Panhandle cowboys strike against big ranches
Published 7:00 pm, Monday, March 30, 2009
When the March 31, 1883, deadline came and went without word one from the big ranches, cowboys across the Texas Panhandle knew their bluff had been called.
The cowpunchers had two choices: cave into the cattle bosses who paid them near-starvation wages while treating them like dirt, or strike for more money and the preservation of their way of life.
A week earlier, two dozen cowhands had squatted around a smoky campfire and aired their grievances against the giant spreads. The long list of complaints was turned into a tough ultimatum which they presented to their respective employers.
The cowboys, like most workers before and since, wanted more cash in their pockets. Their proclamation called for doubling the monthly wage of the ordinary hand to $50 with "good" cooks receiving the same. Seventy-five dollars was the petitioned pay for wagon bosses, a sum many already were pulling down. But wage increases were not at the heart of the dispute.
The key issues concerned mavericking and the right of the cowboy to tend his own private herd on the open range. For years the working wrangler had collected unmarked strays, his only means of accumulating cattle and a shot at a better life. But the new absentee owners of the Panhandle ranches prohibited this practice and denied grazing rights to their own men.
The cowboy was convinced that the growing power of the corporate ranches threatened his very existence. He feared being reduced to a peon on a pony with no future beyond chuck-wagon chow and a meager paycheck. The first of its kind strike in 1883 was the endangered cowboy's tardy attempt to keep his independence and self-respect.
Lesser mortals would not have dared to challenge such formidable foes as the big-business ranching operations. Four of the five outfits were filthy rich enterprises bankrolled by out-of-state interests with political clout that equaled their enormous assets.
The LIT Ranch had been bought by Scottish financiers from Major George W. Littlefield. Both the LX and LS were backed by East Coast bankers, who did not know a Longhorn from a jack rabbit. As for the XIT, destined to be the Goliath of the group, it was owned by a Chicago-based syndicate which gladly accepted 2 1/4 million acres of Panhandle real estate as compensation for the construction of a new state capitol.
To these moneygrubbing moguls, the Texas cowboy was a coal miner or factory worker who happened to ride a horse and was as easily replaced as his mount. Western folk hero or not, the boardroom barons would not permit him to stand in the way of the colossal fortune to be made in the Panhandle.
The strike was timed to spoil the spring roundup. The rebels reasoned that the ranchers, crippled by the work stoppage, would capitulate in a matter of days.
The ranchers reacted to the ultimatum by offering petty wage concessions hoping to split the cowboy ranks. On the mavericking issue, however, they budged not an inch, and the walkout became official on April 1, 1883.
From the beginning, the ranchers pulled no punches. Strikers were fired on the spot, banned from the chuck wagon and their company horses confiscated. With most of them now on foot, the cowboys camped north of Tascosa confident of an early end to the stand-off.
Though badly hurt at first by the labor loss, the ranches managed to function and to carry out the roundup. Non-striking hands and jobless cowpunchers who eagerly crossed the imaginary picket line took up the slack.
The campfire ultimatum had warned ominously that comrades staying on the job "shall suffer the consequences." The strikebreakers and ranch owners braced themselves for an inevitable wave of violence, but the anticipated mayhem never materialized.
The insurgents simply did not have the stomach for retaliating against cowboys, who kept on working. Many were friends and even the scab strangers were brothers in the same vanishing fraternity. In a region so well known for gunplay, not a single drop of blood was shed in the unique conflict.
Boredom soon got the best of the strikers, who straggled into nearby Tascosa. Hogtown, the saloon section of the oasis, profited handsomely from the cavorting cowboys. Drinking, gambling and women of ill repute left them flat broke and in no shape to continue the struggle. By the end of April, the strike flickered and died. During the last days of the doomed revolt, many of the demoralized strikers got their old jobs back. But the die-hards, who held out to the bitter end, were blacklisted throughout the Panhandle.
Most of those outcasts headed west to Wyoming and Montana, the more popular destinations. Some of the pariahs chose to remain, determined to take their revenge against the big ranches, and the seeds were sown for discord and death on the Texas range.
(Bartee Haile writes about Texas history. Contact him at email@example.com or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549)