![]() “They learned that the Chinese could not be taken for granted,” Stanford University’s Hilton Obenzinger told NBC News. But their pushback showed that the Chinese were not docile laborers unwilling to fight for their rights. Railroad bosses ultimately broke the strike by withholding food rations and threatening violence, and the workers’ demands were denied. In the summer of 1867, thousands of Chinese workers organized the largest labor stoppage in America up to that date to demand both equal pay and better working conditions. According to researchers at Stanford University’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Chinese laborers earned between half and two-thirds of what Euro-American laborers did, and had to pay for their food. The treatment and working conditions of each group varied widely. They were joined in the effort by African Americans, Irishmen and smaller numbers of Native Americans and Mormons (now referred to as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Most came from China’s southern Guangdong province, fleeing their country’s Opium Wars. The first Chinese railroad workers (a team of 21 men) arrived in the United States in 1864 ultimately, it’s estimated that some 20,000 Chinese laborers participated in the project, making up the majority of the workforce. So railroad companies began recruiting abroad, focusing particularly on China. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin in their book The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, but the job required many more hands. Several hundred white workers responded, according to historians Gordon H. In January 1865, Central Pacific published an ad seeking 5,000 railroad workers. Many Irish immigrants and other white laborers who moved west chose instead to pursue farming or mining. While the transcontinental Railroad enjoyed wide support-from President Abraham Lincoln, Congress and business leaders and investors-finding enough workers among America’s white laboring class to undertake the grueling and hazardous work proved challenging. READ MORE: 10 Ways the Transcontinental Railroad Changed America Chinese Workers Dominated the WorkforceĬhinese laborers at work with pick and shovel wheelbarrows and one-horse dump carts filling in under a trestle built in 1865 as part of the transcontinental railroad. ![]() The railroad was completed by the sweat and muscle of exploited labor, it wiped out populations of buffalo, which had been essential to Indigenous communities, and it extended over land that had been unlawfully seized from tribal nations. But there was also a dark side to the historic national project. It was widely viewed as an American triumph-the railroad vastly expanded America’s economy as it opened up opportunity in the American West. The work included grading steep mountain faces, building bridges across vast canyons and blasting tunnels through solid granite. With brute manpower, engineering savvy-and little in the way of heavy equipment-they conquered some of the nation’s most daunting terrain. Racing to meet in the middle, they completed the project in 1869. Eleven months later, their counterparts in the Midwest-workers for the Union Pacific Railroad-began breaking ground in Omaha. Trucks for hauling a horse trailer are needed by equestrian horse riders who attend horse shows with horse tack and supplies, veterinary supplies, riding clothes, saddles and boots and riding helmets.Construction on the Transcontinental Railroad began on Januin Sacramento, when workers for the Central Pacific Railroad first broke ground for the track. Back to top Check out all the horse show scores and riding times in the equestrian calendar above.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |