Chinese Immigrants and
the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad
Utah - trains of cars of
the Union Pacific Railroad snow-bound in a drift
near Ogden from a sketch by J.B. Schultz.
In Frank Leslie's
illustrated newspaper, 1872 Feb. 17, title page.
Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-92504.
In 1862, in the midst of the
Civil War, Congress authorized the most ambitious project
that the country had ever contemplated: construction of a
transcontinental railroad. The price tag was immense: $136
million, more than twice the federal budget in 1861. The challenge
was enormous; 1,800 miles across arid plains and desert and
the rugged granite walls of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains.
Two companies undertook the
actual construction in return for land grants and financial
subsidies worth from $16,000 to $48,000 a mile. The Union
Pacific began laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska.
The Central Pacific lay track eastward from Sacramento, California.
Which ever company laid the most track would receive the largest
The Union Pacific's task was
easier; two-thirds of its track was laid across plains. The
Central Pacific, in contrast, had to carve out a rail bed
across the Sierra Nevadas. The first year, it lay 31 miles
of track; after two years, it had only put down 50 miles.
The Central Pacific also faced
an acute labor shortage. In the winter of 1864, the company
had only 600 laborers at work, a small fraction of the 5,000
for which it had advertised. And these workers were unreliable:
"Some would stay until pay day, get a little money, get
drunk and clear out," a superintendent said.
In February, 1865, the Central
Pacific decided to try a new labor pool. Charles Crocker,
chief of construction persuaded his company to employ Chinese
immigrants, arguing that the people who build the Great Wall
of China and invented gunpowder could certainly build a railroad.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century, civil turmoil and poverty had led many Chinese to
emigrate to California, the "Golden Mountain." As
early as 1852, there were 25,000 Chinese immigrants in California.
Most came from China's southeastern coast. The overwhelming
majority were married men who planned to return to China.
In California, the immigrants established support networks,
based on family ties and place of origin, and found work in
agriculture, mines, domestic service, and increasingly in
The Central Pacific's Chinese
immigrant workers received just $26-$35 a month for a 12-hour
day, 6-day work week and had to provide their own food and
tents. White workers received about $35 a month and were furnished
with food and shelter. Incredibly, the Chinese immigrant workers
saved as much as $20 a month which many eventually used to
buy land. These workers quickly earned a reputation as tireless
and extraordinarily reliable workers--"quiet, peaceable,
patient, industrious, and economical." Within two years,
12,000 of the Central Pacific railroad's 13,500 employees
were Chinese immigrants.
The work was grueling, performed
almost entirely by hand. With pickaxes, hammers, and crowbars,
workers chipped out railbeds. Dirt and rock were carried away
in baskets and carts. Tree stumps had to be rooted out, tracks
laid, spikes driven, and aqua ducts and tunnels constructed.
To carve out a rail bed from
ridges that jutted up 2,000 over the valley below, Chinese
immigrants were lowered in baskets to hammer at solid shale
and granite and insert dynamite. During the winter of 1865-1866,
when the railroad carved passages through the summit of the
Sierra Nevadas, 3,000 lived and worked in tunnels dug beneath
40-foot snowdrifts. Accidents, avalanches, and explosions
left as estimated 1,200 Chinese immigrant workers dead.
Despite their heroic labors,
California's Chinese immigrants became the objects of discriminatory
laws and racial violence. California barred these immigrants
from appearing as witnesses in court, prohibited them from
voting or becoming naturalized citizens, and placed their
children in segregated school. The state imposed special taxes
on "foreign" miners and Chinese fishermen.