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.

Includes bibliographies and index.

"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."--Provided by publisher.

Introduction: Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, or heroes and villains of the Gilded Age -- In which Allan Pinkerton creates his agency. The making of Allan Pinkerton ; Allan Pinkerton goes to war ; Crafting the€Pinkerton detective ; Conclusion: A detective mythology -- In which Pinkerton men become the antiheroes of the middle€west. Mississippi outlaws ; The outlaw Jesse James ; Wild bandits of the border ; Conclusion: Highwaymen of the railroad -- In which Pinkerton agents infiltrate secret societies. A noxious weed of Ireland ; Among the assassins! ; Strikers, communists, tramps, and detectives ; Conclusion: Anarchists and the detectives -- In which the Pinks serve as a private army for capital. 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 ; Conclusion: Anarchists and the detectives -- In which Pinkerton myrmidons invade Homestead. 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 Hungarians -- In which the disgrace of Pinkertonism is subjected to public€scrutiny. 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 -- In which the frontier closes and Pinkerton practices are€exposed. A cowboy detective and a labor spy ; Surrounded with lice, Pinkerton detectives, and other vermin ; Pinking the Pinkertons ; Conclusion: Anarchists and detectives, reconsidered -- In which the modern state takes on the duties of the Pinkerton€agency. 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 -- Conclusion. Pinkerton's Inc

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