This week, I’ve been revisiting the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. My biography subject was only eleven years old when that act was passed, but I wanted to know what the German-American farm community in Ohio where he grew up thought, read, or discussed about it, if anything.
Reading a local newspaper from the era, I saw confirmation of a clear trend that many historians have noted. Throughout the 1870s, the paper mostly talked about “emigration” – settlers themselves, moving west. The earlier generations from England, Ireland, and Germany were “emigrants” too. But around 1880, two things happened: the frontier closed, and Ohioans started to worry about “immigrants.”
That included Chinese, even though few Chinese immigrants lived in Ohio, especially in rural Highland County. It didn’t make much sense to worry about Chinese immigration in Ohio.
But there’s a bigger reason it didn’t make sense, in Ohio or anywhere else.
During the 1870s, 2.8 million immigrants had arrived in the United States from all countries.
How many of those 2.8 million came from China?
Less than 125,000.
And many Chinese migrants came only temporarily. In 1882, only about 110,000 Chinese nationals lived in the United States. This was the scope of the Chinese immigration “problem.”
True, the rate of immigration had increased (though an 1868 treaty designed to open Chinese markets to American goods allowed for that). And Chinese workers often willingly accepted lower wages than earlier residents would accept. What anti-Chinese politicians strategically called “slavery” just looked like survival to workers from destitute Guangdong.
The economic competition that undercut labor markets created fear and anger, an issue that immigration still presents today. Some consider immigration a distortion of national labor markets; others say border restrictions distort free labor markets.
(For a level-headed analysis of the net economic gains and losses from immigration, I highly recommend the work of economist George J. Borjas.)
Tramp Printer of Highland County
Students in Highland County, Ohio, engaged in school debates about Chinese immigration in the early 1880s, though attitudes about the 1882 act varied.
In 1885, a Highland County native who signed himself “Tramp Printer” traveled through Denver, Wyoming Territory, and Oregon. Curious, he toured Chinese settlements and temples with local tour guides.
What he saw shocked and horrified him. He described prostitution, wage competition, and “heathen” religious practices (like ritual tea-drinking). Mostly he seemed horrified by, simply, difference. They didn’t cut their hair. They lived and shopped in separate communities. They sent their money home to China. (I’ve previously described that letter in more detail here.)
September 2, 1885 …
As I drafted a book chapter this week including Tramp Printer’s letter to Highland County citizens, I dutifully plugged a citation into a footnote. The letter appeared in Highland Weekly News on September 2, 1885.
I stared at that date for a moment. September 2, 1885. Where had I seen that date before?
Then it hit me. That day – September 2, 1885 – was the day of the Rock Springs Massacre.
The same morning that the Highland Weekly News circulated Tramp Printer’s letter to Highland County citizens, a mob of white coal miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, attacked their Chinese co-workers for refusing to join a strike against their employer, the Union Pacific Coal Company. The mob killed twenty-eight Chinese and wounded another fifteen. They set seventy-nine homes on fire and threw bodies of both dead and wounded people into the flames. The mob forcibly drove five hundred people out of the town.
On September 7, twenty-two white miners were arrested in relation to the Rock Springs Massacre. Then the national news stories started to shift. Some witnesses said the Chinese had set fire to their homes themselves to prevent other miners from finding money they had buried there. The Army officer in charge reported that the disturbance had been nothing more than a few rowdy youth throwing rocks through a dance hall window near the Chinese neighborhood. No indictments were returned.
Yet two years later, Congress voted to pay an indemnity of $147,000 to the Chinese consul for damage sustained by Chinese nationals in the riots.
Account of an Eye Witness
On the morning of September 2, Sam Lung, a Philadelphia merchant of Chinese descent, boarded a train in San Francisco to begin his trip back east. The train’s itinerary happened to be routed through Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory that afternoon, just after the mob attacked that city’s Chinese residents. Lung told this story to a reporter for the Springfield (Ohio) Globe-Republic:
About seventeen miles west of Rock Springs, … our train suddenly stopped. I think it was about 4’o’clock in the afternoon. With the other passengers I stuck my head out of the window to learn the cause of the delay. There is a mountain [path] near the railroad track. Running down it in the direction of the train, I was astonished to see a number of my countrymen. I think there must have been about thirty of them. They all hurried up to our train and some got aboard. On spying me they crowded around and warned me not to go on to Rock Springs. They said that the miners had burned their town and murdered all but themselves. Even while talking other Chinamen kept arriving, demoralized with fear, and joined their voices with those of the first comers in persuading me to get off the train and take to the mountains with them for safety. One of the last arrivals was bleeding from a bullet wound in the arm. The arm was broken by the ball and hung helpless by his side. The flow of blood was stopped by a doctor on the train and the arm dressed as well as the time would permit.
After a delay of about half an hour the train pulled out, leaving some thirty Chinamen standing by the road like so many frightened sheep. The trainmen offered to take them under their care but all save six of them preferred to take the chance of escaping the hoodlums by hiding in the mountains to passing through the place of massacre.
As we drew near to Rock Springs other Chinamen passed us on the dead run. On seeing me they stopped and signalled as best they could that danger was ahead. My countrymen on the car became more and more frightened as we progressed. The dense column of smoke that hung over the town, that we could make out in the distance, confirmed what they had said, and frightened the Americans on the train also. We did not stop, but ran through the town. We could see the flames from some of the burning homes as we passed. Once beyond Rock Springs my countrymen that we had picked up forgot some of their fear and told me of the massacre. They said that they had arrived in Rock Springs but a week before from San Francisco. They had been hired in the latter city by a Chinese contractor. The trouble, they said, began in the morning, when a fight occurred down in a mine between Chinese and Americans.
… It is my opinion … that at least seventy Chinamen perished in the riots. I reckon the number shot at about fifty. From what my countrymen told me at least twenty more would die of their wounds or of starvation in the mountains. My countrymen do not bear up well under defeat and hardships. Many of those who took refuge in the mountains would never find their way to another settlement, but would perish of privation.
You can find this article and other coverage of the Rock Springs Massacre through the Library of Congress here.
Reverberations
When I realized that Tramp Printer’s letter was published the same day as the Rock Springs Massacre, I couldn’t help but wonder about the phenomenon of nonlocality.
I know that’s a little woo-woo; I won’t try to broach any serious quantum theory here. Certainly the observations of that one roving Ohioan echoed the deep hostility that already existed among workers of different ethnicities in economic competition with mine owners and each other. But the date coincidence makes me wonder …
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