Similarities About Unionization At The Texas And Pacific Coal Company Min In Thurber

Scholarly Article Essay
C. What was unusual about unionization at the Texas & Pacific Coal Company min in Thurber, Texas? Describe life in Thurber, the obstacles unions had to overcome, and the result of miners going on strike. Life at The Texas & Pacific Coal Company was not always bad, Gower wrote: “...Thurber was transformed from a ‘Bull-Pen’ in its early history, into one of the most… pleasant mining communities in the entire country.”(Rhinehart, “Underground Patriots 509). It wasn’t until the owners created scrips, payments in goods before paydays, forced employees’ debits to outnumber credits raising tension and creating an unusual unionization in Thurber. To accomplish a pleasant community, Thurber’s miner labor activists emphasized

Only a small group of politicians supported black suffrage. All were Radical Republicans who emerged during the war. Outnumbered, the Radicals in congress still managed to win broad Republican support for parts of their Reconstruction program, including male enfranchisement. The Reconstruction policy soon became bound to black suffrage, a historic change that originally had few political backing. Presidential Reconstruction took effect in the summer of 1865, but had consequences. Most exasperating to Radical Republicans was “black codes”; all seven states took steps to ensure a landless, dependent black labor force. Johnson’s plan assured the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment- neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States- but the codes infringed strictly on the freedmen’s behavior. Racial segregation in public places, racial intermarriage, jury service by black and court testimony by black against whites were all popular codes. These black codes left freedmen no longer slaves but not totally liberated either. In December 1865, Congressed refused to seat delegates of ex-Confederate states. Establishing the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Republicans prepared to take apart black codes and lock ex- Confederates out of power. Radical Republicans were still a minority in Congress. In March 1866, Congress passed a bill that made blacks U.S citizens with the same civil rights

Investors rushed to profit from rising prices, new markets, high tariffs (tax on imports), and seemingly boundless opportunities. But in 1873 a severe panic triggered a five-year depression. Banks closed, farm prices plummeted steel furnaces stood idle, and one out of four railroads failed. Within two years, eighteen thousand businesses went bankrupt; 3 million were unemployed by 1878. Wage cuts hit those still employed; labor protests occurred; and industrial violence spread. Republicans and blacks get blamed for the panic, which brings violence, racism, segregation and disenfranchisement. Jim Crow Laws, a term given to institutionalize and segregate and discriminate against slaves, were also created to limit voting rights, prevent contact, and prevent black advancement. . On the national scale it was very common to view blacks as a joke. When a society says you’re inferior you start to believe it yourself. Which lead to the Great migration (1915-1918). The Great migration was a movement of African Americans from the real south to the northwest. Push factors lead African American to migrate were stolen political rights, no education for family, limiting black voting rights, pole taxes, reading exams, and grandfather clauses. Pull factors, economic depression in the south, racial prejudice and northern employers had a need for African American population to fill also