From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on a real adventure, but we'll be returning very soon. They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Hall Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you, You are here and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This is uh special episode for us. This is a two part episode, is the whole week, so we do hope you like it. Uh. We want to start out with some full disclosure and transparency is very important here uh and stuff they want want you to know. We would like to note that our parent company are Corporate Overlord's I Heart Media, recently recognize something called the I Heart Podcast Union. Now, Matt, you and Nol and I are not involved with these negotiations, but this did inspire us to take a closer look at the concept as well as the conspiracies involved. Yes, we've been watching the process happen right before our eyes. We've been getting updates from our very own Paul mission controled decade. Who I hope Paul, I hope you don't mind us saying this, but you were involved and we in a like in leading the charge and as you listen to this series, if you have any questions, specifically about the I Heeart Podcast Union, Paul has said he is ready to hear those questions and will respond. You can send those questions to us conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Here we go. If you live in the United States, regardless of what sort of job or career you have, you have probably heard of something called unions labor unions specifically. In this two part episode, we're exploring what a union is, where it comes from, and why so many powerful people and institutions seem opposed to them. Will also explore the controversies and corruption that have occurred within unions themselves at times. In short, honestly, fellow conspiracy realist, there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to know here, So let's start at the beginning. Here are the facts, Matt. What is a union? How did they begin? Why is this a thing? Is this new? Is this old? What's what's the school. Oh, this is quite old. Uh. It's a common thing throughout history. When there are a lot of individual a means, generally humans working together in the same profession, they will often team up and say, hey, oh, we're a lot like each other. We we have the same needs and the same wants, and we do kind of the same thing. How can we work together? If you look to ancient Mesopotamia, there are laws there that have really echoed from that time through until today. And these things are like normalized wages, things that will moderately protect workers. Let's say, moderately protect workers. That's the goal at least from the workers perspective, not always from uh, the employer's perspective of the people, you know, deciding what those workers have to do. Um. And you can look to also Egypt Rome. They're similar organizations that arise from those civilizations. UM, similar kinds of rules as well. Yeah, and then it's true. It's an ancient thing, and it makes sense. Human beings are gregarious. They like to have stuffing common, right, and most people like to think that they're having an okay life. I don't think that's a hot take. I mean, okay, so let's go right, the The origins of these ideas are are quite ancient. Let's go to Europe. It's uh, Matt, let's say it's like the sixteenth or seventeenth century. At this point. Economies in in that part of the world are largely run by a series of things called guilds. Guilds are organizations of merchants who all work in the same business. Now, yes, folks, we'll do a City of London episode later. But the City of London, that's in London, whatever, But it's a whole thing. It's it's its own bag of badgers. Uh. In theory, guilds were built with a good faith motivation. They were protective outfits. Like if if Matt and Michigantrol and I all sold wool, right, we're all somehow involved in the wool game. We would join up with other folks in that game, and then we would say, okay, look, let's all sell stuff for roughly the same price, and let's make sure that we can collectively not get screwed over. And in these yeah, I mean, that's understandable. There's nothing sinister about that. In these guilds, these workers would come together again. Originally and then in theory to share expertise, to support charities at times, like to take care of you know, um, if if our fellow uh wool person passed away, we would band together, we posse up, and we take care of their family. Right. We will form rules and policies for trade and commerce, and then we would lobby whatever state or church or arbitrary monarchy was in charge. We would lobby them to not scross over again. It's a protective thing, right. Yeah, there's lots of working together, and you you can kind of see some similarities here. Maybe you're already hearing them between highly organized groups, especially groups that exert some kind of power, right, and that's not a bad thing. Like the point here is to exert the the collective power of a group of people, right, And you can it's just weird. Band I can already see the threads of rumors and some of the older issues with some unions where there's an organized uh not necessarily criminal element, but an organized group maybe pulling strings within the group. Oh yeah, yeah tail as old as time, Like, yes, guilds decayed into corruption shoutout City of London. Uh, they became increasingly