From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where we too partake in New Year's resolutions
and our New Year's resolution to you is more assholes all the time, but not just UFO assholes
now.
We have diversified and we will be looking at all kinds.
Except there, you know, there'll be people, the personification of the idea of an asshole.
So yeah, if you're looking for porn, it's not here.
Sorry guys.
We are continuing our January tradition of historically looking at strikes that have
brought us to the world that we have for workers' rights.
Chelsea, today we're going to be looking at both a man and a company that have really
shaped our labor market as we see it today.
This episode is on the Pinkertons.
Now, Chelsea, have you ever heard this name?
Aside from our ongoing list of things to cover on the podcast, I have not.
Okay.
I just kept scrolling past it because I didn't know what it was.
Yeah, fair enough.
And you've actually mentioned them in the past before.
A few of our previous episodes are going to come up in this one, but I think this is
a good way to come into this episode because there's a lot to learn and there will be
some surprises along the way.
Oh, I love surprises.
Sometimes.
I hope they're good surprises.
This one, I'm just going to spoil it a little bit right now.
There's no murder death cults in here.
So we're good.
We go so far as to say that is foreshadowing.
There may be some foreshadowing.
There will be death.
It will not be mass starvation.
Okay.
Well, that's good.
That surprises out of the way though.
Anyhow, let's get into our story and it starts with the birth of a man by the name of Alan
Pinkerton.
Surprisingly enough.
Now Mr. Pinkerton born baby Pinkerton in Glasgow in July of 1819.
He only went to school until he was 10 and then his father died.
And I should say a lot of this comes from Wikipedia and the Pinkerton's website itself.
There's some of it that's probably embellished.
I'll talk about them when I'm not sure if it actually happened or not.
Okay.
So despite the fact that he left school at 10 years old, Pinkerton was still a voracious
reader and really liked to self educate.
Turn out that's true, no idea because it doesn't really have anything to do with the story.
Just says he was a cooper by trade and he was active in the Scottish chartist movement
as a young man.
The chartists were basically the first people to say we need workers rights in the UK.
And actually it was super interesting.
I didn't know this, but before the chartists came along, it was actually illegal for anybody
who didn't own land to act as a member of parliament.
You had to own land, which basically means no workers could participate in parliament.
I think we've talked about that before, right?
I think I knew that.
Well, back in the day, there used to be you had to own land to vote and that was basically
the old style.
Also, there was no wage for working in parliament either.
So really, if you weren't rich outside of it, you couldn't be in parliament.
So like the chartist movement was a big push.
They got a few things changed.
Those are two of the things.
There was five things in total they did, but this is not a chartist episode.
So we're going to keep going.
Okay.
But weirdly paints him as kind of like a pro worker guy.
We'll talk about that later.
He also says that he was raised as a lifelong atheist.
Now, Pinkerton moves to the U.S. in 1842.
And in 1843, he settles down in Dundee Township, Illinois, which is 50 miles northwest of Chicago
on the Fox River.
He built a cabin there and he starts his own Coopridge, who we don't know anything about
because they don't mention her outside of this.
Is sent to move with him.
She was living in Chicago.
He's like, Hey, I built this cabin.
Come live with me.
She says, okay.
Remember, these are all thick, thick Scottish accents.
I was going to attempt it, but I want this to be listenable.
I was just gonna say, should we be doing that or is that a bad idea?
Well we don't actually have that much of a Scottish listening population.
So maybe, but didn't prep it.
So we'll do it a different time.
And they add this here as early as 1844.
Pinkerton was part of the Chicago abolitionist movement as one of its leaders and his Dundee
home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
So helping freed slaves get to Canada.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
Nothing to substantiate it.
Okay.
Either of those.
That's neutral then.
Pinkerton, you know, he's got his Coopridge.
He's making barrels, but he starts to get into a bit of criminal detective work in a
very strange way.
He was out in the forest looking for wood to make barrel staves and he came across what
he considered a band of counterfeiters.
After observing their movement for some time, he informed the local sheriff who arrested
this counterfeiter group.
This led to Pinkerton being appointed in 1849 as the first police detective in Chicago.
And in 1850, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the Northwestern
police agency, which later became Pinkerton and company.
And finally it ends up with the name Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
Those were his only prerequisites with stumbling upon a group of counter.
Were they actually even counterfeiting?
See, I don't actually know for sure because you know, police records from that day are
spotty at best.
Like there's no criminal database at the time.
Wow.
I am just flabbergasted at this.
Back in the days when you just had to stumble upon a crime to...
Some crazy Scottish man yelling things.
I better follow him.
