The great cowboy strike
Subtitle: bullets, ballots & class conflicts in the American West
By: Mark Lause
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 283
ISBN-13: 9781786631961
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Equality; Cowboys; Strikes and lockouts; Frontier and pioneer life; History
Description: "In the pantheon of American icons, the cowboy embodies the traits of 'rugged individualism', independent, solitary, and stoical. In reality, cowboys were grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal workers, who responded to the abuses of their employers in a series of militant strikes. Their resistance arose from the rise and demise of a "beef bonanza" that attracted international capital. Business interests approached the market with the expectation that it would have the same freedom to brutally impose its will as it had exercised on native peoples and the recently emancipated African Americans. These assumptions contributed to a series of bitter and violent 'range wars', which broke out from Texas to Montana and framed the appearance of labor conflicts in the region. These social tensions stirred a series of political insurgencies that became virtually endemic to the American West of the Gilded Age. Mark A. Lause explores the relationship between these neglected labor conflicts, the 'range wars', and the third-party movements."--Page [4] of cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: How the West was made --; title: Mysteries of the heartland: the emergence of the post-war western radicalism --; title: The wrong side of the tracks: the dangerous classes of the new American west --; title: The panhandle strike of 1883: an appropriately rough interrogation of the sources --; title: The cowboy strike wave, 1884-6: worker persistence, employer responses, and the political implications --; title: Destinies of the industrial brotherhood: a high-water mark of Western worker militancy, 1886 --; title: The destiny of the farmers' alliance: the implosions of the cattle trade, the Union Labor party, and the national election fiasco of 1888 --; title: From Coffeyville to Woodsdale: Kansas variations on the uses of political violence --; title: The West beyond Kansas: murders and range wars--Arkansas, Texas, Arizona, and Wyoming --; title: Wizardly, empire, and the final subjugation of the West.