Spying on the Reds

University of Northern Iowa

Spying on the RedsAuthor(s): Howard McLellanSource: The North American Review, Vol. 230, No. 4 (Oct., 1930), pp. 419-425Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25113659 .

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Spying on the Reds

By Howard McLellan

ELiHu Root's proposal that a

Federal police be established to combat Red activities in

the United States failed to arouse the favorable enthusiasm usually evoked

by the sage counsel which Mr. Root has offered on other knotty problems of statecraft; probably because it

was misinterpreted to an extreme

which its author never intended.

Almost unanimously the press scolded the elder statesman for pro

jecting such an un-American idea, while the Congressional committee

investigating Red activities quietly tucked away the proposal for further consideration.

There were many reasons why the

proposal did not take. Aside from a democratic aversion to European systems of political and industrial

espionage, the country is already well

policed. The Federal Government

maintains eleven detective services, and municipal and State police departments are larger and costlier than anyone a decade and a half ago dreamed they would be. With the cost of combatting crime approach

ing the cost of education, the added expense of a secret political police

which, like all secret services of a

political nature, would devour vast

sums for unexplained purposes, was

not, at that particular time, a relish able tidbit to set before the tax

payers. Another argument, more formida

ble but known to only a few, may be set against Mr. Root's proposal.

Why establish a secret police to pro tect America from the machinations of Moscow when there already exists an elaborate but unofficial secret

police which is doing precisely the same thing that a Federal under cover police would do?

ucH publicity has been given to the American industrial sys

tem, but it has discreetly avoided reference to a vast secret service

organization which quietly serves

industry in the form of an army of thousands of obscure, sharp-eyed

toiler-spies, who for $4 a day secretly guard the internal and external

security of great plants and indus trial centres.

Although concerned chiefly with

maintaining industrial peace, this

army does all it can to fight off the Communistic chimera. If little is heard about its operations, that is

because espionage, when its secret

agents are exposed, becomes dis

M



42o THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

astrous not only to the agents whose

bodily welfare is involved but also to the private detective business which

supplies the agents at good profit and

goes to considerable and sometimes

questionable lengths to frighten hard headed industrialists and promote prosperity in the private sleuthing industry. The art of making much out of little is peculiar to detective

agencies. The stagecraft they employ to invert the natural law of perspec tive compares favorably with the

master tricks of the best illusionists.

The

late Samuel Gompers, "grand old man of union labor," was

often used to provide both figure and

setting for the illusion. Probably no man in the public eye was more con

tinuously and closely shadowed than he, especially after it became appar ent in 1911 that the destruction of The Los Angeles Times building by dynamite was the fruit of a plot among a few direct action labor

leaders to silence that outspoken and

belligerent organ of the open shop.

During one period of the Gompers surveillance I saw much of him, from the rear.

He was an outstanding example of

what private detectives please to call a "soft shadow." He was both an

agreeable and an easy "subject" to

follow, although, for a long time, it was not apparent why he was being shadowed so closely and consistently.

My duty, in the jargon of the shadow world, was to

" get him up

in the morning and put him to bed at night" without, of course,

letting him know he was being given that assistance. My reports of his

every observed movement and con

tact were sent daily to a client

who was paying $15 a day and ex

penses to a detective agency for my services.

It was an interesting assignment.

I saw much of the country at an

other's expense and a great deal of

the grizzled old labor leader, dis

covering, incidentally, that while it is

impossible for a "shadow" to keep constant track of his subject's per son, he may often watch him through the medium of his habits. Gompers had an inordinate attachment to an umbrella of the

" bumbershoot

"

type. It was green from long ex

posure to nature's elements and large

enough, in full bloom, to cover eight men huddled close together. He also

had a snore, a deep bass dissonance, which at times had its musical moments.

With his umbrella he did what most umbrella carriers do. He fre

quently forgot where he had placed it. This helped me tremendously. If Gompers dodged out of my sight into an office, hotel room or meeting

hall, and I lost him, it was necessary

only to look in various corners, find

the umbrella and wait for him to come back to it. He always did that, just as an inveterate pipe-smoker

re

turns to his favorite and fragrant old tobacco burner.

