Leland Stanford, CPRR secretary E. H. Miller, and Samuel Montague, the chief engineer, publicly expressed views similar to what Crocker wrote privately. In a report to the board of directors, the company officials summarized the work that had been completed in 1866 and the goals for 1867. They praised the Chinese workforce but worried that its numbers were insufficient. Only six thousand men were at work because of the dreadful winter conditions. For the coming year, the officials indicated that with the magnitude of very difficult work that still lay ahead and the brevity of the open-air construction season at the summit, the company needed a “large force, probably twenty thousand” to advance the project before the next winter. In order to meet this huge need, the company commissioned a “Chinese artist” to draft a handbill in Chinese to advertise the availability of work for the CPRR. The craftsman made a woodcut of the advertisement and produced five thousand copies, which were to circulate “all over this state & in China.” (We are not sure what the flyer actually said, as no copy of it has been found. Company officials themselves were not confident about what was in it. Crocker confided to Huntington that no one ever translated the Chinese text back into English. The “Chinamen all understand it,” he wrote, “but it is hard for them to translate it back into English.”) Company officials did not seem to realize that their flyer, while it advertised opportunity, also implicitly acknowledged the critical importance of the Chinese workers it then employed. The company’s linguistic, as well as labor, dependence on them would not go unnoticed. Recruiting new workers all the way from China would take months, and Chinese workers in California were already largely employed. The labor market was very tight, and company officials possessed extremely limited understanding of what Chinese were thinking and talking about among themselves.
Work, income, and risk were all highly structured, integrated, and hierarchical on the CPRR. The top officers of the company assumed high financial risk and eventually became enormously wealthy. Working in their offices, they faced little bodily risk. Huntington spent most of his time living comfortably in New York City with his wife, his lover and future wife, and family, first in the luxurious Metropolitan Hotel and then in a “modest” three-story mansion he purchased on Park Avenue. Stanford had his own mansion in Sacramento, which he acquired when he was governor. Hopkins and Crocker also resided most of the time in Sacramento, though Crocker, as the head of construction, frequently went out on the road to inspect, supervise, and even personally pay workers on occasion. Field construction boss Strobridge lost an eye to an errant explosion early in the effort, but he and his wife and children lived together in the security and comfort of a specially outfitted railcar, part of a “camp train” that followed the route, and which appears to have housed many of the CPRR’s white workers; the camp train contained, it was reported, eating and sleeping quarters for five hundred men. This ten- or eleven-car train contained a “hotel, telegraph office, store, kitchen, sleeping quarters and a ‘home that would not discredit San Francisco,’” as one journalist described it. Attached to the train were several platform cars that served as work areas for carpenters and for laborers constructing a telegraph line that ran along the rail line. At key stations on the route, the company established telegraph offices from which they communicated with those behind them and ordered supplies and provisions.
Strobridge, the company leader with whom Railroad Chinese had the most direct personal contact, lived in a forward car in the camp train. He had an office and private quarters, “neatly fitted and well furnished.” Attached was “an awning veranda, with a canary bird swinging at the front door,” according to a reporter. There, Strobridge spent time with his family and received visitors. His wife accompanied him on the camp train from beginning to end of the construction project. On occasion the Strobridges and their children enjoyed outings in the mountains, including boating on spectacular Donner Lake at the summit. The contrast between their highly visible domestic arrangements and the living conditions of the workers near at hand could not have been starker.
The contrast between the working conditions, type of labor, and wages of the Chinese and white workers on the CPRR could not have been starker, either. White men filled the skilled occupations such as carpenter, blacksmith, and tree-cutter almost exclusively. Others were supervisors over the Chinese. Some whites, to be sure, were also line workers, notably the layers who handled the iron rails; but the overall work duties and living conditions of the white rail workers compared to those of the Chinese rail workers mirrored the pervasive racial inequality of American life at the time.
Once, to satisfy their curiosity and to try to squeeze as much work as possible out of their employees, the company directors arranged a competition between Railroad Chinese and workers from Cornwall, in England, who enjoyed the reputation at the time of being the best miners in the world. The CPRR had recruited them with high wages away from mines in Nevada to tunnel at the summit. Chinese and the Cornish were set to work at opposite ends of the tunnel. After measuring the completed work at the end of the day over several days, the company discovered, to its surprise, that the Chinese had advanced farther than the Cornish team. In public testimony in 1877 before a special United States Senate committee investigating Chinese immigration, Charles Crocker reported that the competition was “hard work, steady pounding on the rock, bone-labor,” but “without fail,” the Chinese “always out-measured the Cornish miners” in the amount of cut and removed rock. Crocker maintained unequivocally that “the Chinese were skilled in using the hammer and the drill,” and in terms of their attitude, they were “very trusty,” “very intelligent,” and they lived up to their contracts. In sum, Crocker conceded that compared to “white men,” the Chinese displayed “greater reliability and steadiness,” and with their tremendous “aptitude and capacity for hard work,” they had “worked themselves into our favor.”
