Download or read book East Texas Lumber Workers written by Ruth A. Allen and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1950 a million Texans—more than a tenth of the entire population of the state—lived in a region where one family in every two earned less than $2,000 a year. Composing that region are the thirty-two counties of northeastern Texas in which the lumber industry is concentrated. In eleven of these counties, 70 percent of family incomes were less than $2,000. Until 1930 the Texas lumber industry furnished employment for more workers than any other manufacturing in the state. Though displaced in that year by oil refining, it still ranks near the top in the number of workers it hires. The aim of this study is to show how these people whose economic life has been dominated by a single industry have fared for eighty years in comparison with their fellow Texans and with lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest and the Lakes states. Texas lumber workers have always been in many ways a peculiar people, conditioned by their historical roots, by isolation from the mainstream of national life, and by the deeply rural nature of their environment. A typical group portrait would show two of each three persons to be adult white males. One of three would be African American. It would not show any women. Here and there a face would bear the marks of alien birth. Most of the figures, however, would be natives not only of America but of East Texas. In family background, in work experience, and in social and economic environment these people have been uniquely homogeneous. In the early 1950s the Congressional Committee on the Economic Report of the President designated the area as one of “deep poverty” and pinpointed it as one which had failed notably to reach the level of living achieved by the state and the nation. Its economic status has been lower than that of any other group in Texas except household servants, and its education level has been well below that of the state and nation and increasingly below the level of acceptance in any jobs other than those requiring a minimum of training and competence. The immediate past has shown not only no improvement but a positive deterioration. Drawing upon personal investigation and state and federal reports, the author has put the contemporary situation in a historical setting. Her delineation is principally in terms of figures that weave a social fabric from which definite patterns emerge—insecure wages, illiteracy and inefficient production, unsuccessful attempts to achieve effective organization. Though the book is directed primarily toward those who should feel concern at its revelations, it also suggests a wealth of untapped sources for the ethnographer and the folklorist.
Download or read book East Texas Lumber Workers written by Ruth Alice Allen and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Labor Practices in the East Texas Lumber Industry to 1930 written by Harry Weaver and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book East Texas Theater of the Timber Wars 1910 1913 written by Ryan Scott Gullett and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Timber Wars of 1910--1913 was a pivotal moment in the history of East Texas. The incursion of union organizers into East Texas in 1911 marked the beginning of one the region's most violent periods. Lasting from the early union meetings in 1910 and ending with the Merryville Strike in 1913, the conflict shook the cultural and socioeconomic forces in East Texas and Western Louisiana. The origins of the war between Kirby Lumber Company and the Brotherhood of Timber Workers began with A.L. Emerson, a native East Texan and former employee of Kirby Lumber Company. Emerson organized the Brotherhood of Timber Workers and after making significant inroads in Louisiana, he set his sights on the East Texas lumber industry. The war between the Kirby Lumber Company and the Brotherhood of Timber Workers began as a nonviolent altercation, but as the company blocked every attempt of the union to gain a foothold, violence erupted all along the Sabine River. This study emphasizes the cultural and socioeconomic causes behind the steadfast resistance of East Texas toward the attempts by the union to organize its inhabitants. The study reveals that the Kirby Lumber Company prevented the Brotherhood of Timber Workers from gaining a grip on the East Texas regions the company operated through the utilization of welfare capitalism and their influence through various anti-union associations.
Download or read book Patients and Profits written by Mary Alice Askins Cook and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scores of timber companies that industrialized East Texas beginning in the 1880s created a demand for doctors to treat the injuries and illnesses of the workers. Many lumber companies emulated the paternalism and welfare capitalism practiced by other industries of the era, and provided medical care to their workers. Some sawmills were located near established towns, where lumber companies contracted with local doctors to provide medical services to the company's workers and their families. Often, companies built sawmill towns in remote, isolated areas, and hired company doctors to live in the town and provide medical care to the residents. Many of these doctors began their careers during a time of great change in the nation's medical profession; the scientific theory of modern medicine was becoming universal, and the perceived excessive number of physicians was being winnowed by increased regulation of medical education and licensing. In exchange for an assured salary, company doctors treated endemic and epidemic illness -- sometimes caused by unsanitary conditions in the sawmill towns and logging camps -- and coped with the frequent injuries associated with a dangerous occupation. East Texas lumber company doctors were often fondly remembered for their sacrificial service. Nevertheless, this study reveals that in order to balance the demands of lumber company owners with the needs of workers, company doctors sometimes negotiated a narrow path between patients and profits.
