hand. It is a ghastly skeleton which is constantly being dragged before the public to serve the mischievous ends of the Pinkerton Agency in the absence of anything else to show which would entitle them to a public hearing. We merely wish to state that James McParland worked among the Molly Maguires for three or four years before he secured the evidence which resulted in conviction. It is well for us to remember this fact, as well as the fact that when Mr. McParland worked on this case he was young and vigorous, and free from
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 201
the hallucinations sure to plague a conscience so dreadfully outraged as his has been, in the many years that he has served the Pinkerton Agency. We must also bear in mind that Mr. McParland was in a peculiar position to obtain information and evidence, as for over three years he was himself a Molly Maguire and a leader among them at that.
It may not perhaps be very decent, even for detectives, to keep on pointing to the gibbets which they erected thirty years ago ; but it is certainly good business policy to do so when those detectives have nothing else to point to. For this reason the Molly Maguires are still being tried and hanged, and the horrible tragedy is in this manner kept forever fresh in the memory of men. No matter what occurs, it is at once compared in one way or another with that long-decayed case. The Pinkerton Agency harps on ancient success and carefully conceals modern failure.
A man may be good in his youth, and drift into bad habits in later. years.
And so it is with Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, the Molly Maguire operation, and the work of Manager James McParland. Be it admitted, for the sake of argument, that the Molly Maguires were a gang of cut-throats, assassins and dynamiters. Be it also admitted that James McParland was chiefly instrumental in ridding the community of this