Embedded Files
Sherman Service's "Special Police" as pictured in a SS publication the year of the final HA Strike.
"All guards must be of sterling character, of military or police experience,
and of physical dimensions commensurate with their duties. A single
infraction of the rules disqualifies the men from ever again entering their employ."
The use of private detective firms by large companies was a common practice in the first half of the century. The Sherman Detective Agency (soon to be known as the Sherman Service, Inc. "Industrial Conciliators" [RIGHT] and, later, the "Sherman Corporation, Engineers") was the fifth largest firm out of more than 200 in 1937 when the La Follette Committee of the US Congress investigated the use of private detectives and spies in US industry.
Sherman often worked in the textile industry, one of it's largest clients being the Stevens Companies. The Edison Laboratories, the American Sugar Refinery, Bell Telephone and Sperry were other well-known clients. Sherman Service spies and detectives also were involved in several of the huge strikes in Paterson and Passiac as well as the famous 1919 Steel Strike.
In that post World War I Steel Strike, Sherman operatives were directed:
"We want you to stir up as much bad feeling as you possibly can between the Italians and the Serbians. Spread data among the Serbians that the Italians are going back to work. Call up every question you can in reference to racial hatred between these two nationalities."
In a letter on file in the Museum of the Textile Industry in Lowell Massachusetts (written, coincidentally, during the Herrmann, Aukam strike), the Boston branch of Sherman responded to a New Hampshire mill's request for their help in a strike. "...Four operatives, two French-speaking and two Polish-speaking... for the purpose of endeavoring to discourage the weavers from continuing on strike" was the innocent sounding request.
In a large New York Times ad in 1918 titled "HOW CAN THE SHERMAN SERVICE BE MISUNDERSTOOD?", the detective agency explains they are merely attempting to "Americanize" the industrial forces and that their one purpose is "...to increase the productivity of plant and worker and to add to the prosperity of both".
INDUSTRY, SOCIETY AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT [ABOVE] - a booklet published by Sherman (and, supposedly soon "withdrawn") about their techniques for their "Strike-Breaking Services".
Wrote Illinois State Attorney General Maclay Hoyne, about his investigation of the detective agency during the 1919 Steel Strike:
There is no doubt in my mind at the present time that the Sherman Service, Incorporated, ...through its operatives, was engaged in stirring up riots.
Its operatives destroyed or advocated the destruction of property, aroused antagonism between different groups of strikers and employed sluggers – all the time professing to be engaged in the business of conciliating trouble makers."
Similar "private armies" existed in mining (Baldwin-Felts), steel (the Iron and Steel Police) and other industries (the Pinkerton and the Bergoff detective agencies).
In the strike of needle trade workers in South River in 1932, the mayor contracted with the Manning Industrial Service Detective Agency of Newark, N.J.
In addition to acting as private police, such agencies also supplied spies and agent provocateurs to companies. The use of such firms often aggravated already tense situations; the Home News would later comment on the "disturbed industrial relations, where a hatred between guards and strikers smoldered just beneath the surface” of the strike.
A writer often critical of labor, Louis Adamic, saw detective agencies as accomplishing something other than "Americanizing labor":
"They sent thieves and murderers to the scenes of labor disputes, where employers appointed them "guards" with duties to protect property and scabs, to shoot down and slug strike pickets, provoke riots, commit, and incite strikers to commit outrages which later were blamed entirely on the workers."
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