Which immigrant group faced discrimination in building the railroad?
Teachers should understand that most of the people who worked to build the transcontinental railroad were immigrants from China and Ireland. These immigrants faced discrimination in the U.S., but their labor made this national achievement possible.
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The Transcontinental Railroad's Dark Costs: Exploited Labor, Stolen Lands. Chinese immigrant workers and Indigenous tribes paid a particularly high price. Construction on the Transcontinental Railroad began on January 8, 1863 in Sacramento, when workers for the Central Pacific Railroad first broke ground for the track.
The first transcontinental railroad was built primarily by immigrants from China and Ireland. The government provided loans for each mile of track laid and the railroad corporations that received about twenty million acres of land grants as a reward and incentive from the federal government.
Many workers contributed to the construction of railroads. On the East Coast, Native Americans, recently freed black people, and white laborers worked on the railroads. On the West Coast, many of the railroad workers were Chinese immigrants.
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.
For immigrants to the United States, the Transcontinental Railroad presented an opportunity to seek their fortunes in the West. There, they found more opportunity than the port cities of the East Coast, where discrimination kept immigrants living in urban squalor.
During the 19th century, more than 2.5 million Chinese citizens left their country and were hired in 1864 after a labor shortage threatened the railroad's completion. The work was tiresome, as the railroad was built entirely by manual laborers who used to shovel 20 pounds of rock over 400 times a day.
And the railroad and other rail routes that followed made it easy for large numbers of hunters to travel westward and kill millions of buffalo. That slaughter impacted Native Americans, who had hunted buffalo in moderation, and weakened their resistance to settlement of the west.
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 ...
In less than one year, 80 percent of Central Pacific's workforce was made up of Chinese laborers, and by 1867, there were a total of 14,000 Chinese immigrants working on the railroad.
However, two industries benefited the most from the Transcontinental Railroad. Those were cotton and cattle. Railroads made it possible for cotton farmers in the east to ship their products to the western frontier quickly.
Teachers should understand that most of the people who worked to build the transcontinental railroad were immigrants from China and Ireland. These immigrants faced discrimination in the U.S., but their labor made this national achievement possible.
Chinese workers were treated unjustly and paid lower because of their race. Chinese workers were paid approximately $24 to $31 a month, while the Irish workers were pad $35 a month. In addition, the Chinese worked longer hours and paid for their lodging, food and tools while Irish and white workers were provided for.
The major groups of immigrants that worked on the transcontinental railroad were from Ireland and China. All immigrants working on the transcontinental railroad were treated equally and with high standards.