One morning Gompers embarked

on a steamer at Portland, Ore

gon, leaving me behind in my hotel with no knowledge as to where he had

gone. But I spotted his umbrella

standing in a corner near the hotel

desk where he had left it while he paid his bill. He came puffing into the hotel and picked it up, and I picked him up, following him to the steamer which he had held up an hour to



SPYING ON THE REDS 421

make search for his missing rain

protector. Another time, in San Francisco,

he managed to elude me. I learned

after several hours' nervous search

that he had departed for the train

depot across the bay. When I reached

the station three night trains were

about to depart. Which one Gompers had taken I did not know. I boarded the train on the first track which I came to. The Pullman berths were

all made up. The passengers were

safe behind thick green curtains. I went through the first Pullman,

hoping I might see the umbrella.

It was not in evidence. But, in the

second car, I heard deep bass sounds

which gave off a dirgeful melody like The Song of the Boatmen of the Volga. It was Gompers's snore.

In all the time I shadowed Gom

pers I do not believe that he knew

he was being stalked. He wore thick

lensed glasses. He had painfully weak eyes, due, it has been said, to

the long hours he had spent in his

youth at a cigar maker's bench. Even had he discovered his "shadow" I doubt whether it would have mat

tered. He had been "tailed" off and on for years.

In

those times the friction between

union labor and exponents of the

open shop was at white heat. The

approach of Gompers to an indus trial centre was construed by nervous

and war worn employers to presage the outbreak of fresh labor hostilities and the beginning of a disastrous season of unrest among the workers.

Thus a detective's report that the

belligerent and tireless "grand old man of union labor" was on his way

to a given industrial centre was

viewed with alarm by the industrial ists of that centre and followed by feverish activity in the executive

offices of the various plants. As soon

as possible industrial operatives, who are the real hard working ele ments in a detective agency, were

called into the plants to observe

what effect, if any, Gompers's visit

would have upon the workers. So the

shadowing of Gompers was produc tive of employment at $8 a day for

many hundreds of industrial "ops."

The

labor leader tarried in each centre only one or two days and

then moved on. But, in the interest of

protracted employment of the oper atives, the fear of impending labor

troubles was kept alive in the indus

trialists' minds by means of "Secret

and Confidential Reports" laid upon their desks once or twice a week.

As near as my memory serves me, this is a copy of a

typical report of

this character:

Chicago, May 12 To All Industrial Service Clients

Informant G-262 Reports: At a secret meeting of the International

Sheet Steel Workers Union a strike was

voted for all members employed in the Pacific States. It will be called on the first of the

month. The union reports a war chest of

$40,000 and its agents in various plants are

busy organizing.

Informant C-41 Reports: He attended a secret meeting of Federation

in Olympia on the 8th inst. when it was voted

to accept support of the I.W.W. The I.W.W.

is sending out

agitators daily to strike centres.

Industrialists who received these

reports paid the agencies which sent

them out from $25 to $50 weekly, the rate being based upon the num

ber of workers in a client's plant. The contents of the reports, particu



422 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

larly when they mentioned the much

feared Industrial Workers of the

World, were not conducive to peace of mind. In the face of such alarming news the industrialists would cling tenaciously to the army of "ops"

already in his plant, or double the number.

Still, at the cost of a few cents he

might have gleaned from papers in

nearby cities the same information

that came to him in the "Secret and

Confidential Reports" from un

named informants. Newspapers pub lished it all. But coming to the em

ployer under the cover of strictest

secrecy, and from spies supposed to

be planted in the unions, the infor

mation carried the weight of inside

authenticity. Between shadows' re

ports of Gompers's travels and

speeches, and the follow-up reports from supposedly inside informants, hundreds of thousands of dollars were coaxed from industrialists'

pockets by some detective agencies whose reports showed the factories

untouched by strike or unrest.

hile today divorce investiga tions furnish the "velvet" for

private detective agencies, their

bread-and-butter money is still de

rived from industrial operations. And by far the most important service which the industrialist thinks his $8 a day operatives perform is the warding off of labor troubles

?

the secret attempt of union organ izers to make the plant a closed shop institution. At present, with com

parative peace existing between in

dustry and labor, the threat of

unionization is not the spectre that

it was. Still thousands of "ops" are

employed in the great plants. Care

w

fully manipulated and assiduously circulated propaganda that America

is on the eve of a Red invasion,

plotted in Moscow, serves to create

employment for them.

