The Labor Spy

A Survey of Industrial Espionage

By Sidney Howard

VII. Violence

That industrial espionage should produce violence is inevitable. The official records of the business, are the records of labor violence. Pinkerton provided the armed guards for the battle of Homestead Mills in 1892, and provoked the only congressional inquiry espionage has ever faced. From that time to this, through every strike, which has known violent manifestations, the detective, the spy, the provocateur and the gunman, all agents of the industrial detective, have had their roles to play. Espionage is the heart of the labor riot. Agents of Baldwin Felts ran the armored train in West Virginia and the armored automobile in Colorado. Detectives have never been cleared of the charges of guilt brought by the government investigators, in regard to the dynamiting of the depot at Independence, Colorado, in 1904, the attempted train wrecks in 1903, the murder of Governor Steunenberg of Idaho by Harry Orchard, the train dynamited at Calumet, Michigan, and the dynamite plants at Waterbury in 1920. Detectives were obviously and directly responsible for much provoked violence in the steel strike, the Ccntralia affair, the shooting at Everett, Washington, and in almost all the riots attendant upon the recent street railway strikes. It is a strange thing that these direct action employers of ours, these Garys and Woods, are willing to stake their reputations as citizens upon the acts of such men as these spies of industry and their cousins, the gunmen and the scabs.

The following is the conclusion of Mr. Luke Grant in the Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations:

Espionage is closely related to violence. Sometimes it is the direct cause of violence, and, where that cannot be charged, it is often the indirect cause. If the secret agents of employers, working as members of the labor unions, do not always instigate acts of violence, they frequently encourage them. If they did not, they would not be performing the duties for which they are paid, for they are hired on the theory that labor organizations are criminal in character.

Thomas Boot, the English detective of Scotland Yard brings an even heavier indictment:

That there is a sinister motive behind the employment of these men has been shown again 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? . . . Therefore, instead of preventing these acts, it is to the interest of the employer that they should occur. In this, perhaps, lies, usually, the reason why private detectives are brought to the scene.

The present and recent situation in West Virginia, now in the courts, is an excellent example of the way in which the system works. Down there the machine guns of the war between miners and mine guards are the property of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. The street railway strike of Denver, August, 1920, is another case in point. The story of Black Jack Jerome's riot there is a perfect instance:

The mob yelled, and the strike-breakers in the car, who had sawed-off rifles, fired. ... A riot followed. . . . The tramway company sent four cars out of the barns into the mob. The strikebreakers in the cars were armed. A man in one of the cars shot into the mob, hitting a policeman. The mob was made up mostly of boys from fourteen to twenty years of age. Mr. Hild, the president of the tramway company, stated in the papers, the next morning, that "the street car employees were not responsible for the riot."

The following day, Friday, the East Side Car Barn riots occurred. Union pickets were lounging on some stone coping about a park facing the car barns when an automobile drove up with a man in uniform in it. He stood up and, as he left the car, turned toward the pickets and fired directly at them; then, holding a revolver in each hand, backed into the barn and the doors were closed.

Soon afterwards people began to gather about the barn. Suddenly an automobile drove up and four men dressed in police uniform, stood up and fired at the crowd. Immediately firing began from the first and second-story windows of the car barn. About thirty were killed or injured.

There were no more riots after the federal troops entered town. It was stated that General Wood had said: "There has been murder and the people responsible will suffer for it." General Wood did not deny the quotation.*

From an affidavit of one of Jerome's men an illuminating portrait is taken:

He stood up in an auto with a gun in each hand and escorted us to the south side barn. "Now. boys, I want to tell you something," he said, "you have come here to break this strike. We are going to do it and when you shoot be sure and shoot straight." Those of you who have not arms, I will provide with arms."

The first night in the barns Jerome ordered us within hearing distance, saying: "Boys, we are going to start cars Monday morning. I am the whole thing. The tramway company can tell me nothing. This is my barn. Shoot craps, play cards, do anything you please. Your pay is going on. If you get into trouble while you are running cars, or get into jail, I will get you out. You know me. You know that I can do it. With reference to the money, boys, get the nickels. Get the money and don't forget for the conductor to split 50-50 with the motorman."**

Of the riot this quotation speaks as follows:

Boys, I knew this thing was coming off. I have men in uniform out among the strikers, I know what is going on, I always will know beforehand. I have paid men out among the strikers."

The following verdict comes from West Virginia. [Investigation report of L. A. Lynch, 1912]:

Though the guard system was not the cause of the strike, it was without doubt the immediate cause of the fighting. . . . The operators accepted the men the Baldwin Felts send them and ask no questions.

And so to the simple and unaffected gunman recorded in this amazing letter of William F. Dunn, the editor of the Butte (Montana) Daily Bulletin:

The Anaconda Mining Co. began to use gunmen in this locality early in 1914. Since 1914, a large staff of thugs has been constantly employed. It has been customary for the company to furnish the incoming sheriff with a list of names of these individuals who were sworn in as special deputies.***

The gunmen here are divided into two classes There are the special deputies who hold some job with the corporation from mine-foreman down to time-keeper. Only a few of these men are. actually dangerous. In addition to these, there are the professional gunmen who are generally secured either from the Thiel or the Burns detective agencies. The Thiel men are generally hired through the Spokane office but I have been unable to discover where the Burns men are hired. . . .

