THE PINKERTONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 44, 19 August 1892, Page 13

THE PINKERTONS.

(From the Irish World, July 16.) The scenes witnessed at Homestead during the past week emphasise what we have said of the danger involved in the employment of Pinkerton's mercenaries to overawe labour. Their presence, as it was foreseen, excited passions that found vent in acts that converted Homestead into a veritable battlefield. For the loss of life that occurred during the fight to prevent the landing of the Pinkertons the responsibility mut,t rest on those who advised the hiring of these mercenaries. There were other methods of effectively protecting the property of the owners of the mills without having recourse to the employment of the offscourings of the Blums of New York, Chicago, and other large cities. When the strike began, the Advisory Committee of the strikers made a proposition to the sheriff of the county, which, if it had been accepted, would have saved Homestead from witnessing scenes of riot and bloodshed. The proposition of the Advisory Committee was that five hundred of the men who bad been employed in the mills phould be sworn in as deputy sheriffs to serve without pay, the Advisory Committee furnishing a bond of ten thousand dollars as a security for the faithful discbarge of their duty by the deputies. It this offer had been accepte i the peace of the community would have been preserved and not a dollar's worth of the property of the mill owners would have been injured. Unfortunately it was rejected and the aid of the Pinkertons was called in. What followed was the natural iesult of relying on. an army of Pinkertons to guard the mills.

A brief history of this army of unscrupulous mercenaries will ■apply as with the reason for their being so cordially hated by labour. Borne years before tbe war a Scotchman named Pinkerton established a private detective bureau for the purpose of ferreting out common, ordinary thieves. In the coarse of time it extended its operations. la addition to banting down thieves it supplied watchmen for banks and business houses. In this way the " Pinkertoc detective watch " was established at Chicago. This was the nucleus from which a standing army that has been estimated as high as thirty-five thousand has been evolved. On the death of the original Pinkerton tbe command of this standing army passed to his two sons, who have so improved on their father's methods that they can boast of being able to furnish, in a few hours, any corporation with several thousand men, fully equipped, drilled, and ready to go anywhere or do anything they are ordered to do. The Pinkerrons have regular agencies, with regular forces of men in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, St Paul, Kansas City, and Denver. From these centres of population they are ready, at a moment's notice, to send oat an army that has been recruited in the slumß. It is well known that many an ex-convict has worn the Pinkerton uniform. In advertising for recruits the only qualification the Pinkertonß require is courage. When a man is {accepted he is told off and instructed as to the duties he will have to perform. He is, of course, drilled like a regular soldi it, and is subject to a discipline somewhat similar to that prevailing in the army. As he feels no sense of responsibility except to his employer, it is not surprising that when called upon to help overawe strikers he acts in a manner tbat has earned him the hatred of organised labour. Here are gome of the murders that are laid to the charge of this band of thugs. During the great strike on tbe New York Central they fired into a crowd of strikers, killing one young man and wounding five other persons, one of whom was a woman. This occurred at East Albany. During the 'longshoremen's strike in New Jersey, about five years ago, the Pinkertons murdered a boy under circumstances that so aroused public indignation that tbe New Jersey Legislature passed a law making the employment of Pinkertons unlawful. New York haß placed a similar law on its statnte book. A law of the same character has been in force in Massachusetts since the first of July, which forbids tbe employment of any non-resident of the State to assist any corporation with arms in their hands. We have called attention to only a few of the murders committed by the Pinkertons. We could easily swell the list. So numerous have these murders been that they at last attracted the attention of Congress. Mr Watson of Alabama introduced a resolution calling for an inquiry into the workings and the methods of the Pinkertons. In introducing his resolution he gave this description of the Pinkertons :—: — 11 They have claimed that in one day they could turn over to a big corporation 35,000 men, provided the place where they were to be congregated was near a big city. My attention was first attracted to this great evil at the time of the Missouri- Pacific Railroad strike. Daring that period the Pinkertons advertised for men, and in the advertisement it wbb stated that only men who bad conrage and meant business need apply. " Here waß Mr Hoxie, then the general manager of the MissouriPacific system, employing a larger foice of armed men than was controlled by the Slates. These ruffians showed that they placed no value upon human life, for during the strike many innocent people were killed and wounded. Every one in New York will remember how an innocent man was shot down in the streets of Albany by a Pinkertoo detective, and I remember that during tbe same strike the sweetheart of a young striker, while walking along the street with him, was shot down by one of the villains. " Those who from selfish reasons favour the continuance of this infamous syscem claim that if these men commit any violation of law they can be punished the same as any one else. This ib undoubtedly true, but in the cases of the Pinkerton men the corporations that employ them see that they escape. They are hurried into another State before their identity can be discovered, so that it is practically impossible to bring them to justice." With such a record as this behind them it is not surprising the Pinkertons are cordially hated by organised labour. Their employment during strikes is a direct incitement to violence. It is, therefore, high time the authority of the States be invoked to put them down. There is every probability that Pennsylvania will enact an anti-Pinkerton law. Other States should not wait for a repetition of such scenes as occurred at Homestead before placing the brand of illegality on these organised thugs.