How Did Chinese Learn About The Gold Rush
California Aureate Rush
Like every other nation in the world, the Chinese Empire was represented in the great rush for California which took identify during the gold excitement. At the beginning of the yr 1849 there were in the state only fifty-four Chinamen. At the news of the gold discovery a steady immigration commenced which connected until 1876, at which time the Chinese in the United states numbered 151,000 of whom 116,000 were in the state of California. This increase in their numbers, rapid even in comparison with the full general increase in population, was largely due to the fact that previous to the twelvemonth 1869 China was nearer to the shores of California than was the eastern portion of the United States. Some other circumstance which contributed to the heavy influx of Chinese was the fact that news of the golden discovery constitute southeastern People's republic of china in poverty and ruin caused past the Taiping rebellion. Masters of vessels fabricated the most of this coincidence of favorable circumstances. They distributed in all the Chinese ports, placards, maps and pamphlets with highly colored accounts of the golden hills of California. The fever spread among the yellow men as it did amidst others, and the ship-men reaped a harvest from passage coin.
Probably the most conspicuous characteristic of the Chinese is their passion for piece of work. The Chinaman seemingly must work. If he cannot secure work at a high wage he will take it at a low wage, but he is a good bargainer for his labor and only needs the opportunity to inquire for more pay. This is true of the whole nation, from the everyman to the highest. They lack inventiveness and initiative but have an enormous capacity for imitation. With proper didactics their industrial adjustability is very corking. They larn what they are shown with well-nigh incredible facility, and before long become expert.
If the social atmospheric condition prevailing in California in the days of '49 are recalled, it is not hard to realize how welcome were the Chinese who first came to the country. Here were men who would practice the drudgery of life at a reasonable wage when every other man had merely 1 idea—to piece of work at the mines for golden. Here were cooks, laundrymen, and servants ready and willing. Just what early on California civilization most wanted these men could and would supply.
The result was that the Chinaman was welcomed; he was considered quite indispensable. He was in need as a laborer, as a carpenter, equally a cook; the restaurants which he established were well patronized; his agricultural endeavors in draining and tilling the rich tule lands were praised. Governor McDougal referred to him as "one of the most worthy of our newly adopted citizens." In public functions he was given a place of honor, for the Californians of those days appreciated the bear on of color which he gave to the life of the country. The Chinese took a prominent part in the parades in commemoration of the admission of the state to the Union. The Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, went and so far as to say, "The Cathay Boys will nevertheless vote at the same polls, study at the same schools, and bow at the same altar every bit our countrymen." Their cleanliness, unobtrusiveness and industry were everywhere praised.
The Chinese were surely in a land of milk and honey. They had left a land of war and starvation where work could not exist had and food must be begged and here they found themselves in the midst of work and plenty. They were everywhere welcomed and their wages were such that they could save a substantial function to send back to the families they had left at home in Red china; or, if they did non wish to labor for masters, they could go to the mines. Here they could take an quondam claim which had been abandoned past the white miner and dig from information technology gold dust which to them represented wealth untold. They were careful not to antagonise these whites past prospecting ahead of them, and in return they received the same treatment in the mining districts that they had met with in San Francisco.
The Chinaman was welcomed as long every bit the surface gold was plentiful enough to make rich all who came. But that happy situation was not long to continue. Thousands of Americans came flocking in to the mines. Rich surface claims soon became exhausted. These newcomers did not find it and then easy as their predecessors had washed to amass large fortunes in a few days. California did not fulfil the promise of the golden tales that had been told of her. These gold-seekers were disappointed. In the bitterness of their disappointment they turned upon the men of other races who were working next with them and accused them of stealing their wealth. They boldly asserted that California'due south gold belonged to them. The cry of "California for the Americans" was raised and taken up on all sides.
Inside a brusque time the Frenchman, the Mexican and the Chileño had been driven out and the total strength of this anti-foreign persecution roughshod upon the unfortunate Chinaman. From the commencement, though well received, the Chinese had been a race apart. Their peculiar dress and pigtail marked them off from the rest of the population. Their camps at the mines were always autonomously from the main camps of white miners. This fabricated it the easier to turn upon them this hatred of outsiders. With the great inrush of gilded-seekers the abandoned claims which the Chinese had been working, once again became desirable to the whites and the Chinese were driven from them with modest concern. Where might made right the peaceable Chinaman had little risk.
The land legislature was wholly in sympathy with the anti-foreign movement, and as early as 1850 passed the Foreign Miners' License law. This imposed a tax of twenty dollars a month on all foreign miners. Instead of bringing into the state treasury the revenue promised by its framers, this law had the effect of depopulating some camps and of seriously injuring all of them. San Francisco became overrun with penniless foreigners and their care became a serious problem. The constabulary was conceded to exist a failure and was repealed the post-obit year.
