And racism, let's be blunt here, was the norm. Newspaper accounts almost identified race except for northern Europeans. Black, Greeks, Italians and others all got their "race" mentioned. A railroad gang supervisor will describe his workers as "three Greeks, two Italians, and five whites," and not think anything is amiss at all.
Especially the Chinese.
"Celestials," as they were commonly referred to, had three strikes against them right from the get-go: They looked different, they worked harder and better, and they were willing to work cheap.
Well, I hear you saying, "no wonder they were hated. Better work and cheaper? Can't have any of that!"
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| Mural showing Chinese workers building Transcontinental Railroad in Ogden's Union Station |
And hated they were.
Race was part of it, but so was the economic disruption they caused. Sure, they built the Central Pacific's part of the Transcontinental Railroad, but what -- you can hear the nation asking -- have you done for us lately?
In 1885 a camp of Chinese workers hired by the Union Pacific to mine coal and maintain the rails was attacked by residents of Rock Springs, Wyoming. The resulting riot left 28 Chinese dead, more injured, and the survivors fleeing into the wilderness for their lives.
Folks were asking this in May of 1869, just weeks after the railroad was finished.
On May 26, 1869, the dust had barely settled when the Deseret News ran what looks like an editorial, but that is unsigned, raising the question of what to do with all those folks from China. The arguments, pro and con, sounds surprisingly similar to debates going on in 2019.
"The completion of the great continental highway ... is likely to force the question of Chinese labor upon the attention of the country," it says. California is already dealing with it, where "many see little to hope but much to fear from the influx of the Chinese. If their views be correct, it is a peril which not only menaces California, but the whole country."
Indeed, the road of iron put every part of the nation within days' reach of the peril.
What is the danger? "They have come by thousands to California, and though driven from the mines that Americans and Europeans deem valuable, they contrive to live and save money by working in the streams and placers which the dominant race has deserted."
Unlikely to be satisfied with gold mine leavings, this article says, the Chinese "will set eastward. The force of circumstances will push it in this direction."
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| Statue honoring Chinese workers, Utah Railroad Museum. |
And where the Chinese go, others will suffer. "The European laborer in the East will not work for less than two or three dollars a day; but the Chinaman will work for less than a dollar."
Not only that, but the Chinaman "is frugal and patient, and as industrious as a beaver. He will live where one of the so-called superior race would starve. His food is a little rice, and he eats meat but seldom. He indulges in no dissipation; but is simple, abstinent and very economical."
One would think employers would value such people. The CPRR sure did.
"The San Francisco Times says there are Chinamen who have been on that work who are better at aligning roads than many white men who have been educated in the business, and they will strike a truer line with the unassisted eye than most white men can with the use of instruments."
And so on. In a tunnel-drilling competition between gangs of Chinese and Irishmen "bets were freely made that the white men would come out winners, but at the end of the day, when the work of each party was measured, it was found that the Chinamen had burrowed further into the rock that the others and were, moreover, less fatigued."
The presence of such workers "will inevitably work a great revolution in labor," the article notes."Works will be accomplished which, without their aid, and as labor now costs, would be left unattempted. They are adept for almost any species of labor."
And yet, the article says, politicians and governments everywhere torment and discriminate against them. "Their popularity depends upon refusing them every privilite and right which other races, however profligate and worthless members of them may be, enjoy to the fullest extent."
In California, it says, "they are chased, abused, robbed and abominably maltreated by men and boys, their terror affording only amusement, and even the dogs are set upon and taught to bite them."
The article then takes an interesting turn, also paralleling debate today.
"And yet those who thus torture this race call themselves Christian," it says, "and mock and denounce them as idolators and heathens."
Deed, not example, is the key, it says, to those who wonder why the Chinese resent the way they are treated.
"Men may prate to them about American civilization, free and enlightened institutions, the spirit of progress and advanced Christianity until doomsday, but they will fail to respect or attach any value to these high-sounding phrases and professions while they are treated like wild beasts."
The article urges this course, although it does stop short of calling for actual equality.
"These Asiatics are willing to work, and work cheap at any kind of drudgery," he says. "If the Anglo-Saxon is the superior being which he affects to be, he can with safety assume the direction of this class of laborers. He can employ them to goo advantage and, instead of living a life of drudgery himself, he can cultivate his brain and direct and manage their labor to his own and their advantage."
So it's still racially-charged, but it's being nice, not mean, and that ought to count for something.
"If he treat them kindly, and pay them honestly, he will do more to convert them to his religion and ways than years of preaching with a contrary practice would do, and he need not be afraid that their degradation, vices or barbarism will hurt him."
Folks stayed afraid. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended immigration for decades. The Rock Springs massacre was, sadly, typical.
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