impossible to believe that the leaders of the union hired thugs to hold them up, and unmercifully beat them. Fourth, there was only one way whereby the moves of the union leaders could be accurately known in advance by any outsiders, namely, through a leak in the union. Fifth, we know that this leak was in the person of the talented Pinkerton Detective Robert M. Smith, Sixth, as the latter reported
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 165
exclusively to the Agency and to the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, there can be no doubt on earth that the outrages described were committed by thugs hired expressly for that criminal work by some responsible official or ofKcia/s of the company.
People have been condemned to death on circumstantial evidence far weaker than is ours ; and we can see no reason why, in the interests of a common brotherhood, such rascally methods as were very probably adopted by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company with the active co-operation of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, should not be thoroughly aired before the public.