By the time this was washed, notwithstanding, the Chinese had become the virtually conspicuous body of foreigners in the country and therefore had to bear the brunt of the attacks upon the strange element. Governor Bigler suddenly became inspired with the realization of the value of an set on upon them as a political asset. He sent a special bulletin to the legislature in which he charged them with being contract "coolie" laborers, acquisitive, ignorant of moral obligations, incapable of being alloyed, and dangerous to the public welfare. The result was a renewal of the foreign miners' taxation, but in a milder class than its predecessor.
This did not satisfy the miners, who were at that time the strongest torso, in the community, and the adjacent year the tax was again made prohibitive.
Just it was not just the miners who hated the Chinese. The yield of the placers began to decline in 1853-4, and the discovery of gilded in Commonwealth of australia brought on a financial panic in the latter year. Prices, rents and values fell chop-chop and many concern houses failed. At that place were strikes for college wages amongst laborers and mechanics though the prevalent rate for skilled labor was ten dollars per day and for unskilled three dollars and a half. Investors became alarmed and, withdrew their upper-case letter. Thousands of unsuccessful miners drifted back into San Francisco and began to look for piece of work at their old time occupations. The labor marketplace was glutted and an enormous number were out of work.
To these unemployed men the presence of thousands of Chinese, thrifty, industrious, cheap, and in a higher place all, un-American, was obviously the cause of their plight. The cry was raised that the large number of Chinese in the country tended to injure the interests of the working classes and to degrade labor. It was claimed that they, deprived white men of positions past taking lower wages and that they sent their savings back to China; that thus they were human leeches sucking the very life-blood of this state. Whoever came to their defense force was immediately accused of having mercenary motives or of existence one-half-witted.
The "coolie" fiction of Governor Bigler was seized upon. In the first one-half of the nineteenth century a pseudo-slave trade had sprung up in transporting Chinese laborers under contract to piece of work at a certain wage for a certain period to Cuba, and parts of South America. Such laborers were ignorantly called "coolies" by those who were not familiar with the Chinese linguistic communication. The word itself comes from two Chinese words, "koo" significant to rent, and "lee" meaning muscle. The coolies are those who rent out their muscles, that is, unskilled laborers. In the four classes of People's republic of china they rank with the third, being considered a higher class than the merchants simply below the scholars and farmers. The word in no way signifies any sort of bondage. The "coolies" are perfectly free just as our own laborers are.
The Chinese who came to California were largely of this class and and so described themselves on their arrival. It did non take long for the anti-Chinese agitators to define a "coolie" every bit a contract laborer and to describe how he was jump to a master in China to work a certain number of years at a small wage and how this terrible arrangement was eating the very vitals out of American labor. This American labor about which there was so much concern was almost wholly composed of Irish and other European aliens who were no more American than the Chinese. Only they had a vote in prospect. The Chinese did not.
While the success of the coolie fiction was largely due to the fact that there were and so many who wanted to believe it, a number of circumstances combined to give it greater vitality. Most of the business organization transactions of the Chinese were done through their benevolent organizations which came to exist locally known every bit the "Half dozen Companies." The Companies often contracted for large bodies of laborers and this fact led the unthinking to conclude that these laborers were under contract with the Half-dozen Companies to work for them equally they should direct. This was non the truthful situation. These Companies merely acted as immigration-houses for all sorts of transactions among the Chinese, every bit they had found that they could handle things in a strange land more satisfactorily through such associations than they could individually.
Another affair which strengthened the coolie fiction was the manner in which the Chinese were employed on the construction work. of the Central Pacific Railroad. Because of the scarcity of labor the men in accuse of this construction work had sent an agent to China to secure Chinese laborers. In club to get these men over to this country, it was necessary to advance their passage-money and other expenses. To encompass this loan each Chinaman and then employed signed a promissory note for $75. This note provided for monthly instalment payments running over a period of vii months and was endorsed by friends in Red china. Each laborer was guaranteed a wage of $35 a month. This financial arrangement was of course seized upon and made much of past the anti-Chinese agitators equally the final proof of "coolieism."
The belief that the Chinese were contract laborers was i of those unfortunate errors which sometimes became electric current in our civic life, and past frequent repetition receive almost universal acceptance. In the present instance this phantom of Chinese slavery became so thoroughly a part of the political life of the Pacific Declension that no endeavor was made to reach the truth of the thing. Every man in public life was nether then binding a necessity to have the pop belief in regard to the Chinese and to truckle to it at every plow, that for ane to seek the real truth of the matter was to end forthwith his political career.