All whites, including the line workers, received significantly higher wages than the Chinese. This pay disparity can be seen on the November 1866 payroll sheet for what appears to be one work camp, “Summit 51 ‘A,’” of Charles Crocker’s construction company. Alongside Euro-American names, listed with first and last names, followed by “occupations” such as foreman, blacksmith, or driver, Chinese names are listed as Ah Tom, Ah Keale, Ah Nou No. 1, Ah Nou No. 2, Ah Tom No. 2, Ah Kow, Ah You, and Ah Sam. (The diminutive “Ah” commonly precedes an effort to spell what presumably is a Chinese surname; several of these men may have been related, perhaps even brothers.) The occupation of all of them was “waiter,” and they were paid only sixty-six cents a day, much less than the one dollar paid to Chinese construction workers. The total pay that month for the men just named ranged from $3.96 (for a fellow who worked only six days) to $25 (for those who worked thirty days). The sums were far less than for those with Euro-American names (some of whom may have been African American). Most of the “foremen” received in total between $60 and $90. A per diem fee for board was deducted for several of the Chinese and two of the others. The Chinese waiters likely served food to those who lived at Summit Camp, a pivotal location for the railroad at the highest elevation of the project, which was occupied for four years. Lower down on the same payroll sheet we find the name of Ah Gee, a “helper,” who was paid a dollar a day for twenty-three and a quarter days of work and had $3 subtracted from his pay for board. He may have “helped” Ah Ming, who is listed as a blacksmith and was paid $1.53 per day for fifteen days of work. He had $2 taken from his pay for board. Most of the blacksmiths with Euro-American names earned $2.50 a day with nothing deducted for board. Though the Chinese names as listed are almost no help in trying to identify specific individuals, the record still provides interesting insights. Those with Euro-American names clearly received substantially higher pay than did Chinese, who themselves performed different types of work, were paid at different rates, and kept different schedules.
While the Chinese men listed on this payroll were waiters, even those who did dangerous work
could not expect to be paid anywhere near the level of white workers. Indeed, in an inverse relationship, the Railroad Chinese received the lowest pay but bore the greatest risk to life and limb. Whites and Chinese lived and usually worked in highly segregated settings. African Americans, Native Americans, Mormons, and European immigrant men, Irish and others, also worked along with Chinese and “Americans,” presumably native-born whites, who usually refused to work with Chinese. Very little is known about the experiences of these groups and their interaction on the CPRR. Consistent with capitalist practices at the time, company leadership appears to have paid little attention to the welfare of the workforce, other than to see that they completed the needed work. Lewis M. Clement displayed this disengaged attitude once when he was asked about Chinese workers, bluntly stating that he “never took any particular interest in them, never cared about them so long as we got the work done.”
The extant evidence we do have provides only a general and sometimes conflicting picture of the pay differences among the wage workers. Although race was a basic factor, with whites always receiving higher pay even for the same work, differences in job assignments also accounted for pay differences. Chinese tunnelers, for example, received more than Chinese waiters.
Arthur Brown, the engineer overseeing wood construction, recalled a few years after work was completed that his white carpenters, probably in 1867–68, were paid $4 a day and foremen $3.75 a day, with board included in their compensation. “Laborers,” presumably Chinese, were paid $2.25 to $2.75 a day, but the cost of their board was deducted—from forty cents to $1.25 a day, according to different sources. Engineer Clement said that white wood-choppers were paid $40 a month, with their board included. Chinese timber workers received $30 a month and paid for their own provisions. Clement also noted that provisions up in the high elevations were expensive, as they all had to be packed in by mule or pack trains. There was a constant strong upward pressure to raise the pay of white workers, recalled Clement, as they could always secure better wages elsewhere, even twice what the railroad could pay them, and they still tended to run off to the latest gold strike where they hoped to strike it rich.
Tunnel engineer Gilliss also provided information on wages. He placed the pay of Chinese tunnel workers at $30 to $35 in gold per month, out of which they had to pay for their board. At Tunnel No. 6, the Summit Tunnel specifically, Gilliss calculated that Chinese received $31 per month, without board; white foremen received $120 per month, along with their board; and blacksmiths received $115 per month, with board. In comparison, white laborers on the Union Pacific, according to Gilliss, were paid $3 to $4 per day in currency, or between $78 and $104 per month.
Before the Senate committee on Chinese immigration, Charles Crocker and James Strobridge testified about their experiences with Chinese labor on the CPRR. Both expressed high regard for the Chinese, and though they expressed a racial preference for hiring whites, the two maintained that Chinese were as good as the best white workers. Crocker, who claimed to have been a committed abolitionist from his youth, insisted that Chinese were free agents, and in no way “servile labor” that “degraded” whites, as in the slave system in the South. An employer in California could not work a Chinese unless he was hired and paid properly, he testified. As head of construction overall, however, Crocker had only a general overview of his workforce and was not even sure how many Chinese he had employed—perhaps ten thousand at the high point, according to his estimate. When they worked for the CPRR, Crocker said, the Chinese grouped themselves into teams, with one among them being the “headman.” The company paid him, and he in turn distributed the wages among the others. Whites were paid individually. The company paid Chinese $35 a month, he recalled, or about $1.25 a day. They spent approximately forty cents a day on provisions purchased from the company store.