Seems like an excellent detective.
Okay.
He's a shaker and a mover.
Got it.
So the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency starts off and kind of the bread and butter
of the detective work.
First off working for the postal service because you know, postal detective work is lucrative
at the time.
And then they move on to the railway because you know, natural segue because those are
the two groups that pay well.
For how he got into this, like then he just gets postal and railway, like national things.
You just wait to see where this goes.
First off, he realized that this company was going to be very evil right from the start.
Chelsea, I need you to look up Pinkerton logo just so that you can see what I'm talking
about.
Oh no.
Pinkerton's insignia is a wide open eye with the caption, we never sleep underneath it.
Oh no.
This is troublesome.
This is very straight up.
He's like, how can I make this seem evil?
I don't think you can come up with an evil or logo.
Nope.
And this is how he got the counterfeiters for sure is by never sleeping and always watching
them.
Yeah.
Okay.
So he gets out doing postal detective work and then moves on into the railway because
there's lots of train robberies happening at the time.
It apparently solves a couple of them during the 1850s.
And this brings Pinkerton into contact with a man by the name of George B. McClellan,
who was the chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad.
And then another man you may have heard this name before, Abraham Lincoln, who was a lawyer
for the company as well.
Can we just go over his details quick because he's a very tall man, well known for his wrestling
acumen.
And he turns up, I believe, also becoming president of the United States and assassinated.
Right.
That Abraham Lincoln.
Okay.
Yes.
As a act.
Yes.
Wood teeth, I believe as well.
No, that was the other one.
It was Washington.
Wood teeth.
Yeah.
Anyhow, that he has a relationship now with Abe Lincoln.
And then the civil war begins.
Pinkertons ends up serving as the head of Union intelligence services during the first two
years of the war.
And apparently he heads off an alleged assassination plot in Baltimore to assassinate Abe Lincoln
on his way to Washington, DC.
Weren't they friends or lovers?
Friends as far as I can tell.
He was also tasked with providing estimates of Confederate troop numbers to General George
B. McClellan.
Again, that other guy was part of the railroad.
This guy just seems to stumble into like the best people to get him stuff.
You can't even do something like this these days.
You could never have no credentials and just be head of security for the United States.
Literally, in 1844 is around the time that he stopped the counterfeiters.
And then five years later, he's protecting the president.
This is five years later?
Wow.
No, this is like a different day and age.
You could never.
We can't even own houses now because they're too expensive.
Oh, man.
So he was tasked with providing general estimates of Confederate troop numbers for General George
B. McClellan when he commanded the Army of the Potomac.
His agents often worked undercover as Confederate soldiers and sympathizers to gather military
intelligence.
Pinkerton himself served on several undercover missions as a Confederate soldier using the
alias Major E.G. Allen.
And I really love when people are so lazy with their aliases that they literally just
use their first name as their last name.
It's pretty great.
I'm just getting to thinking now.
Where would he come up with his like process for how to do things as like intelligence?
Like he has no experience other than stumbling upon people in the woods.
And now he's like in charge of very big things.
Oh, yeah.
He's just making it up.
He's like, maybe we got to do this today.
And allegedly stops an assassination attempt against Ample Lincoln, which is just like
so bizarre.
But at the same time, zero proof, zero proof this ever happened.
Like nobody was arrested for it.
Okay, so maybe that's how he's doing things.
My opinion is he's an absolute bullshitter.
Yeah.
And people can't understand him.
And you can only ask somebody three times to repeat themselves before it's too awkward
to just accept what they said.
I'm flabbergasted at this point.
Like, okay, okay, let's continue.
He's working as Major E.G. Allen in the Confederacy to go undercover and figure this shit out.
What's going on?
He was crossing the deep south in the summer of 1861, focusing on fortifications and Confederate
plans.
He was found out in Memphis and barely escaped with his life.
This counterintelligence work done by Pinkerton and his agents is comparable to the work done
by today's US Army counterintelligence special agents in which Pinkerton's agency is considered
an early predecessor.
He was succeeded as intelligence service chief by Lefayette Baker.
The intelligence service was then the predecessor of the US Secret Service.
So basically the Pinkertons invented the Secret Service too.
This is insane.
Out of nowhere.
This guy just meat-up.
Just one of those in meat-callets.
I have to add this at this point because we just talked about how instrumental he was
during the Civil War in the US.
Military historians have been strongly critical of the intelligence Pinkerton provided for
the Union Army, which for the most part was undigested raw data.
In the view of T. Harry Williams, Pinkerton was the poorest intelligence service any general
ever had.
