Ford first? Corporate security and the US Department of War's Plant Protection Service's interior organization unit 1917–1918

Abstract

The Ford Motor Company's corporate security unit is widely considered to be the prototype of in-house corporate security. Drawing on archival research, we demonstrate that beginning in 1917 and continuing through the early 1920s the US Department of War's Plant Protection Service and their interior organization units represent an early example of corporate security emanating from the public sector. The existence and character of this unit challenges the notion that Ford pioneered corporate security and the surveillance, secrecy, employee control, and pre-emptive techniques it typifies. The work of interior organization unit personnel exhibits strategies and features associated with today's professional corporate security managers. We then reflect on the implications of these findings for understanding the history of labor suppression and the origins of corporate security in the United States.

Keywords::

• corporate security
• secrecy
• surveillance
• World War I
• interior organization units
• labor

Acknowledgements

We thank Conor O'Reilly, Chris Hurl, J. Piché, N. Carrier, and Rhys Steckle for comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^3.Challinger, “Corporate Security.”

^4.Tucker, “Employee Theft as Social Control.”

^5.Coopey and McKinlay, “Power without Knowledge?”

^6.Ball, “Workplace Surveillance”; Rosswurm and Gilpin, “The FBI and the Farm Equipment Workers.”

^7. On Plant Protection during WWII see Vitale, “Wages of War”; on Plant Protection and WWI, see Parfitt, “Democracies in Conflict.”

^8.O'Reilly, “The Transnational Security Consultancy Industry.”

^9.Berndtsson and Stern, “Private Security and the Public-Private Divide.”

^10.Cubbage and Brooks, Corporate Security in the Asia-Pacific Region.

^11.Challinger, “Corporate Security,” 586.

^12.Draper, Private Police, 21–22.

^13.Davis, Lundman, and Martinez, “Private Corporate Justice.”

^14.Nalla, “Assessing Corporate Security.”

^15.Weiss, “Private Detective Agencies and Labour Discipline in the United States.”

^16.Williams, Call in Pinkerton's.

^17.Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America.

^18.US Senate report, cited in Weiss 2014, U.S. Senate. Committee on Labor and Education (1893) “Investigation in Relation to the Employment for Private Purposes of Armed Bodies of Men, or Detectives, in Connection With Differences Between Workmen and Employers”. Report No.1280, 52d Cong., 2nd Sess. Washington: Government printing Office.

^19.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^20.Patmore, “Employee Representation Plans in the United States, Canada, and Australia,” 47.

^21.Spitzer and Scull, “Privatization and Capitalist Development,” 22.

^22.Spitzer and Scull, “Privatization and Capitalist Development,” 26.

^23.Parfitt, “Democracies in Conflict.”

^24.O'Reilly, “The Transnational Security Consultancy Industry.”

^25.Weiss, “Private Detective Agencies and Labor Discipline,” 105.

^26.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^27. Cooper and McKinlay, “Power without Knowledge?”

^28. Cooper and McKinlay, “Power without Knowledge?” 114.

^29. Cooper and McKinlay, “Power without Knowledge?” 120.

^30.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^31.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^32.Earl, “Tanks, Tear Gas, and Taxes,” 52.

^33.Dunn, The Americanization of Labor.

^34.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^35.Cantrell, “West Virginia's Chemical Industry.”

^36.Capozzola, “The Only Badge I Need is your Patriotic Fervour”; Cohen, “The Ku Klux Government.”

^37.Cohen, “The Ku Klux Government,” 50.

^38.Parfitt, “Democracies in Conflict,” 93.

^39.War Department, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Washington, February 27, 1918. From Military Intelligence – Plant Protection. To Chief Signal Officer of the Army. Subject: Activities, Military Intelligence, Plant Protection.

^40.War Department, February 27, 1918, Activities, Military Intelligence, Plant Protection.

^41.Interior Organization, February 5, 1918. Sender and receiver unknown.

^42.Interior Organization, February 5, 1918.

^43.War Department, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Washington, February 27, 1918.

^44.Interior Organization, February 5, 1918.

^45.Military Intelligence – Plant Protection. Chief, Military Intelligence Branch, Executive Division. Subject: Secret Supplementary Report on Interior Organization; Activities of the Plant Protection Section. April 30, 1918.

^46.Gilbert, World War I and the Origins of U.S. Military Intelligence, 90.

^47.War Department, Plant Protection Section, From J.F. Grant to George Black, Agent in Charge, District No. 6, July 5, 1918. Subject: Identification and Interior Organization.

