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Nameless Builders of the Transcontinental Railroad
by William F. Chew
157 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1130; ISBN 1-4120-0762-3; US$18.88, C$24.88, EUR15.88, £10.88
Newly discovered historical facts about the Chinese workers of the Central Pacific Railroad during the construction of the Transcontinental.
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About the Book About the Author Table of Contents or Excerpts Catalogue Information
A historical study of the Chinese railroad workers using data from the Central Pacific Railroad Company payroll records dating from 1864 to 1867, correcting the first date of Chinese by the Central Pacific, and the total number of workers employed, with an explanation of how this estimate was calculated. Nearly one thousand workers are named, listing their wages and occupations, dispelling the notion that all Chinese workers were "coolies".
About the Book
A synopsis is extrapolated from previously published works along with arguments for and against the data of some historical events, such as Bloomer Cut and Cape Horn. In addition, the building of the Summit Tunnels, and the laying of ten miles of track in one day are detailed. Particular focus is applied to the little known 1,330 Chinese fatalities which occurred while building the western route of the transcontinental, comparing these numbers to the total lives claimed by other major historical construction projects.
About the Author
William F. Chew is a retired aerospace engineer and a descendant of Chinese railroad workers, paternal and maternal grandfathers, Chew Wing Qui, and Woo Sing Jung.During his forty-five year career as an aerospace engineer, Chew designed and developed critical components for spacecraft travel. From the physical to the cerebral, grandfathers and grandson unwittingly contributed to the transportation industry within the wide range of their positions.
However, Chew's objective in writing this book, is to increase the public's awareness of this pivotal Chinese contribution to the development of America.
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Table of Contents or Excerpts
CHAPTER FOUR
Chinese by the Numbers
Research resulting from the payroll records of the Central Pacific Railroad Company becomes significant because it changes currently accepted historical data concerning the initial employment date and total number of the Chinese employed. The original records are archived in the basement of the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.1
The basic issues have, from time to time, raised several questions, which I hope to answer with my findings.
- When and who were the first Chinese employed?
- What was the maximum number employed?
- How was this number quantified and qualified?
Employment of the First Chinese Workers
Four of the most popular books about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad overlooked documents that pointed to the exact date of the hiring of the first Chinese railroad workers.
In Chapter Seven, "The Central Pacific Attacks the Sierra-Nevada, 1865," Stephen E. Ambrose writes in Nothing Like It In The World:
In February, a month after Strobridge's all-but-fruitless call for labor, Charlie Crocker had met with him and raised the question of hiring Chinese. He said some twenty of them had worked, and worked well, on the Dutch Flat-Donner Lake Wagon Road. 2However, the Central Pacific Payroll Sheets No. 26 and No. 34 dated January and February 1864, are the documents that record the first Chinese railroad workers, Hung Wah and Ah Toy,3 who supervised a crew of 23 unnamed workers.
How Many Chinese Worked for the Central Pacific?
It was the railroad's policy that a headman or labor contractor collected pay (in coins) for all the workers in his crew. George Kraus states in his article "Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific," that a method was used by the railroad company to count the total number of workers at the beginning of the morning shift, at lunch, and at the end of the shift to compare the total hours of wages turned in by the gang boss to prevent overpayment. It was said that one could not tell the difference between the Chinese and the Indian workers. Because of this policy it is improbable that the individual names of the actual laborers will ever be known.10
It is commonly reported that peak employment of Chinese workers by the Central Pacific ranges from 10,000 to 20,000. For instance, Kraus states in his book, High Road To Promontory: "The force at work on the road probably averaged from six to ten thousand, nine-tenths of them being Chinese. . ."11
It has been said that an ordinary life is as insignificant as a grain of sand is to a desert. This cynical hyperbole may apply to the estimated 1,200 Chinese railroad workers who died from 1864 to 1869 while working on the western route of the Transcontinental. This approximates five Chinese deaths for every three miles of track laid from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, a total of 690 miles. No one knows the exact number of Chinese deaths. Some estimates are as high as 2,000. CHAPTER TEN
The Insignificance of Life
Deaths were caused by blasts, avalanches, landslides, rail accidents, falling trees, fatal falls, pneumonia, and freezing to death. But not a single death was reported as being caused from sun or heat stroke, because of the protection that "coolie" straw hats gave the Chinese. The lack of reported deaths from dysentery is attributed to their custom of boiling ground water to make tea while the Irish who drank directly from the streams, suffered from dysentery resulting in many deaths. In general, there was little, if any, news or concern of the Chinese who died. Was it because they were expendable?
Ambrose writes:
Hundreds of barrels of black powder were ignited daily to form a ledge on which a roadbed could be laid. Some of the men were lost in accidents, but we don*t know how many: the CP did not keep a record of Chinese casualties.1
The Chinese volunteered to be lowered in handmade reed baskets 1,400 feet above the riverbed. They drilled holes in the granite and stuffed them with black powder, lit the fuse, and then hoped the men above would pull them up the cliff fast enough to avoid death.
In 1866 the Central Pacific tried using nitroglycerin instead of black powder, because of its greater explosive force.2 However, the use of nitroglycerin was soon abandoned because too many workers were dying from the blast or falling rock. The Central Pacific could not afford to lose workers. Maintaining the schedule of the railroad was more important.
Snowdrifts from 30 to 40 feet in the winter of 1867 caused avalanches burying alive many Chinese whose bodies would not be found until the next spring*s thaw. Many were never found. These Chinese came from the southern part of China, where the climate is semi-tropical. They had never needed nor owned warm clothing until immigrating to the colder regions of the United States. Not acclimated to the extreme cold, many workers died of pneumonia.
No official records of the deaths of Chinese railroad workers were kept.
Thousands of these young men gave their lives in building of the railroad. The dead were never counted, nor have they been memorialized. Some twenty thousand pounds of bones were gathered from shallow graves along the roadbeds and rights of way, according to an 1870 newspaper article quoted in The History of the Chinese in America, by Philip Choy and H. Mark Lai. These bones of about 1,200 Chinese who died in the building of the Transcontinental line were eventually shipped home. But many others lie to this day in unmarked graves in every western state.14
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