unequal and oligarchical, and they repeated the same problems of all monarchical systems, which is, ultimately they did not manage to stay meritocracies, right. They ultimately began um trying to become the governing structure that they originally opposed, which happens with so many revolutions. It's just humans are good at a lot of stuff. Group work is not one. Uh. They like what one thing that really stands out is if you look at the the old school Western European or Central European guild system, you've got three stages. Right, You've got the apprentice, You've got the journeyman, you've got the master, the journeyman, and well it's also a different degree. Wow, alright, we're right. And if you got that one. So the journeyman were these folks who had moved up from their apprenticeship. They had a little bit of agency in theory. They could they could go learn from someone in another city, right, And then ultimately the idea was for them to become a master. They would create a masterpiece, that's where the term masterpiece comes from. Uh. And this would elevate them to a level such that they could also higher on apprentices, grow them into journeymen, and then if they're you know, not a terrible person, they would ultimately they would ultimately facilitate those journeyman becoming masters. The thing is, these journeymen were often getting getting the short end of the stick or the fuzzy side of the lollipop. They were they were getting underpaid, their work was uncredited, they were getting a lot of restrictions, and so occasionally, sporadically they would vultron up together and they would you know, it often happened in capitals of this era, like because a lot of people from rural environments would become journeyman, and then they would go to the capital because that's where most of the work was. And then they would say, okay, everybody, and you know, Prague or whatever, uh, we all the journeyman in charge of wool in Prague are gonna say you have to you have to pay us, and you have to pay us a standard wage, and we also have to get like one day off one day. This is before the concept of the weekend, by the way. Yes, yes, well think think about this. Really, at the heart of it, a a journeyman within that system, and you know, to be described as a journeyman at that time. You have all of the necessary skills of a master, of the essential skills of a master, but you have none of the power of a master. Right and two. And if you get stuck in that spot where you cannot exert a power, you cannot grow. You are just kind of left there as a journeyman with the wages you have, and everyone above you is satisfied with the work you're producing. But there's no reason they don't benefit from elevating you to master, at least not directly. Right. So keeping journeyman at that level is beneficial for those above them, right. And of course you can see the perspective of the masters, you can see the perspective of the journeyman here. And then banding together. That's kind of a forerunner of what we would call unions in the West. That's not a modern labor union because these were just a bunch of people who basically got together and said, what's going on here in Prague is malarkey, you know, or what's it going out here in Paris is not working for us. If you look at modern labor unions, you're really looking at the industrial revolution in probably the late seventeen hundreds in Europe. This was a huge social shift. Why is that? Why does that sound like a tongue of This is just a huge social shift anyway, not for nothing. Right is it called a revolution? People don't think about that as often as they should. Industrial revolution. It's like American revolution, It's like French revolution. It is an upending of the status quo. The here's what happened, and we don't have to point to villains or heroes here. Uh, this is something that happened to everybody, from the bottom of the socioeconomic strata to the very top. A ton of people used to work in agriculture or they worked in things that were called cottage industries, and they found their jobs disappearing because things were increasingly automated. Mechanization came in cottage industry. Just to be clear for everyone. Uh, disc vibes kind of like a system of subcontracting. So like you are tailor, right, and you make um fancy I don't know whatever is fancy at that time, Like dumb looking tunics that are very ornate. You make those and as part of your job as the tailor, you have a bunch of friends. You get by with a little help from your friends. You got somebody you know who lives at home. They make lace. You've got someone you know who like is in the wool game, and uh, and you sort of get this all together, you agglomerate it, and then you know, you end up with um extraordinarily fancy tunic. I don't mean to call them silly, It's just not my thing anyway. So some tunics are dope, Okay, yes, hashtag not all tunics, I got you, man. So the uh, The the is that when the industrial Revolution occurred in Europe for the first time in known history, all of that stuff that people used to do on their own and then send to some sort of overseer, it all could happen in the same place. This is the emergence of the factory and thus the emergence of the factory town. So people poured into industrial areas. There were a flood of what you would call like low skilled workers, and they had absolutely no rights. They were ground to the bones. They died, They