Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [18]
Meanwhile, the telegraph agent would help by cutting the lines to the east, preventing any messages from getting through that might tip off telegraph operators that something was up. Williams offered the man a healthy sum and an incentive bonus for his work: at least $300 if the stock scam failed, and between $700 and $1,000 if it succeeded. In today’s dollars, that would be a payment of more than $20,000 for a successful outcome.
Unfortunately for Williams, the telegraph operator was an honest man who went to his boss with details of the plot. Alerted to the swindle, police investigators found letters from Williams to coconspirators in San Francisco and Virginia City, Nevada. In one missive, Williams predicted that the group could make more than $80,000 on the deal—a staggering sum in those days.
“We ought to make enough on this one thing to lay by for years to come, if necessary,” he wrote. And there was no end to how many times the conspirators could pull off the scheme: “Whenever an important decision is hereafter to be given anywheres throughout the country, we can do the same thing.” The nationwide insider trading scheme never came to pass: Williams was arrested on misdemeanor charges, was unable to post bail of $2,000, and was put in jail.1
Williams’s telegraph swindle was a rare case in which the local police made the bust on their own. But it was just the sort of new, continent-spanning crime against companies and financiers that the Pinkertons were suited to detect. In most cases, local police forces were overwhelmed by the sophistication of corporate thieves, and couldn’t handle crimes beyond their jurisdiction.
The Pinkertons, by contrast, had unprecedented access to rail travel through their connections at the railroad companies. They could move around the country in ways that no force before had been able to do. They hired female detectives, a progressive move for the day, and used them to infiltrate society salons where bumbling male detectives could not go. They collected detailed files on every criminal they came across, establishing physical descriptions, habits, modus operandi, and other details for every man they tracked. The filing system was so thorough and contained so many names that for some crimes the Pinkertons could simply cross-reference a witness’s description with the type of crime and pull together a list of suspects to round up. The Pinkerton corporate files from the years 1853 to 1999 are now at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. They consist of an astonishing 63,000 items.
Pinkerton developed a code of ethics for his operatives, to establish the boundaries of the work the company would do, and the clients it would work for. Some of the same ethical dilemmas Pinkerton was attempting to stave off still recur in today’s private intelligence outfits. In his “General Principles,” written in the 1850s, Pinkerton wrote that the role of a detective is “a high and honorable calling.” He laid out some rules to help keep it that way:
The Agency will not represent a defendant in a criminal case except with the knowledge and consent of the prosecutor; they will not shadow jurors or investigate public officials in the performance of their duties, or trade-union members in their lawful union activities; they will not accept employment from one political party against another; they will not report union meetings unless the meetings are open to the public without restriction; they will not work for vice crusaders; they will not accept contingent fees, gratuities or rewards; the Agency will never investigate the morals of a woman unless in connection with another crime, nor will it handle cases of divorce or a scandalous nature.
Pinkerton’s modern-day successors have broken nearly every one of these rules. Pinkerton’s own agency sometimes found the rules hard to follow, especially those regarding unions, and the agency became a combatant in the epic battles