Courts, Criminals and the CamorraTrain, Arthur Cheney
History
Courts, Criminals and the Camorra
Train, Arthur Cheney
Camorra; Criminals -- United States; Justice, Administration of -- United States
In the great struggle between capital and labor, each side has expended
large sums of money in employing confederates to secure secret
information as to the plans and doings of the enemy. Almost every labor
union has its Judas, and many a secretary to a capitalist is in the
secret employment of a labor union. The railroads must be kept informed
of what is going on, and, if necessary, they import a man from another
part of the country to join the local organization. Often such men, on
account of their force and intelligence, are elected to high office in
the brotherhoods whose secrets they are hired to betray. Practically
every big manufacturing plant in the United States has on its pay-rolls
men acting as engineers, foremen, or laborers who are drawing from $80
to $100 per month as detectives either (1) to keep their employers
informed as to the workings of the labor unions, (2) to report to the
directors the actual conduct of the business by its salaried officers,
superintendents, and overseers, or (3) to ascertain and report to
outside competing concerns the methods and processes made use of, the
materials utilized, and the exact cost of production.
There are detectives among the chambermaids and bellboys in the hotels,
and also among the guests; there are detectives on the passenger lists
and in the cardrooms of the Atlantic liners; the colored porter on the
private car, the butler at your friend’s house, the chorus girl on
Broadway, the clerk in the law office, the employee in the commercial
agency, may all be drawing pay in the interest of some one else,
who may be either a transportation company, a stock-broker, a rival
financier, a yellow newspaper, an injured or even an erring wife, a
grievance committee, or a competing concern; and the duties of these
persons may and will range from the theft of mailing-lists, books, and
papers, and (in the case of the newspaper) of private letters, up to
genuine detective work requiring some real ability.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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