At a ceremony on Friday, Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the first person of Chinese descent to hold the position, paid tribute to the diverse work force. In addition to Chinese workers, there were many Irish immigrants, Civil War veterans, Mormons, African-Americans and Native Americans, Ms. Chao said. Native American communities, of course, were also forcibly displaced by the railroad and the westward expansion it enabled. An exhibit on the Chinese workers, on view at the Smithsonian through next year, also highlights the experiences of Native Americans. Ms. Chao said that the achievements of the Chinese workers were poignant because many did not have the opportunity to become citizens, and so little record of their existence survived. Yet the engineering feat they undertook was “every bit as consequential as the digital revolution that binds the world” today, she said. The renewed focus on the contributions of the Chinese workers is due in large part to Gordon H. Chang, a historian at Stanford University, who has spent decades researching the workers’ history and co-directs the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.<doc-sep>According to family lore, my great-granduncle took on the moniker “John,” to either fit in or to defy the anti-Chinese virulence. He was John Lee, not “John Chinaman,” the caricature. He survived his railroad building experience and moved to New York City, where he would go on to run a successful cigar factory.<doc-sep>With Meghna Chakrabarti Now 150 years after the two halves of the first transcontinental railroad were united, the Chinese workers who did some of the most difficult work get their due. Guests Gordon H. Chang, author of "Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad." Co-director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project. Professor of American history at Stanford University. Director of the Center for East Asian Studies. (@Stanford) Lisa See, great-great granddaughter of Fong Dun Shung, who worked on the transcontinental railroad as an herbalist. Author of "On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family." Participated in the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America oral history project. (@Lisa_See) Photographs From 'Ghosts Of Gold Mountain' (Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862-1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries) (Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862-1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries) (Alfred A. Hart Photographs, ca. 1862-1869 from the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries) From The Reading List Los Angeles Times: "Chinese immigrants helped build California, but they’ve been written out of its history" — "In 2014, the U.S. Labor Department formally inducted the Chinese workers who helped build the transcontinental railroad into its Hall of Honor, giving them a place in American labor history alongside union leaders such as Eugene V. Debs and A. Philip Randolph and champions of worker dignity such as Mother Jones and Cesar Chavez. "Ghosts of Gold Mountain" by Gordon H. Chang "What was remarkable about that moment was that it took the nation 145 years to recognize Chinese immigrants’ role in building the nation. "From 1865 to 1869, as many as 20,000 Chinese laborers worked on the Central Pacific Railroad, which ran from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah, where it was united with the Union Pacific Railroad in the golden spike ceremony marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Those workers accounted for as much as 90% of the Central Pacific workforce. "The Central Pacific could not have been built without them — and without the Central Pacific, the history of the American West and California in particular might have been very different. That’s a fact to be considered as the 150th anniversary of the golden spike ceremony looms just a month away, and as immigration again roils American politics." NBC News: "Recovering an erased history: The Chinese railroad workers who helped connect the country" — "They thought this was their chance. "May 10, 1969, marked 100 years since the golden spike was hammered in at Promontory, Utah, signifying the completion of America’s first transcontinental railroad — a monumental engineering feat that linked together the nation's coasts. "A ceremony commemorating the anniversary drew a crowd of around 20,000. Among the attendees were Philip P. Choy, president of the San Francisco-based Chinese Historical Society of America, and Thomas W. Chinn, one of its founders. "Centennial officials had agreed to set aside five minutes of the ceremony for the society to pay homage to the Chinese workers who had helped build the railroad, but whose contributions had been largely glossed over in history. Choy, Chinn and the others gathered at Promontory that day had hoped this would be the moment when the more than 10,000 Chinese who labored for the Central Pacific Railroad finally got their due." Grace Tatter produced this hour for broadcast.