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But as Wong notes, the railroad is an ambivalent symbol for Chinese Americans, since it represents both the American dream of mobility, luxury and power but also the historical difficulties of the Chinese workers, who often had no choice but to take railroad jobs and who were never allowed the sort of mobility the railroad offered to Anglos.
In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work, especially in the garment industry. Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the American West, and as Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a ...
Adobe building constructed in the 1870s by Chinese workers living in the railroad-adjacent mining town of Dutch Flat. The ruling effectively made white violence against Chinese Americans unprosecutable, arguably leading to more intense white-on-Chinese race riots, such as the 1877 San Francisco riot. The Chinese living in California were with ...
The launch of the North-West America at Nootka Sound, 1788. In 1788, some 120 Chinese contract labourers arrived at Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. [1] [2]: 312 British fur trader John Meares recruited an initial group of 50 sailors and artisans from Canton and Macao, China, hoping to build a trading post and encourage trade in sea otter pelts between Nootka Sound and Canton. [1]
After exclusion, existing Chinese immigrants were further excluded from agricultural labor by racial hostility, and as jobs in railroad construction declined, they increasingly moved into self-employment as laundry workers, store and restaurant owners, traders, merchants, and wage laborers; and they congregated in Chinatowns established in ...
After May 1869, a group of Chinese workers in the Western United States began moving to Texas, as there was a demand for labor in the post-American Civil War environment. [1] Railroad companies in particular wanted workers to rebuild their infrastructure. [2] In 1880, Robertson County had 72 ethnic Chinese, while the other 64 were elsewhere in ...
A diligent worker could save over $20 per month after paying for food and lodging—a "fortune" by Chinese standards. A snapshot of workers in late 1865 showed about 3,000 Chinese and 1,700 white workers employed on the railroad. Nearly all of the white workers were in supervisory or skilled craft positions and made more money than the Chinese.
In June 1867, two thousand Chinese Transcontinental Railroad workers participated in a general strike (a collective action) for a week along the Sierra Nevada range, demanding better working conditions. [1] By 1867, the Central Pacific Railroad workforce was composed of 80-90% Chinese laborers and the rest were European-Americans. [2]