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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 45 LABOR SPIES directors unanimously agreed that ‘this agency in the future not furnish information to anyone concerning the lawful attempts of labor unions or employees to organize and bargain collectively.’”74 In a later interview with the New York Times, Robert Pinkerton stated, “That [labor espionage] is a phase of our business that we are not particularly proud of and we’re delighted we’re out of it. However, there was nothing illegal about it at the time.”75 The presence of labor spies in Utah during the early part of the twentieth century impacted the state’s industry and labor in several ways. Labor espionage aggravated the already strained relations between mine owners and miners; it generated mistrust among workers; it kindled sympathy for the labor movement in local newspapers and in public opinion; and, in some cases, it motivated union leaders to decrease the number of their secret sessions and to open their doors to local reporters. It also left its mark on those who practiced it. In later life, Siringo, who worked for the Pinkertons for twenty-two years, came to regret some of his questionable activities as a labor spy. Although he had initially considered the agency to be a “model institution,” he later denounced it as “a school for the making of anarchists, and a disgrace to the enlightened age.”76 Siringo, McParland and Riddell, and others like them, were an ingenious and resilient breed of men who were required to operate in an environment where the boundaries between honor and treachery were undefined and where the end often seemed to justify the means. In the end, however, there were few winners and many losers among those who were involved with labor espionage. One historian has opined it was inevitable that private detective agencies, and their employees, that were “born out of a nationwide need for law and order,” should eventually “become ensnared in the same corrupting influence and moral decay that so pervaded the era.”77 74 Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases, 95. Quoted in Horan, The Pinkertons, 508-509. 76 Pingenot, Siringo, xix-xxi. 77 Ibid; James McParland passed away in Denver, Colorado, on May 18, 1919. After retiring from the Pinkerton agency, Charles Siringo spent the rest of his life in Texas and California. He died on October 18, 1928, in Altadene, California. The authors have been unable to determine what happened to George W. Riddell after his appearance in Boise at the Steunenberg murder trial. 75 45 |
