Raymond Joseph Burns was an American security industry executive. He is noted for his service in the Burns National Detective Agency.
Background
Raymond Joseph Burns was born on March 25, 1886 in Columbus, Ohio, one of five children of William J. Burns and Annie Ressler. His father was a detective and Secret Service operative whose efforts to rid San Francisco of graft and political corruption in the early years of the twentieth century won national attention; he later headed the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the FBI. William Burns left the Secret Service in 1909 and with a partner, William Sheridan, founded the Burns and Sheridan Detective Agency. Within a year Sheridan sold out his interest in the company, which became the William J. Burns National Detective Agency in 1910.
Education
William Burns was president and his second son, Raymond, who had graduated from Ohio State University in 1908 with a law degree, served as secretary-treasurer and manager of the Chicago headquarters. Burns was just twenty-four years old, and barely out of school, when he went into business with his father.
Career
There was some skepticism about his appointment to the Chicago office. "Word got around that bank robbers would have a field day, " Raymond Burns later recalled. But the younger Burns was no stranger to the detective business.
He grew up hearing stories of his father's adventures as a Secret Service agent and had assisted in the San Francisco graft case. The robbery of the First National Bank of Chatsworth, Illinois, gave Burns the opportunity to prove his ability as a detective. He solved the case in three weeks. A few months later, in October 1910, the fledgling agency began an investigation of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building.
This act of terrorism, which resulted in twenty-one deaths, was widely believed to be a union plot. Father and son hesitated before taking the case; they did not want to plunge the company into the morass of labor disputes. But in the final analysis, they accepted the assignment, and it brought the agency national recognition. Burns doggedly pursued leads in the Midwest until he apprehended two key figures associated with the Times bombing. The confessions of these men tied the bombing to the National Association of Structural Iron and Bridge Workers, confirming that the crime was part of a bitter labor dispute.
Burns effectively took over leadership of the company when his father died in 1932.
In the 1930's, Burns wrote a series of newspaper articles analyzing major crimes such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the death of Dutch Schultz. Although prevention of crime was the major business of the Burns Detective Agency, it found itself from time to time accused of a crime. The most serious accusations revolved around labor disputes. Although William J. Burns attempted to keep the company out of conflicts between companies and unions, the agency did get involved in labor disputes under the leadership of Raymond and W. Sherman Burns.
In 1936, the company was accused of hiring men to infiltrate the workplace and inform corporate leaders about union activities and membership. The agency was also accused of supplying strikebreakers and hiring guards who were convicted criminals. Even though Raymond Burns emphatically denied such accusations, the agency gained a reputation for this activity.
In 1938, the regular guards who policed the stadium of the New York Giants in Manhattan picketed on opening day. They complained that the National Exhibition Company, owners of the Giants, had contracted the Burns Detective Agency to supply the special police. The regular guards, as union members, refused to join the Burns Agency "because of its strike-breaking activities. "
The dispute was quelled, but in 1939 the Workers Defense League protested the Burns Agency request to renew its state license on the grounds that the agency was involved in industrial spying and strikebreaking. The agency's license was renewed, and once again Burns steered his company back to smooth waters. With an eye toward the future, Burns established an electronics division in 1956, and the agency became a leader in electronic surveillance techniques.
By 1959, the Burns Detective Agency was one of the largest organizations furnishing protective services to industrial and commercial clients. In fact, 95 percent of the agency's $29 million revenue in 1960 derived from supplying uniformed guards to industrial and commercial clients. Raymond Burns was a capable administrator.
Before his death in 1977, he saw the agency founded by his father grow to thirty-six thousand employees working out of several regional offices. It guarded everything from golf tournaments to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. He presided over the company as executive committee chairman when it grew to be an international concern and changed its name to the William J. Burns International Detective Agency, Inc.
Achievements
Raymond Burns served as president of the Burns National Detective Agency from 1949 until 1955, when he became chairman of the board. In 1964 he rose to the position of the executive committee chairman, which he held until 1970 when his brother, W. Sherman Burns, succeeded him. Raymond Burns, at age eighty-four, then became director of the agency.
Connections
On April 9, 1907, Burns married Gladys Sykes; they had one child.
