Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

California had even earlier imported skilled Chinese
workers. We know that Chinese had been present at the
founding of Los Angeles in 1781. This is easy to understand
when we see that California was closer to Asia than
New York in practical terms; in travel time San Francisco
was but 60 days sail from Canton-but six months by
wagon train from Kansas City.
The settler capitalists used Chinese labor to found
virtually every aspect of their new Amerikan economy in
this region. The Mexicano people, who were an outright
majority in the area, couldn't be used because the settlers
were engaged in reducing their numbers so as to consolidate
U.S. colonial conquest. During the 1830's, '40s
and '50s the all-too-familiar settler campaign of mass terror,
assassination, and land-grabbing was used against the
Mexicanos. Rodolfo Acuna summarizes:
"During this time, the Chinese were used as an
alternative to the Chicanos as California's
labor force. Chicanos were pushed to the
southern half of the state and were literally forced out of
California in order to escape the lynching, abuses, and colonized
status to which they had been condemned."(32)
Thus, the Chinese were not only victims of Amerika, but
their very presence was a part of genocidal campaign to
dismember and colonize the Mexican Nation. In the same
way, decades later Mexicano labor-now driven from the
land and reduced to colonial status-would be used to
replace Chinese labor by the settlers.
popularly called ''the Iron Chink". The fish itself (salmon,
squid, shrimp, etc.) was often caught and brought in by
Chinese fishermen, who pioneered the fishing industry in
the area. Chinese junks were then a common sight in
California harbors, and literally thousands of Chinese
seamen lived in the numerous alllchinese fishing villages
that dotted the coast from San Diego up to Oregon. As late
as 1888 there were over 20 Chinese fishing villages just in
San Francisco and San Pablo Bays, while 50% of the
California fishing industry was still Chinese. Farms and
vineyards were also founded on Chinese labor: in the
1870's when California became the largest wheat growing
state in the U.S. over 85% of the farm labor was Chinese.
Chinese workers played a large part as well in bringing
out the vast mineral wealth that so accelerated the
growth of the U.S. in the West. In 1870 Chinese made up
25% of all miners in California, 21% in Washington, 58%
in Idaho, and 61% in Oregon. In California the special
monthly tax paid by each Chinese miner virtually supported
local government for many years-accounting for
25-50% of all settler government revenues for 1851-70.
Throughout the area Chinese also made up a service
population, like Afrikans and Mexicanos in other regions
of the Empire, for the settlers. Chinese cooks, laundrymen,
and domestic servants were such a common part
of Western settler life in the mines, cattle ranches and cities
that no Hollywood "Western" movie is complete without
its stereotype Chinese cook.
The full extent of Chinese labor's role is revealing. But their greatest single feat in building the
The California textile mills were originally 70-80% economy of the West was also their undoing. Between 1865
Chinese, as were the garment factories. As late as 1880, and 1869 some 15,000 Chinese b borers carved the far
Chinese made up 52% of all shoe makers and 44% of all Western stretch of the Transcontinental rail line out of the
brick makers in the state, as well as one-half of all factory hostile Sierra and Rocky Mountain ranges. Through severe
workers in the city of San Francisco.(33) The fish canneries weather they cut railbeds out of rock mountainsides,
were so heavily manned by Chinese-over 80Q-that blasted tunnels, and laid the tracks of the Central Pacific
when a mechanical fish cleaner was introduced it was 33 Railroad some 1,800 miles East to Ogden, Utah. It was and