The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956 Page: 164
587 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
makers of Marion County and the turtle-soup canners of Calhoun
County, had been lost in the shuffle of changing times. The eight
thousand Texans who manned the factories in 187o received
$1,750,000, an average annual wage of $226 ($111 less than in
186o) .26
There was, however, a considerable variation in wages. The
nine employees of Galveston's gas company were the highest paid
industrial workers in the state, averaging $1,20o each, but the four
gas-company employees in neighboring Harris County received
just a little over $20o each.27 Workers in Galveston's sash, door,
and blind factories averaged $i,o13 a year, while their colleagues
in Marion County got only $345.28 Iron castings shops in Galveston
paid average annual wages of $936, but those in Harris County
paid less than half as much. Again, the engine and boiler factories
of Galveston paid an average of $712 to each employee, while those
in Harris County paid $442. Other industries which paid average
annual wages over $500 were bookbinderies, plumbing and gas-
fitting establishments, shipyards, cottonseed oil mills, builders of
railroad cars, and publishers. Makers of coffins, boats, ice, and
stone monuments paid their craftsmen $400 or more a year. Over
$Boo a year went to workers in general machinery, tin, copper,
and sheet-iron ware, confectionery, bakery products, carpentering
and building, furniture, agricultural implements, and salt. Next
came the employees of breweries, packing houses, woolen mills,
and carriage and wagon factories. Workers in men's clothing, cot-
ton goods, hides and tallow, mineral and soda water, lumber, and
watch and clock repairing received between $20o and $250 a year.
Ten other industries-"food preparations, animal," butchering,
saddles and harness, cigars, boots and shoes, brick, cooperage,
artificial building stone, castor oil, and stone and earthen ware-
paid over $170 a year, on the average. From this point in the list,
the annual wage descends rapidly through soap and candles, job
26U. S. Census, x87o, III, 392-393, 422, 573-574; ibid., I, (Washington, 1872), 682-683;
U. S. Census, x86o, II, 594; Andrew Forest Muir, The Thirty-second Parallel Pacific
Railroad in Texas to 1872 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1949), 186.
27U. S. Census, z87o, III, 735-736.
28sbid., 573-574, 735-736. In Galveston County, forty-seven men in four shops
turned out $166,3oo worth of sashes, doors, and blinds; in Marion County, fifty-eight
men in two shops turned out only $85,500 worth. The average wage in this industry
was $592.164
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956, periodical, 1956; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101162/m1/182/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.