Struggles in Gold Rush
Chinese immigrants suffered from the racial discrimination during Gold Rush period.
After Chinese immigrants came to California and contributed largely to mining industry, California legislature enacted a foreign miners' tax, aiming mainly at Chinese. The act demanded every foreign miner to pay $20 U.S. dollars each month. Due to the heavy amount of taxes, many Chinese miners refused to pay the $20 tax and left the States. This act caused a huge rebellion from the all foreign laborers, and then the taxes of the foreign miners was lowered from $20 to $4 each month. Even though the act lowered the amount to $4 per month, many of the Chinese miners were only making approximately $6 a month. If they failed to pay the monthly tax, the Chinese workers were forced to give up their properties.What's moreThe tax collectors use physical punishments such as whipping and beating to forced the Chinese miners to pay their taxes.
Because Foreign Miners Tax Act the Chinese immigrants decreased during the 1880s, due to the high living cost and the racial discrimination. By the 1890 the Chinese population in southern California such as Los Angeles and its surrounding cities decreased to only 2%.
Ironically, "By 1870s, California had collected five million dollars from the Chinese, a sum representing between 25 to 50 percent of all state revenue(1)."
After Chinese immigrants came to California and contributed largely to mining industry, California legislature enacted a foreign miners' tax, aiming mainly at Chinese. The act demanded every foreign miner to pay $20 U.S. dollars each month. Due to the heavy amount of taxes, many Chinese miners refused to pay the $20 tax and left the States. This act caused a huge rebellion from the all foreign laborers, and then the taxes of the foreign miners was lowered from $20 to $4 each month. Even though the act lowered the amount to $4 per month, many of the Chinese miners were only making approximately $6 a month. If they failed to pay the monthly tax, the Chinese workers were forced to give up their properties.What's moreThe tax collectors use physical punishments such as whipping and beating to forced the Chinese miners to pay their taxes.
Because Foreign Miners Tax Act the Chinese immigrants decreased during the 1880s, due to the high living cost and the racial discrimination. By the 1890 the Chinese population in southern California such as Los Angeles and its surrounding cities decreased to only 2%.
Ironically, "By 1870s, California had collected five million dollars from the Chinese, a sum representing between 25 to 50 percent of all state revenue(1)."
Struggles in Transcontinental Railroad
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Once they realized how difficult their situation was, the first generation of Chinese immigrants scrambled to find some way to earn a living wage. The vast majority of this first group, in the 1840s and 1850s, was young and male, and many of them had little formal education and work experience. Once in California, they had to find work that required little facility in English, and that required skills that could be learned quickly.
The railroads were tailor-made for this new pool of Chinese labor. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the U.S. railroad companies were expanding at a breakneck pace, straining to span the continents as quickly--and cheaply--as they could. The work was brutally difficult, the pay was low, and workers were injured and killed at a very high rate. For Chinese laborers, though, it represented a chance to enter the workforce, and they accepted lower wages than many native-born U.S. workers would have. On the Central Pacific Railroad alone, more than ten thousand Chinese workers blasted tunnels, built roadbeds, and laid hundreds of miles of track, often in freezing cold or searing heat. When, in 1869, the final spike was driven into the rails of the Transcontinental Railroad, after a record-breaking five years of construction, few Chinese faces appeared in photographs of the event. But the railroad could never have been completed as quickly as it was without the toil of Chinese railway men--unknown hundreds of whom lost their lives along its route.
Once the rail construction was completed, Chinese immigrants found work in a variety of industries, from making shoes and sewing clothes to rolling cigars. Since language barriers and racial discrimination barred them from many established trades, however, they often created opportunities for themselves and launched new businesses. Many of the shops, restaurants, and laundries in the growing mining towns of California were operated by Chinese immigrants. Chinese immigrants also played an important role in developing much of the farm land of the western U.S., including the plantations of Hawaii and the vineyards of California.(3)
The railroads were tailor-made for this new pool of Chinese labor. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the U.S. railroad companies were expanding at a breakneck pace, straining to span the continents as quickly--and cheaply--as they could. The work was brutally difficult, the pay was low, and workers were injured and killed at a very high rate. For Chinese laborers, though, it represented a chance to enter the workforce, and they accepted lower wages than many native-born U.S. workers would have. On the Central Pacific Railroad alone, more than ten thousand Chinese workers blasted tunnels, built roadbeds, and laid hundreds of miles of track, often in freezing cold or searing heat. When, in 1869, the final spike was driven into the rails of the Transcontinental Railroad, after a record-breaking five years of construction, few Chinese faces appeared in photographs of the event. But the railroad could never have been completed as quickly as it was without the toil of Chinese railway men--unknown hundreds of whom lost their lives along its route.