Pinkerton's estimates of rebel troop numbers derived from his credulous interrogations of
Confederate prisoners, deserters, refugees, and escaped slaves, and civilians, unused
to counting large bodies of men, badly exaggerated the size of those formations, sometimes almost
doubling their actual strength.
So the general would ask him to go figure out how many Confederate troops are in this
area and he would be like, oh yeah, there's like 10,000 troops and there'd be maybe a
few hundred.
I mean, that's on point for this guy.
I would expect something more like this.
So yeah, that's a lot of this is really curated to make Pinkerton's look like they're really
good, but there's definitely information out there that they weren't that great.
I mean, that would track for me as far as what I know so far.
Once the Civil War is done, Pinkerton finishes the service with the Union Army.
This is done before a Blinkins assassinated, so you really can't blame him for not stopping
that assassination.
That one did exist and it did happen.
However, he continued pursuits outside of that work, working for the train companies
again.
Pinkerton started running down train robbers, including the Reno gang, which I didn't end
up looking into, who is also hired by the Railroad Express companies to track Jesse
James.
This is a super messed up story.
Jesse James and Pinkerton's have like a big fight for a long time, I guess a feud.
So Pinkerton's fails to capture him for a while.
Railroad withdraws their financial support for Pinkerton's, but Pinkerton's continues
to track James at their own expense.
And after James allegedly captured and killed one of Pinkerton's undercover agents, they
decide in 1875 they're going to go to Jesse James' mom's house and they do a raid, like
one of the first police raids, even though they're a private company.
It's in Clay County, Missouri.
Frank and Jesse, Frank is, I believe, Jesse's partner.
They were nowhere around.
It was just like Jesse James' mom and his half brother who's eight years old.
Pinkerton's they go in, they get in a huge argument with the mom, and then somehow during
this entire time, one of the detectives throws something inside the house and it explodes.
Jesse James' mother's arm is blown off and his half brother ends up dying.
So there's a botched raid.
Pinkerton's the company loses a lot of PR over this time.
And after seeing his detectives denounced as murderers in the papers, Alan Pinkerton decides
to call off his war against Jesse James.
Never catches Jesse James.
Then in 1871, Congress appropriates $50,000 to the new Department of Justice to form a
sub-organization devoted to quote, the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating
federal law, end quote.
The amount was insufficient to actually start an internal investigation unit.
So they just end up contracting out to Pinkerton's.
So Pinkerton's gets $50,000 in 1871 for detective work for the government.
That's about $1.2 million today.
Holy crap.
And in 1872, they are contracted by the Spanish government to help suppress a revolution in
Cuba which intended to end slavery and give citizens the right to vote.
So they are now being contracted as a militia, like internationally.
This is so wild right?
Yeah.
And this is super weird too, because Pinkerton, remember, he was part of the abolitionist movement
in Chicago allegedly.
So why the hell would you take money from this to suppress a slave uprising in Cuba?
If you're abolitionist.
Sounds like he either wasn't a part of it in the first place or he's just doing whatever
to make money.
I think part of it is just trying to give a good reflection on the history of saying,
oh yeah, he's an abolitionist when really he would just take any money he could get.
And like right from the start again, evil logo, evil as logo you could get.
It's true.
It doesn't get much evil than that logo.
In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowan, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad,
hired the agency to quote, investigate and quote, the labor unions in the company's minds.
Pinkerton agent James McParland using the alias James McKenna infiltrated what is called
the Molly McGuire's, which was a 19th century.
It's called a secret society, which apparently they infiltrated of mainly Irish American coal
miners.
They ended up being the cause of the Molly McGuire's being no more.
Now I need to tell you, Molly McGuire's their secret society of Irish immigrant coal miners
basically just advocate for workers rights.
Now they are a little more extreme and that they would terrorize or even kill foremen and
supervisors.
They also are anti-war.
Part of their charter is they won't fight a rich man's war and they rebelled against
drafts during the civil war.
So not considered great, but they were literally just workers have no rights.
There's no way to enforce them.
We need to be violent.
I mean, I can't argue with their logic.
I agree with everything that they're for.
The undercover work done by Pinkerton's during this time led to many of them being executed
by the state in 1877.
And this inspired Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of Sherlock Holmes to write the novel
The Valley of Fear, a Pinkerton agent also appears in a small role in the adventure of
Red Circle, which is a Sherlock Holmes story.
So Arthur Conan Doyle was very aware of them and writing about them as well.
Well, they seem to be shaking things up during this time.
But alas, our friend Alan Pinkerton comes to an end on July 1st, 1884.
Get this.
Okay.
Pinkerton living a big life.
How do you think he came to an end?
