American History Tellers - The Pinkerton Detective Agency | Behind The Brand | 4

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Allan Pinkerton started the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to catch robbers, counterfeiters and spies. For a time, Pinkerton detectives enjoyed their good image, carefully crafted by Pinkerton himself. But, that image tarnished as the Pinkertons increasingly took on paid work breaking up strikes for Gilded Age industrialists. Today, Lindsay is joined by S. Paul O’Hara, an Associate Professor of History at Xavier University, to discuss Allan Pinkerton’s determination to build the company brand and cultivate his own mythology. O’Hara is the author of, Inventing the Pinkertons. Pre-order your copy of the new American History Tellers book, The Hidden History of the White House, for behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most dramatic events in American history—set right inside the house where it happened.Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting https://wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's late morning in June of 1879. You're a 21-year-old aspiring writer living in Chicago, and you're walking briskly up Washington Street toward a large office building. You've been unable to sell your first novel, so you took a job co-writing a book with Alan Pinkerton, head of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Today, you're heading to the agency's main office to meet with Mr. Pinkerton and review with him the first draft of the manuscript you turned in last week. After arriving, a secretary leads you to a large office where Pinkerton himself sits behind a cluttered desk. You know he suffered a stroke years ago, and in your first two meetings he appeared frail and older than his 60 years, but today he seems more robust and energized. Hello, young man. Take a seat. I read your manuscript and I have some concerns. Oh, concerns? What did you not like about it?

Well, for starters, there's not enough drama or action. It's a little flat. Honestly, kind of boring. Your heart sinks because you were sure you'd written a great book. Well, I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, sir. What do you suggest? Well, one thing you can do is feel that way, sir. What do you suggest? Well, one thing you can do is add more dialogue. Get people talking. But how can I do that? I wasn't there. I don't know what people actually said. Oh, that doesn't matter. Embellish. The readers don't care. They want to be entertained. That's what these books are, entertainment. I thought you understood that. You've read Pinkerton's previous books, and you tried to copy the style. But this new one, Spy of the Rebellion, tells the story of Pinkerton's time as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War.

The idea of putting words in people's mouths made you uncomfortable. I want to be sure I'm hearing you correctly. You want me to make up the quotes? Even Abraham Lincoln's? Yes. Just make him sound believable. Think of it as narrative-enhancing dialogue. Narrative? I'm not sure I understand. Is this a fictional book? A novel? No, but it's not a dry

history book either. But it sounds like you want me to take liberties with the truth. People want action, son. They want a good story. And the story need not be 100% true, just merely true enough. He stands up and hands you back the manuscript. Pages are covered with notes. Listen, I have other writers I can turn to if you're not up for the task. My publisher in New York is eager to receive the manuscript, so can you fix it? Yes, yes, I can fix it. Just give me one more chance.

Grand. But remember, I have two goals with all my books. Maintain the reputation of this agency, which you know I built myself over the past 20 years. And secondly, sell books and make money, right? That's obvious. But if you feel like you're not up to it, just say the word, and I'll find someone else. Mr. Pinkerton's last comments resonate with you. You need to make money too. And even if it goes against your nature to embellish the truth, you'll do what it takes to bring in a paycheck. inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside

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Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. By the 1870s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency had become well-known, and founder Alan Pinkerton was eager to capitalize on the growing interest in the work of his detectives. He began writing a series of books based on his and his agents' daring exploits. Pinkerton insisted that the events he depicted actually transpired, but according to historians, he employed ghostwriters to help finesse his recollections and make them more palatable to the public. But despite any embellishments, or maybe because of

them, these stories were wildly popular and would solidify the Pinkertons' reputation as the premier detective agency in America for many years to come. Here with me now to discuss the ways in which the Pinkertons built their brand and tried to control it is Paul O'Hara, Associate Professor of History at Xavier University and author of the book, Inventing the Pinkertons. Paul O'Hara, welcome to American History Tellers.

