, father, and two of his father's favorite agents, Kate Warren and Timothy Webster.
A few years before his death, William Pinkerton spoke at a meeting of the International Chiefs of Police and warned that the nation's increasing industrialization would bring new types of crime and more sophisticated criminals. He also predicted growing political and labor unrest as tensions between corporations and unions heated up. He had hoped that his agency would be on the front lines of that turbulent era. But instead, as acts of extreme violence rocked the nation, the
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In 1910, a dynamite explosion ripped through the offices of the Los Angeles Times, killing 20 and injuring more than 100. This incident triggered a massive manhunt, but city officials did not turn to the Pinkertons. Instead, they hired a new investigative firm run by a former Secret Service agent, the William J. Burns National Detective Agency. Then, a decade later, when bombs exploded on Wall Street, killing dozens, the Federal Bureau of Investigation responded, and
and again called in Burns and his agents, not the Pinkertons. William Burns himself soon became the FBI's director, widely recognized as the nation's top lawman. In 1924, though, Burns was replaced by J. Edgar Hoover, who would maintain an iron grip on the FBI for the next 50 years.
By the 1920s, the Pinkertons' reign as America's foremost detectives was waning. In fact, the entire private detective industry that the Pinkertons had pioneered entered a period of transition, now that federal investigative agencies like the FBI and Secret Service had become well-established. At the same time, city police departments matured and began to invest more public funds into local law enforcement, creating better-trained and better-equipped municipal police and sheriff's departments.
These public law officers now took on cases that had previously been handled by Pinkertons and other private detectives.
So to keep revenue streaming, the agency tried to carve out specialized areas of focus, including handling smaller capers such as counterfeiting, forged checks, and even shoplifting. Bank robberies never seemed to slow, nor did break-ins at jewelry stores. And with the rise of the automobile through the mid-1920s, armed truck robberies replaced train thefts as bandits began using Model T Fords instead of horses.
And the rise of the American middle class meant regular citizens could now afford to hire private detectives to investigate such things as marital complaints, house thefts, estate fraud, missing person cases, and insurance fraud. The Pinkertons took on hundreds of these smaller jobs while continuing their investigative work for banks and jewelers. Meanwhile, corporations continued to hire Pinkertons to spy on their employees and unions, which became the agency's primary source of income.
All throughout this era of change, the agency's old guard desperado chasers were gradually replaced by new hires, many of them college grads or businessmen who would never chase a train robber on horseback or an art thief across Europe. After William Pinkerton died in 1923, the company passed on to his nephew, Alan, who was named for his grandfather, the agency's founder.
When the younger Allen died in 1930, his son Robert took over, the fourth generation to lead the company. He would also be the last. Robert was a Harvard-educated stockbroker whose father had bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. But while his father and uncle had been detectives since they were teenagers, Robert had never worked for the agency. When he took charge of the family business in 1930, he admitted, "...I really had to start from scratch."
He would learn quickly, though, leading the company through the first rough years of the Great Depression. Then, with Franklin Roosevelt's election as president in 1932 and the passage of New Deal legislation in '33, the country entered the Progressive Era of the mid-30s. New laws now govern unions and workers' rights, and the agency was suddenly back in the spotlight, once again accused of primarily working on behalf of big business and against the laboring classes.
But public opinion wasn't the only threat. Soon the agency would have to defend itself before a formidable opponent, angry members of Congress.
Imagine it's September 26th, 1936. You're the great-grandson of Alan Pinkerton, and it's been six years since you took over the detective agency he founded. You spent the past few years learning the business and leading the agency through the Depression. But ever since Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act last year, government regulators have been questioning your company's contracts with big business. Today, you're seated in front of a hostile Senate committee that subpoenaed you and the heads of four other top detective firms.
The committee is led by Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette, who's been grilling you for an hour, but it seems he's just getting warmed up. Now, is it true that a third of your business comes from spying on innocent employees? I wouldn't put it that way, Senator. Well, how would you put it? Please answer the question. I believe that a man running a business should be allowed to keep tabs on his employees.
You mean spying on people, right? Recruiting informants? Creating chaos? Sometimes it's the employees creating chaos. Our job is to prevent that. By paying undercover union men to spy and snitch on their fellow workers, huh? By turning employees against each other. By getting rich off the backs of the common man.
You adjust your tie, feeling the sweat under your shirt collar. As we've presented to this committee, and I have it here in my files, I'll show you. Our work for these companies has resulted in finding thousands of people guilty of crimes like arson, assault, kidnapping, and even murder, all in connection with labor disputes.
Yeah, but I don't need to remind you that your agency does not have the best reputation when it comes to labor disputes, does it? We all know what happened at Homestead in 1892. People died, and your agency was responsible. Actually, wait, you might not remember. Were you even born yet? Senator, now listen, young man. We're here today because labor espionage has gone too far. Too far. As we learned yesterday, General Motors spent $1 million last year on detective agencies like yours.
