Anyone who cares to look up the history of the labor movement for the last hundred years will find that in every great strike private detectives and police agents have been at work provoking violence. It is almost incredible what a large number of criminal operations can be traced to these paid agents. From 1815 to the present day the bitterness of nearly every industrial conflict of importance has been intensified by the work of these spies, thugs, and _provocateurs_. "It was not until we became infested by spies, incendiaries, and their dupes--distracting, misleading, and betraying--that physical force was mentioned among us," says Bamford, speaking of the trade-union activity of 1815-1816. "After that our moral power waned, and what we gained by the accession of demagogues we lost by their criminal violence and the estrangement of real friends."[45] Some of the notable police agents that appear in the history of labor are Powell, Mitchell, Legg, Stieber, Greif, Fleury, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, Schroeder-Brennwald, Krueger, Kaufmann, Peukert, Haupt, Von Ehrenberg, Friedeman, Weiss, Schmidt, and Ihring-Mahlow. In addition we find Andre, Andrieux, Pourbaix, Melville, and scores of other high police officials directing the work of these agents. In America, McPartland, Schaack, and Orchard--to mention the most notorious only--have played infamous roles in provoking others, or in undertaking themselves, to commit outrages. There were and are, of course, thousands of others besides those mentioned, but these are historic characters, who planned and executed the most dastardly deeds in order to discredit the trade-union and socialist movements. The space here is too limited to go into the historic details of this commerce in violence. But he who is curious to pursue the study further will find a list of references at the end of the volume directing him to some of the sources of information.[46] He will there discover an appalling record of crime, for, as Thomas Beet points out, hardly a strike occurs where these special officers are not sent to make trouble. There are sometimes thousands of them at work, and, if one undertook to go into the various trials that have arisen as a result of labor disputes, one could prepare a long list of murders committed by these "hireling assassins."