Thank you for having me. Now, I understand you originally hoped to write just a straight-ahead history of the Pinkertons for your book, Inventing the Pinkertons, but found that it didn't quite pan out that way. What was the basic idea for the book and how did it change? Well, I think like any historian, you find something interesting, you find these key peoples moving through this historical landscape and you want to know more about them, right? Much like Butch Cassidy and Sundance in the 1969 film, right? So you see these guys, who are they? You want to know more about who they are. I mean, I wanted to find that truth about what they were

and what they did and where they fit into all of this. And it was frustrating because I did what every other historian does, which is you go to the archives, you look at the documents. I was already familiar with the books that Alan Pinkerton had written or ghostwritten. I knew all the legends. I knew all the folktales. I wanted to find something else, something tangible to counteract that. And I just couldn't find it. The more I looked, I went to the archives, I went to the Library of Congress, I went to the company

files, hoping to find those really juicy details, and they just weren't there. And the more I looked, the more I found that in the archives, in their records, the company records, it was just this obsessive detailing of their reputation. And every time a newspaper article mentioned them, every time someone in a speech mentioned them, they were deeply concerned about their reputation. And that frustrated me for a very long time until I just kind of embraced it and realized that the folk tale is the story and the legend and reputation is the tale of the Pinkertons. I had to come to terms and reputation is the tale of the Pinkertons. I had to come to terms with not telling the story of the Pinkertons so much as telling the story of

the story of the Pinkertons. And then that kind of became the stories of the stories of the Pinkertons. And that was sort of the process of embracing this messiness of Pinkertons, the company, doing actual things, and Pinkerton, the brand, and Pinkerton, The Company doing actual things and Pinkerton The Brand and Pinkerton The Legend and Folklore and finding the connections between those three. So I guess confronted with this manufactured history and then deciding to make your history about the history, what kind of sources did you try to turn to

and piece together the story behind the story of the Pinkertons? There were these somewhere between detective novels to dime novels that Alan Pinkerton published. There were these journal articles written in national magazines that the company would commission. They'd let authors into the archives.

There was just this public discourse. And so delving into what people said about the company, how they responded to other accusations, how the company tried to counter that and shape it and mold it and respond to these public criticisms. And the way in which those public criticisms created more public criticisms, it was really a story that was hashed out within the public sphere. So I had to concentrate on those public personas that were being bandied about, about the Pinkertons. So the Pinkerton story, well, starts with Alan Pinkerton. And we should start with where he started in Chicago, working as a cooper, a barrel maker. But he fell into detective work rather quickly. And this happened in large part

because of the way money worked at the time. Who manufactured money in the area? How did that lead to a counterfeiting problem? It's an interesting era because it's this era of Andrew Jackson and Andrew Jackson, this great democratizing force railing against the elite institutions of the coast. And the National Bank is one of those. Right. So this Jacksonian era in which the federal bank, the National Bank is being decentralized accounts are being pulled out and spread about to various different state banks. It's this refocusing on specie, right? So hard coins. And so much of the business was supposed to be done in these hard minted coins. Coins made of precious metals, which means the coin itself held value, not banknotes.

Banknotes were just promissory notes. But without a centralized federal national bank, there's a shortage of these sorts of banknotes. So it's this Jacksonian era where banknotes are less than reputable. It's happening at the same time as this huge national expansion of business, of trade, of slavery, of cotton, of railroads. And so at the very time there's less money circulating, there needs to be more money circulating. And what that creates is this explosion in state bank notes. Various different banks, some of them reputable, some of them less than reputable, some of them big, some of them small, some of them real, some of them fake.

All of these banks are printing their own notes. So this is this wildcat money that is flushing through the system, especially in the West. But banks are really on the hook for this. So banks are willing to pay people, especially men such as Alan Pinkerton, to chase down counterfeiters, to chase down these counterfeit banknotes. And that's the real crisis around money and banking. So this kind of alternate economy of banknotes creates an underground's the real crisis around money and banking. So this kind of alternate economy of banknotes creates an underground economy of counterfeiters. And this gives Alan

Pinkerton his first opportunity as a detective. What is this first lucky break of his? What is the story? This is where it's complicated because it's a story and it's his story. So we always have to understand that this is the story he tells later about when he becomes a detective. But he says, I'm a cooper. I'm a skilled artisan. I'm a cooper. He's going into the rivers and weeds to find these very specific woods he needs. And he stumbles across a counterfeiting operation. And he goes to the local sheriff. The local sheriff says, if you come with me, you can help me. And he goes along with the sheriff to capture these counterfeiters. And he says, this is a moment when I realize I have skill at this. This is a need.

