Introduction

Chang, Gordon H.; Fishkin, Shelley Fisher; Obenzinger, Hilton

doi:10.1515/9781503609259-003

Cited by 4 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…More prudent and economical, they are contented with less wages. 2 Chinese were organized into gangs led by a contractor. Each squad had its own cook and sometimes its own doctor, who attended illness and injury.…”

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By June 1868 the entire line from Sacramento to Reno was completed, the first eastbound passenger train from Sacramento arriving in Reno on June 18, 1868. 2 Spurred by federal payments by the miles of track laid, the railroad raced eastward across the Nevada desert. With mid-summer midday temperatures reaching 120°F, Crocker had water shipped in by rail and piped in from springs from nearby mountains.…”

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stanford may have hammered the Golden Spike, but it was the Chinese, Chang wrote, who set the last rail in place. 2…”

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chinese immigration to America in the mid-19th century were nearly all men wanting to earn money to send back to families in their home villages. Unlike those trapped in the cruel “coolie trade” of indentured servitude in European colonies in the Americas in the 1830s-1860s, Chinese headed to the US, in contrast, were “largely free and independent laborers, although often burdened by debt for loans that they used to pay for their travel.” 2…”

Section: The Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…“All our people were prejudiced against Chinese labor,” he said. “There was a disposition not to employ them.” 2 James Strobridge, construction supervisor for the railroad, did not believe that Chinese had the physical or intellectual capacity to do railroad work. Nor did he think that white workers would work alongside Chinese.…”

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chinese Railroad Workers, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Indispensability of Immigration to America

Nakayama

2023

The American Surgeon™

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Asian migration to America began with Chinese railroad workers on the transcontinental railroad (1862-1869). Their labor saved the foundering Central Pacific Railroad, challenged by building a rail line through the Sierra Nevada. By mid-1864 only 50 miles of track had been laid, grueling work that dissuaded its white workforce from going any further. To save the railroad 50 Cantonese workers were hired in early 1864 from neighboring mines to lay rail through forests, canyons, and granite mountains. High explosives, rockslides, cave-ins, and winter avalanches were constant dangers. The trial worked so well that thousands of Chinese joined the effort, many from the rural districts surrounding Guangzhou (Canton). The wages, less than half of that paid to white workers, were beyond the imaginations of subsistence farmers escaping abject poverty, plague, and famine. A good proportion of their earnings were remitted to families back home. As many as 20,000 may have worked on the railway. The death toll was staggering, estimated in the thousands. After Promontory Summit in 1869, Chinese were in great demand, building scores of rail lines throughout the country and Canada. Just 13 years later rising anti-Asian sentiment led to the passage of the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 that for the first time barred a racial group from American shores. But they opened America to Asian immigrants that includes today’s Asian surgical community, which owes its present-day success to the hardworking forebears that created a global country with ribbons of steel rail.

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Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stanford may have hammered the Golden Spike, but it was the Chinese, Chang wrote, who set the last rail in place. 2…”

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chinese Railroad Workers, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Indispensability of Immigration to America

Nakayama

2023

The American Surgeon™

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Protecting Labor Rights in Space

Nesvold¹

2023

Reclaiming Space

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“Protecting Labor Rights in Space” interrogates three historical analogies that are commonly used in the context of the growing space industry, in order to anticipate potential labor rights abuses of future space workers. The environment of space—remote, deadly, and requiring extensive technological support for survival and transportation—poses unusually dangerous challenges to the labor rights of space workers. This chapter explores the experiences of workers in similar environments on Earth, from the Chinese laborers who built the transcontinental railroad in the United States to migrant fishermen in modern Thailand. It also describes the need to address labor abuses that occur in space-related and space-adjacent industries today, to set both a moral example and a legal precedent in this new and growing industry.

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Indentured Labor: The Foundation Story of Asian American Surgeons

Nakayama

2023

The American Surgeon™

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Introduction

Cited by 4 publications

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Chinese Railroad Workers, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Indispensability of Immigration to America

Chinese Railroad Workers, the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Indispensability of Immigration to America

Protecting Labor Rights in Space

Indentured Labor: The Foundation Story of Asian American Surgeons

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