Detectives

[Chris Broderick]

  I'm currently reading Big Trouble by J. Anthony
Lukas, which has been mentioned on the list a few
times as a book sharing much of the historical millieu
as the Western parts of AtD.  It's mainly about the
dynamiting of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg.
 It's a good source of information about the Coeur
d'Alene mine strikes, and has a brief history of the
rise of Anarchism in the West.  This passage about
detectives (on p.84) was particularly striking:

"The sheer ubiquity of the detective testifies to a
massive erosion of trust.  The growth of industrial
empires and mass markets, combined with the decline of
the family farm and bucolic village, contributed to
the decay of mutual confidence.  The organic web of
personal association no longer encouraged good-faith
dealings between employer and employee, banker and
farmer, merchant and customer; these lacunae were
filled, in part, by the paid informer and industrial
agent.  The national obsession with the detective also
acknowledges the stark terror stirred in many
Americans by the rise of the cities, with their alien
swarms and evil resorts.  Just as they dreaded the
irrational chaos set loose in such quarters, so they
fastened on to the detective, a symbol of scientific
optimism and cool reason, whose funtion was to keep
that terror at bay."

-Chris



 
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