TYLER, Texas ( KETK ) – Did you know that the Piney Woods of East Texas and Louisiana were once the site of some of the most violent labor struggles in the region’s history?

The struggles and labor disputes in KETK’s series East Texas’ Biggest Labor Disputes tell the story of how workers from all different industries fought to keep their jobs, unionize their workplaces, secure wage increases, healthcare benefits and more.

On every Monday and Thursday until Labor Day on Sept. 2, KETK will present one of the eight most consequential chapters in East Texas labor history. Be sure to stay up to date with KETK so you won’t miss the next edition of East Texas’ Biggest Labor Disputes on Thursday, Aug. 15.

1911: The Piney Woods

For two years the Piney Woods of Louisiana and East Texas were rife with a series of strikes that would come to be known as the Louisiana and Texas Lumber War of 1911–1912.

This “war” was fought by sawmill workers organized as the Brotherhood of Timber Workers against lumber companies like the Kirby Lumber Company owned by Kirbyville namesake John Henry Kirby and the Long-Bell Lumber Company.

According to a journal article from Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association (LHA), Kirby demonstrated friendship to workers and managed to reduce hours of labor at the mills from 10 to eight without reducing wages. The article said that he was famous in East Texas for putting children through college, providing Christmas dinners, toys and bibles for residents of his sawmill towns.

Kirby reportedly led the fight against unionizing the mills because he was very dedicated to a free enterprise system, against big-government and adamant in opposing “one-worldism”, anarchism, socialism and communism.

Kirby was a leading figure in the South Lumber Operators Association (SLOA) which represented 87 companies across seven states. The association worked to associate the workers’ cause with those “foreign” and “radical” doctrines that Kirby so adamantly opposed.

Early in 1911, the SLOA prepared a yellow dog contract , a type of contract that says workers, like the sawmill operators, couldn’t join a union, like the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, according to the LHA article.

As this contract spread to sawmills, several strikes would start and force many mills to close. The conflict spread and peaked in 1912, with new support from the renowned International Workers Of the World (IWW).

The year was marked by rumors of an assassination attempt on Kirby’s life and the editor of the Rip Saw socialist newspaper, George Creel, was run out of Oakdale, La. following a nearly successful assassination attempt on life, according to the LHA article.

The conflict became most violent at Grabow, La. where 4 people were killed and more than 40 were wounded in a shootout between between union men and company riot officers, according to an article from the East Texas Historical Journal . The LHA article says that 62 union men were put on a highly publicized trial in Lake Charles and ultimately acquitted of all charges.

“The outcome was a tremendous moral victory for the workers, and the entire trial background and proceedings contributed to a great radical push in Louisiana at the end of the year, but the final result was the union’s demise as a viable force in the Louisiana-Texas piney woods,” professor James E. Fickle wrote in the LHA article.

The brotherhood’s demise came after their first and only official strike. Three days before the Grabow trial started, the SLOA had locked out about a thousand lumber workers at Merryville, La. in attempts to provoke a strike on top of a trial which would bankrupt the union, according to the LHA article.

The strike started on Nov. 11 of 1912 and by the end of the year production was restored in Merryville with scab workers . The IWW pulled out support for the union to concentrate their efforts in the Pacific northwest and the strike was reportedly called off in the summer of 1913.

By 1916, the Brotherhood of Timber Workers was dead and the SLOA and Kirby declared their victory over the “Ishmaelitic organization”, according to the LHA article.

To read the rest of this series for yourself, visit the following article:

As this article shows, East Texas has a deep history of labor activity and because of that deep history this article is not comprehensive. Many labor disputes, even modern ones, are under-reported on, so they’re often only known about by the people who lived through them.

Anyone who would like to tell us about any labor disputes not covered in this series is invited to email newsroom@ketk.com.

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