He choked on a ham sandwich.
You know what?
Not that far off.
Okay.
How was it?
The general consensus at the time was that he was walking, slipped on some pavement,
bit his tongue, died of gangrene.
What?
You know, it's not hard to die, really.
Especially before penicillin.
It's a scary thing.
Yeah.
There's things out there that are very mundane that'll get you.
And it's the world's escape replace.
I should say a lot of people also believe it could have been a stroke, but the consensus
of the time was gangrene of the tongue.
Wow.
That okay.
So, he dies in 1884, control of Pinkerton's detective agency goes to Pinkerton's sons,
Robert and William Pinkerton, and the company continues to grow.
So by the 1890s, 1884, within five years, Pinkerton's has 2,000 detectives and 30,000
reserve, which is basically anybody that can get in to come do stuff.
This is more men than the standing army of the US.
Where are these people coming from?
It's just people need work.
Okay.
And then like, these are the only detectives.
And some states see this and they're like, holy shit.
This is a mercenary army that you guys have.
So some states outright ban Pinkerton's or outlaw Pinkerton's from working in their
state.
It's really just Ohio, but they at least said like, we don't want Pinkerton's in here,
so they banned them.
It's not a bad move, I would say.
During Alan Pinkerton's life, the Pinkerton's detective agency is credited with creating
the first crime database.
They're credited with creating the idea of a mugshot.
They hired the first female private investigator in US history, and they in fact coined the
term private investigator or PI.
I was just going to say, not only did they hire the first female when they had the first
male one.
Yes.
But that's actually, that's crazy.
It just seems weird to me, like a woman working in the 1800s as a PI.
Like that seems pretty progressive.
It is actually.
Okay.
Kids take it over.
We're going to get into some of the shadier shit that goes on now.
First and foremost is the Haymarket riots.
In 1886, there was a protest against the killings and woundings of several workers during a
strike at the McCormick Reaper works.
This is in Illinois.
The Haymarket riots take place in Chicago.
Everybody goes to the Haymarket.
All these workers go there.
They start having a protest, turns into a riot.
Situation escalates into a violent riot when an unidentified person throws a bomb at the
police, which results in the death of eight people.
Policemen and Pinkerton's were surrounding this protest at the time that the bomb went
off.
And then seven anarchists are arrested despite zero evidence linking them to the specific
crimes.
Pinkerton's detective testifies at the trial that they saw these people do this.
Four of the men go to the gallows.
They were hanged.
Oh, no.
During the trial, a defense team actually suggests there's evidence linking the Pinkerton's
to the bomb being thrown, which reflects a widespread belief among the strikers.
However, they could not substantiate this and again put to the gallows.
Four of them.
Well, the Pinkerton's?
No, the anarchists.
Well, how come the anarchists have to substantiate this and not the freaking Pinkerton?
Because Pinkerton's are detectives, so they know this shit.
That's at least what people believe at the time.
Oh my God.
Okay.
This is a wild time to be alive.
Seven years after this, the Illinois governor ends up pardoning the last three living haymarket
anarchists after identifying the police and Pinkerton's as unreliable narrators.
So yeah, they said that it turns out it's not true at all.
Oh my God.
Then in 1892, there's what's known as the Homestead Strike.
This is Andrew Carnegie, who's a steel robber baron.
You would know Andrew Carnegie not necessarily by name, but you've heard of Carnegie Hall
before, right?
Yes.
No, I'm thinking of Dale Carnegie.
Yeah, I know.
Dale Carnegie's a different guy.
Carnegie ends up donating pretty much all of his wealth before he dies and they build
like culture around the big cities in the US.
He ends up fairly poor when he dies, but he's an absolute asshole while he's alive.
To give you a short idea of what the Homestead Strike is, in 1892, there's a city in Pennsylvania
called Homestead.
It's a company town, so it's built around a steel mill.
Andrew Carnegie has a guy to run the plant and his last name is Frick.
Can't remember his first name, but Frick is good enough for this.
That's a good last name.
Oh, especially if you're going to be somebody who's doing the biddings of a robber baron.
Anyhow.
Do they have those anymore?
We just have nicer names for them.
We just call them philanthropists.
Okay.
Carnegie tells Frick he wants to get rid of the union in town.
So when the contract's up for ratification, they lock the workers out of the plant.
They put up barbwire fences around the actual plant itself.
They put up water cannons, which can actually spray boiling hot water at anybody outside.
Basically, they say, no, can't go in there, can't work.
We're going to bring people into town to do the job instead of you scabs.
And the workers are saying, well, screw you.
We're just going to not let anybody in.