Strobridge confirmed the amount of the pay differential between Chinese and white workers. And like Crocker, he expressed respect and appreciation for the self-discipline of Chinese and their work ethic. In contrast, he cited the record of UP white workers who frequently went on strike or disrupted work, including even in the days just before the two lines met at Promontory Summit in Utah. UP workers even physically detained company vice president Thomas Durant because of his nonpayment of wages. Chinese workers, Strobridge observed, never behaved in such a way, even though “sometimes we did not pay for two months and perhaps more.” They were never “docile,” Strobridge testified: “I do not think the Chinese are any more docile than white-men.” White workers after getting paid, he said, often “will get drunk,” and “that is when trouble comes with them.” Chinese, by contrast, were exemplary on and off the job. Carefully choosing his words before a panel of U.S. senators who believed that the company, in deliberately hiring lower-paid Chinese, was damaging the interests of the white population, Strobridge argued that Chinese workers still “would be preferable” because “we have less difficulty with them.”
Strobridge’s frank assessment of the quality of Chinese workers irritated the committee members, but his testimony also reinforced their anti-Chinese hostility. The senators suspected that the railroad men favored Chinese simply because of money: Chinese labor cost less. At the end of their time with Strobridge, one member bluntly asked: Wasn’t the issue about the Chinese simply about their pay? Wasn’t their labor “about thirty-three per cent cheaper to the contractor than the white labor?” Strobridge responded, going further: “It is much cheaper. Their board is an important consideration.” Earlier in the hearing, Crocker had said almost the same thing when he was asked, “Did you make more money out of [employing Chinese] than if you had employed white men?” Crocker simply replied, “I think I did.”
There is no question that Chinese received significantly lower pay than did white workers in the same job categories and far less than white supervisors, blacksmiths, teamsters, hostlers, and other higher-paid positions. Few Chinese filled what were considered to be skilled positions. Anti-Chinese politicians cited the wage differential as obvious evidence of the avarice of the railroad barons, who gained immense profits by not hiring white men. In their view, Chinese deprived deserving whites of work. Railroad company officials defended themselves by saying that although they preferred to hire as many whites as would take the work, the numbers fell dramatically short of need. Moreover, they argued, hiring Chinese actually created more and higher-paying jobs for white men, for, without Chinese, the railroad enterprise would not have been able to succeed. Instead of employing only several hundred white men as laborers, the CPRR, it was argued, was actually able to hire several thousand white men in higher-paying positions because of Chinese labor.
From the viewpoint of Railroad Chinese, though the wage differential based on race was glaring, and racial prejudice was openly practiced, they knew that the wages they received were many times greater than what they could earn in the Pearl River delta as farmers or laborers. Physical risk, even the risk of death, was exceedingly high, but so was their gain relative to what they could make in their home villages.
The power imbalance between Railroad Chinese and their white co-workers on the CPRR led to acts of resistance large and small. Sometimes these could be as minor as a prank at the oppressor’s expense—an act that acknowledged but also slyly subverted the inequalities between white and nonwhite workers. The Siyi people can be a garrulous lot, after all. In the camps where they resided, and around the after-dinner fire, they might have exchanged the latest news or stories about the stupidity of white supervisors or about the crazy company building the railroad through such impossible territory. One such tale, handed down by Chinese Americans through the decades as they recounted the lives of their ancestors from those times, and recorded by a community historian, goes roughly as follows.
A Chinese cook once worked for a crew of white railroad workers. He was mild-mannered and worked hard but became the butt of their pranks. As told by an old-timer, Moon Lee, whose father and grandfather had been Rai
lroad Chinese, the whites harassed the cook “by sneaking into his tent and tying knots in his pants legs and shirt sleeves. The cook did not make any fuss but just rose earlier and patiently untied the knots and got on with the food preparation.” The story seems to emphasize the stereotype of the long-suffering Chinese, until it takes a surprising turn. Moon Lee continued: “One day, after a particularly savory dinner, the ringleader, ashamed of the tricks, gathered his gang around him and informed the Chinese that hereafter he was their friend and no one would harm him. The Chinese cook’s eyes brightened.” He called out with a smile, “All-li my flens, now I no pee in the soup!” What howls of laughter this subversive act provoked through the years!
The consolations of a joke at the white man’s expense that was shared around a campfire would not have diminished the very real economic inequities that the Railroad Chinese endured. Derisive laughter might provide a measure of psychic comfort, but stories like this one would also remind them of their penurious social and economic status. And it was always income that was paramount in the minds of the Railroad Chinese: it was the entire reason why they had come to America in the first place.
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