Violence and the Labor Movement

by Robert Hunter

Thus we see that some American "detective" agencies have many and varied trades. But they not only supply strike-breakers, perjurers, spies, and even assassins, they have also been successful in making an utter farce of trial by jury. It appears that even some of the best known American detectives are not above the packing of a jury. At least, such was the startling charge made by Attorney-General George W. Wickersham, May 10, 1912. In the report to President Taft Mr. Wickersham accused the head of one of the chief detective agencies of the country of fixing a jury in California. The agents of this detective, with the coöperation of the clerk of the court, investigated the names of proposed jurors. In order to be sure of getting a jury that would convict, the record of each individual was carefully gone into and a report handed to the prosecuting attorneys. Some of the comments on the jurors follow: "Convictor from the word go." "Socialist. Anti-Mitchell." "Convictor from the word go; just read the indictment. Populist." "Think he is a Populist. If so, convictor. Good, reliable man." "Convictor. Democrat. Hates Hermann." "Hidebound Democrat. Not apt to see any good in a Republican." "Would be apt to be for conviction." "He is apt to wish Mitchell hung. Think he would be a fair juror." "Would be likely to convict any Republican politician." "Convictor." "Would convict Christ." "Convict Christ. Populist." "Convict anyone. Democrat." [(14)] This great detective even had the audacity, it seems, to telegraph William Scott Smith, at that time secretary to the Hon. E. A. Hitchcock, the Secretary of the Interior: "Jury commissioners cleaned out old box from which trial jurors were selected and put in 600 names, every one of which was investigated before they were placed in the box. This confidential." [(15)] It is impossible to reproduce here some of the language of this great detective. The foul manner in which he comments upon the character of the jurors is altogether worthy of his vocation. That, however, is unimportant compared to the more serious fact that a well-paid detective can so pervert trial by jury that it would "convict Christ."

I shall be excused in a matter so devastating to republican institutions as this if I quote further from the disclosures of Thomas Beet: "There is another phase," he says, "of the private detective evil which has worked untold damage in America. This is the private constabulary system by which armed forces are employed during labor troubles. It is a condition akin to the feudal system of warfare, when private interests can employ troops of mercenaries to wage war at their command. Ostensibly, these armed private detectives are hurried to the scene of the trouble to maintain order and prevent destruction of property, although this work always should be left to the official guardians of the peace. That there is a sinister motive back of the employment of these men has been shown time and again. Have you ever followed the episodes of a great strike and noticed that most of the disorderly outbreaks were so guided as to work harm to the interests of the strikers?... Private detectives, unsuspected in their guise of workmen, mingle with the strikers and by incendiary talk or action sometimes stir them up to violence. When the workmen will not participate, it is an easy matter to stir up the disorderly faction which is invariably attracted by a strike, although it has no connection therewith.

"During a famous strike of car builders in a western city some years ago, ... to my knowledge much of the lawlessness was incited by private detectives, who led mobs in the destruction of property. In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to protect property, while several hundred more were scattered in the ranks of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter became officers in the labor bodies, helped to make laws for the organizations, made incendiary speeches, cast their votes for the most radical movements made by the strikers, participated in and led bodies of the members in the acts of lawlessness that eventually caused the sending of State troops and the declaration of martial law. While doing this, these spies within the ranks were making daily reports of the plans and purposes of the strikers. To my knowledge, when lawlessness was at its height and murder ran riot, these men wore little patches of white on the lapels of their coats that their fellow detectives of the 'two thousand' would not shoot them down by mistake.... In no other country in the world, with the exception of China, is it possible for an individual to surround himself with a standing army to do his bidding in defiance of law and order." [(16)]