It's a company town.
They live there with their families.
The only way in and out of town is by barge because it's on a river.
They just block anybody if they don't know in town.
They say, get the hell out of here.
The only people actually from outside of town they allow is the media.
And if they think you're going to write a bad thing about the workers, they say, get
lost.
They were really set up quite nicely with that barge in and out.
Carnegie ends up hiring 300 Pinkerton detectives to come shut down the strike.
They come in by barge.
They end up getting into a 12 hour gunfight between 3,800 workers and 300 Pinkerton's
that are on the barge.
Three Pinkerton's die and seven workers die and then Pinkerton's end up surrendering.
So doesn't go well for them.
That's a really weird way how this strike ends just to give you the Coles notes.
An anarchist from New York hears what's going on and the workers had huge public support.
This anarchist hears about this Frick guy and he's like, oh, this guy is horrible.
He ends up going to Homestead and attempting to assassinate Frick.
He stabs him, but Frick survives and then public attention of this changes and they're
against the workers now.
So whether or not that's actually what happens, that's how the story ends up changing and
the strike breaks.
Everybody ends up going back to work working longer hours for less pay.
Oh no.
Yeah.
Pinkerton's tried to have a hand in that.
They did horribly in it.
So Homestead happens and the Pinkerton's group starts moving out of the corporate thug
business like where we'll go just shut down a strike.
They felt that the damage to the company's reputation was not worth the business.
After all, the company's technical main business was catching criminals and not serving as shock
forces for capitalists, but they still remain involved in Union Bustin by setting in agents
to spy.
The next strike that they get involved in is the Cortalane Strike in Idaho.
In order to invest in machinery, a coal mine in Idaho decides that what we're going to
do is change your hours.
All the workers, they work working nine hour days, six days a week.
They want to change it to 10 hour days, seven days a week and give them a pay cut.
Oh my God.
They form a labor union.
They start planning a strike and the labor union is then infiltrated by Pinkerton's agents.
They basically go in and say like, oh yeah, I want to work in the coal.
Oh yeah, I want to be part of the union.
They go to all the union meetings as Pinkerton agents and pass that information all on to
the owners of the mines.
So they routinely provide union information to the mine owners and there ends up being
violence in this.
On July 11th, 1892, the striking coal miners in Cortalane blow up the Frisco Mill, a mine
building filled with guards after getting into a firefight with Pinkerton's later on.
Killing two mine employees and taking about 60 mine guards prisoner.
This led to the governor of Idaho declaring martial law over the mining district and crushing
the mine strike.
During this time, like it's a field day for union busting company.
So another one pops up kind of the big competitor of Pinkerton's of the day is called the Baldwin
felts agency.
They really have a foothold in West Virginia.
So a lot of the strikes that go on in West Virginia end up having Baldwin felts agents
attached to it.
So like the battle of Blair Mountain had Baldwin felts as opposed to Pinkerton's.
Okay.
Do you remember the battle of Blair Mountain where it's all those coal miners on strike
that end up getting attacked by air raids?
Yeah, I always get that one confused with the big foot one.
That one's also a battle of some mountain.
Right.
Next up is the Pullman strike of 1894, which we did in our first episode of a history of
violent strikes.
Just to give you a bit of an idea, Pullman is a company that builds box cars just outside
of Chicago.
They have the American Railway Union and out of union solidarity, they started blocking
anything that was pulling a Pullman car.
They just said, Nope, Nope, we're not going to work on it.
During this strike, 20,000 troops were called out to ensure that the trains carried us mail
could travel freely.
30 people end up being killed during riots in Chicago for this, which may have gone up
to 40 of nobody really knows.
And there was property damage in the excess of 80 million.
This is specifically listed under the Pinkerton's Wikipedia page as something they're involved
with, but I couldn't find the particulars as to how they were involved with it.
So they were just involved with the Pullman strike as far as I can tell.
Okay.
Somehow, maybe.
Yeah.
They were involved in one called the Miner Strike in Bradwood, Illinois.
Pinkerton's was used by the industrialists against the miners during these strikes.
The strikes were triggered by wage cuts and resulted in violent confrontations between
Pinkerton's and striking miners.
They were also involved.
Chelsea, you did this one, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which was one of the most
significant labor disputes in the 19th century.
Strike was triggered by wage cuts and was marked by violent confrontations again between
Pinkerton's and strikers.
In 1905, Harry Orchard ends up being arrested by the Idaho police and confessing to Pinkerton
agents, particularly James McFarland, that he assassinated former governor Frank Struenberg
of Idaho.
He's a prominent person in the workers' rights worlds and for unions.
