[CHAPTER XI]
OTHER KINDS OF DETECTIVE WORK
I believe it will be of interest to both experienced and inexperienced detectives to be enlightened regarding some of the many other sources from which private detective work arises. Lawyers throughout the country, in both large and small cities, and even in thinly settled country communities, are large employers of private detective service. When prosecuting or defending damage cases, attorneys very often need detective service in getting at facts, in order to properly prepare their cases. Witnesses must be interviewed, and very often investigated. Murder, burglary, damage and divorce cases supply needs for a great deal of detective work.
State, county and city governments are large employers of private detectives. Counties and cities often have their own staffs of detectives, but there are many occasions when special detectives must be pressed into service. Nowadays election frauds are practiced practically everywhere. Private detectives are needed and can easily obtain employment wherever there are professional politicians. Trusted employees often go wrong and disappear with public funds. Officials holding high offices very often turn out to be embezzlers. Dozens of banks are being defrauded daily somewhere by forgers, sneak thieves and others. Hundreds of our large banking institutions periodically place under surveillance their entire staffs of employees, from the cashier down to the messenger boy and porter in order to keep advised regarding the habits and associates of the employees, which information enables them to select from time to time the proper persons for promotion.
Large manufacturers, no matter what the line, usually are extensive employers of private detectives. I have in mind a large manufacturing concern which employes in its factory probably three thousand persons, and at all times not less than two hundred traveling salesmen, also dozens of branch managers. When it is suspected that a traveling salesman is not attending to business, he is placed under surveillance while on his travels from city to city, for probably one, two or three weeks. The detective’s report will show the time of day the salesman begins work, what firms he calls on, how much time spent with each firm, and how much time is idled away, and the time the salesman discontinued work each day; also how much time the salesman may spend in saloons or other places, how he spends his evenings and how much money he spends.
In connection with this class of detective work, I once had occasion to keep under surveillance for three weeks a traveling salesman, who, as it developed, devoted more time to a side line than he did to the line he was being paid to travel and promote business for. Needless to state, this salesman, after his employers received my reports, was obliged to change his ways. The tendency of salesmen to devote time to side lines is one of the worst evils that employers of traveling salesmen have to contend with.
In factories, no matter of what nature, employers usually find it expedient to place secretly among their employees, detectives who work side by side with the employees. Male or female detectives are so placed, as the case may warrant. The reports these detectives are enabled to render show which employees are worthy of trust or promotion and those that are not. Such reports will show who are the lazy ones, the dissatisfied ones, the strike agitators, those who steal tools, material or supplies, those who violate any rules of the factory or shop; also what kind of treatment is accorded the employees by the foreman. An entire book could be written on this branch of detective work alone. It is an undisputed fact that large employers of labor nowadays cannot conduct their business as successfully without secret service work.