Hostility only continued to grow because the Chinese population flourished along with their fortunes. Even when the gold fields played out, the Chinese soon found other jobs because companies were now well aware of the skills that the Chinese possessed and their relentless determination to be successful. (Hoobler 49) In the 1860s many Chinese men were hired to work for the Central Pacific Railroad Company to build new railroads from Texas to Alaska, and as far east as Tennessee. (Hoobler 50) At first companies were hesitant to hire Chinese in this specific field of work. Chinese were believed to be unsuited for railway construction because they "looked too frail to swing a hammer or to lay iron rails." (Wu 34) However, almost immediately after hiring the Chinese to work, their concerns about the Chinese capacity for work vanished. Eventually between ten and fourteen thousand Chinese were hired as railroad workers and Chinese crews set a record by laying an astonishing ten miles of track in a single day. (Sinnott 32) A founder of the Central Pacific, Charles Crocker, said, "Wherever we put them we found them good, and they worked themselves in our favor to such an extent, we found if we were in a hurry for a job or work, it was better to put Chinese on it at once." (Wu 34) One might think that all of their hard work would lead the Americans to deem the Chinese as a worthy race of human beings. In reality, since the Chinese were skilled and were willing to work for low wages they once again threatened the jobs of American workers. As more and more Chinese men signed on for railroad work, more and more California headlines read, "The Chinese are taking jobs from the whites!"(Sinnott 30) It became evident that the large group of foreigners was threatening "the superior race," and whites were willing to do anything in order to degrade the Chinese. (Pfaelzer 29) In 1860 California established segregated schools so that the white children did not have to associate with the Chinese because "inferior races" would lead to the ruin of the schools. (Wu 38) Not only did whites segregate themselves from the Chinese but they also resorted to violence. The Chinese were continually poked, prodded, jeered at, beaten, tortured, hanged, shot and dismembered. (Pfaelzer 34) Yet neither discrimination nor violence could force the Chinese community to leave the United States.
Although prejudice against the Chinese was strong, the door to Chinese immigration stayed open. However, the passage of time did not ease American feelings against the Chinese. In fact, the exact opposite occurred. As more Chinese came to the United States, opposition to their presence grew fervently. Americans said the Chinese were filthy, smelly criminals and opium addicts. (Mizell 40) To make matters worse, competition for jobs became even fiercer when a severe economic depression hit the United States during the 1870s. (Wu 39) Jobs were hard to come by and it was frustrating enough for Americans to compete against Americans for jobs, but now it was Americans competing against the adroit Chinese. In San Francisco there were three workers- two white and one Chinese- for every job. (Wu 39) Americans would shout, "The Chinese Must Go!" (Wu 37) Most Americans adamantly insisted that jobs belong to white Americans, and in a time when everything seemed to be going wrong, the Chinese were an easy target to blame. Once again, along with this Chinese animosity, came violence. On October 1871 a mob in Los Angeles shot and hung twenty Chinese men and by 1876 the governor of California declared that there was "an irrepressible conflict between the Chinese and ourselves-between their civilization and ours."(Wu 39) Drawings pictured the Chinese with slanted eyes and long pigtails, with barbaric customs and inhuman habits. (Wu 42) Residents everywhere were openly hostile to the Chinese, in hopes that they would leave, which would thus provide Americans with more job opportunities. (Mizell 43) However, despite all of the insults and abhorrence, the Chinese continued to flood into the U.S. and between 1868 and 1878 about 12,000 Chinese arrived each year, most of them under the contract labor system. (Wu 42) They took whatever jobs they could find. They drained swamps, turned parts of northern California into rich farmland and harvested in vineyards. They even developed their own fishing economy, which grew exponentially and extended along the West Coast of the United States from Canada to Mexico. (Wu 42) Again this initial success was met with a hostile reaction and the California legislature began making the Chinese pay a special Chinese fisherman tax. (Chinese American History) The Chinese also became involved in industrial disputes, taking the jobs of workers who had gone on strike, which only further infuriated the Americans. In fact, many employers used the threat of importing Chinese strikebreakers as a means to prevent or break up strikes. (Wu 42) Not only were the Chinese taking jobs from Americans but also most of the immigrants sent money to families in their homelands. Americans found this to be another reason to scorn the Chinese. Americans felt as though they deserved jobs over the Chinese immigrants because they would actually spend their wages in the country. (Hoobler 64)
