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Texas Rangers, Canadian Mounties, and the Policing of the Transnational Industrial Frontier, 1885–1910
ANDREW GRAYBILL
Though more often associated with the containment of indigenous peoples and the pursuit of outlaws, the Texas Rangers and Canadian Mounties of the late nineteenth century also played critical—if overlooked—roles in promoting industrialization on the Great Plains. This essay compares the involvement of the two constabularies in managing labor disputes at the largest collieries in Texas and the Canadian North-West during this era.
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DURING THE LAST THIRD of the nineteenth century, Canada and the United States experienced rapid industrial progress, characterized by extensive railroad construction and the rise of large-scale manufacturing. While the growth of the eastern metropolis seems the archetypal symbol of the era, the reach of industrialization touched all corners of North America, even the Great Plains, often thought of in this period as little more than wheat fields and cattle ranches. The West, in fact, played a central role in the transformations of the late nineteenth century. The region was home to vast deposits of coal, the fuel used to power locomotives and smelters involved in steel production.1 |
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Entrepreneurs who sought to develop the coal reserves of the West faced a range of difficulties, particularly a dearth of capital. They could ill afford strikes against their companies—actions driven by workers' concerns about low pay and the right to unionize—which clouded the investment climate and threatened to stall production. While the disputes that erupted along the Rocky Mountain mining frontier are well known, less familiar are those conflicts that took place at either end of the Great Plains, where significant coal mining operations had emerged in Thurber, Texas, and Lethbridge, Alberta.2 |
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As in many industrial disputes of this era, government officials intervened in the strikes against the Texas & Pacific Coal Company (T&PCC) and the Alberta Railway & Coal Company (AR&CC).3 Instead of deploying their militias, as was customary, authorities in Austin and Ottawa turned to their rural constabularies, the Texas Rangers and the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). While the Rangers and Mounties did much to keep the peace, their involvement thwarted unionization efforts and guaranteed the smooth functioning of the Texas and Alberta mines, the largest coal works at the edges of the grasslands. |
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This essay investigates the relationships between laborers, management, and state authorities in the coal fields of Texas and Alberta at the turn of the century. Using the extensive records of the Texas adjutant general and the comptroller's files of the North-West Mounted Police, I explore the contexts of police involvement in the disputes at Thurber and Lethbridge. While I conclude that there are significant structural and contingent differences between the two examples, I also argue that the net effects of police involvement at the T&PCC and the AR&CC were remarkably similar: the safeguarding of nascent mining ventures in order to promote overall industrial development. This study thus tells one chapter of a larger, transnational history linking the northern and southern extremes of the Great Plains in the late nineteenth century. As such, it challenges the narratives of exceptionalism that often characterize the histories of the Canadian and U. S. Wests. |
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