Chinese Immigration And
Labor in The 19th Century
By: William Clark
Current Issues in Information Transfer
Emporia State University
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Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to give a brief summary of Chinese immigration to the
American west in the 19th century and the issues surrounding their immigration. The main
reasons why the Chinese would immigrate to America, especially the west, and how that
effected Americans living in the west. The paper will talk about the accomplishments that
Chinese labor was vital for completion that occurred in the west. The paper will also talk about
legislation directed at the Chinese that seem to be a product of popular sentiment.
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Introduction
It is well known within the historical memory of most Americans that the Chinese were
a vital working force behind mining, farming, and the construction of the transcontinental
railroad in the western United States. Most people today understand that the Chinese suffered
from a certain degree of bigotry and that they prevailed, emerging as a figure representing hard
work in the face of adversity. The Chinese are mostly understood to have been used as a cheap
labor force necessary to the economic expansions in the west. What is neglected within
historical and cultural memory is just how vital the Chinese were and just how bad they had it
in America.
The Chinese role in building up the west was scoffed at in the 19th century and is to this
day not given the full credit it deserves. Furthermore the history of racism the Chinese suffered
in the 19th century is not widely taught and their contributions were rarely written about. Even
with the change of attitude in the mid-20th century historians seem to still neglect the role the
Chinese had in the railroad, farms, and mines through the lack of historical and scholarly
literature.
The history of the Chinese’s role in 19th century America and the efforts to control them
through legislation is somewhat lost due to the lack of scholarly material which has influenced
popular belief today.
Chinese Immigration
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The article, “Chinese History U.S. and Canada” describes a little bit of what attracted the
Chinese to America and what pushed the Chinese out of their own country. China was going
through some major economic and social turmoil at the time of the California gold rush through
to the building of the CPRR (Central Pacific Railroad). The gold rush in California was what
caused the initial attraction of the Chinese to California. The main push came from the growing
instability in Southern China due to the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars (Holland, 2007,
p.1). The Chinese government was unable to maintain peace in the south and the Chinese were
suffering from the economic and social losses caused by war, and wanted to find something
stable.
From 1851-1860 more than 40,000 Chinese had immigrated to the U.S. due to the
California gold rush of 1849. By the mid-1850s the Chinese were securing jobs as miners and
farmers that would work for less money than Americans or Europeans. And by 1881 more than
400,000 Chinese migrants had arrived in the American west looking for work. Therefore
employment opportunities for the Europeans and Americans decreased in California due to an
increased workforce or population and a decrease in the average wage that workers were
willing to take. These social and economic factors prompted anti-Chinese legislation and
greater racial hatred (Carson, 2006, p. 5).
The correlation between an influx in population of a minority group that has come from
a disadvantaged area in order to find opportunity and ethnic conflict has long been known. In
the article, Anti-Chinese Politics In California In The 1870s: An Intercounty Analysis, by Fong and
Markham they lay out and describe some of the possible predictors of ethnic conflict and their
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repercussions. Two of the predictors that Fong describes can be directly applied to the Chinese
in the 19th century and to American history in general.
1. “Where the proportion of the minority population is high, members of the majority are more
likely to perceive the minority group as a threat. The threat stems from three factors. First, where their
proportion of the population is high, minority group members are usually more visible, increasing the
majority group’s awareness of their presence. Second, a larger proportion of the minority members,
most of whom are usually economically disadvantaged, increases the possibility of wage reductions or
job loss for majority group members, especially those on the lower rungs of the occupational ladder
(Bonacich 1972, 1979; Olzak, Shanahan, and McEneaney 1996; Quillian 1995). Third, a large minority
representation makes it easier for minorities to organize to get more resources and better treatment”
(Fong & Markham, 2002, p. 4).
2. “A rapid growth rate of the minority population also leads to more intense conflict.
Regardless of their proportion in the population, a rapidly growing minority group creates more
potential for conflict. Members of the majority group note the rapid increase in minority population and
expect increased competition in the labor market and for desirable housing and public services
(Lieberson 1980; Olzak 1986; Olzak and Shanahan 1996)” (Fong & Markham, 2002, p. 4).
