The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor (review)

On the surface, Theresa Case's The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor could simply appear as a much needed and decades long overdue treatment of the 1886 Great Southwest Strike. Upon digging into this work, though, one finds a rich ideological examination of nineteenth-century working class political thought. Case examines the relationship between race and labor and offers a penetrating look at the conflicting applications of "free labor" ideology that made the 1885-86 Southwest system strikes according to Case "a turning point in the labor upheavals of the Gilded Age" (222). To accomplish this, the author synthesizes previous works of nineteenth-century labor history, newspapers of the era, and the transcripts of the Curtin committee—a congressional committee that in the aftermath of the strike's defeat traveled to major sites of strike activity and interviewed a diverse array of participants and observers of the strike. Case's utilization of the Curtin committee transcripts, a source neglected by prior historians of the subject, offers a ground-up view of the strike.

Case separates the 1885 and 1886 strikes against Jay Gould's system of railroads in the Southwest to demonstrate the dramatic divergence in free labor ideology between strikers and one-time supporters that occurred between the strikes. During the 1885 strike railroaders "forged a cross-racial, cross-skill movement of 'producers'" (223). Strikers, organized in the Knights of Labor (KOL), accomplished this by using anti-monopoly language that also drew the support of localized layers of professionals and the middle class. In 1886, when it became clear Gould would not honor the 1885 strike settlement, railroad workers felt they could once again draw on the broad support they had received the previous year.

However, as Case states, "the 1886 strike tested workers and their communities in ways that the 1885 walkout had not" (213). She argues that the 1886 strike, rather than relying on moral suasion and anti-monopoly language, raised questions of individual rights versus collective obligations, the relationship between local institutions and national bodies such as unions or corporations, and the morality of using violence. KOL District Assembly 101 led by Martin Irons of Marshall, Texas, in calling the 1886 strike, felt the forces of anti-monopoly would follow their lead and honor their calls for regional and national sympathy strikes without prior approval from the KOL national office or local community institutions.

Previous treatments of the strike have pinned the failure of the 1886 action on the rashness of KOL DA 101, and Irons in particular, for calling the strike to begin with. Case takes a different view, blaming the strike's defeat less on internal conflicts within the strikers than on external forces. Gould system officials secured court ordered injunctions and military aid to defeat the strike. The use of the courts and the military, according to Case, convinced previously sympathetic skilled workers and middle class elements to stay out of the conflict.

Throughout her narrative, Case reveals a much more complicated racial picture than is traditionally presented for the late nineteenth-century South. She finds that unskilled black and white workers found common cause in their opposition to Chinese and convict labor. Though still adhering to the norms of white supremacy, black workers participated and took leading roles in the strikes. This cooperation across racial lines, according to Case, "which, limited though it was, opened up political and cultural space for black activism and contributed to a larger wave of third-party politics" (220). Although this work is particularly suited for graduate school seminars, it can also find a wide readership for those interested in southwestern history and more specifically labor history. Case has placed the Great Southwest Strike in the pantheon of great labor struggles such as Hay-market, Homestead, and Pullman, thus adding a neglected southern component to a national labor historiography dominated by northern events.