, actuated by exactly the same economic interests as
any other business. With the agencies making so much per day for each
man employed, the way to improve business is to get more men employed.
Rumors of trouble or actual deeds, such as an explosion of dynamite or
an assault, help to make the detective indispensable to the employer. It
is with an eye to business, therefore, that the private detective
creates trouble. It is with a keen sense of his own material interest
that he keeps the employer in a state of anxiety regarding what may be
expected from the men. And, naturally enough, the modern employer,
unlike a trained ruler such as Bismarck, never seems to realize that
most of the alarming reports sent him are masses of lies. Nothing
appears to have been clearer to the Iron Chancellor than that his own
police forces, in order to gain favor, "lie and exaggerate in the most
shameful manner."[47] But such an idea seems never to enter the minds of
the great American employers, who, although becoming more and more like
the ruling classes of Europe, are not yet so wise. However, the great
employer, like the great ruler, is unable now to meet his employees in
person and to find out their real views. Consequently, he must depend
upon paid agents to report to him the views of his men. This might all
be very well if the returns were true. But, when it happens that evil
reports are very much to the pecuniary advantage of the man who makes
them, is it likely that there will be any other kind of report?
Thousands of employers, therefore, are coming more and more to be
convinced that their workmen spend most of their time plotting against
them. It seems unreasonable that sane men could believe that their
employees, who are regularly at work every day striving with might and
main to support and bring up decently their families, should be at the
same time planning the most diabolical outrages. Nothing is rarer than
to find criminals among workingmen, for if they were given to crime
they would not be at work. But with the great modern evil--the
separation of the classes--there comes so much of misunderstanding and
of mistrust that the employer seems only too willing to believe any paid
villain who tells him that his tired and worn laborers have murder in
their hearts. The class struggle is a terrible fact; but the class
hatred and the personal enmity that are growing among both masters and
men in the United States are natural and inevi