This can be profitable. And this is the moment, he says, when the detective is born. So Alan Pinkerton follows this calling, this new calling, and falls into detective work. He's also appointed a sheriff's deputy and a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service. He began providing security for the Southern Michigan Railroad. This is a lot of hats for one man. What was the state of law enforcement at the time when our modern conception of it would be that these are positions filled by government forces? And that's exactly it. He wears all these hats because there's no other

representations of the state. There are no other representatives. So in terms of law enforcement, there tend to be local sheriffs and they're elected. They might have deputies. They might not. There really don't tend to be police yet. Chicago, like most cities, will have a night watch and they'll have a constable basically there to make sure fires don't start. But really, it's not until the 1850s. For Chicago, it's 1855 that there's any formal police. It's not until 1860 that the police actually have detectives.

Before 1860, they're really just riot control. So there's nothing. There's no police. There are very few sheriffs. The railroad, which crosses state lines, there's no police. There are very few sheriffs. The railroad, which crosses state lines, fall under different jurisdictions. There's really no federal authority, state authority. And that's that space that Alan Pinkerton's able to move into, that he can be a sheriff's deputy and a police detective and work for the post office and work for the railroad

and work for banks. He's this jack of all trades because he can fit whatever need there is. And the state, by and large, is happy to let him do so and happy to let him take on that authority of the state because there's no one else. So in these early years, then, of course, we're hearing from Pinkerton himself on his story. But what did the press say about Alan Pinkerton, detective? The press just love him, right? They eat this all up. They are enamored by his reputation. They're enamored by his skill. They're enamored of the way in which he can provide law and order.

This is a moment in the 1850s where the Eastern press in particular is deeply enamored by the frontier. It's kind of these rugged men from the frontier. And this is Chicago still very much that frontier outpost. And so he fits this kind of romantic ideal of the rugged Westerner who's bringing law and order. And because he fits that ideal, they love him. And the more the press loves him, the more he's willing to play to those very things and stress those things that they love about him. What do you think it was about Alan Pinkerton, barrel maker, that suddenly made him such a successful detective? Was he, you know, just have the right mind for the kind of work or was he

instead in the right place at the right time? I think it's probably a little bit of both. From reading everything he wrote about himself and reading what other people wrote about him, I think he was clearly relentless and single-minded and the work ethic that he was willing to put in was impressive, right? He was obsessive. And when he got on a case, he focused solely on that case. So he's really relentless in his pursuit, even ruthless in his pursuit. And I think that made him very successful, right? So when companies hired him, he got results for those companies. At the same time, he's also a really early brand manager, right? I think he understands in a way that very few others do in the 19th century, that his appeal is cultural. The stories

he tells, the reputation he has, it's clear from the company archives, he knows this really early, that he's selling himself so much as he is his services. And then he's also, he comes at a time when there is this chaos, when there is this banking uncertainty, where there's bank notes and bank collapses and economic panics and the rail's expanding, but they don't know how to expand and who's going to pay for all of this. And just this general sense of uncertainty, he's a great balm for that. So I think it's both his skill set and his reputation. And he comes at exactly the right time for all of those things to really matter. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist,

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He has to be of good moral standing. He doesn't delve into the sort of the darker, murkier world of divorce or sex scandals, that Pinkerton detective is supposed to be a very specific model of middle-class self-control and propriety. And because they have such that center of middle class propriety and self-control, that allows them to then play at being a criminal, right? They can delve into this underworld. They can pretend to be something they're not because they are so morally centered. That's certainly the reputation. And I think it's important that it's reputation because Pinkerton not only creates these models,

but then publicizes it. I think this is also marketing. He's telling everyone, the companies that are hiring him, but also the larger national press, who the company is and why they should be trusted. At this time in America's history, why do you think that there was such a thirst for this brand of detective that Pinkerton's story sold so well? I think it comes at a particular time where several key phenomena are intersecting. This is an age that fundamentally believed in the modern, that they were a new world

with a new way of thinking. He's very clear when he lays out what a detective does. He says that the old forms of detection, the old forms of crime solving, he says, have passed away before the enlightened intelligence of modern times, right? So, the sense of the modern and that modern applications of crime prevention and crime solving and criminal justice could be applied. And I think that's much broader because there's a fascination with mysteries and the very notion of what a mystery is was changing. I think before the 19th century, by and large, mystery was a theological term. It was a religious term. There's a mystery of faith.

