| Struggling
for Work
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.
For information
about Chinese communities in California, visit The
Chinese in California, 1850-1925: Communities and Agriculture
and Industries. |
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