When gold was discovered in 1848 in northern California, there were not many Chinese in the U.S., especially beyond the western states. Such was still true in 1870, but Chinese were beginning to live in all regions, even in places that had never seen a Chinese previously. Given that the typical Chinese immigrant during this period lacked English fluency, financial resources, and marketable work skills, why and how did this secondary migration of Chinese occur?
Most Chinese
in 1870 were still in western states.
Perhaps no definitive answers may be found in historical documents but it is worthwhile to speculate on the probable mechanisms. A good place to start is to look at the role of labor contractors who recruited Chinese laborers to work on railroad and other construction projects starting in the 1860s, as strikebreakers in a laundry, a shoe factory, and a cutlery factory in the 1870s in the northeast, and as a supply of cheap labor to replace blacks on cotton and rice plantations in the South.
What Happened to Chinese Contract Laborers?
One important unanswered question is what happened to the
thousands of Chinese recruited to work for the Central Pacific Railroad in the
mid to late 1860s after the completion of the transcontinental railroad at
Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869? The completion was a cause for great
celebration for the nation but for the Chinese it meant that overnight
thousands of railroad laborers were out of work.
What happened to these Chinese after this work ended?
Some undoubtedly returned to the west coast as well as to China, but it is
likely that some unknown number remained and settled within a short distance of
Promontory Summit, Utah, the site where the transcontinental railroad was
completed. The 1880 Census listed some Chinese working for the railroad but how
many were from the original workers and how many were new laborers cannot be
determined. In the 1880 U.S. Census, Chinese in Box Elder County, site of
Promontory, were not limited to work on railroad maintenance. Some worked in
laundries, restaurants, grocery stores, and others worked as tailors,
prostitutes, doctors, and engineers.
Others
returned to California where they dug channels and ditches of a vast irrigation
system in northern California that created a vast agricultural business.
Other railroad workers found other work such as farming and
mining along the route of the railroad as census records of the late 1800s show
Chinese in many small towns such as Elko, Nevada, Ogden, Utah, Laramie,
Wyoming, and Omaha, Nebraska located along the transcontinental railroad route
between Sacramento, California and Chicago.
Fate of Other Contract Workers
What
happened to the smaller groups of about 50 to 100 Chinese workers that labor
contractors, white as well as Chinese, recruited from the west coast and China
in the 1870s to work in factories, laundries, farms, and plantations?
Some of the Chinese contracted to work in
Hervey’s laundry in Belleville later opened hand laundries in nearby Newark,
New Jersey. A history of Newark’s
Chinatown found there were 2 Chinese hand laundries as early as 1880,
23 by 1885, and 47 by 1887 along with a steam laundry. In 1872, one Chinese
from the Belleville laundry, Ong Yung, is believed to have opened the
first Chinese laundry in New York City, and it is likely that others followed
his example.
Nothing is known about what happened to the Chinese after
they left the shoe factory in North Adams, MA. or the cutlery factory in Beaver
Falls, PA. but it is likely that some of the shoe factory workers remained in
New England around Boston and some of the cutlery factory workers settled in
nearby areas such as Pittsburgh and later attracting relatives to join them.
What happened to the Chinese contract laborers in the South
such as those who worked on the Augusta canal, rice plantations in South
Carolina, or on the Alabama and Chattanooga railroad? There is no documentation
but perhaps some remained to open laundries and grocery stores. Some Chinese in
the Plaquemines, Louisiana, sugar fields apparently stayed in the region
because a decade later, the U. S. Census listed 144 Chinese laborers living
there.
How Did Chinese Migrate Without Help?
As noted earlier, many Chinese were motivated to flee the
west coast and Rocky Mountains to escape anti-Chinese violence. However, that
reason cannot begin to explain how Chinese succeeded in relocating and settling
in distant interior regions of the country. In the late 19th century
Chinese would not have had the ability and resources to migrate from the west
coast into the middle sections of the country on their own, lacking English
language skills or contacts with other Chinese in remote areas of the country
to help them get settled. For Chinese to migrate without assistance into
regions in the 1870s where there were no or few Chinese would have been a
daunting undertaking.
A Possible Resolution to Both Questions
There are two important questions about early Chinese
immigrants that have largely been left unanswered. One is what
happened to the Chinese railroad workers and other contract laborers during the
1870s such as those in the Belleville, New Jersey laundry, the North Adams,
Massachusetts shoe factory, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania cutlery factory, the
Augusta, Georgia canal workers, and laborers on farms and plantations in
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas?
The second unexamined question is how individual Chinese
managed to migrate to regions far from the west coast? How they managed to
migrate from the west coast to settle hundreds, and for some, thousands, of miles
from the west coast to areas where they were often the first, and perhaps, only
Chinese residents is an unanswered
question.
The “answer” to one question may be part of the
“answer” to the other question. In other words, some of the Chinese
introduced to inner America by labor contractors to work on railroad and canal
construction, in shoe factories, laundries and on plantations, may have stayed
in these regions or nearby after their contracts ended especially since most
laborers could not afford return transportation to their point of origin.
Stranded in the midsections of the country, despite being
isolated and facing racism in many communities, they were still safer than if
they returned to the west where anti-Chinese sentiments was rampart during the
late 19th century. They were resourceful and earned their
living by first starting laundries, grocery stores, and even a few restaurants
between 1870 and 1880 in towns that had never seen Chinese before.
These Chinese pioneers then became the “anchors” or
“contacts” for bringing other Chinese to these parts of the
country. They eventually encouraged and assisted some of their male
relatives, brothers, sons, cousins, fathers, and uncles to join them in working
in their laundries, grocery stores, and restaurants. Thus, the answer to
the question of how individual Chinese managed to move to remote areas is that
they did not have to do it by their own means. They
had the essential help of other Chinese already in these areas brought there
earlier by their labor contractors. After their labor contracts expired, these
Chinese remained in these areas to start new lives.
My father can serve as a speculative illustration of
this argument. He did not know how to speak or read English when he immigrated
in 1921 from China at age 20 as the paper son of a San Francisco merchant.
After passing his interrogation at Angel Island to gain entry, he went directly
to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he apprenticed for 2-3 years in the laundry of
a grand uncle before moving to Augusta, Georgia, where he worked for another
grand uncle in his laundry for another 2-3 years. Had these relatives not been
in the Deep South, it would have been very unlikely that he would have chosen
to settle in those places.
A similar process may have operated when these two grand
uncles came to the U.S. probably just before or after 1900. They probably
headed to the South as my father did because they had relatives or friends who
earlier, perhaps between 1870 and 1900, came to work in Chattanooga and
Augusta. There is no proof but could it be that one had come to the area to
work on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad and the other on the Augusta
Canal?