Both predictors and their effects on the majority are what were seen in the 19th century
toward the Chinese. The legislation against the Chinese, the rampant bigotry by the majority in
the workforce, and the dehumanization or feminization of the Chinese were all consequences
of the majority’s fear of the growing minority. Growth that was especially evident in the west
coupled with the mounting disdain over the wages which the Chinese were not only willing to
work for, but that was also all employers were willing to pay them. Such a situation of need
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and greed creates an atmosphere where the Chinese had to take what was offered. Therefore
more Chinese got jobs because the majority would not take the smaller wages for the same
jobs that the Chinese had to take to survive.
San Francisco and Sacramento
California was the state in the 19th century that had the biggest population of Chinese
migrants and sojourners looking for work. Regardless of the fact that most Chinese wanted
only to be in America until they had reached their economic goals and that the Chinese helped
California’s economy, most of the Anti-Chinese sentiment came from California. The largest
populations of Chinese and the largest cities of Anti-Chinese influence were San Francisco and
Sacramento. San Francisco was the early destination for most Chinese that were coming to
California for work and was the center of the Anti-Chinese movement in the 1850’s and 1860’s
(Cole, 1978).
Sacramento was later important to Chinese migrants because it became the base for the
Chinese working in the Mother Lode mines, valley agriculture, and for the railroad. Sacramento
became known by the Chinese as “Fee Yow”, or city of second importance and became
acknowledged as a “strongly anti-Chinese community” by Californians (Cole, 1978, p. 3).
Anti-Chinese Legislation
An article in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Interdisciplinary
History, discusses the correlations between stature, living conditions, socioeconomic status,
immigration, health, employment, and the implications of those elements on some of the
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legislation enacted by California. In 1885 California State legislature passed the, “Act to
Discourage the Immigration to This State of Persons Who Can Not Become Citizens Thereof
and, in 1858, the Act to Prevent the Further Immigration of Chinese or Mongolians to This
State. Chinese immigrants older than eighteen who did not pay California's state foreign
miners license tax were subject to a $2.50 fee” (Carson, 2006, p. 5).
California continued to pass legislation directly targeting the Chinese and Asian
communities throughout the time period leading up to the building of the CPRR because of the
belief the Chinese were taking jobs and allowing employers too much wage negotiation by their
working for less money. By 1863 California passed State Legislation that is an obvious
representation of how most Americans felt toward the Chinese as a lesser people with no rights
of input or opinion. “In 1863, the California State legislature passed a law that prohibited
Indian, Mongolian, or Chinese immigrants from giving court evidence for or against any white
man” (Carson, 2006, p. 6).
Image of Chinese Men
“During the 19th century American journalists, cartoonists, novelists, and playwrights
represented Chinese American men as both docile pets and nefarious invaders; potential
citizens and unassimilable aliens; effeminate, queue-wearing eunuchs and threateningly
masculine, minotaur like lotharios” (Cheung, 2007, p. 1).
The ambivalence regarding the Chinese was often associated with the class of the
concerned party. Chinese ambivalence was used in negotiations between company employers’
and financier’s’ when dealing with Unions and laborers. It was prudent for either side of the
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negotiations to adopt the image of the Chinese that gave them an argument. The employers
and financiers would adopt the view that the Chinese were tame and nonthreatening. The
other side of the negation, the Unions and laborers, would adopt the view that the Chinese
were uncontrollable and threatening (Cheung, 2007). Both views of the Chinese were
paradoxically held by the public and both images of the Chinese were portrayed by the media.
Ultimately both sides of the negotiation had a case that could then be used to at least get each
side’s proposals heard.
Considering the general ambiguity of views held of the Chinese employers felt it best to
perpetuate those images of the Chinese laborers as “not quite” men. In consideration and
trepidation of knowing what can happen when a people is subjugated to the point of uprising
employers could not let the Chinese be represented as slaves either, but rather pets.
