Birth of a Texas Ghost Town: Thurber, 1886–1933

Chapter 3 Labor Difficulties

Chapter 3 Labor Difficulties I t was in December, 1886, that the Johnson Company opened Mine #1 on the site later known as Thurber. The working force for two years was composed principally of men who had been at Coalville1 where the Gould system had operated two mines for the purpose of supplying locomotive fuel.2 The Johnsons attempted to lower the wage scale from $1.95 to $1.50 per ton, and the miners refused to work for such wages. After two months of idleness, the Johnsons agreed to pay the demanded scale and work was resumed. Amicable relations existed between the Johnsons and their employees until September, 1888, at which time the Johnsons announced that they were unable to meet the August payroll. Although many of the miners felt that this inability to meet the payroll was caused by too large a part of the company’s profits being invested in the sinking of a second mine, they continued to mine coal during September. After having worked seven weeks without pay, said Gomer Gower, “the miners gave the Johnson Brothers five days grace and continued to work until September twenty-fifty with the hope that the Johnson Brothers would find some way out of the difficulty. At the expiration of the five days grace, in the absence of the much looked for pay, there was nothing for the miners to do but stop until they did receive their hard-earned wages.”3 Since the coal operators saw no possibility of being able to meet Labor Difficulties 35 the payroll, they decided to sell out to a newly-formed company, the Texas & Pacific Coal Company. Not only did the new owners purchase the Johnson mines and additional property, but on November 12, 1888, the Texas & Pacific Coal Company became the sole owner of a strike that was to cause it a great deal of trouble and expense for a long period of time. Colonel R.D. Hunter, president of the new company, described the situation as follows in his Annual Report for 1889: Possession was taken of the property November 12, 1888. I found at this time three hundred men of all nationalities in control. On the twenty-second of September, the miners had struck on account of non-payment of wages. They were receiving at that time one dollar and ninety-five cents per ton for coal-mining. My first action was to post notices that any employees of the old company would be given work on personal application to the superintendent at one dollar and forty cents for coalmining . We did not have an applicant. They took the advantage of having been on a strike with the Johnson Company and published to the world that they were on a strike on account of reduction of wages by the Texas Pacific Coal Company. Steps were immediately taken to secure new men, and the second greatest battle with the Knights of Labor in the state of Texas began.4 As stated in the Report of Hunter, not only did the miners refuse to accept the reduced wage scale, but they refused even to consider the other demands made by Hunter. These demands are adequately described by Gomer Gower, one of the Johnson miners at the time Colonel Hunter took possession. The Colonel demanded that the miners renounce their allegiance to the Knights of Labor and promise to refrain from CHAPTER 3 36 joining or otherwise affiliating in the formation of a union of any sort. This latter condition had the same effect on the miners as the shaking of a red shawl in the face of a bull. A committee of miners was selected to confer with the Colonel who received this committee cordially, yet with an ill-concealed belligerency and finally dismissed it with the admonition: “I’ll make a dollar look as big as a wagon wheel to you before I get through with you.” He very decidedly made his word good in this respect. . . . Another condition submitted by the Colonel to the idle miners was that the mining rate be on a screened coal basis.5 The miners very promptly and emphatically rejected all the conditions proposed by the Colonel and more particularly the condition that they forever renounce the union and make a yellow dog pledge and they forthwith declared a strike against the company.6 No sooner had the miners refused to...