died making those stupid tunics, and their standard of living plummeted. I just want to point this out. They probably would have been better on the farm, even as it's messed up. Well, yeah, because now the master work is being done by machines, and so now you literally need hands to move things along that production line. And that's why, that's why the skill, the skill level requirement to actually function and create the you know, the same tunic or you know who whatever it is, is lowered so much because you're not actually making the tunic. Now you're perhaps making a part of the tunic with the help of machines, and then that the tunic itself is being put together through the machines. And you can just see how again, like I'm trying to show the perspective on both sides here. From the perspective of the worker you are, you don't need to know as much to create a thing or to be functional in your position, and from the people who are running the factory, those people who are now the actual humans who are creating your goods are just pieces in this machine that are manufacturing your goods. It is not you know, several prized individuals who have the skills required to make the thing. It's people who move the thing along well, put yeah, cogs right, moving parts and and that's you know, uh, folks, long time listeners, you know that Matt, and I take great offense to the idea or the term low skill worker. Agreed, agreed, Yeah, I'm sorry, and I don't. I only use that even framing of it as in the way that workers began to be viewed from that perspective. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Like we obviously know and hopefully everybody knows that there's not really such a thing as a low skilled worker. Maybe some executives there there are may be some executives like skating by on nepotism, you know what I mean? Fine, Uh, no, I disagree with you, Matt. Matt, you are quite talented as a very fact. The the the only thing, the only thing that I think, uh that I think you're not good at is having high standards and friends. So thank you for hanging out with me. Sure, so alright, trade unions is the real thing. So the the what you need to know is that in the United Kingdoms specifically, you see the first arrival of modern trade unions, and they're usually going to be sporadic. Uh, they're restricted to certain regions or professions. But the governing powers were aware of this, right because this is a lower class speaking truth to the people. In power. So it should not surprise anyone that at various times throughout history, especially in Western Europe, these things were explicitly outlawed. The concept itself had not reached a tipping point. If you want to look at the tipping point, the emergence of the concept of workers representing themselves, you have to look to the United States now. Yes, of course, if you listen to this show, uh, you know that the US gets a lot of things wrong. And edit me here, Paul, we rightly on Uncle Sam at times, uh, and I think we do it in a very fair way. But it may surprise, it may surprise many of us to know that the the US now is known as a pretty anti labor union country, but in many ways it was home to the modern labor movement. It was. I just love the concept that every once in a while we give Uncle Sam a right fair, very British of us. Yes, Ben, why don't we Why don't we hear a word from our sponsor and then come right back and learn a little bit about the history of unions within the United States. Ah, we have returned, and we are headed to the United States, the good old US of a. Yes, So the interesting thing here is that the history of labor disputes the working class versus the ownership class, the employees versus the employers. It's older than the American Revolution. If you look back in sixteen thirty six, you'll see that a bunch of people working in the fishing industry on this one island off the coast of Maine went on strike. In sixteen seventies seven, people working in the transportation industry went on strike in New York City. And most of those incidents are temporary and they're isolated, and it was very rare for these incidents to result in a formation of a permanent group that would try to bargain with the powers that be. Uh, mainly because they had very little legal ability, they have very little agency. UH. If if they were injured in the result of a strike or something, then the going consensus was, it's on you, it's your bad. Uh. There was one criminal prosecution in the colonial era in Savannah, Georgia in seventy six a bunch of carpenters went on strike and and the law officially got on them. Now, don't get us wrong, folks, these people were getting their heads bashed left and right, and that is typically well. Often, as you'll see him part two of this week's episode. Often that remains the case in some way. So the US gets this tradition of unions or something like unions and European guilds from their friends across the pond. And this is where we want to introduce this guy named Samuel Gompers. I'm sorry to say his name like that. I think it's a great name anyway, Samuel Gompers. Uh, don't don't let don't let that delightful name fool you. He's a big deal. In six he brought together a couple of craft unions and specifically cigar makers, and he forms something called the American Federation of Labor the a f L. That was one of the first big, big unions in the US. And then fast forward seventy years, the a f