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Victor
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The Labor Spy
A Survey of Industrial Espionage
By Sidney Howard
VI. The Character of the Spy
"I cannot," said Judge Anderson, giving his decision in the Colyer case of last April, "I cannot adopt the contention that government spies are more trustworthy or less disposed to make trouble in order to profit therefrom than are spies in private industry. Spies are necessarily drawn from the unwholesome and untrustworthy classes. A right minded man refuses such a job. The spy system destroys confidence and propagates hate." William J. Burns himself complains of detectives that "as a class they are the biggest lot of blackmailing thieves that ever went unwhipped of justice."
A British report on industrial espionage as practiced by the American detectives includes the following:
There are detectives at the head of prominent agencies in this country whose pictures adorn the rogues' galleries; men who have served time in various prisons for almost every crime on the calendar.
It has been repeatedly alleged, and with justice that the detective agency prefers to hire the man with a criminal record. At least
the fact that these men may have criminal records is not deterrent to their being employed, and no check can be made on the men sent out by these companies on hurry calls.
To conclude, one has the statement of an industrial detective.
All I have to do is to go to Mills Hotel No. 1, in Bleecker Street. ... In 36th Street there must be sixty or seventy per cent strike-breakers . . . engaged in gum shoe work or what they call detective work.
To substantiate the charges which have been brought here against the industrial detective and his spy-agent, it is well to produce certain evidence. No man is more willing to talk to a stranger than an industrial spy. Once he has failed and, in consequence, lost his job with the agency, he is all eagerness to compose sensational affidavits. Unfortunately, the word of a spy is not of great worth, and these charges must rest, in large part, upon the accumulation of circumstantial evidence derived from such exposes and from the stories told by labor unions. They are too numerous not to be at least cautiously accredited.
Such instruction as the following are given:
Stir up some trouble on the Western Electric Company. Tell us that the business agents are ready to organize the workers there because I want a contract with the Western Electric. Stir up some trouble with the Buda Motor Company in Harvey, Illinois, because I want a contract there. Stir up trouble with the Stewart Speedometer Company. . . .
And the operative's explanation:
A man will appear in the organization committee and say that conditions in such and such a place are rotten. The different operators will appear before the business agents to start something rolling . . . supply the workers in the shops with literature, get dissatisfaction into these shops to scare the employer.
A man whose name and code number I do not know was instructed to take a number of pamphlets to the shop and distribute them among the men. This in turn was reported to the owner, who immediately arrived at the conclusion that the shop was being organized and he reinstated the service.
Such documents go on their face value as the word of the "unwholesome and untrustworthy classes." They are to be had in thousands for the asking and must be considered in respect to the cumulative impression they produce rather than as evidence in themselves.
It is, however, possible to illustrate the point in question by quotations from the affidavits of ex-spies which have stood the test of court examination. I present a group of these, submitted in Milwaukee during the hearings of detective agencies in relation to the Wisconsin law restricting their activities. That they are concerned with a single situation and locality is not of consequence. They are cited to illustrate the subterranean work of double-crossing accomplished by the industrial detective. They are quoted in succession with no comment other than our italics.
As Police Judge of Cudahy, Wisconsin, I have had occasion to observe the manner of behavior and conduct of the strikers, and they have been well behaved and conducted themselves as peaceful and law-abiding citizens. Private detectives in the employ of the Russell Agency, which, in turn, was employed by the Cudahy Packing Company, came to the city of Cudahy and endeavored to stir up strife and trouble and break down the morale of the law-abiding and peaceful Cudahy strikers. Any trouble which Cudahy has experienced by way of lawlessness and breaches of the peace was due directly to the acts and conduct of private detectives and Russell men and so-called guards who were not citizens of Cudahy but dangerous thugs and desperadoes. Had these thugs been kept out of the city there would have been no trouble. . . .*
A blacklist and an agent provocateur appear in the second:
Joe Schulan, being first sworn on oath, deposes and says: : : :that the reason said strike was called was that the officers of the Cudahy Packing Company had discharged several men for joining a labor union which was newly organized. That, for over a period of six weeks prior to the organization of the union, there were several men employed in the plant who were not regular and bona fide employees but private detectives in the employ of the Russell Detective Agency of Milwaukee. That the names of these men are Ray Smith and Al. Gullam. That Mr. Gullam appeared before the Honorable the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners and admitted that he was employed by the Russell Detective Agency to act as spy on the workmen of the plant, and to join the union and spy on the members and obtain other information. That Ray Smith also worked in said plant and was very active in forming and organising the Cudahy local of the union. That he was very active in urging the men to join the union and in forcefully agitating among the men . . . and he urged them to go out on strike. That he went out on strike when the rest . . . went. That he became a member of the union and, on the morning of the strike, he did picket duty . . .
That, at the time of the strike, there were upwards of fifteen Russell men in the plant. That shortly after the strike was in progress, the Russell men, Ray Smith among them, continually urged the men to start trouble. That Ray Smith was particularly active in "egging" on the men to "clean up" anyone who went in.*
That Russell men engaged in the plant were not used as guards in the sense that watchmen are employed to guard property, that they were used as spies, armed thugs and gunmen for the purpose of harassing and annoying the strikers, breaking the morale of the strike and encouraging bloodshed for the purpose, I firmly believe, of prolonging their own employment.**
In the following, the spy speaks for himself:
I was expressly told by Russell's general manager, Burgett, to try and get the pickets to cause as much trouble as possible so that the Russell Agency could keep its men on the job for as long a time as possible.
