The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 103, July 1999 - April, 2000 Page: 429
554 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
"On the Train and Gone"
plans where regions with traditional surplus labor resources, including
all parts of Texas, were to release surplus manpower to areas with short-
ages, such as the West Coast and Midwest.6 This federal policy exacerbat-
ed tensions between rural employers and the state because it encour-
aged the flight of rural workers from farms and lumber mills by means
of labor piracy and individual outmigration.
Under the war emergency, national military mandates instigating the
export of workers from the Southeast and Southwest ultimately revealed
the limits of rural elites' power in these regions. Employers attempted to
immobilize workers through the enforcement of old and new labor laws.
Yet, African American and Mexican American workers exercised their
legal right to move. During the war, defense industries and federal labor
networks extended economic and social opportunities for unskilled
workers. In rural Texas, white, black, and Latino families used these for-
mal and informal networks to sever the bonds of dependence with their
employers. For Mexican Americans and African Americans especially,
the war fused together the concepts of mobility and freedom.'
Following the Civil War, farm worker mobility characterized the south-
ern sharecropping system. Throughout the cotton belt of the American
South, many sharecropper and tenant families moved annually in search
of economic betterment, and to exercise one of the few rights that farm-
ing families had. As rural areas of the South and Southwest industrial-
ized during the Gilded Age, farming families also sought to supplement
their incomes with work in textiles, mining, lumber, tobacco, and food
processing. Such seasonal work initially involved moving short distances
between farms, mills, mines, or camps, yet, by the early twentieth centu-
ry, farmers and farm workers found themselves moving farther afield to
earn a living in these seasonal industries.8
Ranks of migrant workers expanded dramatically during the 192os
and 193os as farming operations became more mechanized and capital-
ized and New Deal farm policies released rural families from the land
throughout the cotton belt. With the shift of national cotton culture
6 Gerald Nash, The American West Transformed, The Impact of the Second World War (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 44-45; George Flynn, The Mess in Washington, Manpower
Moblizatzon in World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), 68-7o.
7 For the meaning of African American mobility in the South, see William Cohen, At Freedom's
Edge Black Mobilaty and the White Quest for Racial Control (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1991); Pete Daniel, Shadow of Slavery, Peonage in the South, 1go1-1969 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972), Gerald Shenk, "Race, Manhood and Manpower: Mobilizing Rural
Georgia for World War I," Georgia Hzstorcal Quarterly, 81 (Fall, 1997), 622-662.
8 For discussion of worker mobility in the sharecropping system, see Gerald D. Jaynes,
Branches Without Roots- Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1862-1882 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986). For discussion of seasonal mobility between agriculture
and industry, see Jacqueline Dowd Hall, et al. (eds.), Likhe a Family. The Making of a Southern Cotton
Mzll World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); and Daniel Letwin, The
Challenge of Interracial Unionsm, Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1921 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998).429
2000
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 103, July 1999 - April, 2000, periodical, 2000; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101220/m1/485/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.