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The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor. By Theresa A. Case. Red River Valley Books, No. 3. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010. Pp. [xii], 279. $40.00, ISBN 978-1-60344-170-4.)
This study of the 1886 Southwest railroad strike addresses several concerns of Gilded Age labor and social historians, including the influence of the courts in labor conflict, the effectiveness of workers' biracial alliances, and the role of masculinity in worker protest. The strike pitted the rapidly expanding Knights of Labor against Jay Gould, one of the nation's most powerful corporate magnates, in a period when railroads were critical to industry and commerce. The bitter contest affected rail lines in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois. Theresa A. Case highlights how during the strike the judiciary broadened the grounds on which to issue injunctions in labor disputes, the most important factor in the strike's defeat. This expansion of "federal courts' repressive role" set the stage for the failure of the Pullman strike in 1894 and...