Generally speaking, industrialists

continue to visualize a Red as a

discontented, bearded and bloused

peasant of Middle Europe who goes about with a

bag of bombs and tosses

them at the first man who looks as if

he had considerable wealth. It is a

childlike visualization and is due, no

doubt, to the fact that hundreds of

thousands of the workers in the great industrial centres of America are re

cruited from peasantclassesof Europe.

It

is not a difficult undertaking to

warp this visualization into an

intense fear. The faintest suspicion that secret Red agents are pouring

inflammatory whisperings into the ears of foreign-born workers leads to the further and more alarming

suspicion that the workers are being lured into a violent hatred of Ameri can systems, and that, like wildfire, the unrest will spread through one

factory and devour others, the Red

tide of discontent being subtly swol

len by the ability of the foreign-born workers to carry on their machina

tions in tongues and gestures alien to their English-speaking employers.

In order properly to capitalize this

fear of a Red invasion, detective

agencies, for the first time in their

history, embraced modern selling methods to widen the market for

their services. Doubtless they had

learned, as others have, that propa

ganda methods which helped win a

great war also could be successfully

employed in peace time to win

clients when otherwise there would




have been a lack of business because

of the generally amicable relations

between organized labor and the

employing class.

The agencies were greatly aided, and at no expense to themselves, by the chatter of sociable persons around

pink tea tables who saw in exponents of birth control, child labor laws,

modernism, low tariff and realism

in literature a menace to the coun

try's security. Very possibly these same sociable persons would take

to the other side of the street if

they saw a lowly private detective

approaching. But just the same

their pink tea chatter puts dollars

into the pockets of those same

sleuths.

Not long ago the newspapers

throughout the country briefly announced that a certain university

professor of liberal leanings was

about to undertake a lecture tour of

all large cities. He was to talk upon a subject totally unrelated to labor, but it was known that he recently had toured Russia in the company of a Soviet guide. One unofficial Red

chasing agency, composed of the

nicest people, bent on rescuing Amer

ica from the machinations of the

Third Internationale, succeeded in

having the professor barred from the

rostrum in one city for no other reason than a

suspicion that, having been in Russia, he might drop re

marks favorable to the Soviet, al

though his lectures were not about

Russia. The society sent its confiden

tial reports on the professor to its

branches everywhere. One report fell into the hands of a detective agency with correspondents in all

large cities. Forthwith mimeo

graphed excerpts went out to every

large manufacturer in localities

where the agency correspondents were doing business, as follows:

Secret to All Large Employers: Professor A. J.-who is scheduled to

speak before the local branch of the League for- is a notorious advocate of Com

munism though he keeps his affiliation secret. Our informants advise that he claims to

talk about the League of Nations but this is only a blind. His expenses are believed to be paid by the propaganda bureau of the Soviet Government in New York City.

While in this locality he will be in contact with numerous persons with Communist

connections. The real object of his lecture tour is to spread Red propaganda among foreign-born workers in large industrial centres.

The-Detective Agency Industrial Information Division

A

few days were permitted to pass while the recipient of this alarm

ing piece of information drank it in and made the most, and the worst, of it. Then he was visited by a gen tleman with a portfolio, who an

nounced himself as the confidential contact man for the agency which

had been kind enough to warn

employers of the menace they faced.

And what could the agency do to meet that menace? Well, there was

the agency's sign service by which

the employer would be furnished with a suitable quantity of enameled

signs which bore the agency's impos

ing and much-feared name. These

could be posted in conspicuous places in the factory, the more the better.

They would warn agitators that the

factory was under the protection of

the agency. These signs could be

leased at $6 a year for each sign and the leasing of them carried a special



424 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

privilege. Instead of paying the usual $12 a day rate for detectives

if the manufacturer needed such

service he would get it at $8 a day, providing he leased fifty signs.

Perhaps

the manufacturer spent some moments in silent quandary,

running over the cost of signs and

operatives. At this point the con

fidential contact man, with true

selling perspicacity, unloaded his

strongest selling point. While the

agency would receive $8 a day for each operative, that operative would

be doing a full day of regular factory work. Of course to provide the opera tive with proper "cover" he must

