No self-respecting laborer or mechanic likes to feel that the man beside him may be a spy from a detective agency, and especially so when the laboring man is utterly at the mercy of the detective, who can report whatever he pleases, be it true or false....[20] Whether assumedly legal or not, the employment of armed bodies of men for private purposes, either by employers or employees, is to be deprecated and should not be resorted to. Such use of private armed men is an assumption of the State's authority by private citizens. If the State is incapable of protecting citizens in their rights of person and property, then anarchy is the result, and the original law of force should neither be approved, encouraged, nor tolerated until all known legal processes have failed."[21] We must leave this black page in American history with such comfort as we can wring from the fact that the modern exponents of the oldest anarchy have been at least once rebuked, and with the further satisfaction that the Homestead tragedy brought momentarily to the attention of the entire nation a practice which even at that time was a source of great alarm to many serious men. In the great strikes which occurred in the late eighties and early nineties there was a great deal of violence, and C. H. Salmons, in his history of "The Burlington Strike" of 1888, relates how private detectives systematically planned outrages that destroyed property and how others committed murder. A few cases were fought out in the courts with results very disconcerting to the railroads who had hired these private detectives. In the strike on the New York Central Railroad which occurred in 1890 many detectives were employed. They were, of course, armed, and, as a result of certain criminal operations undertaken by them, Congress was asked to consider the drafting of a bill "to prevent corporations engaged in interstate-commerce traffic from employing unjustifiably large bodies of armed men denominated 'detectives,' but clothed with no legal functions."[22] Roger A. Pryor, then Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, vigorously protested against these "watchmen." "I mean," he said, "the enlistment of banded and armed mercenaries under the command of private detectives on the side of corporations in their conflicts with employees. The pretext for such an extraordinary measure is the protection of the corporate property; and surely the power of this great State is adequate to the preservation of the public order and security. At all events, in this particular instance, it was not pretended either that the strikers had invaded property or person, or that the police or militia in Albany had betrayed reluctance or inability to cope with the situation. On the contrary, the facts are undisputed that the moment the men went out Mr. Pinkerton and his myrmidons appeared on the scene, and the police of Albany declared their competency to repel any trespass on person or property.