Between 1880 and 1885, the CPR employed about 17,000 Chinese labourers for the construction of the railway. It's estimated that they saved Onderdonk three to five million dollars, preventing him from going bankrupt.
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Initially, Chinese employees received wages of $27 and then $30 a month, minus the cost of food and board. In contrast, Irishmen were paid $35 per month, with board provided. Workers lived in canvas camps alongside the grade.
After completing the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, Chinese laborers fanned out across the United States to work on at least 71 other rail lines, according to Fishkin.
“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 also had the most difficult and dangerous work, including tunneling and the use of explosives. There is also evidence they faced physical abuse at times from some supervisors.
Introduction. Chinese workers were an essential part of building the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR), the western section of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States.
“Wars, ethnic conflicts and economic insecurity were scourges, and young people were leaving to seek work and support their families from afar.” Altogether, the Central Pacific Railroad hired an estimated 12,000 Chinese workers, some as young as 12.
From 1863 and 1869, roughly 15,000 Chinese workers helped build the transcontinental railroad. They were paid less than American workers and lived in tents, while white workers were given accommodation in train cars.
They would next find work on the railroads in the West, especially Texas. More than 1,200 Chinese laborers helped build the Southern Pacific Railroad from Los Angeles to El Paso, completed in May 1881. When the job was done, about 300 Chinese decided to stay in El Paso.
Between 1863-1869 the Central Pacific hired more than 13,000 Chinese laborers to support the construction. It took the construction crews, comprised of 80% to 90% Chinese laborers, fifteen months to drill and blast through 1,659 feet of rock to complete the Summit Tunnel at Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.