^48.Interior Organization, February 5, 1918.

^49.Rowe, “The Tragedy of Liberalism: How Globalization Caused the First World War.”

^50.Communiqué, no title, February 5, 1918. No sender and no recipient.

^51.Communiqué, Subject: IWW Anarchists, Location: Los Angeles, Agent No. 102. December 26th 1917.

^52. From Edmund Leigh, Military Intelligence, Plant Protection, to Chief, Military Intelligence Branch Executive Board, subject IWW Activities – Coast. June 21 1918.

^53. From Edmund Leigh, Military Intelligence, Plant Protection, IWW Activities – Coast. June 21 1918.

^54.War Department, Plant Protection Section, From J.F. Grant to George Black, Agent in Charge, District No. 6, July 5, 1918.

^55.War Department, Plant Protection Section, From J.F. Grant to George Black, July 5, 1918.

^56.War Department, Plant Protection Section, From J.F. Grant to George Black, July 5, 1918.

^57.Plant Protection Section, Chief Signal Officer of the Army – Attention Mr. Flynn, Chief Clerk. April 20, 1918. Subject: Plant Protection Passes.

^58.Attention Mr. Flynn, Chief Clerk. April 20, 1918. Subject: Plant Protection Passes.

^59.Notice regarding “Racial Classification of Foreign-Born Workers”. September 4, 1918. From the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education to Mr. Edmund Leigh of Plant Protection.

^60. We use ‘imagined’ since, as in much critical scholarship, we assume race is a socially constructed classification that varies across place and time rather than an immutable quality of individuals.

^61.Wagner and Obermiller, “A Double-Edged Sword,” 1926.

^62.Banning intelligence synopsis, Plant Protection. No date.

^63.Dubofsky, We Shall be All, 382–384.

^64.Military Intelligence – Plant Protection. George Black, Agent in Charge, Detroit, Mich. January 24, 1918. Subject: An Ordinance for the City of Detroit, Mich., Licensing and Regulating Private Detectives and Watchmen.

^65. The AFL and IWW had an uneasy relationship. The AFL only rarely supported IWW initiatives afterward. Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 310–314.

^66.Ball, “Workplace Surveillance,” 94.

^67.Dubofsky, We Shall be All. Pg. 442.

^68. January 24, 1918. Subject: An Ordinance for the City of Detroit.

^69.Rosswurm and Gilpin, “The FBI and the Farm Equipment Workers,” 486. Also see McCartin, Labor's Great War.

^70.Donner, The Age of Surveillance, 424.

^71.Petersen, “The Politics of Corporate Security”. On this set of issues conceived as high policing, see O'Reilly and Ellison “Eye Spy Private High.”

^72.Petersen, “The Politics of Corporate Security,” 87.

^73.White, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company”; Williams, “The Private Eyes of Corporate Culture.”

^74.Weiss, “Corporate Security at Ford Motor Company.”

^75.White, Company Towns; Dinius and Vergara, Company Towns in the Americas.

^76.Wagner and Obermiller, “Social Control in Appalachian Company Towns,” 1917.

^77. Cooper and McKinlay, “Power without Knowledge?” 113.

^78.Henry, “Private Justice and the Policing of Labour,” 55.

^79.O'Reilly, “The Transnational Security Consultancy Industry.”

^80.Berndtsson and Stern, “Private Security and the Public-Private Divide.”

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant numbers 430-2013-0968 and 430-2011-0057].

Notes on contributors

Kevin Walby

Kevin Walby is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, Canada specializing in policing, security, and punishment. He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press). He is co-editor of Emotions Matter: a Relational Approach to Emotions (2012, University of Toronto Press) and Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (2012, UBC Press). He is co-editor with Randy K. Lippert of Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation (2013, Routledge) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (2014, Palgrave). With Lippert he is co-author of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (Routledge, 2015).

Randy K. Lippert

Randy K. Lippert is Professor of Criminology at the University of Windsor, Canada specializing in security, policing and urban governance. He is co-editor of Eyes Everywhere: the Global Growth of Camera Surveillance (2012), Sanctuary Practices in International Perspective (2013), and Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation (2013) as well as co-editor of Corporate Security in the 21^stCentury: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (2014). He is author of Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice: Canadian Sanctuary Incidents, Power and Law (2006, UBC Press) and numerous refereed articles. With Walby he is co-author of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (Routledge, 2015).