How many cowboys died in bar room shootings

P-man · August 22, 2019, 12:04am

But he was never known to shoot an honest man, according to Bob Dylan.

mhendo · August 22, 2019, 2:20am

These figures are about right, although one thing worth remembering about cowboys is that it was generally not a year-round job, and some regions of the country, depending on climate and conditions, actually had pretty short seasons.

I have some figures for cowboy wages in among the historical sources that I rely on for teaching my history classes. Here’s one example that gives some idea of their income and working conditions.

The Panhandle strike occurred in the spring of 1883, before the
major mining strikes in the West. Texas and Colorado ranchers
had moved into the Panhandle late in the 1870s and by purchases,
leasing, intimidation, and brute force rapidly established large
territorially distinct ranches. By 1881 a handful of large operators
acting through the Panhandle Stock Association had a firm grip on
the better grazing land and newcomers, especially small stock
raisers, were effectively excluded. Ranch hands were forbidden to
own any cattle of their own and the Association enforced a
twenty-five or thirty-dollar standard wage. This compared favor-
ably with herder’s wages in central and especially southern Texas,
where Mexican and Negro cowboys predominated. But Panhandle
cowboys compared themselves to ranch workers in Wyoming and
Colorado, where wages were higher. This was not just white
supremacy; the harsh Panhandle winters made the working season
shorter than in most of Texas. In addition they felt that other
terms and conditions of their employment were unsatisfactory,
although these do not seem to have been any worse than elsewhere.

…

Sources differ on the exact set of grievances put together by the
cowboys; perhaps it was never all that uniform from ranch to
ranch. In the apparently authentic “cowboy ultimatum” that sur-
vives only the wage issue is mentioned. The strikers demanded a
minimum wage of fifty dollars a month for all cowboys regardless
of their skill. A rancher oriented newspaper decried the leveling
egalitarianism of this demand. But the cowboys had no intention
of abolishing status distinctions. Wagon bosses and other sub-
foremen were to receive seventy-five dollars a month, which
preserved the proportion of the previous pay differential.

…

Another strike, in midsummer 1886, may well have been inspired
by the spring roundup strike in Wyoming. It occurred during haying
time, was limited to one ranch (the Milbrook), and was a distinct
failure. The hands demanded a partial restoration of their wages,
from thirty to thirty-five dollars, but the owner refused, arguing that
he had no choice since the stock association set wages and violations
brought a fine of five hundred dollars. Twelve of the twenty-nine
summer hands quit and were set walking (to Laramie, a distance of
eighteen miles) “carrying their beds and baggage on their shoul-
ders” (cowboys rarely owned horses).

David E. Lopez, “Cowboy Strikes and Unions,” Labor History, Vol. 18 (Summer 1977), pp. 330-331, 335.

One thing that’s always fascinated me about American labor history is the extent to which employers’ (and, often, citizens’) hostility to unions often existed in a labor environment where employers shamelessly colluded to keep keep wages down and prevent the free market from working, as the stock associations did in these cases. Collective action for us, but not for you, has been a pretty significant tenet among business owners in the course of American history.

One thing that often kept cowboy wages down, according to this same article, was the fact that the cowboy image attracted more workers than the ranchers needed, making it easier for employers to keep wages low. Wages also fluctuated with the farm economy, and the American economy more generally. The major economic recessions of the 1870s and 1890s saw a drop in wages across many industries. And with cowboy work, as with many other occupations in the west, wages were often significantly higher in the early days of a region’s settlement, and declined over time as more people moved in.

Here are a few excerpts from letters written by a cowboy who worked in Nebraska, Montana, and South Dakota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The cattlemen are slowly getting out, or going into
sheep them selve’s. There is no irrigation in this part
of the State. And no land worth taking.

…

This man I am working for has a small bunch of
cattle and a small bunch of sheep on share’s; He has
his sheep on a small creek about four miles south of
here. I go out about once a week and move the
herder’s camp for him. I am doing all kinds of ranch work
now day’s. I put in a small patch of potatoe’s yesterday
I do not spend all my time in the saddle like I
did in the Sand Hills and South Dacota. I some times
wish I did; But I get better wages than I did then-I
was offered one job of steady riding; but would have
to batch and cook for a batchelor And only 35 dollar’s
a month. So I concluded to stay with this untill after
haying.

Earl J. Martin to his sister and brother-in-law
May 9, 1903 (Montana)

All the above from Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 60-65.

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How many cowboys died in bar room shootings

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