Once the rail construction was completed, Chinese immigrants found work in a variety of industries, from making shoes and sewing clothes to rolling cigars. Since language barriers and racial discrimination barred them from many established trades, however, they often created opportunities for themselves and launched new businesses. Many of the shops, restaurants, and laundries in the growing mining towns of California were operated by Chinese immigrants. Chinese immigrants also played an important role in developing much of the farm land of the western U.S., including the plantations of Hawaii and the vineyards of California.(3)
Struggles in agriculture industry
At the time of the Gold Rush, California’s food source came primarily from cattle-raising. The Central Pacific Railroad Company’s use of Chinese labor inspired other entrepreneurs to hire Chinese in other large construction projects, such as swampland reclamation and levee building that helped convert the Sacramento River Delta into some of the richest farmland in the world. Brian Tom, founder of the Chinese American Museum of Northern California in Marysville, noted that "when the Chinese first immigrated to California in the mid-19th century, China had developed the most advanced agricultural technology in irrigation, crop rotation and fertilization."(4)
The railroad brought cheap manufactured goods and unemployed white immigrants from the East Coast, triggering an economic depression in the West and the Chinese were made scapegoats, because all the unemployed white immigrants blamed Chinese workers took away the job opportunities and lower the wages . During the “Driving Out” period, many Anglo-American destroy and burned and Chinese communities and properties, aiming the farmworkers in the West. Most Chinese farm workers, who made up 75% of California’s agricultural workers in 1890, were expelled. The vacant agricultural jobs, which later proved to be unattractive to unemployed whites, were filled then by Japanese workers.
Struggles as "Chinese laundrymen"
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The San Francisco Supervisors responded to this anti-immigration and anti-Chinese environment by passing more than a dozen ordinances against laundries from 1873 to 1883. The ordinances targeted the laundries in various ways, such as by imposing a maximum hour rule so that different laundry owners could not share one laundry space, zoning rules to push laundries from white neighborhoods to the outskirts of town or to toxic industrial areas, taxes on laundries with horse-drawn vehicles, prohibiting drying racks on roofs, and banning the use of a mouth tube to squirt starch on clothes, which was a common practice by Chinese laundries.
On February 5, 1880, a fire broke out in a Chinese operated laundry that killed 11 of the 13 residents according to the Chronicle. The fire was started when one of the workers arose and was careless with a candle that set the clothes drying on lines on fire. At the first Supervisors meeting after the fire, a supervisor named Charles Taylor proposed an ordinance that would regulate all buildings used by the Chinese as laundries as requiring Board approval. At this meeting, the Supervisors also asked the city attorney to determine the legality of an ordinance that would “restrict and confine the keeping and carrying on of laundries by the Chinese to a certain designated portion of this city and county” which provides a bit of insight into the Supervisors’ intentions at the meeting. When the Supervisors passed the finalized version of Order No. 1569, which stated that it would be illegal for any person to operate a laundry in a wood building in the city and county of San Francisco without permission from the Supervisors, the provisions regarding Chinese owned laundries was removed because of concern that it would be unconstitutional. Violation of Order No. 1569 would be a misdemeanor and a fine of $1000, imprisonment for a maximum of six months, or both.(6)
On February 5, 1880, a fire broke out in a Chinese operated laundry that killed 11 of the 13 residents according to the Chronicle. The fire was started when one of the workers arose and was careless with a candle that set the clothes drying on lines on fire. At the first Supervisors meeting after the fire, a supervisor named Charles Taylor proposed an ordinance that would regulate all buildings used by the Chinese as laundries as requiring Board approval. At this meeting, the Supervisors also asked the city attorney to determine the legality of an ordinance that would “restrict and confine the keeping and carrying on of laundries by the Chinese to a certain designated portion of this city and county” which provides a bit of insight into the Supervisors’ intentions at the meeting. When the Supervisors passed the finalized version of Order No. 1569, which stated that it would be illegal for any person to operate a laundry in a wood building in the city and county of San Francisco without permission from the Supervisors, the provisions regarding Chinese owned laundries was removed because of concern that it would be unconstitutional. Violation of Order No. 1569 would be a misdemeanor and a fine of $1000, imprisonment for a maximum of six months, or both.(6)