CSET Practice Test History Subtest I

According to most archeologists, the first migrants came
to North America about 30,000 years ago. These were small,
nomadic tribes who crossed the "land bridge" between Asia
and America during a period in our earth's history when
large glaciers covered much of that area. These Asiatic
peoples slowly trickled into North America, during a
period lasting several thousand years. Because this
migration was a slow trickle instead of a mass exodus, the
result was a large number of Native American tribes
scattered throughout North and South America, each one
having its own language, customs and traditions.

About 4,000 years ago, many Native American civilizations
began to undergo an "agricultural revolution." During this
time, they developed more sophisticated methods of
cultivating crops. As they shifted from hunting/gathering
to farming, they could establish more permanent
communities and develop more complex cultures. The Aztecs,
Incas and Mayans are good examples of this.

In the northeast, Native Americans did not generally
practice as intensive an agriculture. The so-called
Eastern Woodland Cultures relied on a mix of farming,
hunting and gathering to survive. Tribes like the
Massachusetts, Mahican, Powhatan and Tuscarora tended to
form small villages during the summer months but disband
for winter.

Native Americans prior to Columbus' voyage were extremely
diverse. With 300 - 350 different languages, distinct
traditions and cultures, and scattered throughout North
and South America, there is very little that all of these
tribes shared in common. European settlers to the New
World during the 16th and 17th centuries will often fail
to recognize these differences.  Moreover, in New England
and Virginia, where English settlers would first arrive in
the early 1600's, rivalry and competition among the tribes
would make them easier to conquer and exploit.  Attempts
to unify across tribal lines to resist white encroachment
would be sporadic at best, and largely unsuccessful.

New technologies were vital to European exploration and
expansion, beginning in the 15th century.  The Portuguese
were the first to be aided by technologies borrowed from
other societies, such as the Arab caravel (a type of
sailing ship) and the Chinese compass.  Astrolabes,
quadrants and sextants allowed navigators to approximate
the altitude of heavenly bodies, enabling them to
determine their own latitude at sea.  Moreover, as
Renaissance scholars "re-discovered" the writings of the
ancient Greeks, they renewed their interests in
cartography (map making).   Greek cartographers who had
been largely forgotten during the Middle Ages, such as
Ptolemy (c. 90-168 C.E.), were now being read again,
although this meant that Europeans of the 15th century
would have a lot of the same misconceptions about the
continents and the size of the earth as their predecessors
had.

Besides the advances in technology and the rediscovery of
ancient manuscripts, new forms of business enterprise,
such as joint stock companies, were important in fueling
the age of discovery.  These companies could raise vast
sums of capital from investors, and were eventually
granted rights to settle, manage and defend proprietary
colonies.

During the Renaissance that a stronger and more
sophisticated middle class began to emerge in Europe's
growing towns and cities.  These people demanded more
luxury goods from Asia, particularly spices and silks.
For centuries, the way goods got from Asia to Europe was
over land.  This was known as the "Silk Road."

But this took a long time, and the journey was very
dangerous for traders. For this reason, many people began
wondering whether they could reach China and India by sea
instead.  During the early 1400's the Portuguese made
several attempts to reach India by sailing around the
African continent.  In so doing, they established a number
of trading posts along the west African coast, and began
to import African slaves to Europe.  (Slavery had existed
in western civilization from time immemorial, and in
ancient societies had been the bedrock of the economy.
What was new about slavery after the 15th century was the
nearly exclusive reliance on sub-Saharan Africa as a
source of slaves, and the gradual justification of African
slavery on racial grounds.   I discussed the role of local
kings and chiefs in facilitating this African slave trade;
the Portuguese relied on local authorities to conduct the
raids, often into the interior of Africa, from which able-
bodied captives would be sold into slavery.)   However, at
least initially, the African slave trade was incidental to
Portuguese exploration; their primary motivation remained
the search for a water route to Asia.  In 1488,
Bartholomeu Dias, sailing for Portugal, rounded the
southern tip of Africa, but was forced to turn back before
reaching the Indian subcontinent.

Meanwhile, a Genoese (Genoa, Italy) sea captain,
Christopher Columbus, convinced Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain that the water route to Asia was westward.  (By the
marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon [r. 1479-1516] to Isabella
of Castille [r. 1474-1504], Spain had become a powerful,
unified country.  Hence, another ingredient in
understanding why Europeans were able to "reach out"
during the 15th century — political centralization.)

