Sacramento Union January 1865 Nevada, Placer, Plumas, and Sacramento counties had 29,844 males age...
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Transcript of Sacramento Union January 1865 Nevada, Placer, Plumas, and Sacramento counties had 29,844 males age...
Background and Thesis Why study immigrant laborers?
What types of jobs were they performing?
What were their living conditions like?
Thesis: Although many historians argue the Chinese laborers had a more difficult
experience during the construction of the Pacific Railroad, when one considers the tasks being performed by laborers, the living conditions of these laborers, and the environments in which these laborers were living, the Irish laborers had the worst experiences of immigrant laborers constructing the Pacific Railroad.
Finding Labor
Sacramento Union January 1865 Nevada, Placer, Plumas, and
Sacramento counties had 29,844 males age 20-40.
“Nothing was scarcer in California than labor in 1865.”
Central Pacific’s solution: Chinese
The end of the Civil War created a readily available work force in the east. John Joseph McGlinchey
Omaha’s population doubled in 1865 to 15,00 due to the influx of U.P. laborers.
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6
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Grading the Line
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Right-of-way had to be cleared 100 foot clearing
25 feet on either side of track needed to be completely clear of all rock and vegetation.
Once cleared, the ground must be graded and leveled for the track. All work done with pick, shovel, and
wheelbarrow.
Tunnel Boring
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Bridge Construction Temporary wooden trestles would
be constructed to progress the tracks ahead, and later replaced by masonry.
“There was no boat within reach of us or any ford... The only practical way was for someone to swim across… I let myself down into the water, which on touching bottom, proved to be several feet over my head in depth. This proved to me that I sure enough had some swimming to do.” Charles Sharman at North Platte
Crossing
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Raids on the Union Pacific Attacks by Sioux and Cheyenne
were commonplace during construction. Gen. Grenville Dodge
Charles Sharman
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Conclusion
Chinese Job Duties
Grading, Tunneling
Diet Meats, fish, grains, vegetables, fruits
and tea.
Environment Sierra Nevada Mountains, High Desert
of Nevada and Utah
Life Tents/Cabins, Clean, Healthy, Conflict
Free
Irish Job Duties
Grading, Track Laying (UP & CP), Tunneling, Bridge Building
Diet Meat, bread, beans, potatoes, water.
Environment Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Wasatch
Range, High Desert of Utah.
Life Dormitory cars, unsanitary, attacks by
Natives, bounty hunters, gun fights.
Citations1. Central Pacific Railroad, “Wanted” (advertisement), Sacramento Daily Union, January 7, 1865.
2. United States Department of the Interior. Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of Census. 38th Congress, 1st Session, House Miscellaneous Document (Washington, D.C., 1864), 30.
3. George Kraus, “Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Winter 1969), 43.
4. Robert Michael Collins, Irish Gandy Dancer: A Tale of Building the Transcontinental Railroad (Create Space Independent Publishing, 2010): 32-33, Kindle.
5. Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 167.
6. Lawrence & Houseworth, Grading the Central Pacific Railroad, Sailor’s Spur and Fill 12 Miles Above Alta, Placer County, Circa 1865, Society of California Pioneers Photography, San Francisco, CA.
7. John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 114-115.
8. Ibid.
9. Alfred A. Hart, Track Laying in the Great Salt Lake Dessert, Circa 1869, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkley.
10. Unkown, Union Pacific Workers Laying Track at the 100th Meridian, October 1866, Eye Witness to History.
11. A. J. Russell, Dale Creek Bridge, Circa 1868, Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale.
12. Haycox, 28.
13. Ibid., 28-29.
14. Unknown, 19th Century Dormitory Car, Latin American Studies.
15. Unknown, Benton Wyoming Along the Union Pacific Line 672 Miles West of Omaha, 1868, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, MO.
16. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses (Council Bluffs, Iowa: Monarch Printing Company, 1910), 15.
17. Ernest Haycox, Jr., “A Very Exclusive Party: A Firsthand Account of the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 51, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 30.
18. Alfred A. Hart, Central Pacific Crews at Camp Victory, West of Promontory Point, Utah, 1869, Linda Hall, Library, Kansas City, MO.
19. Alfred A. Hart, Heading of East Portal, Tunnel No. 8, 1866, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkley.