Railroad/Chinese Immigration

1. Railroad/Chinese Immigration Isolation was prime shaper of California. Routes were arduous and dangerous. • Isthmus of Panama (no water passage through Central America) • Wagon Train or Horses - Oregon Trail, Mountain Passes (you can follow the old trails today by following the discarded junk along route) • Sail around Southern Tip of South America • 1850-1860 Overland Stage: inefficient, unreliable Donner Party: Fall 1846 - Spring 1847

2. Railroad Barons 4 Railroad Barons (former Shopkeepers): • Leland Stanford (Bay Area) • Mark Hopkins (SF) • Collins P. Huntington (LA) • Charles Crocker They invested their combined assets, about $100,000. Eventually they would amass fortunes totaling $200,000,000. There was risk involved, but these men eventually used their power to control the economy of California.

3. Laying the last rail and the Golden Spike at Promontory Point, Utah, May 19, 1869. 4 month trip now takes 4 days!

4. Where are all the Chinese???????

5. Promontory Point Utah

6. Chinese Labor

7. Effects of the Transcontinental Railroad • San Francisco becomes a trans-shipment point for Asian goods. Prices drop over night. • Trains that at first went empty back East started to take agricultural products with them. • Railroad was a monopoly. Prices were high. Resentment and sporadic violence from farmers and others broke out. • Southern Pacific is the 3rd largest landholder in state after Feds and State. • Influx of Asian, particularly Chinese, workers.

8. Effects of the Transcontinental Railroad Pluses: • Connected California to East • Increased trade • Increased speed of communications • Connected Pacific to Atlantic and Europe Minuses: • Monopoly and Greed • Unethical business practices • Politicians controlled by Southern Pacific (Frank Norris, The Octopus)

9. Violence against Asians • The Gold Rush brought many Chinese to California. Town of China Camp on Highway 49, for example. They were violently forced out by Mexicans, who were later violently forced out by Americans. • All of this was repeated during the construction of the railroads. White men designed, engineered, supervised, and profited. Chinese “coolies” did the backbreaking labor. They worked right through the winters in snow tunnels. Many became lost and were found frozen during the spring thaw.

10. Violence against Asians Railroad laborers were mostly Chinese men. Smaller number from all over the world. As Chinese pushed out, Japanese (who often brought their families) replaced them. Differences led to tension: • Immigrants from the Eastern U.S. often intended to become citizens. • Chinese were here to make money and return to their families. They worked very hard. (Sojourners) • Migration issues: most migrants still move for money. Most are young men. • Why learn English? • Why mix socially? • Why go slow?

11. European Resentment Why? • Made them look lazy • didn’t associate with Europeans (or was it other way around?) • didn’t learn the language • racism (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882) Truckee at one point had 1,000 Chinese. In 1883, vigilante committee formed by local politician burned Chinese Truckee. Newspaper headline read: “Luckey Truckee - Chinatown Holocausted.”

12. Stop here

13. Farming Changes in California • Little agriculture under Native Americans • Spanish begin dry farming • Mexicans focus instead on ranching cattle • American’s changed things. • Had to feed 49’s • railroad made shipping products out of season practical • Mormons, 1847-1850, in San Bernadino, introduced irrigation using local streams, just as they had in Utah with dams and storage areas to grow expensive fruits, grapes, nuts. Later they did this in San Joaquin, too.

14. The Depression and Dust Bowl • Stock Market Crash of 1929 • Dust Bowl droughts in Midwest and 1930s depression send thousands of unemployed migrants to an already depressed California. • “Okies” • John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath California’s depression didn’t really end until build-up for WWII.

15. Dust Bowl Migrations • Causes: • improper farming techniques - no fallow period, no turning in of crops • drought • handbills advertising work for pickers in CA • So many came that wages for pickers plummeted. Living conditions were terrible. • At one point Gov. of CA called out state troopers to block newcomers! Feds quickly put an end to that.

17. World War II • 1941-1945 WWII • Military build-up included explosive growth for fledgling aircraft industry in Southern California • Douglas, Northrop, Lockheed, Hughes • Defense contractors quickly become base of So Cal economy, providing many high-paying union jobs. • Immigration flows, following economic opportunity and “California Dream,” begin in this period.

18. 1939-> Lend/Lease • Oakland - Liberty Ships By the end of the war, California was an urban, industrial society.

19. World War II • 1941-1945 WWII • Feb. 1942 Roosevelt authorized military control of “enemy aliens” Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens placed in concentration camps and stripped of their land: • Manzanar in the Owens Valley • Tule Lake near Oregon Border in the Modoc Plateau. Still a Japanese ag. community today. • Economic losses of at least $365,000,000 for the Japanese.

20. No redress until 1988Civil Liberties Act which paid each survivor $20,000. (65,000 of 120,000) • Italians and Germans were never subjected to this treatment. Many Japanese still served in military. Manzanar Internment Camp, 1943 Manzanar Memorial, 1999

21. Postwar Boom • Southern California becomes a military stronghold. Soldiers passing through for training often return to settle. Population growth soars ahead of other states. “Ranch” houses and sprawl begin. • Economic growth: • assembly line style housing developments • consumer goods, including automobiles • defense industry continues to thrive on Cold War money: nuclear power, missile systems, aerospace, electronic weaponry, planes. • By 1960, CA gets 25% of federal defense money • 1969, CA gets 33% + of federal defense money

22. California as Trendsetter • Fashion, Style, and Music • Youth subculture: surfing, skateboards, fashion, rock ‘n’ roll, Razor scooters • Prop. 13, 1978 - brought property tax hikes to screeching halt. Taxes only set at time of sale. Dramatically decreased ability of governments to provide services. Now homeowners may pay 20 times the tax of their neighbors! • “Los Angelization of Places” - suburban sprawl, over-development, and Spanish Mediterranean style architecture are all now ubiquitous.

24. California Prop 187 Nov 8th 1995 • That statute is a dramatic effort to drive out undocumented aliens and to deter • their entry by….. • Cutting them off from medical and other public services • Cost to treat illegal immigrants falls on public funded hospitals (emergency care) • Depriving their children of an education. • Public schools are funded by property tax, and illegal immigrants don’t pay property tax • Ridding our prisons of illegal immigrants. • Bed, 3 meals a day, clothing, etc for non-citizens who never paid into the system • (It was described in the official ballot argument as “the first giant stride in ultimately ending the ILLEGAL ALIEN invasion.'')

25. California Prop 227 June 1998 Requires all public school instruction be conducted in English. Requirement may be waived if parents or guardian show that child already knows English, or has special needs, or would learn English faster through alternate instructional technique. Provides initial short-term placement, not normally exceeding one year, in intensive sheltered English immersion programs for children not fluent in English.