<doc-sep>The nation’s first transcontinental railroad, completed 150 years ago today at Promontory Summit in Utah, connected the vast United States and brought America into the modern age. Chinese immigrants contributed mightily to this feat, but the historical accounts that followed often marginalized their role. Between 1863 and 1869, as many as 20,000 Chinese workers helped build the treacherous western portion of the railroad, a winding ribbon of track known as the Central Pacific that began in Sacramento. At first, the Central Pacific Railroad’s directors wanted a whites-only workforce. Leland Stanford, the railroad’s president, had advocated for keeping Asians out of the state in his 1862 inaugural address as governor of California. When not enough white men signed up, the railroad began hiring Chinese men for the backbreaking labor. No women worked on the line. Company leaders were skeptical of the new recruits’ ability to do the work, but the Chinese laborers proved themselves more than capable — and the railroad barons came to consider them superior to the other workers. Advertisement The Chinese workers were paid 30% to 50% less than their white counterparts and were given the most dangerous work. My colleagues and I initiated an international research project — based, appropriately, at Stanford University — to investigate the enormous contribution Chinese workers made to the transcontinental project. It proved to be a formidable task, not least because no written record produced by what were called “railroad Chinese” is known to exist. Without letters, diaries and other primary sources that are historians’ stock in trade, we amassed a sizable collection of evidence that included archaeological findings, ship manifests, payroll records, photographs and observers’ accounts. The material allowed us to recover a sense of the lived experiences of the thousands of Chinese migrants Leland Stanford came to greatly admire. He told President Andrew Johnson that the Chinese were indispensable to building the railroad: They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad’s labor force. These workers showed their mettle, and sealed their legacy, on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. Many observers at the time had assumed that Stanford and the railroad were daft for thinking they could link California with the East because an immense mountain range separated the state from Nevada and beyond. The Sierra Nevada is a rugged, formidable range, its inhospitableness encapsulated by the gruesome tragedy of the Donner party in 1847 and 1848. Trapped by winter storms in the mountains, they resorted to cannibalism. To get to the High Sierra, Chinese workers cut through dense forests, filled deep ravines, constructed long trestles and built enormous retaining walls — some of which remain intact today. All work was done by hand using carts, shovels and picks but no machinery. The greatest challenge was to push the line through the Sierra summit. Solid granite peaks soared to 14,000 feet in elevation. The railroad bed snaked through passes at more than 7,000 feet. The men who came from humid south China labored through two of the worst winters on record, surviving in caverns dug beneath the snow. They blasted out 15 tunnels, the longest nearly 1,700 feet. To speed up the carving of the tunnels, the Chinese laborers worked from several directions. After opening portals along the rock face on either side of the mountain, they dug an 80-foot shaft down to the estimated midway point. From there, they carved out toward the portals, doubling the rate of progress by tunneling from both sides. It still took two years to accomplish the task. The Chinese workers were paid 30% to 50% less than their white counterparts and were given the most dangerous work. In June 1867, they protested. Three-thousand workers along the railroad route went on strike, demanding wage parity, better working conditions and shorter hours. At the time it was the largest worker action in American history. The railroad refused to negotiate but eventually raised the Chinese workers’ pay, though not to parity. Advertisement After the Sierra, the Chinese workers faced the blistering heat of the Nevada and Utah deserts, yet they drove ahead at an astonishing rate. As they approached the meeting point with the Union Pacific, thousands of them laid down a phenomenal 10 miles of track in less than 24 hours, a record that has never been equaled. A Civil War officer who witnessed the drama declared that the Chinese were “just like an army marching over the ground and leaving the track behind.” Progress came at great cost: Many Chinese laborers died along the Central Pacific route. The company kept no records of deaths. But soon after the line was completed, Chinese civic organizations retrieved an estimated 1,200 bodies along the route and sent them home to China for burial. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion » Advertisement The transcontinental railroad’s completion allowed travelers to journey across the country in a week — a trip that had previously taken more than a month. Politicians pointed to the achievement as they declared the United States the leading nation of the world. The transcontinental railroad has been viewed in a similarly nationalistic way ever since. Chinese workers were often left out of the official story because their alienage and suffering did not fit well with celebration. And attitudes toward them soon soured, with anti-Chinese riots sweeping the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States and placed restrictions on those already here. Federal immigration law prohibited Chinese citizens from becoming Americans until 1943. As a faculty member of the university that bears his name, I am painfully aware that Leland Stanford became one of the world’s richest men by using Chinese labor. But I also try to remember that Stanford University exists because of those Chinese workers.<doc-sep>
