"Mr. John Adams observed that the numbers of people were taken by this article as an index of the wealth of the state, & not as subjects of taxation, that as to this matter it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves. That in some countries the labouring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten labourers in his farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand. The ten labourers add as much wealth annually to the state, increase it's exports as much in the one case as the other. Certainly 500 freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the paiment of taxes than 500 slaves. Therefore the state in which are the labourers called freemen should be taxed no more than that in which are those called slaves."
Thomas Jefferson, Debates On The Articles Of Confederation
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Regional tensions that would soon erupt in the Civil War complicated the congressional agreement on the location of the railroad-- southerners wanted a southern route and northerners a northern one. The outbreak of the war solved the problem. The South pulled out of the government, and the North was free to make the decision. In 1862, the Congress passed the first of several Railroad Acts, choosing a route which went from Omaha to Sacramento-- much of it an old pioneer trail-- and naming the two companies to be responsible for the construction of the railroad: the Central Pacific, building from the West, and the Union Pacific, building from the East.
The Central Pacific was founded by Theodore Judah, a brilliant young civil engineer who found a way to lay tracks across the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, the traditional stumbling block to a transcontinental railroad. For financing, Judah teamed up with four shrewd Sacramento businessmen-- Charley Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Collis Huntington-- otherwise known as the "Big Four".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/iron/
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In 1855, a law was passed entitled, "An Act to Discourage the Immigration to this State of People Who Cannot Become Citizens Thereof." Seven years later another law was enacted--officially called the law to "Protect Free White Labor Against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor and to Discourage the Immigration of Chinese into the State of California."
There were repeated attacks on communities of Chinese immigrants. Their homes and shops were often destroyed. Chinese people were lynched, scalped, castrated and branded. Their long traditional, braided queues were cut off to humiliate them.
In one Nevada town a Chinese laundryman was tied to a wagon wheel and driven through the town until his head fell off. One Chinese fisherman was branded, his ears sliced with a knife, his tongue cut out and then killed. On a single night in Los Angeles in 1871, 20 Chinese men were executed by lynching, burning or crucifixion.
By the 1860s, most Chinese immigrants had been forced out of the mines and most of them worked building the railroads. By exploiting the desperation of Chinese workers, railroad capitalists were able to lower labor costs by one third. The Chinese railroad workers carved roadbeds out of the sheer 1,400-foot wall of rock above the American River using primitive tools and explosives. Many died. Meanwhile, railroad capitalist Charles Crocker argued before a legislative panel that Chinese workers should never be allowed to become citizens.
http://rwor.org/a/v21/1040-049/1042/gold2.htm
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
