with the hope that may be supposed to sustain any
gudgeon of moderate experience of snapping the bait and escaping the
barbed hook. Human greed is the reliance of the general sharper, and it
has served him to excellent purpose for many years. But some of these
operators must depend on actuating motives far different from the desire
of gain in money; and chief among them are these private detectives, who
draw their sustenance from meaner and equally unfailing fountains.

"It is not upon record who bestowed a name which is more apt than
designations usually are. The word detective, taken by itself, implies
one who must descend to questionable shifts to attain justifiable ends;
but with the prefix of private, it means one using a machine permitted to
the exigencies of justice for the purpose of surreptitious personal gain.
Thus used, this agency, which even in honest hands and for lawful ends is
one of doubtful propriety, becomes essentially dangerous and
demoralizing. Originally an individual enterprise, the last resort of
plausible rascals driven to desperation to evade honest labor, it has
come to be one of associated effort, employing much capital in its
establishment and some capacity in its direction. All the large
commercial cities are now liberally provided with 'Detective Agencies,'
as they are called, each thoroughly organized, and some of them employing
a large number of 'shadows' to do the business, which in large part they
must first create before it can be done. The system being perfected and
worked to its utmost capacity, the details of the tasks assumed and the
method of accomplishment are astonishing and alarming to the reflecting
citizen, who has the good name and well-being of the community at heart.
Employed in the mercantile world as supposed guards against loss by
unfaithful associates or employes, and in social life as searchers for
domestic laxness, these two items make up the bulk of the business which
the private detectives profess to do, and through these their pernicious
influence is felt in all the relations of life. Were they however only
the instruments of rapacious and unreasoning distrust, they might be
suffered to pass without rebuke as evils affecting only those who choose
to meddle with them; but as they go further, and the community fares
worse because they are ever ready to turn a dishonest penny by recovering
stolen property, which they can only do by compounding the crime by wh