Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs

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Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs

Name: Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781421420561
Price: 69.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781421420561

Being a story of the nation's most famous (and infamous) detective agency

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$69.99

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By S. Paul O'Hara
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: December 14, 2016
Format: HARDBACK
Pages: 216

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Between 1865 and 1937, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency was at the center of countless conflicts between capital and labor, bandits and railroads, and strikers and state power. Some believed that the detectives were protecting society from dangerous criminal conspiracies; others thought that armed Pinkertons were capital's tool to crush worker dissent. Yet the image of the Pinkerton detective also inspired romantic and sensationalist novels, reflected shifting ideals of Victorian manhood, and embodied a particular kind of rough frontier justice.

Inventing the Pinkertons examines the evolution of the agency as a pivotal institution in the cultural history of American monopoly capitalism. Historian S. Paul O'Hara intertwines political, social, and cultural history to reveal how Scottish-born founder Allan Pinkerton insinuated his way to power and influence as a purveyor of valuable (and often wildly wrong) intelligence in the Union cause. During Reconstruction, Pinkerton turned his agents into icons of law and order in the Wild West. Finally, he transformed his firm into a for-rent private army in the war of industry against labor. Having begun life as peddlers of information and guardians of mail bags, the Pinkertons became armed mercenaries, protecting scabs and corporate property from angry strikers.

O'Hara argues that American capitalists used the Pinkertons to enforce new structures of economic and political order. Yet the infamy of the Pinkerton agent also gave critics and working communities a villain against which to frame their resistance to the new industrial order. Ultimately, Inventing the Pinkertons is a gripping look at how the histories of American capitalism, industrial folklore, and the nation-state converged.

Introduction: Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, or heroes and villains of the Gilded Age

Chapter 1: In which Allan Pinkerton creates his agency
The making of Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton goes to war
Crafting the Pinkerton detective
Conclusion: a detective mythology

Chapter 2: In which Pinkerton Men become the anti-heroes of the middle west
Mississippi Outlaws
The Outlaw Jesse James
Wild bandits of the border
Conclusion: Highwaymen of the Railroad

Chapter 3: In which Pinkerton agents infiltrate secret societies
A Noxious Weed of Ireland
Among the Assassins!
Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives
Conclusion: Anarchists and the Detectives

Chapter 4: In which the Pinks serve as a private army for capital
The ""Pinkerton Force"" or detectives on trial
""Pinkerton is neither more nor less than the head of a band of mercenaries""
The Knights of Labor and the Pinkerton roughs
Conclusion: Anarchists and the detectives

Chapter 5: In which Pinkerton myrmidons invade Homestead
The Great Battle of Homestead
Mr. Frick's hired invaders
The Pinkerton system is a standing menace to order and good government
Conclusion: Pinkerton raiders, the advance guard to Poles and Hungarians

Chapter 6: In which the disgrace of Pinkertonism is subjected to public scrutiny
Protecting property from the"" Tyranny of the Homestead Mo""
Protecting free labor from ""this gang of Hessians""
Protecting society from the ""Disgrace of Pinkertonism""
Conclusion: Lessons on Corporate management from the Mercenaries of the Oligarchy

Chapter 7: In which the frontier closes and Pinkerton practices are exposed
A Cowboy Detective and a Labor Spy
Surrounded with lice, Pinkerton detectives and other vermin
Pinking the Pinkertons
Conclusion: Anarchists and the Detectives, reconsidered

Chapter 8: In which the modern state takes on the duties of the Pinkerton agency
Birdy Edwards and the last myth of the Pinkertons
The modern state and the detectives
Stool Pigeons, Company gunmen, and the New Deal
Conclusion: Dashiell Hammett, Pinkerton

Conclusion: Pinkerton's Inc.

""Inventing the Pinkertons is a welcome addition to the history of the long Gilded Age. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in American popular culture, business-government relations, the ongoing struggle between labor and capital, and the formation of the modern surveillance-police state.""

Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs

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