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316 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
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 inevitable 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