That's money that could have been spent on better working conditions. With respect, Senator, without the work we do, these companies would suffer. It's the workers who suffer. They're the ones being intimidated and threatened when they try to bargain for better pay and better conditions. Also, if this work is so important to companies, why all the secrecy, huh?
And why did your agency destroy records when we subpoenaed you? My agency has done nothing wrong. We've broken no laws. Well, we'll see about that. What I am sure of is that the corporate spying system in this nation, which your agency pioneered, breeds fear, suspicion, and animosity in the workforce. Labor espionage causes more strikes than it prevents. It's wrong, and it needs to stop.
Thank you.
By 1936, the Pinkerton Detective Agency had 27 offices and grossed more than $2 million annually. A third of that income came from so-called industrial espionage. The agency supplied more than 1,000 agents to companies like General Motors, and its labor spies had infiltrated all of the top unions, from auto to textile and mine workers.
A years-long congressional inquiry led by Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette looked into industrial espionage, private police agencies, and strike-breaking services. Committee hearings revealed that the scope of labor spying was far more entrenched than the general public was aware. More than 200 private detective agencies were providing labor spies to companies in more than 100 cities. The results of these hearings and the subsequent public outcry led to widespread reforms.
Agency President Robert Pinkerton admitted during testimony that his company did supply labor spies to GM and others, but he publicly vowed to end that practice. In early 1937, he summoned his board of directors to Chicago and informed them that the agency would stop all labor investigation work.
Pinkerton then made a remarkable public announcement, stating, Our agency has always felt that the employer had a right to know what his employees were doing, but the sentiment throughout the country is such that it looks as if we were on the wrong side of the fence. He added, Times have changed, and we are out of step.
Robert Pinkerton later told the New York Times that his company had done nothing illegal during its industrial spying and strike-breaking era, but that it was also a phase of our business that we are not particularly proud of, and we're delighted we're out of it.
As a result of this pullback from labor espionage activities, the agency suffered financially for years. Its income dropped nearly 40% in the late 1930s. During World War II, it recovered by providing security protection for manufacturing plants, and the agency remained in family hands until 1967, when Robert Pinkerton renamed the company Pinkerton's Inc. and stepped down.
A new president took over, and for the first time in more than a century, someone outside the Pinkerton family would run the agency.
Into the second half of the 20th century, the Pinkertons continued to thrive, becoming less of an investigative agency and more of a modern global security force. Pinkerton guards protected racetracks, sporting events, fairs, hospitals, schools, and other institutions. The company created a security training school and developed sophisticated alarm systems and other technological advances.
In 1982, the agency was sold to American Brands and five years later was sold again to California Plant Protection. At the time, the company had 250 offices and more than 50,000 employees worldwide.
In 1999, Pinkerton was sold once more to the Swedish conglomerate Securitas AB, creating one of the largest security firms in the world. It was renamed Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations and has become a high-tech cybersecurity enterprise.
When Alan Pinkerton founded his agency in the 1850s, the progressive abolitionist barrel maker from Scotland unwittingly launched an iconic enterprise, one that has survived to become one of America's oldest companies, alongside the firms whose rail cars it once protected from American Express to Wells Fargo. Pinkerton, his sons, and their agents chased Confederate spies, Wild West bandits, and international art thieves...
but also courted controversy with their violent union busting and strike-breaking activities. But their legacy as America's preeminent detective agency endures, and as the forerunners of the FBI and Secret Service, the agency helped to fundamentally shape modern law enforcement in America. From Wondery, this is Episode 3 of the Pinkerton Detective Agency from American History Tellers.
On the next episode, I speak with S. Paul O'Hara, an associate professor of history at Xavier University, about Alan Pinkerton's careful curation of the Pinkerton's mythology, as well as his own. If you like American history tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
If you'd like to learn more about the Pinkertons, we recommend The Lost Detective by Nathan Ward and The Eye That Never Sleeps by Frank Moore. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Christian Paraga. Sound design by Molly Bach.
Music by Lindsey Graham. This episode is written by Neil Thompson, edited by Dorian Marina, produced by Alita Rozanski. Our production coordinator is Desi Blaylock. Managing producer, Matt Kant. Senior managing producer, Ryan Moore. Senior producer, Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman and Marsha Louis for Wondery.
It's 1978 in Miami, and the infamous Mutiny Club is the hottest spot in town and the epicenter of the cocaine trade. But behind the glamorous parties and opulent lifestyles, a violent drug war to own the booming industry is raging.
Business Wars is a podcast about the biggest rivalries of all time, and our new three-part series, Drug Cartels, dives into the war between the top two cartels in Colombia, combining the complex business acumen of a corporation with the calculated violence of the mafia.
The Cali and Medellin cartels ignited a ruthless fight to extinguish the other and dominate the growing cocaine trade in the U.S., which in 1984 was estimated to be over 70 tons of cocaine each year. Follow Business Wars on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Business Wars drug cartels exclusively and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus and binge the new TV series that inspired this season, Hotel Cocaine, right now only on MGM+.