Pinkerton agents

(noun)

A private security and detective agency founded in 1850 who employers often used in labor disputes to infiltrate unions, guard factories, and enforce strikebreaking measures.

Related Terms

Examples of Pinkerton agents in the following topics:

  • The Molly Maguires

    • The Molly Maguires were an Irish-American organization of coal miners, opposed and persecuted by industrialists and Pinkerton agents.
    • In the 1870s, the Reading Railroad blamed the deals of two dozen mine foremen and administrators on a secret society of Irishmen called the "Molly Maguires. " Although the Reading Railroad hired a Pinkerton undercover detective to investigate, it is highly probable that most of the men accused and executed for being Molly Maguires were innocent.
    • Gowen and the testimony of Pinkerton detective James McParland.
    • Gowen decided to force a strike and showdown, and hired Pinkerton agent James McParland to go undercover against the Mollies.
    • McParland's assignment was to collect evidence of murder plots and intrigue, passing this information along to his Pinkerton manager.

  • The Homestead Strike

    • After three agents were shot, many of the Pinkertons refused to continue the firefight.
    • Just before noon, a sniper shot killed another Pinkerton agent.
    • The Pinkertons, too, wished to surrender.
    • Their arms were stripped from them, and as the Pinkertons crossed the grounds of the mill, the crowd formed a gauntlet through which the agents passed.
    • Men and women threw sand and stones at the Pinkerton agents, spat on them, and beat them.

  • The Rise of Unions

    • Although the Reading Railroad hired a Pinkerton undercover detective to investigate, it is highly probable that most of the men accused and executed for being Molly Maguires were innocent.
    • Gowen and the testimony of Pinkerton detective James McParland.
    • Carnegie's steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, hired a group of 300 Pinkerton detectives to break a bitter strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers.

  • Workers Organize

    • In the riots of 1892 at Carnegie's steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania , a group of 300 Pinkerton detectives , whom the company had hired to break a bitter strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, were fired upon by strikers and 10 were killed.

  • Conclusion: Populism Resurgent

    • Donald Trump in a New Hampshire Town Hall on August 19th, 2015 at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH

  • The XYZ Affair

    • The XYZ Affair refers to the bribes demanded by French agents in the negotiating dispatches to cease French seizures of American vessels.
    • When Adams sent a three-man delegation, Charles Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, to Paris to negotiate a peace agreement with France, French agents demanded major concessions from the United States as a condition for continuing diplomatic relations.
    • Since Adams omitted the names of these French agents in the dispatches, referring to them as "X, Y, and Z", this became known as the XYZ Affair.

  • Sears Roebucks

    • When Richard Warren Sears was a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota, he received an impressive shipment of watches from a Chicago jeweler, which the local cube jeweler did not want.
    • Sears purchased the watches, sold them for a considerable profit to other station agents, and then ordered more for resale.

  • Scandals

    • This intensified during the Grant administration, as whiskey distillers bribed Treasury Department agents, who in turn helped the distillers evade taxes to the tune of up to $2 million per year; the agents would neglect to collect a duty of 70 cents per gallon, then split the bonus profits.
    • The ringleaders had to coordinate distillers, rectifiers, gaugers, storekeepers, revenue agents, and Treasury clerks by way of recruitment and extortion.
    • Missouri Revenue Agent John A.

  • The Glorious Revolution in America

    • He and other Massachusetts agents were received by James, who promised in October 1688 to address the colony's concerns.
    • The Massachusetts agents then petitioned the new monarchs and the Lords of Trade (who oversaw colonial affairs) for restoration of the Massachusetts charter.
    • Agents for both colonies worked in England to rectify the charter issues.

  • The "Reign of Witches"

    • The Federalists, on the other hand, were suspicious of the Democrat-Republican party's affinity for France, especially since in the released dispatches of the XYZ affair, agent "Y" had boasted of the existence of a "French" party in American politics.