Oysters, Macaroni, and Beer
Subtitle: Thurber, Texas, and the Company Store
By: Gene Rhea Tucker ; foreword by Richard Francaviglia
Series: Plains Histories
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Lubbock, Texas
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9780896727687
Subjects: Company stores; Employees; Texas Pacific Mercantile and Manufacturing Company; Business enterprises; Case studies; Economic conditions; Texas and Pacific Coal Company; Social conditions; Services for; Company towns; History
Description: From 1894 to 1934, a span of forty years that saw its parent company go from coal mining to oil drilling, the Texas Pacific Mercantile and Manufacturing Company operated and managed the various commercial and service enterprises essential to the life and history of Thurber, Texas. Thurber was a company town, wholly owned by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, and the inhabitants viewed the “company store” with suspicion before and after unionization in 1903, believing it monopolistic and exploitative. But to call the mercantile a monopoly, or a mere contrivance to exploit laborers, paints an incomplete portrait of the company store as it existed in Thurber and elsewhere. With a keen eye for spotting telling detail, Gene Rhea Tucker examines a wealth of company ledgers, interviews, and newspaper accounts, presenting a case study not only of the microcosm of Thurber and TPM&M but of relations between labor and management in industrializing Texas, and a larger story of the complex role of the company store and company town in America.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Plainsword; title: The Company Town of Thurber; title: A "Company Store" for Thurber; title: The Commercial Enterprises of Thurber; title: More Than Just Stores : Services for the Town; title: The Company Store and the Workers; title: A Withering Town with Dwindling Business; title: Epilogue: The Afterlife of a Ghost Town