Railroads and Chinese
Laborers: 1880s-1890s
Chinese transcontinental railroad workers in 1869.
Wanting to profit off of the West coast economic boom, railroad companies like the Central Pacific Railroad started to hire laborers. They couldn’t keep workers for very long, however, due to low wages and horrendous working conditions.
After a wage dispute was launched by Irish workers, the company started targeting Chinese migrants. The Central Pacific Railroad recruited more than 12,000 Chinese laborers, paying them less (at $27-30 per month) than the $35 plus free room and board they paid to Irish workers. [#32]
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in response to racist claims that Chinese immigrants were responsible for declining wages, even though they represented only .002% of the population.
After the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese immigrants were required to prove their legal presence in the U.S. by having government-issued identification cards on their persons at all times or risk facing deportation or being sentenced to hard labor.
The law banned the immigration of Chinese workers and made them ineligible for naturalization. It was the first major attempt to restrict the flow of workers coming to the U.S. Chinese immigrants and their American-born offspring were not allowed to become U.S. citizens until 1943. [#33]
Railroad companies were major players in the growth of Wall Street. They were among the first U.S. companies to issue stocks and bonds after profiting from government subsidies and land grants to expand across Native land.
To what extent was our economy designed to be fair?
To what extent was our economy designed to be fair?
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Dispossession of Land
from Indigenous Peoples:
1607 – Present Day
Wall Street Established
as an Official Trading
Post of Enslaved Peoples:
1711
Invention of the Cotton
Gin Accelerates the
Expansion of Slavery:
1794
Choctaw Nation Forced
to Abandon Ancestral
Lands for “Indian
Territory”: 1831
Lehman Brothers’
Cotton Exchange: 1858
Sharecropping and Debt
Peonage: 1870s-1940s
Prison Labor:
1870s - Present Day
Railroads and Chinese
Laborers: 1880s-1890s
Tulsa Black Wall Street Massacre: 1921
Stock Market Crashes, Ushering in the Great Depression: 1929
LA Police "Repatriate" Mexican Americans and Immigrants at La Placita Park: 1931
The Home Owners Loan Corporation Develops Redlining: 1933
Report on “Pinklining” Reveals How Wall Street Targets Women for Toxic Loans: 2016
