Moreover, a good detective is too valuable a person to be wasting his time in the court-room.

In the ordinary divorce case the detective, having procured evidence, is obliged to remain on tap and subject to call as a witness for at least three or four months, during which time he cannot be sent away on distant work.

Neither can the customer be charged ordinarily for waiting time, and apart from its malodorous character the business is not desirable from a financial point of view.
The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, murder cases, and general investigating.

They no longer undertake any policing, strike-breaking, or guarding.

The most ridiculous misinformation in regard to their participation in this sort of work has been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies and by the labor unions.
By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describing himself as an English detective, contributed an article to the 'New York Tribune' of September 16, 1906, in which he said: "In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involving the steel industry, over two thousand armed detectives were employed supposedly to protect property, while several hundred men were scattered in the ranks of strikers as workmen.