be carried on the factory payroll like

any other worker but, at the end of

the week, he would turn in his fac

tory wages which the agency would

return to the client. A full day of

factory labor by one hard-working

operative free! A pretty inducement

and one few manufacturers fail to

fall for. And in addition, the contact

man hastened to explain, the em

ployer would be placed upon the

agency's confidential mailing list to receive highly secret bulletins

purporting to reveal the closely

guarded secrets and war plans of

labor organizations, Communist bu

reaus and other groups having de

structive designs upon American

political and industrial systems. In a three-day canvass one contact

man employing the selling tactics

just described signed up twelve

employers for 350 warning signs at

$6 a year per sign, "planted" ninety five industrial "ops" in twelve fac

tories at $8 a day each, of which the

agency retained $4 and gave $4 to

the man. The "ops" had jobs which

lasted five weeks. When they were

finally let out, it was after the pro fessor's book on Russia had appeared. It contained a scathing criticism of

the Soviet system and warned Ameri can workers to fight shy of Com

munism !

It

is not difficult to sell the services of an industrial "op" to an em

ployer. If an automobile manufac

turer discovers a drop in production, which his modern time-study devices can not explain

or remedy, he calls in

the "ops." He never sees them, but

from their reports he learns that very often the cause of the drop is a

graft

ing foreman who, for a bottle of booze

handed to him by a worker, winks

at idling or thieving in the plant. Or it often happens, where the plant

employs both sexes, that the fore man is

" sweet

" upon one of the hard

working young women and favors

her with half day holidays which the

company pays for without knowing it, thus causing not only

a diminu

tion in production but injecting a sex problem with its companion

problem of jealousy and envy. In

exposing these hindrances to pro duction and factory morale the in

dustrial "op" often performs a real

service to employer and employees. Most industrial

" ops

" are pick-ups

who are lifted out of the drifting army of unemployed and who seem

never to fit permanently into any

occupation. They are floaters.

One agency which does a lot of industrial work has a novel method of

picking them up. When a man is

wanted a white flag is wigwagged across the agency's office window.

A wag for each man needed. In

stantly the man or men appear in the




office. It doesn't take them long to

get there, for each day dozens of them stand across the street under the

portico of a Federal building, waiting for the white sign of bread-and

butter money. It is a convenient and economical system of getting help, for it saves the expense of providing a rented waiting

room. On occasion

ex-convicts and thieves happen to

answer the wigwag, but the agency has no means of knowing the men are

wrong until some plant executive

frantically complains that since he

placed "ops" in his factory thievery had grown to

alarming proportions. Not infrequently the espionage

departments of the labor unions take

advantage of this loose method. I

recall five "expert ops," picked up

by want advertisements, who were

sent to do under cover work in a

factory whose owner boasted that he

had never employed a union man.

He wanted the "ops" merely to

check up on factory affairs. The men

hadn't been in his factory two weeks

before they had signed up sixty per cent of the personnel as members of a union. The quintette of under cover

men were labor organizers.

Prohibition

has been a mighty help to detective agencies in

making their industrial "ops" con

tent with a low wage. When an

apartment house owner suspects the

presence of a bootlegger among his

tenants, and seeks to avoid a Federal

padlock on his premises as well as the notoriety of a raid, he sends to a

private detective agency for an

operative. The agency provides not

only a man but also his wife and

sometimes their children, at a charge

of $12 a day. All of the $12 goes to

the agency, but the man and his wife and children get their quarters free, the wife serving as a watcher

during the day while her husband is

busily engaged in a nearby factory. Rent free means a lot to a $4 a day man. And a lot to the agency too ?

a clear profit of $16 a day on the labor of one man while the agency's client, the factory owner, gets free one productive human's work.

The

chain store, too, has mate

rially aided agencies in making the #4 wage attractive. Chain sys tems are impersonal institutions.

There is no personal contact between store employees and owners under

the chain method and these employ ees are found in the open labor mar

ket. Little is known of their pasts and because of this dishonest workers

creep into chain establishments. The

only way their honesty can be tested

is to make regular checks. Test

purchases are made regularly by

private detectives who in turn report to the management of the chain.

The agency makes either a flat

charge per check or test or does the

work on an annual retainer basis.

But the checking is done by the industrial "ops." All they get for their work is the privilege of buying at cost the goods they purchase and turn over to the agency. Thus a man

who works all day in a factory for $4, considers himself richly privileged

when he gets rent free for his family and shirts, hats, socks, groceries and

other necessities at cost. And since

chain stores are forced to the neces

sity of continually checking on em

ployees, they manage to get rid of considerable goods to the army of

"ops" who do the checking.



Documents

Spying on the Reds