California's economic growth and influence throughout the Far West increased dramatically with the gold rush and the building of the nation's first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. Like the mining bonanza era, the railroad-building period was closely linked to the Golden State's lucrative Pacific maritime involvements extending all the way to Asia. The good times ended with the onset of the nationwide economic depression of the 1870s. Unemployed laborers and their political spokespersons looked for scapegoats. In California and elsewhere in America the Chinese received a large share of the blame for the troubles of workingmen, whose leaders helped write a new state constitution in 1879. Largely at California's behest, three years later Congress framed and implemented a new policy of excluding most Chinese from entry into the United States.
Pacific Eldorado: A History of Greater California, First Edition. Thomas J. Osborne. © 2013 Thomas J. Osborne. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Timeline
1861 The Central Pacific Railroad is chartered in Sacramento
1862 In part to facilitate Asian Pacific trade, the Pacific Railroad Act is passed and signed, providing for the construction of America’s first transcontinental railroad and accompanying telegraph system
1865 The Southern Pacific Railroad is incorporated in California; the Big Four buy it, still unbuilt, three years later
50 Chinese, the first contingent of thousands who would cross the Pacific to build the first transcontinental, are employed by the Central Pacific Railroad
1867
The Central Pacific rejects its Chinese laborers’ requests for $40 a month and a 10-hour workday (8 hours in the tunnels), with the result that some 2,000 Chinese go on strike; the railroad withholds food and other supplies, breaking the strike one week after it began
1869
Secretary of State William H. Seward dubs San Francisco, envisioned as the western terminus of a transcontinental railroad and telegraph network, “the Constantinople [a world-renowned Mediterranean port] of American empire”
The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet at Promontory Point, Utah, completing the first transcontinental rail network
1871 Led by Anglos and some Hispanics, the state’s bloodiest anti-Chinese massacre occurs in Los Angeles, resulting in the deaths of between 19 and 21 Chinese
1873 Regarding the building of the first transcontinental railroad, New York journalist Charles NordholF rightly declares: “Not a foot of iron was laid on the road on all the eight hundred miles to Ogden [Utah], not a spike was driven, not a dirt-car was moved, nor a powder-blast set off, that was not first brought [by vessel] around Cape Horn”
1874 The Big Four create the California-based Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company, capitalized at $10 million in stock, to compete with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
Charles Nordhoff publishes Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands, whose chapters situate the Golden State in the Pacific world
1876-7 A report issued by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors states that the Chinese are viewed as “a social, moral and political curse to the community”
1877 Denis Kearney, in San Francisco, organizes the Workingmen’s Party, whose demands include: the eight-hour workday, direct election of U. S. Senators, compulsory education, state regulation of banks and railroads, a fairer tax system, and a ban on all Chinese immigration into the state
1878 1,500 unemployed workers in San Francisco demonstrate for “work, bread, or a place in the county jail;” another group of men threatens to destroy the wharves and vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and bomb Chinatown; the U. S. Navy sends a warship to the Bay Area to defend federal mail docks
A Sacramento constitutional convention is attended by 152 delegates
1879 California’s second constitution, aimed at regulating the Southern Pacific Railroad and limiting Chinese employment opportunities, is approved by voters
(Continued)
1882 Under pressure from California interests, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, suspending the immigration of Chinese workers, skilled and unskilled, to the United States for 10 years and prohibiting the naturalization of Chinese in America; teachers, students, merchants, and travelers are exempted from the immigration ban
1883 A second transcontinental railway, the famed “sunset route” connecting San Francisco and New Orleans, gives the Big Four access to the carrying trade of the Gulf of Mexico
1885 A competitor of the Southern Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, reaches San Diego
1898 The Southern Pacific launches Sunset magazine, a San Francisco monthly promoting tourism and
Settlement in California
1900 Headquartered in San Francisco, the Southern Pacific has branch offices in major cities throughout the United States and Europe, and boasts the world’s largest transit network; Southern Pacific’s federally granted California land holdings range between 3 and 5 million acres