Mysteries were things that were unknown and unknowable. And I think as we shift into the 19th century, that changes where a mystery is a puzzle that you haven't solved yet. But someone smart enough, disciplined enough, observant enough can solve these mysteries. And I think the idea of the detective confirms that. And so what he's plugging into is not just this economic need to apply some law and order on banking and railroads and crime, but you also get this literary output. You get Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. They're all creating literary detectives, right? These gentlemen crime solvers.

That's already out in the milieu. It's out in the conversation. And so in many ways, Pinkerton's able to tap into this fantasy about who detectives were and this need from companies to crack down on disorder and bad money and is able to wed the two together. So then in his pursuit of these gentlemen crime solvers and their prominence and promotion, Pinkerton drafts a code of conduct, the principles and rules for a detective, and also the principles for armed guards or what he called preventives. Give us an idea of what kind of an overview of what these principles said.

They lay out the basic rules of strict morals, of not inducing crime, not being an agent provocateur, of not working for rewards, but for money, a per diem, basically trying to distance his detective agency from this more French tradition of hiring thieves to catch thieves, right? Or hiring criminals to catch criminals, right? Getting inside the criminal mind through the criminal mind. His rules and regulations say, no, we're just, we're the complete opposite of this. We are gentlemen of honor and we will conduct ourselves like gentlemen of honor. And you can trust what we do. You can trust what we say because we have all these rules of conduct of who we hire and how they act. That's the official line. And that's the line that Pinkerton will promote.

And that's the line that Pinkerton will keep advertising and insist upon, yet we also know because we get these exposés from old Pinkerton agents, especially Charlie Seringo, who is a detective who starts in Chicago, heads out West. And one of the things that Charlie Seringo will write in his exposé about the Pinkerton detective agency is that he says, you know, they have all these rules about who they hire, but boy, if you go into that bunkhouse, you see all kinds of different guys. They'll hire anyone. So you get kind of this official rules, official regulations, and then unofficially, there's this creeping counter narrative that says the Pinkertons aren't who they say they are.

Throughout this series, one of the things that surprised me was how progressive Pinkerton was when it came to hiring and promoting women. He was clearly a man in a man's world at the time. Why do you think he gave women the chance to be detectives of all things? I think it worked for him. He's very proud of this, as well he should be, that he does hire women detectives. He hires them very early. He has Kate Wern in particular, but Hattie Lawton and others who work very well for him.

And I think he's interested in women detectives because of his fundamental belief in what a detective does. If a detective is morally centered, they can get near that criminal and sooner or later the criminal will give themselves away. And this is especially important in his early cases when he's working for banks or express companies, because the banks don't just want to catch the thief. They want to know where the money is. So you need to get confessions. You need to get information. And so what Pinkerton detectives do is they surround the people. And Pinkerton says, if we can get into their homes, they'll be even less on guard. So women detectives like Kate Wern can pierce that veil of the private sphere. They can get into the people's parlors.

They can cozy up to other people's wives. They can chat. They can listen. They can hear. They go unnoticed. And that's the very important purpose that they can serve. So Alan Pinkerton, as we've been discussing, an early brand manager, very aware of his image, a keen marketing mind.

What were the methods that he used to get his message out? How did he interface with the press? This goes through a couple of different stages. In the 1850s, he's by and large happy to let the press find him when he uncovers big cases. So he'll get lauded in the press in Chicago and elsewhere. And he's pretty content with that. He's also pretty happy to build business networks, right? If he works well with railroads and railroad executives, he'll get more work.

And that works really well for him in and through the American Civil War, right? He gets all of these intelligence and counterintelligence positions through George McClellan and the Department of War because of the connections he already has. And then in the post-war period, there's this immediate outpouring of stories about spies, about detectives, and these various different detectives. There's Lafayette Baker in Washington. There are all these other spies, especially women's spies during the war, trying to take credit for saving Lincoln in 1861, trying to avoid blame for losing Lincoln in 65, trying

to take credit for espionage and counter espionage during the war, and suddenly just waiting for the press to find him isn't enough. And that's when he turns to first self-publication, right? He writes these books about himself. He tries to defend his reputation. No, I'm the one who saved Lincoln. I'm the one who found all these spies. And that opens up quite literally sort of a new chapter for him. He realizes he can, I think, tap much more immediately into this larger discourse of the detective, that literary detective, if he just flat out writes detective books. And so he says,

I'm going to dig through my files. People have been asking me to do this. And so here are these rip-roaring adventure tales that I've been on. And they're all true. And I think that becomes the key method to promote himself from the 1860s well into the 1880s. So speaking of these novels or the novelization of his brand, I was wondering if you could share a short reading with us and maybe set it up first. So one of Pinkerton's first efforts at creating these sorts of dime novel literary stories was The Expressman and the Detective, which is about the Adams Express Company and one of their agents, Moroni, who is suspected of stealing from the company and using his wife to hide the money. And the plot unfolds of how Pinkerton is going to catch not only the thief, but find the money.

