g on with the police throughout the
world. And as the agency is protecting banks all over the United States
it has greater interest in all bank burglars as a class than the police
of any particular city who are only concerned with the burglars who
(as one might say) burgle in their particular burg. Thus, you are more
likely to find a detective from a national agency than a sleuth from
300 Mulberry Street, New York, following a forger to Australasia or
Polynesia.

The best agencies absolutely decline to touch divorce and matrimonial
cases of any sort. It does not do a detective agency any good to have
its men constantly upon the witness stand subject to attack, with
a consequent possible reflection upon their probity of character or
truthfulness. Moreover, a good detective is too valuable a person to
be wasting his time in the court-room. In the ordinary divorce case the
detective, having procured evidence, is obliged to remain on tap and
subject to call as a witness for at least three or four months, during
which time he cannot be sent away on distant work. Neither can the
customer be charged ordinarily for waiting time, and apart from its
malodorous character the business is not desirable from a financial
point of view.

The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases,
and general investigating. They no longer undertake any policing,
strike-breaking, or guarding. The most ridiculous misinformation in
regard to their participation in this sort of work has been spread
broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.

By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an
English detective, contributed an article to the 'New York Tribune' of
September 16, 1906, in which he said:

"In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel
industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to
protect property, while several hundred men were scattered in the ranks
of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter became officers in the labor
bodies, helped to make laws for the organizations, made incendiary
speeches, cast their votes for the most radical movements made by the
strikers, participated in and led bodies of the members in the acts of
lawlessness that eventually caused the sending of State troops and the
declaration of martial law. While doing this, these spies within
the ranks were making daily reports of the plans and purposes of the
strikers. To my k