Chinese Laborers (j. o'connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

Here in Santa Cruz, a major industrial area of California from 1880-1900 or
so, there was the biggest black powder works west of the Mississippi
(finally bought out and closed by Dupont). The mixing rooms were so
dangerous that one wall in the cinder blockhouse-type structures were built
to blow out when there was an accidental explosion. This was the room where
local Chinese labor worked. Many died. Also, Chinese built most of the
railroad tunnels (nine in all) in the mountain range from San Jose to Santa
Cruz. A pocket of gas was ignited in one of the last tunnels built, killing
30 or more Chinese workers. The rest left the job and refused to come back,
whereupon the railroad recruited some Cornish tin miners working nearby to
finish the job. As local historian Sandy Lydon has shown, in Monterey Bay,
the Chinese, kept from other trades, worked the margins for a living, e.g.,
kelp, landfill agriculture, abalone (not popular among consumers at the
time), etc. The Protestant Puritans who ran Santa Cruz were needless to say
miserable hypocrites, who were consumers in the sin industries (gambling,
opium, sex) but were above being producers, jobs that were assigned the
Chinese, more making a living on the margins of society. In bad times,
Chinese were not even accepted in "traditional" roles, e.g., camp cooks. In
the Fall Creek lime works, as the local paper happily trumpeted one day in
the 1890s, the Chinese cook was bodily tossed off the job, and replaced by
a white cook. This method of labor mobility was one precursor to the
actions of white workers in the 1930s, marching on, for example,
construction sites, and throwing black workers off the job physically.
One trouble with this country, a big one, is that the "mistakes of the
past" in race relations are sometimes admitted, in text books, and
occasionally by a President, but few if any ever draw the conclusion that
white racism was terribly functional for building the country and
distributing its largesse in ways which are still with us.
Jim O'Connor