L merges with something called the Congress of Industrial Organizations. This creates the a f L dash c i O, and this is one of the largest labor organizations around. Look, there's a ton of history when it comes to unions. We're just giving you the highlights from a very Western perspective. There there is also a dark side to this history because it turns out pretty much from the beginning of the concept of unions centuries and centuries ago, people in power have been trying to abolish them. Why here's where it gets well, because if there's a union, then I have to provide my cogs with things that they want, like wages that are fit to live within society as well, you know, as well as healthcare perhaps benefits if you're in the United States because you have to provide healthcare through a private insurance company, uh, you know, or things like time off on a regular basis, not working their hands with their bone. Um, it's it's unions. I'm been opposed because it does kind of put a hamper on theoretically your ability to make goods in a profit at a pace that perhaps you would wish as an employer, which is well, I mean that you can at least see that viewpoint right as from historically and there that that is a feeling I think a thread that that goes all throughout history and that continues on today and and there is a deep desire I would say, on behalf of a large organization's large corporations too, to stop unionization from happening. Because of the fears of what may happen to your company, to your profitability, to what your shareholders will think about your company. If there is a union within your organization, and it's it's really interesting something that we found out. Uh. I mean, I would say a bit firsthand recently, forming a union from within a company is in itself, necessarily I think, a bit of a conspiracy. Yeah, yeah, you're agree. You can say that unions function in their nascent days as a conspiracy of sorts, and it's it's a conspiracy by necessity at times, you know, if there are well, talk in a second about how bad to get, but it's not people necessarily being extra. It's not people who just have a love of subterfuge or something like that. They are trying to avoid retaliation at times, retaliation that includes murder. This is a real thing that happened. Uh. The on the other side of this, I like that we're looking at at multiple angles here. On the other side of this, you can also absolutely say that anti union activities union busting falls into the realm of conspiracy. Like union union busting. All right, there's a ton of consulting agencies who don't like when we use that phrase. Just like, there's a ton of crooked, crooked people out there who don't like being called body brokers. There are companies that exist entire now they call themselves like employee relationship consultancies or whatever. If you're seeing this on YouTube, I'm doing a very disrespectful kind of dance because I don't respect it what they're doing. They don't like the term union busting, but you'll hear that term a lot, and union busting collectively describes a bunch of activities that are meant to either um at the very least, disrupt an existing trade union or labor union, or most often nowadays, to prevent them from forming in the first place. And you have to ask yourself, regardless of how you feel about a union or the concept of it, why would these powerful entities care so much? You know, where's the beef? Well, like you said, Matt, it would increase cost for a company, very likely, And it would increase the cost not just by standardizing a wage or something, but by also guaranteeing things like healthcare, vacation time, a weekend, which used to be a hot take for any for anybody who's very against the idea of unions, like I don't know what propaganda side you fall on, if it's pro union or anti union, if you're reading it on a Saturday or a Sunday, you're reading it because the union stuff will worked for a second. Uh, Like remember back when, back when those British people we mentioned earlier, before the break, when they came to those factory towns, they had zero rights, no vacation or guarantee of wages. Obviously people were paid according to their demographic rather than they're a bill city. Uh. And they had no like guarantee that they would have a job tomorrow. Is zip zilch, not a you get nothing Lebowski. And there's there's this thing called the Combination laws, And in eighteen twenty four Britain repealed those laws. This meant that it was no longer illegal to have a labor organization. Unions used to be such a big deal that state powers banned them. It was it was like selling meth or something. You know, it was treated with that level of um tyranny. So once it's no longer illegal, these groups of employees they posse up, they vultron up, and they start things like the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers spelled with a you in there right because it's it's British. Uh. They this was two and these folks mainly wanted to make sure that their wages stopped going down. They weren't trying to make a bunch of money. They were trying to make sure that they made something close to the same amount of money each year. And any employer they agreed this is price fixing. Basically, they agreed that anybody who was going to hire a member of the agriculture the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers, would need to pay them a minimum wage. Now that