In 1848 gold was discovered at John Sutter’s Mill in California.
As word spread, fortune seekers from all across the United States and across the world flocked to California in what came to be known as the Gold Rush.
This included thousands from China. Many of the Chinese miners planned to return home with the gold they mined.
As the easily accessible gold became more and more scarce due to the rush, resentment grew against foreign miners.
In 1850 California passed the Foreign Miners Tax, charging those who came from outside of the United States $20 a month.
On this day in Labor History the year was 1862.
The California legislature passed an act to further limit Chinese miners.
The official title was “An Act to Protect Free White Labor Against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California.”
The word Coolie referred to unskilled laborers from China and the Indian subcontinent.
It was also often used as a derogatory term for Chinese people.
The act implemented new taxes and licensing requirements on Chinese miners.
The steep taxes led many Chinese to leave mining.
Nearly 12,000 Chinese workers found employment with the construction of the transcontinental railroad.
They performed extremely dangerous work laying the tracks through the Rocky Mountains. Yet when the railroad project was completed, the Chinese workers were excluded from the celebrations.
They were also not allowed to ride on the trains that crossed the continent for the first time.
Anti-Chinese racism continued to grow.
Twenty years after the passage of the California law, the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
This law prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers.
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