Making a Living:

In 1863, the Central Pacific Railroad began construction of the western side of the nation’s first transcontinental line, building east from Sacramento, California. Before long, the company confronted a problem: its employees—native and foreign-born white men—had become “unsteady,” “unreliable,” and demanding, thus, threatening to drive up costs and halt the project’s progress. Hoping to curtail the problem, in 1865, the Central Pacific hired fifty Chinese male laborers on an experimental basis.¹ The trial was a success, as the workers performed their tasks well and caused management few problems. The white workers who remained refused to work alongside the Chinese, however, and demanded the foreigners be let go. Charles Crocker, one of the company directors, was unsympathetic, and instead praised the Chinese employees’ “reliability and steadiness, and their aptitude and capacity for hard work.” He furthermore told the white workers, “If you can’t get along with them … We’ll let you go and hire nobody but them.”² With the help of recruiters who advertised in West Coast immigrant communities as well as in China, the Central Pacific eventually hired about fifteen thousand Chinese laborers, four-fifths of its wage workforce.