is not a hot take, but just two years after that, the members of the landowning class complained, and they complained to their friends who are in power, and the leaders of that movement, leaders of that organization were arrested, they were charged, and they were convicted. I'm laughing because this is a silly law. They were convicted not of organizing labor. They were convicted of Get this match the swearing of secret oaths. That sounds a lot like the anti Freemason movement that came. I want to say after maybe that's around the same time the anti Mason movement. You can't that's that's a multiple nations in Europe had that idea, like one cannot be a member of a secret society, but the swearing of secret oaths. I get where they're going, but they're better ways to write that, I think. So anyway, these guys they don't get killed. They're sentenced to a very specific kind of punishment at that time, transportation, which meant they were sent to the continent of Australia and they were going to be sent there for seven years. But there's this huge grassroots public backlash and they eventually are released. But we say all this, yeah, we see all this to point out the odds were originally retty stacked against the concept of unions because again, as as you said, it doesn't make sense from the perspective of the people at the top. Absolutely, I know it's just an a side guys, But just to throw it in, we're talking about eighteen thirty four when the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers got shipped off to Australia. The Anti Masonic Party within the United States formed in eighteen eight so just a little bit before that, and um just for that history and only functioned until eighteen forty and then it came back and had like a second run. But just it's interesting that there was an anti secret oaths trend going on. So let's talk about let's talk about some of this stuff. Uh, let's talk about strikes. So a strike, you've heard of this. A strike is when a group of workers stops working and they're protesting maybe unsafe working conditions or they're using it as of flex during negotiations between a union and management. Today, strikes are largely, at least in the US, they're largely peaceful events. This was very much not the case back in the day. If you look back through let's say the eighteen hundreds, you will see that numerous strikes were put down hard hired militia, police, actual US government troops reigned fire on on people who were just like, again, these are not you know, these are not bad faith actors. These are people who are saying stuff like, hey, please spend a couple of bucks to make the uh, the lumber mill less dangerous. I would like to have both of my hands at the end of the day. And then multiple forces were like, no, we're gonna shoot you. That's what happened. And I would say the one of The major thrust of this episode is to talk about this and the groups that physically pushed back and fought human beings that were attempting to strike for all the things we've mentioned, better wages and everything. Um, there's a group ben I believe they're called the Pinkerton's or is it the Pinkerton Detective Detective Agency was? Yeah, ah, these guys ak Matt Frederick's favorites. Yeah, as I stayed in clearly previously in the episode. You now they're they're they're they're pretty horrified. These the Pinkerton Detective Agency is. They're the guys who would go in and intimidate striking workers, would uh escort people who were not striking but needed to like move through a big crowd of strikers, especially scabs, right, or the idea of other workers who were hired to replace striking workers at least temporarily, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah, the Pinkerton's story is worthy of its own episode. It is at its origin, it's um kind of an American success story because we're talking the guy who started at Pinkerton himself Scottish immigrant, very good at detective work. And then it just sort of went off the rails. We'll talk more about Pinkerton's in the second part of this week's episode, but for now, we want to give you a sense of how how strikes worked um and and what happens when they go wrong. So on May one, there was a nationwide strike leading to something called the Haymarket Riot. This remains one of the most infamous and tragic events of this story. Here's what they were striking for, by the way, an eight hour work day. That's it. They wanted at nine to five. That's all they wanted, and something many of us love, slash, enjoy, slash, get to have right right, Yes, I like the slashes there. Uh so there was is after this strike. So three we said May first, So three days later there's a rally in a place in Chicago, Haymarket, and this rally is protesting the laws, crackdown, violent crackdown to a strike by employees at a place called McCormick Reaper Works, not related to our good friend Joe McCormick of stuff to play your mind or death themselves as in the Reapers. It's a hay Market, guys. Yeah. And the thing about this rally is the weather sucked that day, So there weren't a ton of people. There weren't as many people as they were hoping, right or the rallies organizers. There were a few hundred police move in, they want to disperse the crowd and someone, this person has lost to history. We don't know whether it was a protester or an agent provocateur, or whether this is a bill of goods that you're sold in textbooks. Somebody