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[[File:Pinkertons.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|<i>Inventing the Pinkertons</i> by S. Paul O'Hara]]
In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded a detective agency that would grow into Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Pinkerton's agency is easily the most famous and infamous security guard and detective agency in United States history. Pinkerton originally created the agency to help railroad companies to control and the investigate their employees and catch train robbers. But over time, the Pinkerton Agency Pinkertons developed an intimate relationship with the federal government and as these partnerships grew the Pinkertons' role grew increased dramatically.
This relationship started after the Pinkertons provided personal security to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. By the 1870s, the Pinkertons investigated and captured people (including outlaws such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) who stole railroad and bank money on behalf railroad and express companies with the approval of the Department of Justice. The Pinkertons are probably most notorious for their role in suppressing labor in the last twenty five years of the 19th Century.