That the assertions of Thomas Beet are well founded can, I think, be made perfectly clear by three tragic periods in the history of labor disputes in America. At Homestead in 1892, in the railway strikes of 1894, and in Colorado during the labor wars of 1903-1904 detectives were employed on a large scale. For reasons of space I shall limit myself largely to these cases, which, without exaggeration, are typical of conditions which constantly arise in the United States. Within the last year West Virginia has been added to the list. Incredible outrages have been committed there by the mine guards. They have deliberately murdered men in some cases, and, on one dark night in February last, they sent an armored train into Holly Grove and opened fire with machine guns upon a sleeping village of miners. They have beaten, clubbed, and stabbed men and women in the effort either to infuriate them into open war, or to reduce them to abject slavery. Unfortunately, at this time the complete report of the Senate investigation has not been issued, and it seems better to confine these pages to those facts only that careful inquiry has proved unquestionable. We are fortunate in having the reports of public officials—certainly unbiased on the side of labor—to rely upon for the facts concerning the use of thugs and hirelings in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Colorado during three terrible battles between capital and labor.

The story of the shooting of Henry C. Frick by Alexander Berkman is briefly referred to in the first chapter, but the events which led up to that shooting have well-nigh been forgotten. Certainly, nothing could have created more bitterness among the working classes than the act of the Carnegie Steel Company when it ordered a detective agency to send to Homestead three hundred men armed with Winchester rifles. There was the prospect of a strike, and it appears that the management was in no mood to parley with its employees, and that nineteen days before any trouble occurred the Carnegie Steel Company opened negotiations for the employment of a private army. It had been the custom of the Carnegie Company to meet the representatives of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers from time to time and at these conferences to agree upon wages. On June 30, 1892, the agreement expired, and previous to that date the Company announced a reduction of wages, declaring that the new scale would terminate in January instead of June. The employees rejected the proposed terms, principally on the ground that they could not afford to strike in midwinter and in that case they would not be able to resist a further reduction in wages. Upon receiving this statement the company locked out its employees and the battle began.

The steel works were surrounded by a fence three miles long, fifteen feet in height, and covered with barbed wire. It was called "Fort Frick," and the three hundred detectives were to be brought down the river by boat and landed in the fort. Morris Hillquit gives the following account of the pitched battle that occurred in the early morning hours of July 6: "As soon as the boat carrying the Pinkertons was sighted by the pickets the alarm was sounded. The strikers were aroused from their sleep and within a few minutes the river front was covered with a crowd of coatless and hatless men armed with guns and rifles and grimly determined to prevent the landing of the Pinkertons. The latter, however, did not seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation. They sought to intimidate the strikers by assuming a threatening attitude and aiming the muzzles of their shining revolvers at them. A moment of intense expectation followed. Then a shot was fired from the boat and one of the strikers fell to the ground mortally wounded. A howl of fury and a volley of bullets came back from the line of the strikers, and a wild fusillade was opened on both sides. In vain did the strike leaders attempt to pacify the men and to stop the carnage—the strikers were beyond control. The struggle lasted several hours, after which the Pinkertons retreated from the river bank and withdrew to the cabin of the boat. There they remained in the sweltering heat of the July sun without air or ventilation, under the continuing fire of the enraged men on the shore, until they finally surrendered. They were imprisoned by the strikers in a rink, and in the evening they were sent out of town by rail. The number of dead on both sides was twelve, and over twenty were seriously wounded." [(17)]

These events aroused the entire country, and the state of mind among the working people generally was exceedingly bitter. It was a tension that under certain circumstances might have provoked a civil war. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives immediately appointed committees to inquire into this movement from state to state of armed men, and the employment by corporations of what amounted to a private army. It seems to have been clearly established that the employers wanted war, and that the attorney of the Carnegie Company had commanded the local sheriff to deputize a man named Gray, who was to meet the mercenaries and make all of them deputy sheriffs. This plan to make the detectives "legal" assassins did not carry, and the result was that a band of paid thugs, thieves, and murderers invaded Homestead and precipitated a bloody conflict. This was, of course, infamous, and, compared with its magnificent anarchy, Berkman's assault was child-like in its simplicity. Yet the enthusiastic and idealistic Berkman spent seventeen years in prison and is still abhorred; while no one responsible for the murder of twelve workingmen and the wounding of twenty others, either among the mercenaries or their employers, has yet been apprehended or convicted. With such equality of justice do we treat these agents of the two anarchies!

