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The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was a Security Guard agency established in the United States in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton who became famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln . Pinkerton personnel performed services which ranged from the 19th century equivalent of effectively both a private military contractor and a security guard. During the height of their existence, the Pinkerton Detective Agency had more men than the standing army of the United States of America, leading Ohio to outlaw the agency due to the possibility of it being hired as a " Private Army " During labor unrest in the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton guards to keep Strikers and suspected Union ists out of their factories, the most notorious example being the Homestead Strike of 1892 , where hundreds of Pinkerton agents ended up killing several people by enforcing the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick (acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie , who was abroad). The agency's logo, an eye embellished with the words "We Never Sleep" inspired the term " Private Eye ." The "Pinkertons" were also used as guards in coal, iron and lumber disputes in Illinois , Michigan , New York and Pennsylvania , as well as the railroad strikes of 1877 . 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 McParlan, infiltrated the Molly Maguires using the alias James McKenna, leading to the downfall of this secret organization. The incident was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle 's '' The Valley Of Fear '', one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories which focus on the exploits of one of the characters in the story instead of Holmes himself. A Pinkerton agent also appears in a small role in The Adventure Of The Red Circle , another Holmes story. During the Homestead Strike , the arrival, on July 6 1892 , of a force of 300 Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago resulted in a fight in which about 11 men were killed, and to restore order two brigades of the state Militia were called out. Pinkerton agents were hired to track notorious western outlaws Jesse James , the Reno Brothers , and the Wild Bunch (including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ). G.H. Thiel, a former Pinkerton employee, established the Thiel Detective Service Company in St. Louis , Missouri , a competitor to the Pinkerton agency. The Thiel company operated in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The William J. Burns Detective Agency was founded about 1910 . In July 2003 Securitas AB acquired the United States companies of Pinkerton and Burns to make it Securitas Security Services USA, Inc., one of the largest Security companies in the world. In popular culture In the 2005 movie '' The Legend Of Zorro '', Pinkerton agents goad Zorro's wife to divorce him and become one of their agents in order to investigate a Secret Society threatening to derail California's 1850 admission to the Union. The Pinkerton Agency is referred to by the victim of a gold mining fraud in an attempt to persuade the perpetrator to unwind the deal in a handful of episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 of the HBO series ''Deadwood'' . Corporate-hired Pinkerton personnel assault early 20th century union organizers in an early scene of the 1993 movie '' Hoffa ''. Pinkerton toughs occasionally appear as secondary characters throughout Harry Turtledove's series of ''Great War'' and ''American Empire'' fictional novels. In Sergio Sollima 's '' Faccia A Faccia '' (1967), William Berger portrays a real-life Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo. See also External links
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