Inventing the Pinkertons ; or, Spies, sleuths, mercenaries, and thugs : being a story of the nation's most famous (and infamous) detective agency / S. Paul O'Hara.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Hara, S. Paul, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pinkerton's National Detective Agency.

Pinkerton, Allan, 1819-1884.

Pinkerton, Allan.

Private investigators--United States--History.

Private investigators.

Industrial relations--United States--History.

Industrial relations.

History.

United States.

Labor--United States--History.

Labor.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

vi, 194 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Spies, sleuths, mercenaries, and thugs

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.

Summary:

The fascinating story of the most notorious detective agency in US history. -- Between 1865 and 1937, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency was at the center of countless conflicts between capital and labor, bandits and railroads, and strikers and state power. Some believed that the detectives were protecting society from dangerous criminal conspiracies; others thought that armed Pinkertons were capital's tool to crush worker dissent. Yet the image of the Pinkerton detective also inspired romantic and sensationalist novels, reflected shifting ideals of Victorian manhood, and embodied a particular kind of rough frontier justice. Inventing the Pinkertons examines the evolution of the agency as a pivotal institution in the cultural history of American monopoly capitalism. Historian S. Paul O'Hara intertwines political, social, and cultural history to reveal how Scottish-born founder Allan Pinkerton insinuated his way to power and influence as a purveyor of valuable (and often wildly wrong) intelligence in the Union cause. During Reconstruction, Pinkerton turned his agents into icons of law and order in the Wild West. Finally, he transformed his firm into a for-rent private army in the war of industry against labor. Having begun life as peddlers of information and guardians of mail bags, the Pinkertons became armed mercenaries, protecting scabs and corporate property from angry strikers. O'Hara argues that American capitalists used the Pinkertons to enforce new structures of economic and political order. Yet the infamy of the Pinkerton agent also gave critics and working communities a villain against which to frame their resistance to the new industrial order. Ultimately, Inventing the Pinkertons is a gripping look at how the histories of American capitalism, industrial folklore, and the nation-state converged.

Contents:

Chapter 1 In which Allan Pinkerton creates his agency 13

The making of Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton goes to war

Crafting the Pinkerton detective

Conclusion: A detective mythology

Chapter 2 In which Pinkerton men become the antiheroes of the middle west 35

Mississippi outlaws

The outlaw Jesse James

Wild bandits of the border

Conclusion: Highwaymen of the railroad

Chapter 3 In which Pinkerton agents infiltrate secret societies 53

A noxious weed of Ireland

Among the assassins!

Strikers, communists, tramps, and detectives

Conclusion: Anarchists and the detectives

Chapter 4 In which the Pinks serve as a private army for capital 71

The "Pinkerton Force" or detectives on trial

"Pinkerton is neither more nor less than the head of a band of mercenaries"

The Knights of Labor and the Pinkerton roughs

Chapter 5 In which Pinkerton myrmidons invade Homestead 90

The Great Battle of Homestead

Mr. Frick's hired invaders

The Pinkerton system is a standing menace to order and good government

Conclusion: Pinkerton raiders, the advance guard to Poles and Hungarian?

Chapter 6 In which the disgrace of Pinkerton ism is subjected to public scrutiny 107

Protecting property from the "tyranny of the Homestead mob"

Protecting free labor from "this gang of Hessians"

Protecting society from the "disgrace of Pinkertonism"

Conclusion: Lessons on corporate management from the mercenaries of the oligarchy

Chapter 7 In which the frontier closes and Pinkerton practices are exposed 122

A cowboy detective and a labor spy

Surrounded with lice, Pinkerton detectives, and other vermin

Pinking the Pinkertons

Conclusion: Anarchists and detectives, reconsidered

Chapter 8 In which the modem state takes on the duties of the Pinkerton agency 144

Birdy Edwards and the last myth of the Pinkertons

The modern state and the detectives

Stool pigeons, company gunmen, and the New Deal

Conclusion: Dashiell Hammett, Pinkerton.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781421420561

1421420562

OCLC:

934937757