In the great strike of 1917 the gunmen traveled in twos and threes on the streets. Nobody knows how many were on the payroll at that time, but it is safe to say that there were at least two hundred. ... In connection with the Frank Little murder, it is a mistake to believe that they were after Little in particular. They wished to murder some one who was well-known and popular with the miners in order to incite them to riot when the troops, who were already on the scene, could get into action with their machine guns, and drive them back to work This is proved by the fact that on the night Little was hung, the same gang of thugs visited my house during my absence, they also called at Tom Campbell's house twice that night. These visits were made before they got Little. . . .

In 1918 . . . two detectives—Shirley and Thorpe — ... were working in the local branch of the I. W. W. Thorpe held the position of local secretary and Shirley was the most active of the members. . . . One was a Burns man and the other a Thiel recruit—in the employ of the Anaconda Mining Company. The utterances of Shirley were the most violent I ever heard. This is an instance of how the "stools" can operate successfully and appear to be upholding the cardinal principles of working class doctrine. . . .

In the last strike of April, 1920, the gunmen resorted to their automobile tactics but they proved ineffective. On April 21st, a crowd of gunmen fired into a crowd of pickets without warning, killing two men and wounding nineteen. These men were all shot in the back, as they were unarmed and began to retreat when they saw the gunmen approaching. City police and regular sheriff's deputies were on the ground, but they made no attempt to arrest the perpetrators of this outrage. . . .

In this instance the local officers of the Department of Justice co-operated with the company. They informed the gunmen of the time the picketing was to take place and there is more than a suspicion that some of the men who took part in the shooting were on the federal payroll. . . . The places where these men were lodged is known and it is also known that the local federal operatives were in communication with them. . . . There is at all times close co-operation between the company operatives and gunmen and the local department of justice and the city and county authorities. . . .

In the last month of the 1917 strike, I was compelled to make several trips to Great Falls where the Anaconda Mining Company's smelter is located. On one occasion we stopped over night in Helena—which is about half-way—we were traveling by machine—and that night a carload of gunmen waited all night about two miles from Basin—a little town about twenty-five miles from Butte—and stopped every machine that passed. They might not have been waiting for us but that was our information.

On another occasion in Great Falls I was returning from a meeting of the boiler makers where I had been urging a sympathetic strike. Contrary to my usual custom I was returning to the hotel and while I was passing a rather dark alley, three men sprang out at me. I had a .32 Colts in my coat pocket—with my hand on it— and I shot twice. Two of the men dropped and the third man ran. I ran down the same alley they came out of and went to my hotel by the quickest route. I expected to see headlines about the affair the next morning, but there was not a word. Instead there were headlines announcing that W. F. Dunn had disappeared and that it was believed he had been taken off a train between Great Falls and Helena. I immediately left for Butte and was met at Helena by one of my "bodyguards" who gave me an envelope which had been sent to our headquarters and which contained one of the "Vigilante" notices written with red chalk. This notice gave me until August 12th to live. . . .

Another time when a party of us were going to Anaconda—twenty-six miles from Butte—there is also a smelter there—on a lonely stretch of road where there are no houses for six or seven miles, an automobile load of gunmen pulled up behind us and began shooting when about seventy-five yards away. I was in the back seat of our machine with another electrician, who is a remarkable shot. We had, in addition to revolvers, a high powered rifle apiece. The gunmen had only revolvers and we promptly shot their engine to pieces. We then pulled out of range and shot off their tires. We did not try to hit any of them but it was certainly amusing to see them trying to get to cover behind a piece of sage-bush about as thick as a man's thumb. We left and went on to Anaconda and needless to say there was nothing carried by the local press.

These incidents are all known to the authorities and to the public, but nothing is ever done about them. We have never emphasized these incidents in detail, nor the dozens of minor plots . . . because few people will believe them. ... I do not like to write about myself ... I merely mention my personal connection with these matters in order to give you an insight into the local situation.

Such is the gist of industrial espionage—the heart of so much labor trouble and inspiration of so many horrors—a thing first approached by us incredulously but finally accepted as irrefutable. Anaconda confirms Calumet. West Virginia substantiates Colorado. The street cars of Denver are a parenthesis in the story of the Steel Strike. Espionage is something which we must accept, a substitute for industrial relations, covering the whole field of American industry excepting only those few cases wherein real industrial relations do exist.

The present purpose has not been to probe individual outrages. So intricate are the ways of labor spies that no authority short of Congress can ever reach the exhaustive and authentic evidence necessary to place the blame accurately and specifically. The present purpose has been merely to present an impartial description of the practice, told in the language of its own men. We find that it puts both employer and employe at the mercy of a power which is, at best, unscrupulous; that it lays labor open to corruption, misleads capital into folly, injustice and, often, actual crime; that it creates, wherever it appears, a turmoil of unrest and rage; and that it is at the very heart of labor violence. Industrial spies, "many of whom would commit a murder for two dollars," are undeniably the seeing eyes of more than one honorable American employer. The system "which could not exist in England" is undeniably a characteristic of American industry and a factor in our industrial problems. It is about as difficult to become a detective in this country as it is to get married or buy a license for a dog. This, in view of the detective's powers and responsibilities, is a curious thing. If ever there were a field for a congressional investigation, an institution completely damnable, ethically, socially and economically, it is industrial espionage.

—Sidney Howard, in The New Republic, March 30, 1921.

(The End)

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*Report of Alice Barrows Fernandez to the Cabot investigation.

**Affidavit of William A. Ingraham.

***As in Colorado, 1914.

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