threw a bomb and it blew up in the mob, and then pandemonium strikes. The police are firing guns. Um, it's likely that some of the protesting workers at firearms. There's no official tally even now in there's no official tally of how many civilians died, but we know seven h seven police died and sixty more were injured, and a lot of those injuries for that sixty officers came from their fellow officers friendly fire, you would call it. So anyway this happens, it's crazy. You know, Chicago is super corrupt at this time and maybe today, but even more corrupt back then. And someone's like her rub for up for um, something must be done, so they arrest a lot of protesters. This is before cops were really arrested for doing crime. Uh. They arrest folks who have ideologies like socialism or anarchists. Right. Eight of them are charged and convicted for not swearing secret oaths this time, but inflammatory speeches and publications that allegedly caused the violence. This is a kangaroo court. There's no there's no way to escape it. It's a kangaroo court. And everybody who is outside of this, everybody who is essentially not controlled by the people in power, are like, they're saying, what gives. Four of those who are convicted are hanged in One guy doesn't get hanged because he kills himself by putting a stick of dynamite in his own mouth while he's in prison, which makes you wonder, you know, shades of Epstein. But on June there's this guy's a new governor of Illinois. His name is John p Altgeld, and he says, hey, the three of you who are still alive, I'll give you a full pardon. And this is the reason that may first became the like international Celebration of Workers, because other labor leaders saw this and they thought there was some light at the end of the tunnel. Uh, but you you may be asking yourself, what about Labor Day? Is this where Matt and Ben talked about Labor Day, Well, it's called May Day in some countries and throughout a lot of the world, it's celebrated on May one. Here in the US, it is I think it's the first Monday in September. And uh that is like some stuff they don't want you to know history about it. I don't know about you, but growing up, whenever I heard Labor Day, I always thought it was kind of paradoxical. You know, it's a day off, but it's called Labor Day. A kid, you, Matt, I used to think. I used to think it was like a commemoration of what women have to go through giving birth. Oh, like a target that you could aim for, like, oh, we gotta hit Labor Day this year. Uh so let's get started. It's you know, it's late December, early January. No, alright, So, um, yeah, I don't know. I didn't know much about Labor Day until I got to college, and so I wonder how many people out there listening even knew that, um that May Day exists. And then also, you know, Labor Day within the United States and as it's celebrated in September. Ben, I really want to look. I said it was one of the most import parts of this episode. I may have been a little wrong there, but I really want to get back into the Pinkerton's. We do that. Yeah, let's you know what, let's pause for a word from our sponsors, and let's get back to some villains. And we've returned. It is pretty obvious that union slash anti union conflicts were way more blatantly violent back in the day. We're talking about Robert Barrens. You know, we're talking about decade aristocrats, uh nepotistic ne'er do wells, murderous bosses, crooked cops, you name it. They're all there, all the hits, all the good ones. And out of all of these rapscallions, the most fascinating are probably the Pinkerton's, the Peakerton National Detective Agency. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So the Pinkerton's, they were founded as a private police force in Chicago in eighteen fifty by a Scottish immigrant. And this guy's story is is pretty interesting. The founder was actually a Scottish immigrant who started off as a barrel maker, but he was so good at catching local ne'er do wells that eventually he stopped making and repairing barrels and started, uh started making a difference in Chicago's crime scene. Yeah, barrels can wait, we got crooks to catch. That's kind of cool to kind of respect to that, Like I feel like that's cool. It's just it's it becomes a weapon, right, Any any police force, any law enforcement agency, is a weapon against the whatever the thing is that it's aimed at. And in this case, the Pinkerton's, in my opinion, got aimed at the wrong thing. Agreed me, Because there's one thing that you don't often here described in a lot of media, but it's true. One of the powers of the state really is just the monopoly on violence, the monopoly on legal violence. And the Pinkerton's were became something that blurred that line between private militia and state power when they became the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. When they went official, they first were focused on catching street level crime, you know, thieves, burglars, but they got a reputation for results, and powerful people started paying attention, and so the Pinkerton's branched out. They diversified and they became the bane of the labor movement. They were enthusiastic, ruthless, vicious strike breakers, and they could break the law because the people who made the laws were hiring them. It feels like we experienced some of the same things, at least in our lifetime. I think, Ben, it's it's really frustrating, and you