He says, the reader knows that I'm determined to win. The Adams Express Company had furnished me with all the backing I wanted. And under such favorable auspices, I said, when I must, when I shall. I did not doubt that Maroney was the thief. The question now was, how can I find the money? And then a couple of lines later, when Maroney makes his big slip up and the space is open to catch him. We were in a private room when Fox came in.

This is his detective. After hearing his report, I turned to George Bangs and said, the plot thickens. Every day we are nearing success. We have the woman treed at last and in the north among our friends. Depend upon it. We shall have the money ere long. And this is exactly the kind of melodramatic retelling that almost all of his detective tales have. his advantage because Jesse James did too, taunting Pinkerton in the press because Jesse James consistently escaped from Pinkerton agents. Tell us how Jesse James used the press to his advantage. So Jesse James is another one of these characters whose folklore and reputation and what he

actually does and why he does it don't necessarily match up, but he's also sort of this man of his time. So Jesse James and Frank James and the Youngers, they're all guerrillas in Missouri during the war. And they continue to do after the war, what they had done during the war. They keep riding, they keep stealing, they keep raiding. It's not so much James as it is John Newman Edwards. And John Newman Edwards is a St. Louis newspaper man, dedicated Confederate, dedicated to the memory of Missouri Confederates and Missouri guerrillas. It's Newman Edwards that really crafts this language around Jesse James that says he's not just a random bandit and he's not just this random gorilla. He's the rebel who keeps fighting. He's the rebel who never gave up. And so if you craft James as this Confederate rebel hero, then Pinkerton finds himself as the

foil of that story. He becomes the villain of that story. And he's not comfortable being the villain of a story. So then we have this, I guess, a war of words in the press. What did Alan Pinkerton do to counter Jesse James and his publisher advocates and his failure to break up his gang? He's found his match both in the James gang because he can't catch them. And it drives him insane because all of his methods don't work. He would normally just flood an area with agents. They'd take up positions in local bars. They'd throw some money around. They'd buy some drinks, right? And sooner or later, someone would talk.

And that just didn't work in post-war Missouri. Pinkerton agents just stuck out. James was not unpopular. He's actually quite popular. And so Pinkerton's normal methods just end up getting Pinkerton agents killed. When they show up in Missouri, the James gang finds them, executes them, right? So his methods aren't working. And he also finds he can't win the battle for

reputation. He can't win hearts and minds because John Newman Edwards is also besting him at his game in that he's creating this legend of James and creating these letters, ostensibly from James, taunting Pinkerton in the press, right? These letters published in newspapers saying, Pinkerton sends his best agents after us and we best them all, right? He tries to catch us and he can't. And there's this key moment where, based upon intelligence, based upon rumor, the Pinkertons are pretty sure that both Frank and Jesse James are going to be at home. They surround the house in the middle of the night. They have this incendiary device.

It's ostensibly supposed to light up the house, but it explodes, blowing the arm off of their mother. Neither one of them are home. And this is a PR nightmare. And he backtracks. He backpedals. He tries to tell other stories. He'll talk about the Reno gang in Indiana. Well, we caught them. He'll talk about the Farrington gang from Tennessee. They're also Confederate rebels. We caught them. But the

Farringtons and the Renos don't carry the cultural weight that Jesse James does. And Pinkerton's always that counterpart to the Jesse James legend. Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming. Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation,

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You can binge all episodes of The Real History of Dracula exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus and The Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency offered both detective services and eventually armed guards for hire. By the late 1870s, the agency's business expanded from uncovering or catching criminals to providing these guards to steel and mining companies. This was a fairly significant switch. What forces were at play that caused the agency to make this shift? I think there are two things. First is family dynamics. Alan Pinkerton was aging, right? He creates this company in his own image. They provide private guards for companies that need them, but the big focus is on the detective.

