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Bad Beginning. In 1908 Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte slapped together a rudimentary Bureau of Investigation by borrowing a heterogeneous collection of sleuths and bank examiners from other departments. Within considerable limitations, the Bureau was charged with the detection and apprehension of violators of Federal statutes. In 1910 these duties were increased by the passage of the Mann Act to break up the interstate traffic in women. Seven years later the War brought the tasks of espionage and counterespionage. In 1919 under the Dyer Act, Department of Justice agents began to chase across State lines automobile thieves (most of whom turned out to be joyriding youngsters). But neither in morale nor efficiency did the Bureau grow up with its expanding job. Chief qualification for a would-be investigator was a letter of recommendation from his Congressman. And under suspicious, eccentric Director William J. Burns, who used to keep photographs of Lenin and Trotsky, like a special rogue's gallery, on his office wall, several ex-convicts and the notorious Gaston B. Means wormed their way on to the Bureau's rolls. Such was the sloppy and demoralized agency which, in the scandalous spring of 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was handed by Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone, who had just succeeded Harry Micajah Daugherty, besmirched Harding crony.
Hooverization was therewith given a new meaning. Director Hoover began to look around for an entirely different type of man for his Bureau's front line. Politics were out. Today applicants must be not less than 25, not more than 35 years old. Their characters are more scrupulously investigated than those of the blackest suspect under Federal surveillance. They must be either law school graduates, certified public accountants, or experienced police officers. The last are much in the minority. Lawyers and accountants have the advantage of being already trained as expert court witnesses and if the applicant has the sort of honest face that a jury is likely to trust, it is a point in his favor.
Among the 623 Special Agents and Accountants now in the field there is an amazing diversity of occupational backgrounds. Sixty-three are experienced farmers, 17 are aviators, 17 newshawks, one a baker, seven professional baseball players, one a surveyor, one an oil gauger, 37 with banking experience. Two were radio announcers. ("That's the pair they ought to shoot," jests Director Hoover.)