Chinese Immigration And Labor in The 19th Century By: William Clark Current Issues in Information Transfer Emporia State University Chinese Workers on the CPRR 1 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. Chinese Workers on the CPRR 2 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 3 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 4 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 5 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 6 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 7 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. Chinese Workers on the CPRR 8 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 9 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. Chinese Workers on the CPRR 10 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 11 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 Chinese Workers on the CPRR 12 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). Chinese Workers on the CPRR 13 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. 14