Chinese Gold Rush in California
Early on, the California government did not wish to exclude Chinese migrant workers from immigration because they provided essential tax revenue which helped fill the fiscal gap of California. Only later, when there was enough money did the government cease to oppose Chinese exclusion. By 1860 the Chinese were the largest immigrant group in California. The Chinese workers provided cheap labor and did not use any of the government infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) because the Chinese migrant population was predominantly made up of healthy male adults. As time passed and more and more Chinese migrants arrived in California, violence would often break out in cities such as Los Angeles. By 1878 Congress decided to act and passed legislation excluding the Chinese, but this was vetoed by President Hayes. Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was finally passed in 1882, California went further by passing various laws that were later held to be unconstitutional. After the act was passed most Chinese families were faced with a dilemma: stay in the United States alone or go back to China to reunite with their families. Although there was widespread dislike for the Chinese, some capitalists and entrepreneurs resisted their exclusion based on economic factors.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Exclusion Act
Famous quotes containing the words gold, rush and/or california:
“Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas.... But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.”
—Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)