The Day Wall Street Exploded A Story of America in its First Age of Terror by Beverly Gage (2009)

Author:Beverly Gage (2009) [Gage, Beverly]
Language: deu
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2009-10-21T15:21:12+00:00

The “Great Detective” Returns

Burns did not have this information at hand when he assumed the

leadership of the Bureau in August 1921; after leaving New York, Linde

all but ceased communication. Despite this puzzling silence, Burns had

reason to believe that his informer was on the up-and-up. In April, just

after Flynn’s arrest of Ligi, the Bureau and the New York bomb squad

had orchestrated a raid on prominent members of the Communist Party’s

New York branch, absconding with membership lists and secret codes.

Contained in those fi les, Burns claimed, was evidence that one “Linde”

was in the confi dence of the Third International. It was a mistake that

would later cost the Bureau dearly.23

burns was laid up with a cold just after his appointment to the Bureau,

the sort of minor illness that had become more than niggling as he passed

age sixty. He decided to stay at his country home in Scarborough, New

York, for at least a few days. To compensate for his temporary absence

from Washington, he invited reporters to his house to discuss plans for

reshaping the Bureau in the wake of Flynn’s failures. Sniffl es notwith-

standing, he sounded like his old progressive self as he charted schemes

for training, testing, and disciplining his agents into “the most effective secret service in the world.” As a government post, the Bureau job promised to be the culmination both of his legendary career and of the growing fusion between federal and private police. Just as the federal government

had recently begun to encroach on the traditional duties of local authori-

ties, it had more and more come to assume the roles—strikebreaking,

radical surveillance—long assigned to the private detective industry. As

an entrepreneur returning to government service, Burns embodied both

the past and future of law enforcement.24

To the fi nanciers and industrialists who had long employed Burns men

to investigate crimes and break strikes, this sounded like an ideal arrangement. “There is joy all along the [Pennsylvania] avenue,” Chicago Banker magazine remarked, “on the report that President Harding is to make

William J. Burns ‘commander-in-chief’ of all the detective and secret ser-

vice departments of the government.” There was joy along Wall Street,

too. “[N]o man in his line in the United States,” one bank vice president

wrote to Washington, “has a stronger following among the bankers of the

country than Wm. J. Burns.” 25

To those who viewed the consolidation of private and federal power with

a bit more skepticism, the Burns appointment set off immediate alarms.

271

The Russian Connection

With the fi rst hints that Burns might be on his way to Washington,

trade unionists scrambled to compose protest letters, urging Harding

to appoint someone “about whom no odium has ever been cast.” Newspapers

sympathetic to their cause joined the attack as well, dredging up accusa-

tions of jury rigging, corruption, and underhanded union-busting tech-

niques. As Chicago Banker summed it up, the debate showed roughly that

“Labor is ‘ferninst’ [against] Burns, but everybody not in the ‘Union’ is

for him.” 26

In an effort to preempt criticisms that Burns would merely be a

strikebreaker in government clothes, Daugherty assured the press that

his old friend’s private-detecting days were at an end. “Mr. Burns has

severed

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