And he just so happens to confess to a Pinkerton's person detective that he murdered the former
governor.
I mean, they seem like standup guys that would always tell the truth, though.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
And so, they acquitted for it in a nationally publicized trial.
However, there were several people that were implicated in this and there was a trial.
Harry Orchard ends up receiving a death sentence but ends up getting it commuted, so he's not
actually put to death.
What actually happened there, I'm not sure, though.
This one I find super interesting.
In 1907, Morris Friedman reported that Pinkerton agents had infiltrated the Western Federation
of Miners and managed to gain control of the strike relief fund.
So you know that money that they have for a rainy day if they need to go on strike?
He ends up exhausting the treasury by awarding lavish benefits to strikers.
However, many attacks against unions have used force for one sort or another.
They found new and different ways to actually stop strikers.
This guy joined the union as a Pinkerton's detective.
He's like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm good with money.
I'll handle the money.
And just gave it all out so that they had no money to support themselves while striking.
Their timeline of events is bizarre.
It's just been a wild ride from like stumbling upon people potentially counterfeiting in
the woods to now they're working against unions and like.
And that's like exclusively what they do during this time.
Like they're still working for the railways.
This is so weird.
But yeah.
And then according to the New Republic, a newspaper, the Pinkerton's were also brought
in alongside the Colorado National Guard during the 1914 Ludlow massacre.
So I have to give you a little more background on this one because this is just insane.
So the Ludlow massacre is basically soldiers from Colorado's National Guard and private
guards employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company who were brought in to stop a strike
that was going on at a coal mine, basically a tank colony of roughly 1200 workers and
also their families living in Ludlow, Colorado.
So Pinkerton's and the Colorado National Guard are brought in to suppress it.
John Rockefeller Jr. was also a part owner in this company.
And that's just a little bit of information for the robber baron side of it all.
Anyhow, what happens is they end up burning down the tent city and 69 to 199 people were
killed during the suppression.
And it's considered quote the deadliest strike in the history of the United States.
I don't know what to say about that.
And the 69 to 199 people who died were mostly women and children.
They were not the people that were on strike because the families would be in the tent.
I was just going to say were like they doing any fighting or did they just go light up
the houses, so to say.
I think they were trying to disperse them away from the mine so that if you don't have
a place to live, why would you stick around the mine?
Great idea Pinkerton's, but that's been the theme for the whole podcast.
The Ludlow massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations.
Socialist historian Howard Zinn describes it as quote the culminating act of perhaps the
most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history and quote.
And this is really a changing point for how Pinkerton's can relate to things.
So Congress responds to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and
Mining to investigate the events.
It publishes a report in 1915 which is super influential and child labor laws being introduced
to the US and an eight hour work day.
The Ludlow Town site and the adjacent location of the tent colony is now a ghost town that
you can go visit.
So super weird.
The massacre site is owned by the United Mine Workers of America which erected a granite
monument in memory of those who died that day.
I should also say it's not just Pinkerton's that's implicated in that one, Baldwin Felt
is also implicated.
In the 1930s the Pinkerton agency employed 1200 labor spies and nearly one third of them
held high level positions in targeted unions.
The International Association of Machinists was damaged when Sam Brady, a veteran Pinkerton
operative held a high enough position in the union that he was able to precipitate a premature
strike.
So he pushed them to go on strike when they weren't ready for it.
So it was a failure.
And all but five officers in the United Auto Workers Local in Lansing, Michigan were driven
out by Pinkerton's agents.
The five who remained were Pinkerton's at the end of the day.
At the Underwood Elliott Fisher Company plant the union local was so badly injured by undercover
operatives that membership dropped from more than 2500 to fewer than 75.
So they moved from being like just the bullies to a very different style.
This is so stupid.
But this is where the big change happens for Pinkerton's.
Bosses once hired the firm because agents would do just about anything to break a strike.
Pinkerton's agents would lie and kill if necessary and they could do things and go places
law enforcement could not.
Companies hire Pinkerton's now because the firm's very name still implies a threat.
As the 20th century progressed, Pinkerton's changed their concentration and more of their
resources into surveillance and corporate espionage.
When the U.S. Senate convened the Lafayette Civil Liberties Committee in 1936, senators
found that the Pinkerton's had not only infiltrated general workers whose workers were then attempting
to organize with the United Auto Workers.
Their agents had also destroyed evidence before the governor could complete an investigation
of their activities.
They're not only infiltrating these guys, they're specifically destroying evidence
that could implicate them in anything that the government is finding.
Because of this, they passed the Wagner Act through Congress in the 1930s, which made
the investigation of labor activities illegal.