And it's his sons who are slowly moving into the business, begin to take over the business by the late 70s to early 80s. And it's his sons who say the real money is in providing these security services. That needs to be the focus. What's also the times? This is the Gilded Age. The Civil War has ended. There's this huge, massive explosion of American industry, of railroad expansion, meatpacking, coal mining, steel production. There's a massive influx of new immigrants into these new jobs, explosion of new cities. And there's tension. There's violence. Unions are trying to form. There's crackdowns on these unions. And so there's also

this new market for guards, this new fear of labor unions. There's this fear of anarchy and chaos within these labor unions. So there's also this brand new market emerging. So in this shift from merely detectives to guards, there was also this brand new market emerging. So in this shift from merely detectives to guards, there was also this new business opportunity, which is protecting American corporations from their striking workers. Give us an example of how this would play out. This is the era in the company's history in which they become the biggest villains. No question. Pinkerton's business, when it came to strikes, because the company had these two different wings, they would, on the one hand, send in

detectives. And what a detective would do is infiltrate the union. They would start working at the plant. They would go to union meetings. They would figure out who the leaders were. They would figure out what people were saying. Were they planning on striking? The detective could label them in any way, an anarchist or a socialist or dangerous, all the better. The detectives would infiltrate and get information and intelligence on that union. What you have from the guards, the preventives, is that they were muscle and their job was to show up in force and armed. And that's primarily to protect the plant, the mill, or the mine, to protect it from sabotage, to keep strikers away from it,

and perhaps most importantly, to allow replacement workers to get through those crowds back into the factory, back into the mill, back into the mine. That's contentious because they're armed guards out in this public space, but it's even more contentious because all of these strikes were not just factories and mills and mines, but railroads. And the railroads meant the Pinkerton guards were protecting the rail line as it moved through town, which means they had a much larger presence, many more armed guards, many more confrontations with crowds. And this is where so much of Pinkerton strike breaking and guard activities turn violent

and bloody and deadly. And so it's their place, not only within these strikes, but most notoriously within these railroad strikes that really give them this well-earned reputation as the private army for capital. And I suppose it was this period of the company's history that, in spite of all of his PR efforts, Alan Pinkerton could not control the narrative. In our series, we talked about the Homestead and Haymarket incidents, in which Pinkertons were involved in anti-labor violence, and people died.

How did incidents like these hurt the Pinkerton reputation specifically, especially the public perception of the agency? Well, I think it's Homestead. Homestead is the big, big moment. And it's been building for a long time through all these various different strikes that they're involved in, the railroad strikes, but it's Homestead. And it's the optics of Homestead that here's this massive army armed to the teeth coming down across state lines, coming up the river, coming into town, confronting strikers, this big open battle with strikers. This is too far. To public perception, this is Carnegie's private army, right? How does Carnegie have this much power? How does Carnegie get to have his own army? These are questions that people begin to ask. And there's outrage about the Pinkertons. And this carefully cultivated reputation gets changed. And suddenly, they're not just the Pinkertons, they're the Pinks. And the Pinks are just thugs and mercenaries and armed guys with rifles willing to crack heads at the behest of whoever pays them enough.

After Homestead, Congress investigates, and they investigate how this happens, and they investigate whether companies should have armed guards, and whether Carnegie should have this much power. And it's part of this larger effort to rein in that unchecked power of guys like Carnegie and Rockefeller and others, and the Pinkertons are right at the top of that list. The Populist Party cites them specifically by name that one of the outrages of the American political system are the Pinkertons. Congress will pass the Anti-Pinkerton Act.

This is specifically about them and the kinds of abuses that they represent. And basically, that emerging progressive state begins to say law enforcement can't be delegated out to private companies. That has to be an obligation that the state takes. So that space of state authority through private companies that Pinkerton had thrived in after Homestead, that shrinks. So in a way, in this moment, labor becomes the new Jesse James, the Pinkerton's bet noir in the press trading barbs. That's right. Yes.

This emerging folk culture of labor, they absolutely create their own narrative about who the Pinkertons are. And Jack London and other novelists and other reporters are happy to counter what the Pinkerton sons are now saying about their company. And with this tide turning here, the folklore turns against the Pinkertons as well. There is a folk song, a line that says, father was killed by a Pinkerton man. I suppose this gets to the grassroots notion of the turn against the Pinkertons. I think that's right, that it's this idea of capital and labor and who the people are within that. I mean, that's the whole point of the Populist Party, right?

