#501 Industrialization, Railroads, and Chinese in America

Promontory Point, Utah. 10 May 1869. Wikimedia.

Image analysis:

• What is happening in the image above? What significance might this event have had in the context of nineteenth-century America?
• What kind of people do you see in this image?

Background

• ​During Civil War, the North passed laws that helped industry.
  • Supporting industry was a key part of Lincoln’s program to support continued development of a free-labor economy
• Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act of 1863:
  • Federal government would give rail companies free land and loan them money to build the transcontinental railroad
  • Afterwards, the rail companies were supposed to sell the land on both sides of the track and pay back the government, though that did not happen
• Two companies competed to get the most land and money: Union Pacific (built tracks from East to West) and Central Pacific (built tracks from West to East).
• In May 1869, the Central Pacific Railway met the Union Pacific Railway in Promontory Point, Utah, marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
• Building the railroad depended on the labor of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of whom were Chinese.

Clip from Ken Burns

• View video clip: from Ken Burns’ The West, "The Grandest Enterprise under God: 1868-1874." Start at episode 5, minute 19:15. (7:25)

Document-based discussion

• In pairs take 1-2 minutes to revisit the timeline of Chinese Immigration and Exclusion (PDF). Together, identify patterns you notice with your partner.
  
• Next, continue with a partner to analyze either Document A or Document B (PDF):
  
  • Document A: “The Chinese Must Go,” an anti-Chinese play, 1879
    
  • Document B: “Hands off Gentlemen!” a political cartoon, 1891
    
• In pairs, discuss the prompt: “If this document were your only piece of evidence, how would you answer the question: ‘Why did Americans pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act?’”

Homework: Assignment #502