The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West

The sound of jangling spurs is almost audible as Lause (Free Labor), professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, upends the mythic figure of the stoic, independent cowboy. This is great news for scholars who, like Lause, are interested in how the American West became what it is. Lause builds on fellow historians’ analyses of the role of racial violence in the settlement of the West by highlighting how class conflict provoked hostilities when rich white landowners schemed to increase their profit margins. Landowners viewed cowboys as laborers and resisted attempts by workers to agitate for higher wages and better working conditions. In a wonderful chapter about cowboy culture, Lause shows that, though they loom large in the mythical West, cowboys were actually only a small portion of the population. But they were indispensable to profitable ranching and they knew it. In 1883, cowboys in the Texas Panhandle organized a strike to secure a 40% wage increase. Its success inspired more strikes across the West and encouraged Westerners to participate in a variety of political and labor organizations. There’s great information and intriguing ideas here, though they are often buried in jargon-heavy prose. Lause clearly demonstrates that collective action, rather than staunch individualism, ruled the American West. Illus. (Jan. '18)

This review was updated to reflect a pub-date change.