There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday October 27, 1906
From the Duluth Labor World: Beware the Pinkerton
SPIES IN LABOR UNION
BONE OF CONTENTION
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John F. Tobin Tells How One is Discovered
in Boot and Shoe Workers.
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Becomes Active in Strike and Proves to be
Employed as Pinkerton Detective.
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In his report made at the convention of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ union recently held at Milwaukee, National President J. F. Tobin had this to say of spies in unions:
In many of our unions, and particularly in the large shoe centers, it is a well known fact that we have members who betray the union, giving out information both truthful and untruthful, which is conveyed to employers, sometimes by one method and again by others.
During my membership in a local union in Rochester, N. Y., in 1890, while the Cox strike was in progress, a stranger came to the city well recommended, and was very active in our meetings, very friendly with everybody and very liberal with his money, and contributed to the funds of the union altogether out of proportion with his small earnings while occasionally employed in one of the factories.
After being in the union quite a number of weeks he became a candidate for delegate to the joint shoe council in the semi-annual election and made an active canvass for election. About this time it was discovered that he was a Pinkerton detective, and upon this information being passed around among the members at the meeting he was elected outside sentinel, from which he took the hint and immediately left the city.
During the last big strike in Haverhill a man giving his name as Ed Loughlin was a avery active and prominent member of the union for some time, and was then discovered to be a Pinkerton detective, when he suddenly disappeared.
