Chinese Exclusion Acts
Why did Americans pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act?
During the late 1800s, The Gilden Age was in full effect. After the Decade of Crisis, when thousands of settlers came to the West in search of gold, reconstruction began. While many of these temporary settlers left when the Gold Rush was over, some stayed like the Chinese. They worked on the Transcontinental Railroad, more commonly as replacements for fellow Irishmen, Germans, Englishmen, or Italians who were unreliable for miscellaneous reasons. Tensions rose between the two groups once the railroad was finished in 1869. By 1878, courts ruled that any Chinese man couldn't be naturalized. Americans then passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which denied all Chinese the right to American citizenship, even those born in the United States. Americans passed the Chinese Exclusion Act because they resented the competition for work, they had stereotypical hatred toward the Chinese, and they felt exclusion was the Chinese's only protection.
Americans passed the Chinese Exclusion Act because they resented the competition for work. When approximately 25,000 Chinese had immigrated to America, about 15,000 of them were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad. After the railroad was finished, many Chinese continued to find work elsewhere within the West. "Today, every avenue of labor, of every sort, is crowded with Chinese slave labor worse than it was eight years ago. The boot, shoe, and cigar industries are almost entirely in their hands... They monopolize nearly all the farming done to supply the market with all sorts of vegetables" (Doc C). After the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, slavery was no longer an issue in all U.S. territories, although Americans saw Chinese labor equivalent to the same threatening competition of slavery from the early 1800s. The Chinese argued that their work was fair, hard, and respectable work that had no resemblance to slavery, and demanded a high market price. "No one would hire an
During the late 1800s, The Gilden Age was in full effect. After the Decade of Crisis, when thousands of settlers came to the West in search of gold, reconstruction began. While many of these temporary settlers left when the Gold Rush was over, some stayed like the Chinese. They worked on the Transcontinental Railroad, more commonly as replacements for fellow Irishmen, Germans, Englishmen, or Italians who were unreliable for miscellaneous reasons. Tensions rose between the two groups once the railroad was finished in 1869. By 1878, courts ruled that any Chinese man couldn't be naturalized. Americans then passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which denied all Chinese the right to American citizenship, even those born in the United States. Americans passed the Chinese Exclusion Act because they resented the competition for work, they had stereotypical hatred toward the Chinese, and they felt exclusion was the Chinese's only protection.
Americans passed the Chinese Exclusion Act because they resented the competition for work. When approximately 25,000 Chinese had immigrated to America, about 15,000 of them were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad. After the railroad was finished, many Chinese continued to find work elsewhere within the West. "Today, every avenue of labor, of every sort, is crowded with Chinese slave labor worse than it was eight years ago. The boot, shoe, and cigar industries are almost entirely in their hands... They monopolize nearly all the farming done to supply the market with all sorts of vegetables" (Doc C). After the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, slavery was no longer an issue in all U.S. territories, although Americans saw Chinese labor equivalent to the same threatening competition of slavery from the early 1800s. The Chinese argued that their work was fair, hard, and respectable work that had no resemblance to slavery, and demanded a high market price. "No one would hire an