The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases, and general investigating.  They no longer undertake any policing, strike-breaking, or guarding.  The most ridiculous misinformation in regard to their participation in this sort of work has been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.

By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an English detective, contributed an article to the ’New York Tribune’ of September 16, 1906, in which he said: 

“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 men 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 so that their fellow detectives of the two thousand would not shoot them down by mistake.”

He, of course, referred to the great strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892.  In point of fact, there were only six private detectives engaged on the side of the employers at that time, and these were there to assist the local authorities in taking charge of six hundred and fifty watchmen, and to help place the latter upon the property of the steel company.  These watchmen were under the direction of the sheriff and sworn in as peace officers of the county.  Mr. Beet seems to have confused his history and mixed up the white handkerchief of the Huguenots of Nantes with the strike-breakers of Pennsylvania.  It is needless to repeat (as Mr. Robert A. Pinkerton stated at the time), that the white label story is ridiculously’ untrue, and that it was the strikers who attacked the watchmen, and not the watchmen the strikers.  One striker and one watchman were killed.

But this attack of Mr. Beet upon his own profession, under the guise of being an English detective (it developed that he was an ex-divorce detective from New York City), was not confined to his remarks about inciting wanton murder.  On the contrary, he alleged (as one having authority and not merely as a scribe) that American detective agencies were practically nothing but blackmailing concerns, which used the information secured in a professional capacity to extort money from their own clients.

“Think of the so-called detective,” says Mr. Beet, “whose agency pays him two dollars or two dollars and fifty cents a day, being engaged upon confidential work and in the possession of secrets that he knows are worth money!  Is it any wonder that so many cases are sold out by employees, even when the agencies are honest?”