Pinkerton's then shifted its focus towards the investigation of gambling, particularly
the horse racing circuit.
Weirdly enough.
During World War II, in the 1940s, the agency provided guarding services for war supply plans.
This marked a significant shift in the agency's service, with property guarding becoming their
primary focus.
It's all been significant shifts, I would say.
They're just all over the map.
In the 1960s, the word detective disappeared from the agency's letterhead, reflecting
its shift from the detective work towards protection services.
During this period, the agency also established offices in Hong Kong, opening doors to operations
in Asia.
I don't know much about that side of it.
In the late 20th century, the company became increasingly involved in risk management
and executive protection, and it was bought by a Swedish security company known as Securitas
AB in 1999, which led to further expansion and diversification in its services.
The company now operating as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Incorporated focuses on
threat intelligence, risk management, executive protection, and active shooter responses.
Within recent years, Pinkerton has transformed into a global provider of corporate risk management
and has pioneered the holistic approach called ESRM, Enterprise Security Risk Management,
and has also developed a comprehensive risk management platform to unlock a specialized
solution framework.
A lot of that comes from PR bullshit from them.
They are still around today.
They're very real still.
The Pinkerton survived and entered the 21st century intact, largely on the strength of
their ability to intimidate, surveil, and gather intelligence about workers.
On its website, the company advertises global protective intelligence, and produced in
large part by agents who are embedded or on call.
Corporate clients can access the Pinkerton Vigilance Network, which consists of the
firm's agents, government agencies, and 1,000 plus private sources.
The goal is to help corporations manage risk on all fronts, from natural disasters to political
events.
Pinkerton's hardly the only firm to advertise such services, but its history sets it apart
and the company embraces its legacy.
Quote, with one call to Pinkerton, you gain access to our global network of resources,
providing boots on the ground when and where you need them.
End quote, it promises.
And Securetoss add for the firm lists, quote, labor demonstrations, and quote, among the
risks it can monitor.
So they're still in anti-union bullshit.
Trouble can happen anywhere, anytime.
That's their tagline.
Is that legal anymore?
Anti-union?
Let's look at what they've been doing the last few years.
This came right from Chelsea of all places that's writing anti-Pinkerton stuff.
What magazine do you think it is?
Is it the cult one?
You're never going to guess it.
This is Teen Vogue.
I'm never going to...
Teen Vogue?
Yeah.
Okay.
Weirdly, a bunch of bullshit about teenage celebrity shit and then pro-labor rights stuff.
Okay.
Don't understand it at all.
The Pinkerton promise is attractive to some Silicon Valley firms.
The Guardian reported on March 16th that Google and Facebook have both retained Pinkerton's
to monitor staff for leaks, quote, among other services Pinkerton offers to send investigators
to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on employees' conversations,
end quote.
Olivia Salon reported, oh my God.
The Pinkerton representatives told Salon that its agents typically focus on IP theft
and insider trading, but the firm's reach may not end with those concerns.
And sorry, I said this is Teen Vogue.
This one's not Teen Vogue.
This one's Salon.
Quote, through LinkedIn searches, the Guardian found several former Pinkerton investigators
to have subsequently been hired by Facebook, Google, and Apple.
Salon roped.
Oh.
Facebook and Google fittingly are now in the process of building their own physical communities.
Apartments in Willow Village and Alphabet City will theoretically be available to all,
but the parallels of company towns of mold are obvious.
That's crazy.
So they're working for Facebook and Google doing God knows what and Apple.
Next up, dozens of leaked documents from Amazon's Global Security Operations Center
reveal the company's reliance on Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers and
the extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social
movements.
Is that legal?
Is it?
Or no?
Yes.
It must be.
Quasie.
Gray area.
Next up, there have been reports of Starbucks using Pinkerton agents to monitor labor board
rulings.
This suggests that Starbucks may have been using Pinkerton agents to gather information about
potential union activities and to prepare for potential strikes or other labor disputes.
All these big companies.
And then this one is super weird.
This has to do with Magic the Gathering.
Chelsea, do you know what that is?
Yeah, that card game.
Major nerd card game.
They're owned by Wizards of the Coast, who is an ardent defender of its IP.
Basically, they make a ton of money off Magic the Gathering and a few other things.
So they tightly hold things close at hand without letting it out.
A YouTuber by the name of Dan Cannon, who goes by old school MTG on YouTube, he uploaded
a video of himself opening a box of Magic the Gathering cards that he'd just got in
the mail.
And it turns out the cards weren't supposed to be released yet.
They accidentally got sent to him.