know, there's um it's depicted in fiction a lot the Pinkerton's or or Pinkertons like organizations companies that do this, the police force that's hired specifically to break strikes, and the severity that you're I just don't want it to be lost on people, the severity of the beatings and the violence that was enacted by these guys. Yeah, it bears further scrutiny because the story is often swept under the rug, as is a lot of the story of the La Aber movement in the United States. Whether you love it or hate it, whatever your personal ideology is, knowledge is power, and so we should all be very aware of the moments when someone doesn't want you to know about a thing. I mean, I I just accidentally talked about the point of our show anyway. Yeah, how ruthless are the Pinkerton's. Uh you could classify their actions against strikers or the working class under something like by any means necessary. Remember those anarchists we mentioned earlier in the show, the ones who were arrested after the Haymarket riot with zero proof. By the way, it was a kangaroo court. The Pinkerton's sent those folks down the river, and they even had a Pinkerton's operative perjur themselves go to the sham trial and just make stuff up to send these folks to their deaths to the gallows. And that's only one example. There are multiple examples, so more recent than you might think. Another example of Pinkerton's approach to unions can be found in something called the eighteen two Homestead Strike. It features our old pal Andrew Carnegie, steel tycoon, but a person like anybody else. He has good days, he has bad days. When this story takes place, Andy is having just a bad week. It's having a bad week, Matt. You know, he's worried about rich guy problems because the employees at his steel mill over in Homestead, Pennsylvania are also having a bad week. They've been having a series of bad years they're fed up. You know, there were labor discussions occurring at his steel mill between I guess Carnegie and his representatives and the workers, and he drapped it up a new contract that actually lowered the workers wages UM and that didn't go well. Uh, probably not a great idea. But again, as we've been talking throughout these episodes, I don't know the real pressures that Carnegie was under, or of that the steel mill itself was under, or whatever. Those pressures were economic pressures that made him believe the right move was to lower wages to lower the production costs UM. But those are human beings with families, and it was probably just not the smartest move, but somebody had to test it out throughout history. What if we lower the employees wages. Let's just give it a go, you know what I mean, Like like those people who are pick up artists and just say the same terrible line to a hundred folks, thinking it's not thee that are too smart to fall for this, it's the one that this will work on. So yes, Carnegie, Carnegie said, just shoots his shot, as you would say in the parlance of our day, and surprise, surprise, the employees refused to sign it because it is in fact a much worse steal than what they had in the beginning. You could almost say, and I'm sure many members of the union thought this. Uh, you could almost say that it was an offer made in retaliation for the inconvenience of of asking for some basic considerations. So Carnegie gets his boy, Henry Frick to come in come into play. Henry Frick is the technical term here, a real pill. He is a piece of work as a person, and given his personality and his bedside manner, Uh, he is what hr would call an area of opportunity, and not as a compliment, but because in general is an area of an opera of opportunity. As as a person, he has the opportunity to be better. Uh. Here's how he responds. He looks at the employees of this steel mill and they're about three thousand, eight hundred of them, and he says, okay, you're all fired. All of you were fired. And furthermore, I'm bringing in the Pinkerton's. So he gets the Pinkerton Agency, He gets three hundred of their operatives who are armed by the way to occupy the property. The former employees don't like this. Tensions are high. This leads to a twelve hour gun battle. You thought the Amazon stuff was acrimonious, folks, No, these people are bringing heat and they're not doing it a posture. They are firing live rounds at each other. Eventually, three Pinkerton's go down. At least seven employees are murdered. The Pinkerton's get the word to stand down, but the damage is done. The strike ends up collapsing. And this guy, by by the way, also Frick was taken at home. Dude. He he was threatening to evict workers from their houses, not just fire them. Yeah, think about what it would take for you to show up to your job site wherever it is that you work with, maybe with a gun, maybe with a pipe, maybe with just yourself, but with a willingness to go to battle to keep your job. What would it take. Not only is that a lot of fortitude, that's you can you can tell that people needed that job. The individual of the three thousand, eight hundred employees needed that job. And uh wow, I can't believe it was a gun battle at their job site to keep their job. That's just that blows my mind. Yeah, and now we have to well, you know, I want to say, in this case, it's clear that the Pinkerton's and Carnegie and Frick, they were doing evil things right there is all. You know, the old adage is true when you talk about conflict, if you are in