The article Anxious and Ambivalent Representations: Nineteenth-Century Images of
Chinese American Men, describes how people thought of the Chinese and how that reflected
and impacted the ways others represented the Chinese. Also the article describes some ways
in which this imagery was used against the Chinese and for the Chinese. Some views of the
Chinese were used to help them get work, but in a greater sense used in favor of the employers
that could then exploit the Chinese laborer.
In order to accomplish this while assuaging the anxiety of the American worker and the
public that the Chinese were going to take people’s jobs employers had to use some of the
already stereotypical imagery within the public forum while dismissing allegations of slavery.
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Employers began stressing that the Chinese earned wages and were not slaves.
Employers accented the ideas that the Chinese were passive and servile men that caused no
harm. “Essentially, employers needed to sterilize Chinese will and all signs of such will, such as
revolutionary fervor and sexual desire, in order to make their use benign” (Cheung, 2007, p.2).
The practice was not lost on the CPRR Company and soon Crocker and Stanford, the
founders of the company, had come up with their own strategy of sterilizing the Chinese
laborers’ image. Crocker and Sanford would not call the Chinese “laborers”, nor would they call
them men. Crocker and Stanford labeled the Chinese as “pets”. Such a label perpetuated an
idea of loyalty and controllability of the Chinese within Crocker and Stanford’s men (Cheung,
2007, p. 2). A pet is also seen as something less-than-human and can therefore be treated as
such which freed bosses and employers from remorse or moral duty to treat the Chinese
better.
Chinese and the Railroad
“1858, China and the United States signed the Treaty of Tientsin. Under the terms of
that one-sided deal, China agreed to prohibit permanent immigration to the United States. The
treaty was not abrogated until 1959…. Thousands of men signed prepaid labor contracts that
included free transoceanic passage to the West Coast of the United States. The president and
the Senate encouraged and facilitated this immigration by approval of the Burlingame Treaty of
1868. More than half of the immigrants during this period came from Guangdong Province's
Taishan County. These immigrants were poor, came from rural areas, and spoke the Cantonese
dialect of Chinese. The labor contracts typically were for five years, and the Chinese who signed
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them intended to return to China after their sojourn in the United States” (Holland, 2007, p.2).
Unfortunately the promises of wealth for most of the Chinese immigrants were just that. Most
Chinese ended up being unable to leave the United States because they had not made enough
money to do so.
Chinese Work on the Railroad
The first tracks were laid by the CPRR (Central Pacific Railroad Company) on January 8,
1863. The CPRR at this time only hired white men, mostly Irish and some German. Both the
railroad company, and the nation, had strong predigests regarding Chinese men and refused to
hire any. Chinese immigrants would not be hired to work for the railroad until 1865 when
laborers, white men, were in short supply.
The article, The Workers of The Central Pacific, illustrates how most of the Chinese
immigrants came to America by trading corporations under an indentured servants plan and
how the decision to hire Chinese came about. One major problem was that a large percent of
the white workers in the first years of the railroad would take the free trip west on the CPRR
dime and then abandon the camps when they got to a mining area. The article tells how
Charles Crocker, who was a founding member of the CPRR, first suggested the plan to hire
Chinese workers. Crocker discovered that for every 1000 white workers hired only 100 stayed
on and 900 left after only a week of work. Therefore a decision was reached to begin hiring
Chinese workers.
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On To Promontory
Finally by the summer of 1868 the CPRR was through the Sierras, over Cape Horn, and
on its way to Promontory, Utah to meet the Union Pacific Railroad Company with the help of
12,000 Chinese, or 80 percent of the total workforce of the CPRR (PBS.org, 2012). The railroad
was completed in 1869 with a big celebration that would be immortalized in a famous photo
that shows the meeting of the Union Pacific’s No. 119 and Central Pacific's Jupiter. The photo
shows hundreds of white workers standing on and around the engines toasting and shaking
hands but not one Chinese laborer.