At first railroad companies were reluctant to hire Chinese workers, but the immigrants soon proved to be vital. They toiled through back-breaking labor during both frigid winters and blazing summers. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents and disease. And even though they made major contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, these 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese immigrants have been largely ignored by history. Looking back, historians say, the Chinese, who began arriving in the United States in significant numbers during the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, were deemed too weak for the dangerous, strenuous job of building the railroad east from California. Hilton Obenzinger, associate director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, says that Central Pacific Railroad director Charles Crocker recommended hiring Chinese workers after a job ad resulted in only a few hundred responses from white laborers. Chinese workers building a cut and a bank at Sailor's Spur in the Sierra foothills for the Central Pacific Railroad in California, 1866. Underwood Archives/Getty Images “But Crocker’s plan hit opposition amid anti-Chinese sentiment, stemming from the California Gold Rush, that gripped the state,” Obenzinger told NBC, noting that construction superintendent James Strobridge didn’t think the immigrants were strong enough to do the job. Nonetheless, Central Pacific Railroad was desperate, says Gordon Chang, Stanford professor of American history and author of the book, Ghosts of Gold Mountain. “White workers, whom the company wanted, did not sign on in numbers anything close to what was needed,” he says. “Crocker’s colleagues objected at first because of prejudice but then relented as they had few other options. The idea of hiring Chinese, it appears, might have been raised first by Crocker’s Chinese manservant.” READ MORE: Chinese Americans Were Once Forbidden to Testify in Court. A Murder Changed That According to the Chinese Railroad Workers Project, Central Pacific started with a crew of 21 Chinese workers in January 1864. Chinese laborers at work on construction for the railroad built across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, circa 1870s. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images “In January 1865, convinced that Chinese workers were capable, the railroad hired 50 Chinese workers and then 50 more,” the Project notes. “But the demand for labor increased, and white workers were reluctant to do such backbreaking, hazardous work.” Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific, former California governor and founder of Stanford University, told Congress in 1865, that the majority of the railroad labor force were Chinese. Without them,” he said, “it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great national enterprise, within the time required by the Acts of Congress.” More Chinese immigrants began arriving in California, and two years later, about 90 percent of the workers were Chinese. “Hong Kong and China were as close in travel time as the eastern U.S.,” Chang says. “The Irish (who made up the majority of the Union Pacific workforce which was laying tracks westward from Omaha, Neb.) did not come out to California in large numbers until after the completion of the Transcontinental.” Their job duties included everything from unskilled labor to blacksmithing, tunneling and carpentry, according to the Project, with most work done with hand tools. Of course the large number of immigrants working for Central Pacific and their hard work didn’t mean they were well-treated or well-compensated for their efforts. According to the Project, Chinese workers hired in 1864 were paid $26 a month, working six days a week. They eventually held an eight-day strike in June of 1867. Chinese camp and construction train in Nevada when building of the first transcontinental railroad was being speeded across the state by the Central Pacific. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images “Chinese received 30-50 percent lower wages than whites for the same job and they had to pay for their own food stuffs,” Chang says. “They also had the most difficult and dangerous work, including tunneling and the use of explosives. There is also evidence they faced physical abuse at times from some supervisors. They protested these and the long hours and they used their collective strength to challenge the company.” The strike ended without pay parity after Central Pacific cut off food, transportation and supplies to the Chinese living in camps, but, Chang says, the strike was not held in vain. Working conditions improved following the strike. “They scared the pants off the company leaders,” he says. Despite Chinese workers' contributions to building America’s historic infrastructure project, Chang says their history is often forgotten.