Jess Nevins <
jjnevins@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
<< Relations between labor and capital were extremely
bitter. Conservative defenders of the establishment used
newspapers to claim that criminals like Frank and Jesse James
... were caused by labor unrest, while liberal newspapers
portrayed criminals as heroes of folklore, with the James
brothers specifically compared to Robin Hood's men.
"This was the backdrop set for the rise of the outlaw hero in
popular American fiction in the mid-1870s. Characters like
Deadwood Dick and the James brothers remained outlaws, but
they were made into versions of the räuberroman (see: The
Räuberroman)hero. ...Officials who represented business and
the financial establishment were automatically corrupt and
automatically the enemy of the outlaw hero, who fought them
but defended the poor and the working class.
>>
Good stuff, as always, Jess!
RE: Jesse James as outlaw hero -- have you read Jesse
James: Last Rebel of the Civil War by T.J. STILES? (
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375705589/pulprack-20)
This is an excellent study about James and the entire
Missouri-Kansas guerilla war, the Civil War, and the post-war
rise of the James gang. He shows how Jesse built up his own
reputation as an outlaw for the underdog (creating his own
Robin Hood myth, which perpetuates to this day) and struck at
banks and railways with ties to the pre-war and wartime
Union. Fascinating stuff, well written.
RE: the western miners strike -- this continued to be
a story hook throughout the pulp era as well, perhaps because
of its historical precedents. For instance, in Frederick
Faust's (Max Brand) novel THE LONE RIDER (New York: Leisure
Books, 2005, first published in All-Story Weekly as a
five-part serial July 14 through August 11, 1917, titled as
"Fate's Honeymoon") the hero seeks redemption by allying with
a struggling mine owner and quelling a riot among the
disgruntled mine workers, who are threatening to walk off the
job.
Another work -- "Western Violence: Structure, Values,
Myth," by Richard Maxwell Brown, in Western Historical
Quarterly February 1993 (vol. 24, no. 1) -- addresses some of
the historical mining wars. This article appears in an
academic journal cited in Jesse James: Last Rebel of the
Civil War by T.J. Stiles, which I mention above. Brown writes
from a bit of a Marxist perspective, but he bases his
argument on an interesting hypothesis: that most events of
western violence (from 1850 to 1910) were prompted by what
the author calls the Western Civil War of Incorporation, or
what you and I might term the civilizing of the old west.
"The violence central to the Western Civil War of
Incorporation illustrates Charles Tilly's maxim that the
history of violence is the history and organization of
power."
Brown points to the Tonto Basin War (and Zane Grey's
fictionalized account, To the Last Man, plus the
vigilante-based story of Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The
Ox-Bow Incident), the Johnson County War (and Owen Wister's
fictional portrayal, The Virginian), and -- to bring the
discussion back 'round to mine strikes -- the Coeur d'Alene
Mining War (portrayed in two novels, May Arkwright Hutton's
The Coeur d'Alenes or A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in
Idaho and Mary Hallock Foote's Coeur d'Alene). For Brown,
representatives of the conflicting forces in the Western
Civil War of Incorporation are incorporation gunfighters
"lined up on the conservative side in the regional civil
war"-people like Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett
and Tom Horn-and resister gunfighters, or "those who
habitually used six-gun and rifle to reject incorporation"
(or outlaws), such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid. We might
also add to Brown's list of resisters the Clantons and their
gun-fighting
associates. Popular western heroes representing the
incorporation gunfighters would be Wister's eponymous
Virginian, Marshal Will Kane (portrayed by Gary Cooper) in
the film High Noon, and the mysterious Shane from Jack
Schaefer's novel (played by Alan Ladd in the film).
To remain On Topic, all this can probably also tie
back to Hammett's RED HARVEST and the various filmic homages
based on the novel.
- Duane Spurlock proprietor, The Pulp Rack
www.pulprack.com
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