However, if Berkman spent seventeen years in prison, the other anarchists were mildly rebuked by the Committee of Investigation appointed by the Senate. "Your committee is of the opinion," runs the report, "that the employment of the private armed guards at Homestead was unnecessary. There is no evidence to show that the slightest damage was done, or attempted to be done, to property on the part of the strikers...." [(18)] "It was claimed by the Pinkerton agency that in all cases they require that their men shall be sworn in as deputy sheriffs, but it is a significant circumstance that in the only strike your committee made inquiry concerning—that at Homestead—the fact was admitted on all hands that the armed men supplied by the Pinkertons were not so sworn, and that as private citizens acting under the direction of such of their own men as were in command they fired upon the people of Homestead, killing and wounding a number." [(19)] "Every man who testified, including the proprietors of the detective agencies, admitted that the workmen are strongly prejudiced against the so-called Pinkertons, and that their presence at a strike serves to unduly inflame the passions of the strikers. The prejudice against them arises partly from the fact that they are frequently placed among workmen, in the disguise of mechanics, to report alleged conversations to their agencies, which, in turn, is transmitted to the employers of labor. Your committee is impressed with the belief that this is an utterly vicious system, and that it is responsible for much of the ill-feeling and bad blood displayed by the working classes. No self-respecting laborer or mechanic likes to feel that the man beside him may be a spy from a detective agency, and especially so when the laboring man is utterly at the mercy of the detective, who can report whatever he pleases, be it true or false.... [(20)] Whether assumedly legal or not, the employment of armed bodies of men for private purposes, either by employers or employees, is to be deprecated and should not be resorted to. Such use of private armed men is an assumption of the State's authority by private citizens. If the State is incapable of protecting citizens in their rights of person and property, then anarchy is the result, and the original law of force should neither be approved, encouraged, nor tolerated until all known legal processes have failed." [(21)]

We must leave this black page in American history with such comfort as we can wring from the fact that the modern exponents of the oldest anarchy have been at least once rebuked, and with the further satisfaction that the Homestead tragedy brought momentarily to the attention of the entire nation a practice which even at that time was a source of great alarm to many serious men. In the great strikes which occurred in the late eighties and early nineties there was a great deal of violence, and C. H. Salmons, in his history of "The Burlington Strike" of 1888, relates how private detectives systematically planned outrages that destroyed property and how others committed murder. A few cases were fought out in the courts with results very disconcerting to the railroads who had hired these private detectives. In the strike on the New York Central Railroad which occurred in 1890 many detectives were employed. They were, of course, armed, and, as a result of certain criminal operations undertaken by them, Congress was asked to consider the drafting of a bill "to prevent corporations engaged in interstate-commerce traffic from employing unjustifiably large bodies of armed men denominated 'detectives,' but clothed with no legal functions." [(22)] Roger A. Pryor, then Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, vigorously protested against these "watchmen." "I mean," he said, "the enlistment of banded and armed mercenaries under the command of private detectives on the side of corporations in their conflicts with employees. The pretext for such an extraordinary measure is the protection of the corporate property; and surely the power of this great State is adequate to the preservation of the public order and security. At all events, in this particular instance, it was not pretended either that the strikers had invaded property or person, or that the police or militia in Albany had betrayed reluctance or inability to cope with the situation. On the contrary, the facts are undisputed that the moment the men went out Mr. Pinkerton and his myrmidons appeared on the scene, and the police of Albany declared their competency to repel any trespass on person or property. The executive of the State, too, denied any necessity for the presence of the military.

"I do not impute to the railroad officials a purpose, without provocation, to precipitate their ruffians upon a defenseless and harmless throng of spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling exhibition of force. If the railroad company may enlist armed men to defend its property, the employees may enlist armed men to defend their persons, and thus private war be inaugurated, the authority of the State defied, the peace and tranquillity of society destroyed, and the citizens exposed to the hazard of indiscriminate slaughter." [(23)]