Pegler-Gordon in the article, Chinese Exclusion, Photography, and the Development of
U.S. Immigration Policy, says this picture is,” is a graphic metaphor for the ways that the
Chinese were excluded from the United States and the ways that their long-standing presence
in this country has been erased” (Pegler-Gordon, 2006, p. 2). The exclusion of the Chinese
laborers in the photo marking the connections of the transcontinental railroad is quite literally a
picture of intentions. The completion of the railroad marks when the Chinese were no longer
welcome by their old employers. The picture excluding the Chinese from the history of the
transcontinental railroad connection is exactly what people had in mind for them in the
country.
Exclusion
As mentioned the areas with the largest and fastest growing population of minorities is
the one that will be most strongly against that minority regardless of the economic push gained
from their work. A product of the anti-Chinese sentiment by Sacramento residents was
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eventually reflected in the popular newspaper The Sacramento Union. As Cole talks about in
the article, Chinese Exclusion: The Capitalist Perspective of the Sacramento Union, 1850-1882,
the Sacramento Union played a major role in the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882
that placed a moratorium on Chinese labor immigration for ten years. The Sacramento Union
was vital to the passing of the Act as a supporter even though there was a significant business
segment represented by the paper in the 1850’s and 1860’s that had an ambivalent and at
times pro-Chinese stance that counterbalanced the exclusionary segment of the people.
“During the 1870's, however, a number of factors led the editors of the Union, and the
pro-business Republican interests they represented, to back the exclusion movement. Their
support proved vital to the eventual passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.” (Cole, 1978,
p. 3).
Such an Act had never been passed before and, “Historians of immigration have long
claimed that Chinese exclusion marked a new development in immigration policy as the first
law to discriminate against a group of immigrants on the basis of race and class” (PeglerGordon, 2006, p. 3).
Conclusion
During the 19th century the Chinese that immigrated and worked in America had
to struggle against racism, classism, and exploitation. The Chinese were not the cause of some
of California’s or the Country’s problems, rather they helped solve them. Without the Chinese
laborers America would not have been able to become an Industrial giant via the
transcontinental railroad. Nor would America have had all the cheap manpower required to
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maintain the mines and farms in the west. The historiography of Chinese labor in the 19th
century has changed. An appreciation of the work the Chinese did under such horrible
conditions of social abuse is evident in the writings and undertones of the information
available. There is no effort to sugar coat the treatment of the Chinese in the available
literature. The truth is trying to be told but it is hard because the truth was never professionally
recorded. Many of the Chinese laborers’ stories are lost to time. But there is an effort being
made to reveal those who Chinese that helped build the west and to include their stories into
the historical memories of Americans.
However the effort to recognize and recount the Chinese experience is slowly being
undertaken. And only as recently as 1999 were the Chinese thanked publicly by California
Congressman John T. Doolittle: “Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the Chinese – American
community and pay tribute to its ancestors to the building of the American transcontinental
railroad” (CPRR.org, 2012).
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Reference List
Carson, S. (2006). The biological living conditions of nineteenth-century Chinese males in
America. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History. Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 201-217
Cheung, F. (2007). Anxious and ambivalent representations: nineteenth-century images of
Chinese American men. The Journal of American Culture, 30:3
Cole, C. (1978). Chinese exclusion: the capitalist perspective of the Sacramento union, 18501882. California History, Vol. 57, No. 1, The Chinese in California. pp. 8-31
CPRR Photographic Museum. (2012). Chinese- American contribution to transcontinental
railroad. CPRR.org. retrieved from
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/
Fong, E. & Markham, W. (2002). Anti-Chinese politics In California in the 1870s: an intercounty
analysis. Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 45, No. 2. pp. 183-210
Holland, K. M. (2007). A history of Chinese immigration in the United States and Canada.
American Review Of Canadian Studies, 37(2), 150-160.
HSIN-YUN, O. (2010). Chinese ethnicity and the American heroic artisan in Henry Grimm's the
Chinese must go (1879). Comparative Drama, 44(1), 63-84
Chinese Workers on the CPRR
PBS. (2010). Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad. WGBH Educational Foundation.
Retrieved from the web
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/
Ronda, J. P. (2008). The west the railroads made. American Heritage, 58(4), 44-51.
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