Pinkerton (detective agency) Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893, federal law has stated that an "individual employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, or similar organization, may not be employed by the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia." In the 1870s, Franklin B. Gowen, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, hired the agency to "investigate" the labor unions in the company's mines. A Pinkerton agent, James McParland, using the alias "James McKenna", infiltrated the Molly Maguires, a 19th-century secret society of mainly Irish-American coal miners, leading to the downfall of the labor organization. The incident inspired Arthur
Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency The Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency was a private detective agency in the United States from the early 1890's to 1937. Today, it is most remembered for its violent confrontations with labor union members as part of the Coal Wars in such places as the Pocahontas Coalfield region of West Virginia, the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, the Ludlow Massacre in 1914 and the Battle of Matewan in 1920. Members of the agency were also central actors in the events that led to the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. The agency was founded in