I also was sent by Russell to Marinette to work in Lumber Co. I worked in the plant as general handy man around the yard. My particular work was to join the union and watch the men and report any labor agitation or activity. I joined the union and was in the union about two weeks before the strike was called. I was asked to join the union several times but refused at first, thinking it best to hold off. Themen voted to go on strike and I went on strike with them. Burgett came up with a number of guards. Burgett was after me all the time to stir up trouble as, he stated, otherwise the guards would not be kept there.
Russell had to have more men in the union beside myself. I got into some trouble with Russell on account of pay and quit while the work was in progress.
Before I quit, however, and while I was at a union meeting, the Secretary got up and read a letter which was supposed to be signed by Red Garlow, a former employee of Russell, tipping the union off who I was ... I am certain that Russell wrote it in order to get even with me and get me out of there without much ceremony ... I packed up and got out in a hurry . . .
It is my opinion that there is not a union in the City that has not one or more men carrying union cards who are, in fact, in the employ of private detective agencies. In general the men employed by detective agencies are obtained at a time when work is hard to get ... In fact I found myself in that position when I accepted work with private detective agencies.***
These three affidavits of a police judge, a worker and a spy tell the story as completely as it would be told by the thousand others which might be cited. Mr. Coach's newspaper is now past history. The labor leaders of Akron have only just been expelled from their unions, in which the Corporations Auxiliary Company employed them.
There is the case, too, of an officer of the Machinists' Union who was sued by the union for misappropriation of its funds. Anticipating the suit, he tried to threaten the union into inaction. The suit being pressed, he made good on his threat by producing the receipts for the stolen funds, all of which, at the instigation of his detective employer, he had utilized for the hiring of thugs to attack non-union workers and so provoke trouble for the union.
Employers and employees alike have made a practice of deceiving each other until the whole industrial world is snarled beyond disentanglement. Strikes have been provoked to break agreements which have become onerous to the employer, spies set to turn conservative unions Bolshevist and more spies to force federal authorities to interfere.**** James Henderson of the Machinists' Union, "Pitchfork Jim" to the world of labor, is perhaps the oldest and most efficient foe of espionage in the entire American labor movement. As he sums it up, it is not the spying that does the harm but the exploitation of the worker incidental to the spying. The union which has nothing to conceal has little enough to fear from the mere informant. But that the employment and welfare of its members should be rependent upon the exigencies of a detective agency's business does not seem to him a terrible thing.
There has been exploitation of employers and, finally, of spies themselves. For there is reasonable evidence on which to accuse a certain firm of clothing manufacturers of hiring detectives to provoke a strike in its plant to the end of collecting strike insurance in the slack season. And this in spite of the detectives of the strike insurance company which was also and independently spying the same plant to secure evidence against the paying of the insurance.
The employers in the case may be very briefly classed. There are those who say, with Mr. Carter of the Western Union Telegraph Company: "I don't like the fellows, but what else can we do." There are those who, like Mr. Kirschbaum of Philadelphia, acclaim the value of the practice and extoll its practitioners. There are those who say with Mr. Atterbury of the Pennsylvania Railroad:
We have a very efficient police organization, and we know in advance everything that is going on, just exactly as the organizations themselves know what is going on with us. We have emissaries in our ranks just as the organizations have emissaries in their ranks . . . We have our own employees, who may volunteer information and we employ the Pinkerton Service. They are men already in the labor organizations, who may have union cards and have been employed somewhere else. We ask the Pinkerton Company to assign a certain number of operatives to our service; we do not know who they are; they come along in the natural course of events and then we get reports.
And, finally, there is the legion of those who say, with the mill operators of Passaic: "Lies— all lies."
It is unfortunately not possible to clear labor on the score of practicing espionage itself. Parallelism between capital and labor is a present characteristic of industrial development, parallelism in both organization and policy. It is a well-known fact that strike committees do retain thugs to intimidate non-union workers. There is an organization in New York, The Active Detective Bureau, which advertises espionage service to labor organizations only. Unions boast of the spies they have planted in the offices of the spying detective agencies. There was even a case in Minneapolis in which the same agency was found to be serving both union and employer in the same strike.
All this considered, however, the balance is still on the side of capital. Espionage is included in the Americanism of a great group of American employers, of the Woods and Garys and du Ponts of the country and of their unquestioning supporters. It is a simple matter for the employer to corrupt and dismember the union; it is impossible for the union to return the compliment by dismembering the board of directors.
— The New Republic, March 23, 1921.
*Affidavit of John C. Yunker, Police Judge of Cudahy, reproduced as introduction to the following affidavits.
**Affidavit of Joe Schulan, a worker in the plant
***Affidavit of Herbert A. Foster, former employee of the Russell agency in Detroit.
****Iwankew, a Russian Jew, an agent of Armesworth and Cavett, industrial detectives of Pittsburgh and former Pinkerton men, organized a local of the Communist Party in Youngstown, Ohio. He was, at the time, detailed to the service of the Youngstown Sheet and Tin Company. This firm made efforts to obtain his release and furnished bond for him after the raid which he provoked on his own organization and in which, as a blind, he, too, was arrested. Secretary Post refused to release him. He was last heard of awaiting deportation on Ellis Island and still the hero of a considerable agitation.
Go to: VII. Violence.