How did the completion of the railroad affect the Chinese negatively?
Economic tensions quickly became prevalent, as many Chinese workers were willing to work for lower wages than their white counterparts. There were also cultural tensions as Chinatowns emerged in cities throughout the West Coast.
People Also Ask
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.
Chinese camp and construction train in Nevada when building of the first transcontinental railroad was being speeded across the state by the Central Pacific. “Chinese received 30-50 percent lower wages than whites for the same job and they had to pay for their own food stuffs,” Chang says.
They were paid less than white workers, and hundreds lost their lives as a result of the dangerous work, said Gordon Chang, professor of American history at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences. A Chinese laborer works at a tunnel heading above Donner Lake on the western summit of the Transcontinental Railroad.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, U.S. railroad companies were expanding at a breakneck pace, straining to span the continent as quickly--and cheaply--as they could. The work was brutally difficult, the pay was low, and workers were injured and killed at a very high rate.
With no support from other workers, the Chinese strike ended without event, and the men went back to working hard and steady. Thousands more Chinese were brought on to finish the railroad. In 1868 Central Pacific crews finally broke out of the Sierra Nevada.
They made less than their white counterparts, and in 1867 participated in an (eventually unsuccessful) strike for equal pay. The Chinese laborers often did the most dangerous parts of the construction, including the dynamiting of mountain tunnels.
As white explorers and settlers entered Western territory, they disrupted a centuries-old culture — that of the Plains Indians. The arrival of the railroad and, with it, more permanent and numerous white settlement, spelled growing conflict between whites and natives.
Good and badThe railroad is credited, for instance, with helping to open the West to migration and with expanding the American economy. It is blamed for the near eradication of the Native Americans of the Great Plains, the decimation of the buffalo and the exploitation of Chinese railroad workers.
The railroad also gave homesteaders greater access to manufactured goods, as they could be transported easily and quickly across the railway. However, the Transcontinental Railroad had a negative impact on the Plains Indians. They were forced to move away from the railroad despite it running through Indian Territory.
Abstract. In this chapter, we review the level of disturbance caused by railways due to noise and vibration, air, soil and water pollution, and soil erosion.
Railroad Workers Were UnhappyEmployees often worked 10, 12 and even 16 hours a day. Sometimes they did not receive extra pay for the extra hours they worked. Conditions on the job were often very dangerous. Workers joined together to improve their poor working conditions and increase their salaries.
He told President Andrew Johnson that the Chinese were indispensable to building the railroad: They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the ...
The rails carried more than goods; they provided a conduit for ideas, a pathway for discourse. With the completion of its great railroad, America gave birth to a transcontinental culture. And the route further engendered another profound change in the American mind.
The Chinese workers were educated and organized; 3,000 laborers went on strike in 1867 to demand equal wages, as the white workers were paid double. “They were unsuccessful because they were out in the middle of nowhere,” said Liebhold. “The railroad stopped them from getting food. That's one way it failed.”