Of course, Columbus greatly underestimated the westward
distance to Asia, and did not know that North and South
America (and the Pacific Ocean) stood between the Atlantic
and China. However, his "discovery" of the New World in
1492 would turn out to be an even more important
development than finding a route to Asia. It led to a
series of explorations, and, ultimately to the European
settlement of the New World.  Columbus himself made 3
subsequent journeys to the western hemisphere (the last in
1502-04), during which he searched for gold.  As Spanish
viceroy in the Caribbean he sought the enslavement of
native or Amerindian peoples, which the Spanish crown
approved.  For a number of reasons (primarily disease and
resistance), enslavement of these native populations was
largely unsuccessful and the Spanish and Portuguese would
eventually look to Africa as a source of forced labor for
the New World.

Columbus died in 1506, still believing he had reached
Asia.  (In 1498, Vasco da Gama, reached India by sailing
around Africa, enhancing Portugal's position; only after
Ferdinand Magellan's ill-fated circumnavigation of the
globe [1519-22] did Europeans realize their distance from
Asia.)  

The early period of European exploration was dominated by
the Spanish and Portuguese. These two countries viewed the
New World as a source of mineral wealth and other riches,
and sought to divide the North and South America between
themselves. However, neither country would be able to stop
subsequent exploration and settlement by the French, Dutch
and particularly the English.

The Impact of the Railroad: The Iron Horse and the
Octopus  

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869
was a major event in California history. The iron horse
linked California with the rest of the nation and ushered
in an era of economic consolidation. The Californians who
controlled this new technology became the wealthiest and
most powerful men of their generation. The railroad also
stirred intense controversy. It was denounced by its
opponents as a grasping and greedy octopus.  

Early Transportation and Communication The admission of
California to the union in 1850 linked the state
politically with the rest of the nation, but California
remained geographically isolated. 

Several early attempts were made to solve the problem of
isolation. Stagecoaches carrying the overland mail began
crossing the continent to California in 1858. Writer Mark
Twain chronicled the plight of one group of hapless
passengers who accompanied the west-bound mail. Among the
more colorful stagecoach drivers in California was
Charlotte Parkhurst, a tough character also known as
"Cock-eyed Charley." The Pony Express began providing
transcontinental mail service to California in 1860, but
its impact was minimal. Perhaps the most ingenious attempt
to solve the problem of California's isolation was the
introduction of camel caravans across the deserts of the
southwest. Meanwhile, river boats carried passengers and
cargo on the inland rivers of the state. The wires of the
telegraph established instant communication between
California and the rest of the nation in 1861, but the
larger challenge of providing a system of transcontinental
transportation remained unmet. 

The United States Congress in 1857 passed the Overland
California Mail Act. This act offered government aid in
the form of mail contracts to any company that could
provide stagecoach service from the eastern United States
to California. Soon the postmaster general awarded the
first contract to the Overland Mail Company, headed by
John Butterfield of New York. Butterfield's stagecoaches
began carrying passengers and mail across the continent
from St. Louis to San Francisco in 1858. The coaches
crossed 2,800 miles of roads that were little more than
rutted dirt trails. The trip lasted about three weeks.

As Mark Twain once discovered, riding in a stagecoach was
not nearly as much fun as one might imagine. Meals along
the way usually were a combination of beans, stale bacon,
and crusty bread. Overnight accommodations were dirty and
uncomfortable. The ride itself was a bone-jarring, teeth-
rattling, muscle-straining experience. 

Mark Twain One of the many young Americans to cross the
continent in a stagecoach carrying the overland mail was
the writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. He
came to Nevada in 1861 and worked on the Territorial
Enterprise newspaper. Later in 1864 he moved to San
Francisco and began writing for the Golden Era.

"Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would
wake up, and try to recollect where we were.... We began
to get into country, now, threaded here and there with
little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side,
and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the
other, our party inside got mixed somewhat.

First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of
the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we
would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And
we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and
corners of mailbags that came lumbering after us and about
us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all
sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble,
and probably say some hasty thing, like: 'Take your elbow
out of my ribs! –Can't you quit crowding.'"

Charlotte Parkhurst Charlotte Parkhurst was a stagecoach
driver in the 1850s and '60s. She drove a four-horse team
for Wells, Fargo and Company on the road from Santa Cruz
to San Jose. Since the stagecoach companies in those days
hired only men as drivers, she dressed in men's clothing
and applied for the job as "Charley Parkhurst." She wore
gloves (in both summer and winter) to hide her small hands
and pleated shirts to hide her figure.

Apparently no one suspected Parkhurst's true identity. One
of her unknowing companions later said that Charley
Parkhurst "out-swore, out-drank, and out-chewed even the
Monterey whalers." Parkhurst was a tough-looking hombre
with a patch over one eye, blinded by the kick of a horse.
In later years, this colorful character was known as
"Cock-eyed Charley."

