WI: Pinkertons a pro-labor force?

Zioneer

Banned
So Allen Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkertons had taken part in the Chartist movement before he moved to America. The Chartist movement was (if you trust Wikipedia) one of the first powerful working class and pro-labor movements in the Industrial age.

The Pinkertons now are really seen as a nickname for labor suppression, so what if that reputation was reversed, and Allan Pinkerton recalled his old Chartist sympathies, revamping his detective agency as a pro-labor, muckraking political force, while still performing detective work?
 
Very hard to see this. Pinkertons suppressed Labor because it was the companies that hired them. If Pinkerton wasn't going to allow companies to hire his people, then likely one of his proteges would leave and start his own company, and that company would take the place of the Pinkertons.

A muckraking, political activist detective agency doesn't sound like a good business plan. It would be extremely limited in the money it could earn and wouldn't attract a lot of people. It's possible that eventually labor organizations get big enough they could hire them to provide protection from other people hired to bust them up, but the companies would likely just hire even more goons.

At most, maybe they'd be an interesting footnote to history.
 
Well you've certainly created an interesting would-be literary sub-genre.

Socialist Noir.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Well you've certainly created an interesting would-be literary sub-genre.

Socialist Noir.

Hmm.... That actually sounds quite interesting to write about, perhaps I should actually do a socialist detective story. :D
 
Well you've certainly created an interesting would-be literary sub-genre.

Socialist Noir.

Hmm.... That actually sounds quite interesting to write about, perhaps I should actually do a socialist detective story. :D

:eek:

Yes, please, right now :D

In all seriousness though it doesn't seem like it'd be that difficult to achieve; the real turning point appears to be his time working for the Union during the Civil War. There's a baker's dozen different alt-Civil War TLs on the boards and I think there's room in most of them for Pinkerton to turn 'leftist' and radicalize. Perhaps he's indoctrinated, or at least exposed, into one of the early American socialist movements during one of his missions 'assuming a role.'
 

Japhy

Banned
While it sounds nice to turn the Pinkertons into a "Pro-Labor, Muckraking Force" how exactly would that happen? There is basically no money in doing that as a company, and if Pinkerton decided "Hey We should be the right arm of the labor movement" how exactly do you expect him to pay the rough sort of men who became Private Eyes?
 
Basically this boils down to Pinkerton being, in some mixture, the kind of leftist who become a muckraking journalist, of which there have been legions and the type is not totally dead yet; or a violent revolutionary, one seriously focused on marshaling and using force to overthrow the system in favor of some kind of worker's republic. Of whom there were plenty in 19th and early 20th century America as well--perhaps not plenty enough, if one has sympathy for an alt-timeline where radical leftism prevails.

As I could hardly deny being one of if I wanted to (having "cleverly disguised" :rolleyes:myself with the name of a hairy anarcho-communist egghead from a Red Moon).

But nope, I don't think that one more of either type tips the scales, even if he's a paragon of both.

I'd rather people like Harriet Tubman or Mother Jones or in some moods William Morris (over in Britain) be the ones who actually step (farther) forward and pull it off anyway.

But no; apparently OTL Pinkerton was one of the legions of hard leftists who at the end of the day made his peace with working and living indefinitely within the system.

As I can hardly deny I've pretty much done in real life myself.

Heck, I've even worked for a company that ultimately absorbed the Pinkertons...:eek:
 
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