DETECTIVE BURNS LECTURE

Detective William J. Burns, head of the Burns Detective Agency, gave a lecture in the Union on Saturday. The subject of his talk was a discussion of his experiences in detective work and their relation to social questions.

Mr. Burns began by expressing his conviction that the hope of the future lay in college men. Public opinion moulded by college graduates must eventually settle the social and industrial problems confronting our nation today. The Socialists think they are capable of settling them by the use of theories, but this is a false impression.

Detective Burns had some important disclosures to make in regard to detective work in general. To be a successful detective requires nothing more than good, common sense coupled with persistence and resourcefulness. The greatest drawback to the profession is rampant dishonesty, the readiness of the operatives to "sell out," as Mr. Burns expressed it. In the San Francisco graft investigation where implicit trust in his co-workers was imperative, Mr. Burns employed Stanford University students.

Mr. Burns illustrated his work by reference to the McNamara case. A series of outrageous dynamiting disasters, resulting in tremendous losses of life and property, and surrounded by what appeared to be an impenetrable mystery, had aroused the structural iron corporations to action and Mr. Burns was engaged to make investigations. An attempt to wreak destruction on a mill in Peoria, Illinois resulted in the discovery of the most important clew in the whole investigation. A peculiarly constructed bomb had failed to explode, and this was found by Mr. Burns.

Los Angeles "Times" Dynamiting Case.

One month later the great Los Angeles Times disaster occurred, in which twenty-one men lost their lives. Mr. Burns was again called upon to investigate. A bomb unearthed among the ruins proved to be of identical design and construction with the one discovered at Peoria. This was convincing evidence that all the operations were being directed by the same hand. Mr. Burns could have placed his hands on the actual perpetrators of the crime, then and there, but it was his purpose to get the "big men" behind all the labor outrages.

In his attempt to accomplish this, he was forced to contend against the irresponsibility of a Los Angeles attorney, who in his craving for notoriety insisted upon making public every bit of information, regarding Mr. Burns's investigations that he could gather. He even went so far as to break in and rifle Mr. Burns's Los Angeles office in an attempt to find the detective's reports. Chiefly through this attorney's disclosures Mr. Burns was defeated in his purpose to bring the "big men" to justice and was forced to make his arrests prematurely. Notwithstanding the bribing of his operatives, and many other opposing factors, the detective succeeded in weaving as clear a case about the McNamaras as has over been effected in a case of such importance.