They were from the next set that was supposed to come out, not the current set that was
coming out.
So he posts these videos of him opening what's called the March of the Machines aftermath.
Whereas the card set that had come out was March of the Machines.
You can see how it's fucking confusing.
This set was not due to be released until later in the year, but Cannon had purchased
the box from an acquaintance who was unaware they were selling an unreleased set.
In response to these videos, Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Magic the Gathering,
hires Pinkerton to recover the leaked cards.
The agents arrive at Cannon's house, demand he hand over the stolen products, and tell
him that he will face jail time.
If he does not, they're in his house, berating him and his family, and saying, you're going
to go to jail if you don't hand these cards over because you stole them.
He ends up giving all of the cards and tokens and everything that had to do with these cards,
even the packaging, to the Pinkerton's detectives.
Because they intimidated him so much.
Why is that the way they do it though?
Why wouldn't they be like, I'll give you these ones instead, just give me those?
I don't want to do dicks.
Yeah, Cannon, the guy who posted the videos, maintains that the cards were just mistakenly
sent to him from a person whom he purchased them from.
And after the incident, Cannon was given a number to call at Wizards of the Coast.
The representative he spoke to was apologetic and assured him they did not believe any
one had stolen the cards instead.
They wanted to investigate how the unreleased set had ended up in his hands and plug that
hole.
They might just be making that shit up, but Pinkerton's might have also been way more
aggressive than they intended them to be.
Well just looking at their track history.
Because of this entire thing happening, Cannon ends up removing his unboxing videos from
YouTube and he asks anybody who is using videos or screenshots from his YouTube channel to
please delete them.
Like he just wants nothing to do with this anymore.
This last one is not really detective activity, but I had to include it just because it shows
you what they are.
I'm still unsure of what they are.
Chelsea, you've heard of Rockstar before, right?
Not the energy drink, the video game company.
They make Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.
Okay, yeah, I know those games, I guess.
Red Dead Redemption takes place in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
And because of this, and then being outlaws, guess who shows up in the game?
Yes, D. Jane.
The Pinkertons.
Oh, okay.
So this ends up filing a lawsuit against Rockstar and its parent company, Take Two Interactive,
alleging that Rockstar had no right to use their agency's name in the game.
Red Dead Redemption 2.
The game features Pinkertons agents as the antagonists who are constantly pursuing the
Vanderlind game, the game's protagonist.
In response, Rockstar and Take Two filed a counter lawsuit in January claiming that the
use of Pinkertons name was protected under the First Amendment as it was part of the
game's historical setting.
They argued that Pinkertons could not use trademark law to own the past and prevent
creators from including historical references to Pinkerton agents and depictions of the
American West.
Yeah, I'm on their side.
Do they win?
Pinkertons' original lawsuit accused Rockstar and Take Two of violating its trademark of
the Pinkerton name.
However, the legal disputes and quietly Take Two voluntarily dismisses the lawsuit that
they filed against Pinkertons and it appears that Pinkertons also just dropped their case.
Because, you know, that's a huge company.
And yeah, they're still alive and kicking like all over the place today.
I did not expect it to end like that.
You'll see a lot of this.
Anything that's set in the late 1800s, early 1900s likely has some sort of reference to
Pinkerton for that day because it is a household name at the time.
The Red Dead Redemption games, it shows up a lot.
There was actually a Canadian show called Pinkertons for a while.
I've never seen it.
Apparently it exists.
And Bioshock Infinite has references to Pinkertons as well.
So it shows up a lot in relevant media.
If you're looking at the 1800s, it's huge.
They...
Well, it sounds like it.
Put that on the logo and never look back.
Just decided, yep, we're evil.
What's the evilest stuff we could do?
Okay, this one, we can't do this one anymore.
What's the next evilest thing we could do?
Let's go beat up a nerd with some magic cards.
Yeah, I wasn't prepared for this.
I mean, every time I thought I got a hold on what was going on with the Pinkertons,
they completely changed the course.
But history, everybody should know.
This company is still around.
And people doing shady shit.
All the biggest companies still use them.
And was shocked about that as well, to find out they're still around.
I was expecting them to shut down or something.
But I guess that wouldn't track.
I guess they would still be around.
Well, I learned a lot of new things today.
Chelsea, anything you want to add before we end the episode?
No.
Okay.
I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.
If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe, or follow,
depending on what venue you are listening to us through.
Also please, if possible, leave a five star review, as that really helps us in the algorithms.
Should you wish to interact with us, please check us out on your social media of choice.
I bet you we are there.
And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell
us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe.com.
For now, I'll see you in the next episode.