By 1876, political leaders were no longer talking about "open gates." (Wu 39) The United States government received political pressure from Americans who were in constant fear that the Chinese were taking their jobs from them. Also during this time, Sierra Flume and Lumber Company offered 200 jobs for Chinese mill workers to come up to Chico. Later on, posters circulated the cities demanding that Sierra Flume fire its Chinese workers and replace them with whites. Meetings were held at the town hall about the whites' concern of hiring these Chinese immigrants. Threatened by the Chinese, the Order of the Caucasians debated a plan to steal explosives from the mines to blow up Chinatown in order to regain job opportunities. In retaliation, the Chinese were just as public with their response--they went to the hardware stores and bought every single shotgun in stock in order to prove their strength. (Pfaelzer 310-311) In 1877 relations between white and Chinese workers reached its boiling point. Railroad workers on the East Coast and in the Midwest broke out into a violent strike, with Dennis Kearney, an Irish immigrant, as their leader. Kearney's slogan was "The Chinese Must Go," and it became apparent that many people throughout the United States supported his views. (Wu 44) As a result of these anti-Chinese views, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which excluded Chinese laborers from entering the United States for a period of ten years. (The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black Legacy) Americans had channeled their fear of the Chinese into anger and pressured the government into forming laws aimed at the Chinese. Since the Chinese could not vote, political figures had to please the Americans, and thus made the obvious political choices. For the first time in the history of the United States, the borders were being closed to a group of people solely based on their race. (Hoobler 51) America was attempting to keep these so called "threatening intruders" from intruding. The only Chinese allowed into the state were teachers, merchants, students and tourists and the restrictions proved to be successful. (Wu 43) The Chinese population dropped from 105,000 to 61,000. (Wu 44) In order to tighten provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return, a set of amendments were made in 1884. The Scott Act, which was enacted in 1888, which expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving the U.S. (Canaday) Many people were adamant supporters of the Chinese Exclusion Act, including the Knights of Labor, a union that fought for better working conditions. (Pfaelzer 151) They supported the exclusion act because companies were using Chinese workers as a way of keeping wages low and conditions contemptible. (Pfaelzer 152) Having the Chinese in America seemed to help industrialists but exasperated the working Americans. However, to the satisfaction of the Americans, the Chinese exclusion act and other restrictions enacted after, the Chinese community froze in 1882. Unlike the European immigrants, Chinese immigrants were prevented from growing and assimilating into the United States society. (Chinese American History) Their hard work and success had triggered a multitude of feelings from Americans, ranging from enviousness to overall panic.
For Chinese Americans, in the years after 1882, nearly everywhere they were subjected to bad treatment and were refused service in public places. Some states prohibited Chinese from buying land and others made it a crime for a Chinese to marry a white person. (Wu 47) Riots continued to flare up throughout the West in the 1880's and 1890's. For one instance, the riots of the Rock Springs Massacre, between Chinese immigrant miners and white immigrant miners, was the result of racial tensions and an ongoing labor dispute over the policy of paying Chinese miners lower wages than white miners. Tension between whites and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century was particularly high, especially in the decade preceding the violence. The massacre in Rock Springs was the violent outburst of years of anti-"coolie" sentiment in the United States. This Rock Springs Massacre follows a similar race riot in Tacoma, Washington, where whites forced more than 700 Chinese immigrants to spend the night crowded on open wagons, then shipped them to Portland, Oregon the next day. In 1902, Congress extended the Chinese Exclusion Act; and following that in 1904, Congress made it permanent. Because of all the discrimination they were being subjected to during the 19th century and beyond, many Chinese immigrants were now on their way to moving east of the Rocky Mountains by the 20th century.
By the 1940's, most of the Chinese immigrants had migrated towards the east of the Rocky Mountains. During this time, the discrimination and racism that the Chinese were fighting against gradually died down and halted for the most part. Although this change took place during the mid-20th century, it does not take away the pain and suffering the Chinese immigrants had gone through all the way through the 19th century and beyond. Looking back, the Chinese immigrants who had originally migrated from China over to California in hope of striking it rich would most likely be skeptical in their choice to do so. Coming to America to escape poverty, the Chinese were looking for a means of survival and job opportunities. Unfortunately, what they found when they arrived was an agglomeration of covetousness and hatred, which led to the many years worth of racism and discrimination. The Chinese were so industrious and successful in the West that Americans began considering them rivals and even threats for the jobs that they were being offered so quickly. The Chinese were not only skillful and inventive, but they were willing to work for extremely low wages, thus making them prime candidates for jobs. Consequently, Americans resented the success of the Chinese and believed that the Chinese were unjustly stealing their jobs. This jealousy and hatred is what led to a struggle for Chinese Americans to advance economically in the face of racism and discrimination.
