"How Sacramento helped spark a transportation revolution 164 years ago"
" ... Laying the rails required grueling and arduous manual work, and much of it was done by Chinese laborers. Many had come for the gold rush, largely from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. High foreign miner taxes forced them to look for other sources of work. Crocker, one of the Big Four, proposed hiring them to construct the railroad but faced pushback. 'I believe that all our people were prejudiced against Chinese labor, and that there was a disposition not to employ them,' said Crocker in an 1877 Congressional report. After hiring a small 50-person crew as a test run, the railroad company found Chinese laborers to be reliable and efficient. By 1868, over 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad’s workforce was made up of Chinese laborers. At one point, the railroad even began recruiting workers directly from China. In all, the Central Pacific hired more than 10,000 Chinese workers during the railroad’s construction. 'You just wouldn’t have a transcontinental railroad by 1869 without the work of Chinese railroad workers' ... " [More]
[Courtesy Google Alerts.]
Alfred A. Hart stereoview #235, 'J Street, Sacramento City. View from the Levee', detail.
Courtesy California State Library.
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 8:24 AM
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