Yeomen, sharecroppers, and Socialists : plain folk protest in Texas, 1870-1914 / Kyle G. Wilkison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilkison, Kyle Grant, 1960-

Series:

Elma Dill Russell Spencer series in the West and Southwest ; no. 30.

Elma Dill Russell Spencer series in the West and Southwest ; no. 30

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rural poor--Texas--Hunt County.

Rural poor.

Rural poor--Texas--Hunt County--Social conditions--19th century.

Rural poor--Texas--Hunt County--Social conditions--20th century.

Group identity--Texas--Case studies.

Group identity.

Land tenure--Texas.

Land tenure.

Farm tenancy--Economic aspects--Texas.

Farm tenancy.

Religion and culture--Texas.

Religion and culture.

Agriculture and politics--Texas.

Agriculture and politics.

Hunt County (Tex.)--Rural conditions.

Hunt County (Tex.).

Texas--Politics and government--1865-1950.

Texas.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (310 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A&M University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As the nineteenth century ended in Hunt County, Texas, a way of life was dying. The tightly knit, fiercely independent society of the yeomen farmers--"plain folk," as historians have often dubbed them--was being swallowed up by the rising tide of a rapidly changing, cotton-based economy. A social network based on family, religion, and community was falling prey to crippling debt and resulting loss of land ownership. For many of the rural people of Hunt County and similar places, it seemed like the end of the world. In Yeomen, Sharecroppers, and Socialists historian Kyle G. Wilkison analyzes the patterns of plain-folk life and the changes that occurred during the critical four decades spanning the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Political protest evolved in the wake of the devastating losses experienced by the poor rural majority, and Wilkison carefully explores the interplay of religion and politics as Greenbackers, Populists, and Socialists vied for the support of the dispossessed tenant farmers and sharecroppers. With its richly drawn contextualization and analysis of the causes and effects of the epochal shifts in plain-folk society, Kyle G. Wilkison's Yeomen, Sharecroppers, and Socialists will reward students and scholars in economic, regional, and agricultural history.

Contents:

Introduction

From homeplace to no place: the changing Texas economy, 1870-1910

Farmers and wealth distribution in Hunt County, Texas, 1870-1910

"A legitimate and useful life": family, work, and community

"The same class of people": cohesion and conflict

"The land shall not be sold forever": land and God in 1910s Texas

"Whose planet is this anyway?": land and the politics of dissent

Conclusion

Appendix A. Tables for Chapter 2

Appendix B. Tables for Chapter 3

Appendix C. Methods for Chapter 3

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-287) and index.

ISBN:

1-299-05415-3

1-60344-413-0

OCLC:

605885463