In the years following 1854 this unthinking, prejudiced, anti-Chinese movement ran anarchism. Various schemes were proposed for ridding the state of the Chinese as if they were a pest. It was seriously suggested that they be all returned to China, but as this would accept involved an expense of about seven millions of dollars and x or a dozen ships for every vessel that was bachelor, information technology was reluctantly laid bated. This scheme failing, information technology was asserted that they could at least be driven from the mines. Merely every bit this would have deprived the state of a large acquirement from licenses and would have crowded the outcasts in still greater numbers to the cities and agricultural districts, this too was abandoned.
Various local authorities passed legislation intended to harass them. Near of the Chinese were in San Francisco, so the principal efforts were made in that city, The famous "pig-tail ordinance" required all convicted male prisoners to have their hair cut within one inch of their heads. This detail piece of idiocy was vetoed by the mayor simply others nearly as vicious were passed.
Many of these were declared unconstitutional by the courts, but even the courts were non at all times consequent friends of the Chinaman. The worst accident which they received was embodied in a conclusion given by the Chief Justice of the land Supreme Court. There was a statute on the books which prohibited "negroes and Indians" from testifying confronting a white man in the courts of the state. The court held, in a brilliantly logical opinion, that this included the Chinese for the reason that in the days of Columbus all of the countries washed by Chinese waters had been called "Indian."
During the Civil War other issues overshadowed the Chinese question and the Orientals had a brief respite. But in 1868 the Burlingame treaty was entered into between the United states of america and China. It provided for reciprocal exemption from persecution on business relationship of religious belief, the privilege of schools and colleges, and in fact it agreed that every Chinese citizen in the U.s. should have every privilege which was expected by the American denizen in China. Though naturalization was especially excepted, the provisions of this treaty aroused a storm of animosity on the Pacific Coast. The labor agitators decried the treaty as a betrayal of the American workingman, and the whole Chinese question was up over again in more violent form than ever before.
The panic of 1873 and its ill effects brought the thing sharply before the public and especially that portion of it that was out of work. The crisis was averted for the fourth dimension, however, past the opening of the Consolidated 
This was more than than could be borne past the much-oppressed laboring man, who claimed that the Chinese, were robbing him of his bread and, which was worse, the merely one who benefitted by their labor was that other curvation-enemy of the laboring human, the capitalist. Something must be done. The courts had annulled the efforts of their municipal authorities and legislatures when these had tried to aid them; Congress had thrown them but a stone; the treaty-making power had betrayed them; they must have matters into their own easily. And this they proceeded to do.
Their method of procedure was in near cases to sack and burn the Chinese laundries and other commercial establishments operated by the Orientals. It was left for Los Angeles to furnish the most terrible example of all. Here nineteen Chinamen were hanged and shot in 1 evening. The massacre was accompanied by the theft of over $forty,000 worth of their goods.
Information technology was in the south in fact that the violent opposition to the Chinese had first found stiff supporters. Here were many who were accustomed to affirm the "superiority" of their race and to attach the idea of servitude to all inferior races. To work at all was well-nearly intolerable, but to piece of work abreast a "pig-tail" upon whose wearer even the wild Indian looked down, was to abasing to be borne. From these southerners this feeling rapidly spread among the immigrants from the poorer countries of Europe, who at home were in a position almost of servitude. Arrived in this country and endowed with the rights of citizenship, for which they are utterly unfitted, they immediately seek to raise themselves higher in their own estimation by trampling underfoot the rights of others.
But, beside these prejudices due to race-feeling and ignorance, at that place were existent causes of discontent against the Chinese. They were non given to sexual immorality themselves but some of them engaged in the business organisation of importing women whom they would prostitute to others for gain. Gambling was an all-prevalent vice. These two features of the Chinese state of affairs received far more than emphasis even amongst thoughtful people than should have been given to them. This came virtually considering of the practice of "seeing Chinatown," which like "seeing the globe" besides oftentimes meant seeing the worst possible side of it. The proportion of prostitutes among the Chinese was little if any higher than among the other races in California at the time but much publicity spread the thought of great numbers. Gambling, too, while very mostly indulged in by the Chinese, was never amidst themselves the vice which was made of information technology by the Americans who frequented the Chinese houses. The Chinaman gambled for small stakes as an amusement and never to his own devastation. But while gambling and immorality have been over-emphasized, one charge remains against them in all its original forcefulness. The Chinese quarter was very unclean. Their cleanly persons and spotless linen were in foreign contrast to their filthy homes, overrun equally they were with rats and other vermin.
In: The Story of California From the Earliest Days to the Present,
by Henry Thou. Norton. seventh ed. Chicago, A.C. McClurg & Co., 1924. Chapter XXIV, pp. 283-296.
Source: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html
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