Central Pacific Chinese Coolies

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2. Introduction In California in 1865, the Central Pacific experienced a severe labor shortage. By "labor shortage", what is meant is "a shortage of white laborers", as the Central Pacific had hired only white men (mostly Irish) up to this point in time. It was not a shortage of men, as there were many men in California, but a shortage of men willing to work on the railroad, especially after silver had been discovered in Nevada that year. After all, there was free gold (in California) or silver (in Nevada) to be had, if only one looked hard enough. In fact, it was the 1849 gold rush that brought thousands of Chinese looking for this "free gold" over from China. By the early 1860's, newspapers estimated that 42,000 Chinese labored in northern California.

3. The Chinese in California The Chinese in California were segregated into separate communities with separate jobs. They were derogatively called "coolies", which was a British term from India, which originally meant "porter" or "native unskilled laborer" in Hindu . However, they adapted readily to the white man's way of life that many male Chinese were imported as cooks, house boys, gardeners, and laundrymen. They were brought across the Pacific by Chinese trading companies in such poor conditions as the Atlantic's slavers, and bought their passage under an indentured-servant plan, similar to the ones used on the east coast in the seventeenth century.

4. The Chinese Joins The Central Pacific The Chinese were organized into work gangs of around 30, under the supervision of an Irish. These work gangs were separate from the white work gangs. Each work gang selected one man to collect all the wages and buy all the provisions for that gang. They extended this system to the hiring of an American clerk for the price of $1 per man per month to keep accounts straight and to see that food costs were distributed fairly. The Chinese did not mingle with the Irish. They settled their own differences and made few demands on their foremen.

5. Daily Life for The Chinese Coolies After the day's work was finished, all the workers would troop back into camp. The Irish would eat their dinners, consisting of beef, beans, potatoes, bread, and butter. Before they ate, the Chinese would bathe and change clothes. Each Chinese work gang had its own cook, "whose duties required that he not only prepare meals but also have a large boiler of hot water ready each night. When the Chinese came off the road, they filled their little tubs made from powder kegs, took a hot sponge bath, and changed clothes before their evening meal". For this meal, the Chinese would eat such exotic foodstuffs as dried oysters, abalone, cuttlefish, dried bamboo sprouts, dried mushrooms, five kinds of vegetables, pork, poultry, vermicelli, rice, salted cabbage, dried seaweed, sweet rice crackers, sugar, four kinds of dried fruit, Chinese bacon, peanut oil and tea.

6. Continue… After dinner, the Chinese would sit around their campfires, "humming songs or chirping like angry orioles around a fan-tan game“. The Chinese tended to be habitual gamblers. They "wagered wildly and frequently argued fiercely over the results" of their fan-tan games. However, they always kept the games and the bickering among themselves. On Saturday nights, the Chinese work crews would smoke opium. The crew bosses reasoned that "after an eighty-hour week dangling over a cliff edge or hauling rock out of a tunnel mouth, ... a man deserved his own kind of recreation“.

7. The California Public’s response to Chinese Labor The Chinese were a boon to the Central Pacific; without them, the railroad could never have been completed as quickly as it was. The populace of California, however, saw things differently. California laborers had never shown much more than "monumental indifference" toward the work done by the Central Pacific. However, with the new Chinese labor force working for the Central Pacific, they became suddenly worried about their futures and, "incited by an indignant San Francisco press, leaders began to raise a passionate hullabaloo over this unfair competition by 'yellow labor'". These working-class people were now faced with an issue that seemed to be "bound up directly with their own bread and butter“.

8. Continue…. In San Francisco on March 6, 1867, the Anti-Coolie Labor Association held its first meeting in the American Theater. This was the beginning of bad times for the Chinese in California. "Mobs of men and women howled through the streets, pelting Chinese with rocks and filth". Drunks and "young toughs" set fire to Chinese owned laundries and cigar factories, emptied chamber pots on the doorsteps along Grant Avenue, and howled indecencies at Chinese funeral processions.

9. The End