Recovering an erased history: The Chinese railroad workers who helped connect the country. - NBCAsianAmerica
“It is the best opportunity I will have in my lifetime to have this story shared, to have it understood and appreciated by people outside our community,” said Michael Kwan, the association’s president, whose great-great grandfather worked for the Central Pacific.
It also generated tremendous wealth for railroad tycoons such as Leland Stanford, a former California governor who ran under an anti-Chinese immigrant platform. Stanford also served as president of the Central Pacific and later established the university that bears his name. for better wages and the prospect of striking it rich, Hilton Obenzinger, the project’s associate director, said.Alfred A. Hart Photographs, 1862-1869 / Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
The success of the experiment led the Central Pacific to hire additional Chinese workers, but the Chinese labor pool in California soon ran out. So the company arranged with labor contractors to bring workers directly from China, mostly from Guangdong province in the south.Alfred A. Hart Photographs, 1862-1869 / Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
By the end of July 1865, boatloads of Chinese were arriving in San Francisco. Less than two years later, almost 90 percent of the Central Pacific workforce was Chinese; the rest were of European-American descent, mostly Irish. At its highest point, between 10,000 and 15,000 Chinese were working on the Central Pacific, with perhaps as many as 20,000 in total over time.
Often toiling in extreme weather, they cleared obstructions, moved earth, bored tunnels and built retaining walls — work done virtually all by hand. They became experts in drayage, masonry, carpentry and track laying. Sometimes they were lowered off cliffs to plant explosive charges when blasting was necessary, knowing that once the fuse was lit the difference between life and death hinged on how fast they were brought back up.
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