conflict and active conflict, then you have already messed up because you should be able to In most conflicts you should be able to de escalate into some sort of negotiation. But this, yeah, this is just again a couple of cases of Pinkerton's doing some very villainous things. You can, however, learn more about Pinkerton's. We're We're excited. I think they're an episode all their own, if you you can go. They're still around obviously, I think we established this before. They're going by Pinkerton Comprehensive Risk Management. Uh. You can hop on their website pinkerton dot com right now and you'll see some very interesting things about the Pinkerton's stuff that we may not get to in part two of this episode, but we will definitely get to in a third episode. Um, we're going to be examining the current state of unions or collective bargaining as well as the future of union busting. Conspiracies. Oh my gosh. I don't want to spoil it, Matt, but it's it's really tough. We're We're also going to, by the way, talk a little bit about the imperfections of unions, because unions, being organizations created by humans, have all the foibles of any other human created organization, you know, like unions did work actively to suppress some demographics in the past, you know, and they have been um leveraged by organized crime, etcetera, etcetera. But it goes so much deeper than the conspiracies of history. There are active anti union conspiracies today. That's what I would say. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, for sure, there are active conspiracies against those who want to organize, uh, for the purposes of more fair labor practices and you know, payment and everything. Um. Sorry, Ben, I got stuck on the Pinkerton website. Here I went on, I went under our approach and then checked out our story and under our under our story, Ben, the last thing it says in that section is being a Pinkerton agent means we are your trusted partner, because at Pinkerton we never sleep. I know. I love it. Uh, It's it's true. It is. It is true. I wouldn't say it's strong, brave, tender, and true, but it is true that they don't sleep. If you want to understand that reference, check out the part of the website Matt's talking about. There's a neat little video that is kind of propaganda that's fun to watch. And and this is just a quick disclaimer here. We have no idea what the Pinkerton Agency is actually like right now to work there or to be whatever it is that an agent is now. Uh, we're describing the Pinkerton's back in the day in this episode. Yes, yes, we're describing them back in the day. But we will talk a little bit more about the modern day in the future. In the meantime, we can't wait to hear your opinions, fellow conspiracy realists, because you know, Matt and Mission Control and I are well aware that unions have become a highly divisive, highly politicized concept here in the US. We are pretty sure that we know the reasons why, some of which verge into the realm of propaganda conspiracy. But but again, we want to provide a balanced look at this. So now you know a little bit of the history of labor movements from their roots in Europe all the way up and now. And you know some of the problems. But what about the future. That's the question we're going to ask, So stay tuned and in the meantime, we can't wait to hear from you. What do you think? Do you think unions are divisive? Do you have your own personal war stories or anecdotes or experiences with labor organizations? And if so, uh, what do you wish your fellow conspiracy realists knew about them? For the good or for the ill? Uh? We can't wait to share those stories. We try to be easy to find online. Yes, just search for conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show and whichever app you use on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We are conspiracy Stuff on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show. We would love to hear from you, so please reach out in those ways if you'd like. If not, you can use your mouth and your phone to give us a call and leave a voicemail. That's correct one Pinkerton No I'm kidding. It is a free number to call. That is one eight three three st d w y t K. You will hear a familiar voice letting you know you're in the right place you left three minutes. Those three minutes are yours. Go nuts, go ham on it, get weird, give yourself a cool nickname or moniker. Let us know whether we can use your name and or voice on the air. Tell us what's on your mind. Tell your fellow listens what's on your mind. And most importantly, don't feel like you have to edit yourself. That goes against the mission of this show. It's antithetical to us. It's anathema and just taking out the A words here matt uh. Instead, if you have some links you want to provide, if you have some photographs you want to send, if you want to usher us further into the rabbit hole, let's keep the thunder here. If if it's if you can hear it, it is becoming a dark, stormy night here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, which means it's time for us to sign off. It's time for you to sign on. Do check out our book coming out in October. And if you want to help us find the new rabbit holes and to help us figure out more stuff they don't want you to know, then all you have to do is shoot us a good old fashioned email. We'd love to hear from you. 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