The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972 Page: 188
566 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
ton detectives to break the strike and reduce the steel workers' union
to an impotency from which it did not recover until the 1930's." John
Henry Kirby, while he never recognized unionism as a legitimate or
beneficial goal for the workers, likewise employed standard anti-union
tactics to deny his laborers the advantages provided by collective bar-
gaining. A short memory permitted him to defend himself in 1915
against a newspaper attack upon him as the "leading Texas repre-
sentative of the exploiters of labor ..."' with the statement that dur-
ing his years in the lumber industry "I have never had a strike or any
disagreement with my employees. On the contrary, every dollar my
company has earned has been distributed in wages to my pals who
toil about [my] mills. . . ."' The sobriquet, "the Peon's Pal," given
Kirby by at least some of the workers indicates that not everyone
in the piney woods shared his interpretation of his relations with em-
ployees of the Kirby Lumber Company, nor does the record bear him
out.!
After forming the Kirby Lumber Company in 1901, Kirby not only
reduced working hours in his mills without decreasing wages but
also, for a time at least, paid his workers on a weekly basis. Financial
difficulties stemming from Kirby's connection with the Houston Oil
Company reached serious proportions by the summer of 19o3 and led
to the first stirrings of unrest among workers employed by the Kirby
Lumber Company." Leaving his assistant, B. F. Bonner, in Houston
'McCloskey, American Conservatism, 148-150o.
*Winters (Texas) Tribune, April 23, 1915.
'Kirby to M. Lester Chambers, May 21, 1915, Kirby Papers.
sRuth A. Allen, East Texas Lumber Workers: An Economic and Social Picture, I87o-
z95o (Austin, 1961), 181. The Industrial Workers of the World press lampooned Kirby
as "Con H. Jirby, president of the Hotair Lumber Company." See Industrial Worker
(Spokane, Washington), May 8o, 1912.
'The Houston Oil Company of Texas and the Kirby Lumber Company were chartered
in 19o01 as the result of a complicated promoters' agreement between Kirby and Patrick
Calhoun of New York City. Under the terms of the agreement, Kirby agreed to convey
to the oil company title to some 1,ioo,ooo acres of timberland which he either owned or
"controlled" through options to purchase. The oil company then executed an agreement
with the Kirby Lumber Company allowing it to conduct cutting operations on the con-
veyed lands. The contract also specified stumpage rates and annual production quotas.
The purchase of sawmills and equipment required to implement the agreement placed
a severe financial burden on Kirby and, in fact, the Kirby Lumber Company never suc-
ceeded in meeting the payments required by the contract. Meanwhile, Calhoun's attempts
to obtain adequate financing for the Houston Oil Company, and thus provide some
indirect relief for Kirby, failed due to eastern coolness toward proposed Texas petroleum
ventures. The history of the Houston Oil Company and Kirby's involvement with it is
ably and thoroughly told in John O. King, The Early History of the Houston Oil Com-
pany of Texas, zgox-zgo8 (Houston, 1959).188
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 75, July 1971 - April, 1972, periodical, 1972; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101201/m1/200/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.