Finding that the ordinary arguments did not avail, Mr. McParland began to cast about for some means whereby he might influence the mine owners into giving the Agency work; and as Mr. McParland is a resourceful man, he soon found a means which suited the Agency's purpose so well that it is still being used by him and all other Pinkerton officials in the West as an invincible argument in canvassing for business.
The means in question was the placing of the murderer's mark of Cain upon the forehead of every mem-
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 23
ber of the Western Federation of Miners, and then demonstrating that this band of cut-throats was directed by a secret INNER CIRCLE composed of the head officers of the Federation, by laying every case of theft, accident, arson, murder, and mine explosion in any and every mining camp in the West at the door of the Western Federation of Miners in general, and of this Inner Circle in particular.
Charges of this kind, made by a famous detective like James McParland and by other officials of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, naturally threw a great number of mine owners into a frenzy of fear and anger at the thought that they might have such a dangerous class of outlaws in their employ, and that their lives and property were constantly menaced by a mysterious, blood-thirsty Inner Circle, at the head of a band of ruffians and dynamiters, parading before the community as an innocent labor union.
Every prominent labor union in Colorado has likewise been maligned, vilified and persecuted by the Agency to a degree scarcely credible. Suffice it to say at this time that the Denver office has within the last three years done as much, and at times even more business than five other offices of the Agency combined.