Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day

"The operatives did not always take great pains to disguise their surveillance. Late in January, Haywood noticed a red-haired man loitering outside the office. When Haywood and Moyer boarded a streetcar, the red-haired man waited until the last moment, then leaped on too. When the two union men got off to take in a cattle show at the stockyards, their tail alighted. Returning to the office, they looked out the window and, sure enough, there was the red-haired man leaning against a building. Weeks later, Haywood's wife said Bill had told her, 'his footsteps were dogged,' because 'those fellows in Idaho would try to implicate him.'

One day, a 'fat fellow' calling himself Hynes begin hanging around the WFM office, notably the room where the Miner's Magazine was edited. He came into Haywood's office and asked for the monthly financial report. What in the world, Haywood wondered, could this man want with a financial report? When the stranger left, Haywood had him followed, and he went straight to the Pinkerton offices in the Opera House Block. At Haywood's suggestion, the Miner's Magazine ran a photograph of the operative in its next issue. He sent a complimentary copy to McParland—'as a valentine,' he said."

--Excerpt from Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas
--Photos from collection of John T. Richards, Jr.

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