Download or read book Sawdust Empire written by Robert S. Maxwell and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive story of logging, lumbering, and forest conservation in Texas records the industry's history from the earliest days of the Republic, when a few isolated operations provided for local needs, through the first four decades of the twentieth century. Supplemented by over one hundred photographs, many never before published, the text re-creates Texas' heyday as one of the nation's leading timber producers. At that time, the forested area equaled the state of Indiana. In the words of one visitor, the forest was "like a vast wave that has rolled in upon a level beach ... creeping forward, thinning out, and finally disappearing, except where, along a river course, it pushes far inland."
Download or read book The Making of a Southern Sawmill World written by Steven Andrew Reich and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Texas Labor History written by Bruce A. Glasrud and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too often, observers and writers of Texas history have accepted assumptions about labor movements in the state—both organized and not—that do not bear up under the light of careful scrutiny. Offering a scholarly corrective to such misplaced suppositions, the studies in Texas Labor History provide a helpful new source for scholars and teachers who wish to fill in some of the missing pieces. Tackling a number of such presumptions—that a viable labor movement never existed in the Lone Star State; that black, brown, and white laborers, both male and female, were unable to achieve even short-term solidarity; that labor unions in Texas were ineffective because of laborers’ inability to confront employers—the editors and contributors to this volume lay the foundation for establishing the importance of labor to a fuller understanding of Texas history. They show, for example, that despite differing working conditions and places in society, many workers managed to unite, sometimes in biracial efforts, to overturn the top-down strategy utilized by Texas employers. Texas Labor History also facilitates an understanding of how the state’s history relates to, reflects, and differs from national patterns and movements. This groundbreaking collection of studies offers notable opportunities for new directions of inquiry and will benefit historians and students for years to come.
Download or read book Labor s Promised Land written by Mark Fannin and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By subverting customary values to promote movements in which solidarity was more powerful than social divisions, these unions challenged the very cornerstones of traditional southern society: women were encouraged to "think and act for themselves," and they assumed leadership roles within the movements; the rhetoric of race was radicalized; and the religious foundations of devout communities were shaken by an approach that reactionaries saw as explicit and often blasphemous. Thus, by upsetting the conservative values and traditions espoused by the agricultural and industrial elites, these organizations provide an important link between the promise of the South and the realization of working-class aspirations."
Download or read book Lynching and Leisure written by Terry Anne Scott and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2022-03-04 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2022 Ottis Lock Endowment “Best Book” Award from the East Texas Historical Association In Lynching and Leisure, Terry Anne Scott examines how white Texans transformed lynching from a largely clandestine strategy of extralegal punishment into a form of racialized recreation in which crowd involvement was integral to the mode and methods of the violence. Scott powerfully documents how lynchings came to function not only as tools for debasing the status of Black people but also as highly anticipated occasions for entertainment, making memories with friends and neighbors, and reifying whiteness. In focusing on the sense of pleasure and normality that prevailed among the white spectatorship, this comprehensive study of Texas lynchings sheds new light on the practice understood as one of the chief strategies of racial domination in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century South.
Download or read book Sawmill written by Kenneth L. Smith and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of logging in the Arkansas and Oklahoma Ouachita Mountains from 1900 to 1950 not only examines man's interaction with a major forest resource but also looks at the effects of the forests' depletion on the people and towns that made their livelihood from the mills. Reprint.
