table results of this
system of spies and informers.

How widespread this evil has become is shown by the fact that nearly
every large corporation now employs numerous spies, informers, and
special officers, from whom they receive daily reports concerning the
conversations among their men and the plans of the unions. Thousands of
these detectives are, in fact, members of the unions. The employers are,
of course, under the impression that they are thus protecting themselves
from misinformation and also from the possibility of injury, but, as we
have seen, they are in reality placing themselves at the mercy of these
spies in the same manner as every despot in the past has placed himself
at the mercy of those who brought him information. It may, perhaps, be
possible that the Carnegie Company in 1892, the railroads in 1894, and
the mine owners in 1904 were convinced that their employees were under
the influence of dangerous men. Very likely they were told that their
workmen were planning assaults upon their lives and property. It would
not be strange if these large owners of property had been so informed.
Indeed, the economics of this whole wretched commerce becomes clear only
when we realize that the terror that results from such reports leads
these capitalists to employ more and more hirelings, to pay them larger
and larger fees, and in this manner to reward lies and to make even
assaults prove immensely profitable to the detectives. So it happens
that the great employers are chiefly responsible for introducing among
their men the very elements that are making for riot, crime, and
anarchy.

Close and intimate relations with the employers and with the men during
several fiercely fought industrial conflicts have convinced me that the
struggle between them rarely degenerates to that plane of barbarism in
which either the men or the masters deliberately resort to, or
encourage, murder, arson, and similar crimes. So far as the men are
concerned, they have every reason in the world to discourage violence,
and nothing is clearer to most of them than the solemn fact that every
time property is destroyed, or men injured, the employers win public
support, the aid of the press, the pulpit, the police, the courts, and
all the powers of the State. Men do not knowingly injure themselves or
persist in a course adverse to their material interests. It is true, as
I think I have made clear in the previous chapters, that some of the
worke