Working on the Central Pacific Railroad

( 0 Votes ) This is an essay I wrote for my Nevada History class last semester (Spring '08).

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Ni hao, my name is Hun Wah. My team and I are preparing the roadbed just outside of Camp 24 for the Central Pacific railroad. This will be North America's first transcontinental railroad. When it is finished many people will be able to travel from coast-to-coast in a matter of days instead of months. When I was in California I saw the Labor recruiters hired by Charles Crocker flood into Sacramento advertising work on railroad grading to get recruit the Chinese. I heard that Crocker is short on workers because the Irish rail laborers are agitated over their wages. He decided to recruit some Chinese in their place so that the Irishmen would abandon their dispute, which they did.

I first heard about the work when I was in California seeking gold at Gum Sham. I did not find any gold there; I was only left with the worthless rumors of promised riches. So I decided to take up the work digging for the railroad. I have been with the Central Pacific since then and now am in Nevada. Soon I will reach Truckee Meadows where the second-crossing bridge has just been completed a way off from Camp. The bridge crew is hurrying to finish the third crossing of the Truckee, three miles beyond Camp 24 so that the tracklayers can continue dropping rail. 

Work is moving along at a steady pace as the Chinese laborers prepare the roadbed and the Irish laborers lay the track. I work six days a week, from dawn to dusk digging the roadbed and carting away rumble. I am paid one dollar a day, that’s thirty dollars a month not including room and board. I work in a team or work gang of 29 Chinese men like myself. My work gang has a man that collects the wages of the entire gang and buys the provisions for us. We also have hired an American clerk for $1 per man per month to keep our accounts straight so that the food costs are distributed fairly between us. The Chinese work gangs are kept separate from the Irish work gangs even though we are under the supervision of a riding boss who is Irish. If any issue arises between either work gang, we settle them ourselves and do not involve the foremen. For the most part the conditions here are satisfactory.

At the days end my work gang and I return to camp. After sometime I began to notice the subtle differences between our camp and the Irish camp. At camp the Chinese would bathe and change their clothes before eating whereas the Irish would eat their dinner right away. Each of the Chinese work gangs, like mine, has their own cook. The cook prepares the meals and has the hot water ready in the tubs each night for our baths. My dinner usually consists of vegetables and seafood and we keep a few live pigs and chickens in our camp for weekend meals. The Irish crews stick to an unvarying menu of boiled food such as beef and potatoes.

For entertainment we play games, mostly gambling, and sometimes sit around the campfire at night and sing. Some of the men in the other Chinese work crews smoke opium on the weekends but I stay a way from that stuff. I am only 23 and I am saving up most of my money to hopefully buy some property one day soon. I know that not everyone in this country is welcoming the coolie boom. And I read about the San Francisco Anti-Coolie Labor Association meeting at American Theater in the newspaper a few months ago. That meeting was held on March 6, 1867 but I try not to let it bother me. I am more concerned with the fourth bridge crossing of the Truckee River at Hunter's that needs to be finished before the tracklayers will be able to move on. By May 22 the train cars will be running nine miles beyond Reno, so the rail needs to advance at a rate of more than a half mile per day. With fair weather and open country, we should be able to move far ahead. By June we should past the Wadsworth site then follow the Truckee River seventy miles to the desert toward the Humboldt River. Eventually this track will join with the Union Pacific railroad in Promontory, Utah. 


Works Cited:

Wendell W. Huffman. IRON HORSE ALONG THE TRUCKEE. 2008. Central Pacific Railroad. April 14, 2008. http://cprr.org/Museum/Iron_Horse_Along_Truckee.html

David and Dawn Bushong. The Workers of the Central Pacific. April 14, 2008. http://bushong.net/dawn/about/college/ids100/workers.shtml

People & Events: Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad. 2003. PBS. April 14, 2008. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/peopleevents/p_cprr.html

CHINESE-AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION TO TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD. 2008. Central Pacific Railroad. April 14, 2008. http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html

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