Download or read book American Lumberman written by and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 1952 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Under the Iron Heel written by Ahmed White and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 International Labor History Association Book of the Year A dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobblies—and how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution and driven by uncompromising militancy, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat that had to be eliminated. In Under the Iron Heel, Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, sometimes lethal violence that shattered the IWW. In so doing, he reveals the remarkable courage of those who faced this campaign, lays bare the origins of the profoundly unequal and conflicted nation we know today, and uncovers disturbing truths about the law, political repression, and the limits of free speech and association in class society.
Download or read book Nameless Towns written by Thad Sitton and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of the sawmill towns of East Texas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sawmill communities were once the thriving centers of East Texas life. Many sprang up almost overnight in a pine forest clearing, and many disappeared just as quickly after the company “cut out” its last trees. But during their heyday, these company towns made Texas the nation’s third-largest lumber producer and created a colorful way of life that lingers in the memories of the remaining former residents and their children and grandchildren. Drawing on oral history, company records, and other archival sources, Sitton and Conrad recreate the lifeways of the sawmill communities. They describe the companies that ran the mills and the different kinds of jobs involved in logging and milling. They depict the usually rough-hewn towns, with their central mill, unpainted houses, company store, and schools, churches, and community centers. And they characterize the lives of the people, from the hard, awesomely dangerous mill work to the dances, picnics, and other recreations that offered welcome diversions. Winner, T. H. Fehrenbach Award, Texas Historical Commission “After completing the book, I truly understood life in the sawmill communities, intellectually and emotionally. It was very satisfying. Conrad and Sitton write in such a manner to make one feel the hard life, smell the sawdust, and share the danger of the mills. The book is compelling and stimulating.” —Robert L. Schaadt, Director-Archivist, Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center
Download or read book The Emergence of the New South 1913 1945 written by George Brown Tindall and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1967-11-01 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the South in this century has been obscured in the ever-growing mass of information about the region's rapid change and turbulent development. In this book, Volume X of A History of the South, the historical image of the modern South is brought into full focus for the first time.George Brown Tindall presents a thorough and well-balanced historical narrative of the region during the years 1913--1945 when the South underwent a transformation from a predominantly agricultural area to one of growing industrialization.The inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson ended a half century of political isolation for the South and ushered in an era of agrarian reforms, prohibition, woman suffrage, industrial growth, and recurring crises for Southern farmers. During the 1920's the South was caught in a contrast of urban booms and farm distress. There were flareups of racial violence, and the Ku Klux Klan was revived. Mr. Tindall devotes considerable attention to the Southern literary renaissance which produced William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, and many other notable writers and critics.The Emergence of the New South provides a new understanding of the changing political and social climate in the South under the stresses of depression, the New Deal, the labor movement, Negro unrest, and two world wars.
Download or read book Saving the Big Thicket written by James Cozine and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Big Thicket of East Texas, which at one time covered over two million acres, served as a barrier to civilizations throughout most of historic times. This text is a classic account of the region's history and a play-by-play narrative of the prolonged fight for the Big Thicket Preserve.
Download or read book Victory at Home written by Charles D. Chamberlain and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victory at Home is at once an institutional history of the federal War Manpower Commission and a social history of the southern labor force within the commission's province. Charles D. Chamberlain explores how southern working families used America's rapid wartime industrialization and an expanded federal presence to gain unprecedented economic, social, and geographic mobility in the chronically poor region. Chamberlain looks at how war workers, black leaders, white southern elites, liberal New Dealers, nonsouthern industrialists, and others used and shaped the federal war mobilization effort to fill their own needs. He shows, for instance, how African American, Latino, and white laborers worked variously through churches, labor unions, federal agencies, the NAACP, and the Urban League, using a wide variety of strategies from union organizing and direct action protest to job shopping and migration. Throughout, Chamberlain is careful not to portray the southern wartime labor scene in monolithic terms. He discusses, for instance, conflicts between racial groups within labor unions and shortfalls between the War Manpower Commission's national directives and their local implementation. An important new work in southern economic and industrial history, Victory at Home also has implications for the prehistory of both the civil rights revolution and the massive resistance movement of the 1960s. As Chamberlain makes clear, African American workers used the coalition of unions, churches, and civil rights organizations built up during the war to challenge segregation and disenfranchisement in the postwar South.