Is that they claim to be representatives of the people. And the company had been so very good at controlling their narrative and they push back on this. This is when they release all of these new magazine articles trying to remind people of what wonderful detectives they once were, all these crimes that they solved.

But they don't control the narrative by the 1890s into the 20th century. And instead, there's this demand that companies can't have their own private armies. Companies can't crack down on labor. And the state should be responsible for these kinds of enforcement of laws. And yet, of course, the Pinkerton Company survived this turbulent period. How did it pivot? The Pinkerton Agency goes into much more espionage detective work. They try to leave the armed guard work behind so they're less seen publicly.

They will go into security work for racetracks, but they also still provide that same kind of industrial labor espionage for General Motors and other corporations well into the 1930s. So they basically hold on by clinging to those parts of that market that are still available to them. Their public reputation really stays poor until the 1940s when during World War II, they can repivot and reposition themselves as protectors of American industry from the threats of sabotage from foreign agents. There's another significant competitor too on the investigation side, the FBI. That's right, which again is this progressive era idea that the state should be the ones responsible. And it is a great affront to the Pinkerton company when the FBI emerges and who's asked to create and help shape this newly emerging Bureau of Investigation are not the Pinkertons, but William Burns, right? Their chief rival.

Because Burns has created what he calls the International Detective Agency, which is sort of a one-upsmanship of the National Detective Agency. He's the one who's charged with creating what are in essence these federal agents who will do what Pinkertons once did, but with the clear power and authority of the state.

And that's certainly the FBI in the 20s. Into the 30s, you start to get J. Edgar Hoover. And I think in many ways, J. Edgar Hoover follows the exact same playbook that Pinkerton had created 80 years earlier. So now let's race ahead several decades to almost the modern era now. In 1999, the Swedish security conglomerate Securitas acquires the company Pinkerton. It's now just called Pinkerton. But it is still very vigilant about its name and reputation.

And one fascinating instance of this was their response to the Pinkerton showing up in the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. Tell us what happened. So the Pinkertons had always been cognizant of how their name and reputation was being used. So they show up in novels all the time. So they show up in Sherlock Holmes novels. By the 1950s, 1960s, when espionage is hip again, Ian Fleming in the James Bond novels, right, will have Felix Leiter as a Pinkerton agent, right? So they're perfectly happy to let Pinkerton agents show up when they're the heroes. What changes, I think, with this video game is that you play the game as an outlaw.

You're a bandit and you're being chased throughout the Wild West and you're being chased by Pinkertons and Pinkertons are clearly the villain and you battle them. And I think what happened was not necessarily that this occurred, but how popular the video game became and how many online forums there were of people who were playing the game talking about how many Pinkerton agents they killed. And I think that caught the attention of the company and they sued. And it created a lot of press. It showed up in all kinds of news releases. And ultimately, the case was unsuccessful. It was never really going to be successful. But I think what's masterful about that act of suing the video game company is that almost every response that I read basically resummarized, I didn't know that Pinkerton still existed.

And I think in many ways, it was a masterful PR move because in essence, the company reminded the entire world, hey, we still exist and we still provide security services if you need them. Paul O'Hara, thank you so much for joining me on American History Tellers. It is my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. That was my conversation with historian Paul O'Hara. His book, Inventing the Pinkertons, is available now from Johns Hopkins University Press. Thank you so much for having me. That was my conversation with historian Paul O'Hara. His book, Inventing the Pinkertons, is available now from Johns Hopkins University Press.

From Wondery, this is our fourth and final episode of the Pinkerton Detective Agency for American History Tellers. On the next episode, we'll be talking about the hidden history of the White House, a new book from the team behind American History Tellers. I'll join the book's author, Corey Mead, and journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Kate Anderson Brower, who will take us inside the walls of America's executive mansion to explore the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation.

The Hidden History of the White House comes out June 4th and is available for pre-order now wherever you get your books. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. and Alita Rosansky. Our senior interview producer is Peter Arcuni. Coordinating producer is Desi Blaylock. Managing producer, Matt Gant. Senior managing producer, Ryan Lohr. Senior producer, Andy Herman.

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