When Parkhurst died in 1879, the San Francisco Morning
Call mourned the passing of "the most dexterous and
celebrated of the California drivers, and it was an honor
to occupy the spare end of the driver's seat when the
fearless Charley Parkhurst held the reins."

Pony Express The Pony Express began carrying mail between
California and St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 3, 1860. The
route was nearly 2,000 miles long and service was provided
semi-weekly. In summer, the trip took ten and a half days.

The Missouri freighting firm of Russell, Majors and
Waddell hired eighty young riders to carry the mail across
the continent aboard fleet-footed ponies. The average age
of the riders was just eighteen. The company outfitted
them with revolvers and knives to defend themselves
against any varmints they might meet along the trail,
critters like wolves and mountain lions. The company also
supplied the riders with bibles and prohibited them from
engaging in any "drinking or swearing." The riders wore
close-fitting clothes to reduce wind resistance and on
their ponies were light racing saddles. They carried
leather pouches filled with twenty pounds of mail wrapped
in oiled silk to keep out the moisture. These dashing
young riders sped across the continent at twenty-five
miles an hour, stopping every ten to fifteen miles for a
fresh horse at one of the hundreds of relay stations along
the way. As the rider approached each station, his
replacement mount would be saddled and ready to go. The
rider would transfer his mail pouch and be on his way
again in less than two minutes. The Pony Express delivered
the mail to California far faster than other means. But
the cost was much higher. After only about eighteen
months, the Pony Express went out of business. It ended on
October 24, 1861, the day the transcontinental telegraph
began providing instant communication across the
continent.

Camel Caravans The United States Congress in 1855 approved
a plan to use camels to carry goods across the deserts of
the southwest to California. The plan was the bright idea
of Jefferson Davis, an imaginative young senator from
Mississippi at the time. Davis was convinced that camels–
famous for their sure-footedness in shifting sands and
their ability to endure intense heat–would be an ideal
means of transporting military supplies to California.
After Davis became United States Secretary of War, he
dispatched government agents to north Africa to purchase a
small herd of camels. The camels eventually arrived in New
Mexico where they were assigned the task of transporting
goods over a twelve-hundred-mile desert trail to southern
California. 

On their maiden trek west, the camels averaged twenty-five
miles a day and finished the journey in about fifty days.
The caravan arrived safely in southern California without
losing a single man or beast. Some of the soldiers who
served as camel tenders complained that the rolling gait
of their ungainly mounts made them seasick. Others said
that the camels had extremely rude manners. When angry or
upset, the discomfited dromedaries had the unpleasant
habit of ejecting their cuds into the face of unsuspecting
onlookers! 

Although the camels did well, the government soon lost
interest. In the early 1860s, some thirty-five
decommissioned camels were driven north from Los Angeles
to the army's Benicia Arsenal in Solano County. There they
were auctioned off as government surplus to the highest
bidder. 

River Boats In the years before the advent of the
railroad, the major arteries of inland trade and
transportation in California were the routes of the great
paddlewheel steamers on San Francisco Bay and on the
larger rivers of the Central Valley. 

The magnificent river boats that plied the waters of the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers were every bit as
elegant as any that ever paddled their way along the
mighty Mississippi. They were dripping with Victorian
gingerbread, and their staterooms were decked out with
lace and cut velvet. One New Englander was delighted with
the luxury and comfort he found aboard The Senator in
1850: "It was a strong, spacious, and elegant boat. After
my recent barbaric life, her long upper saloon, with its
sofas and faded carpet, seemed splendid enough for a
palace."

Huge profits were to be made, and the competition for
customers between San Francisco and Sacramento was
particularly intense. Rival crews got into fist fights
over who would carry a particular passenger or load of
freight, while captains pushed their boats to the limit,
trying to make the best time. The record from San
Francisco was set in 1861: five hours and nineteen
minutes. Price wars drove passenger fares down from $30 to
$5. One desperate captain even offered to carry folks for
free–just to get their business!

Telegraph The overland mail reached California by
stagecoach in about three weeks. The fleet-footed ponies
of the Pony Express reduced delivery time to around ten
days. But a new technology, the telegraph, promised
instant communication across the continent.

The telegraph is a simple device that sends messages by
electricity. It was developed by an American inventor
named Samuel F. B. Morse. He also developed the Morse
code, an ingenious code that uses dots and dashes to stand
for the letters of the alphabet. Morse sent his first
message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, in
1844. Telegraph lines soon connected cities throughout the
eastern United States.

Workers began building a telegraph line across the country
in the summer of 1861. It was completed on October 24,
1861. On that historic day, the first telegram was sent
from California to the east. The chief justice of the
California Supreme Court telegraphed President Abraham
Lincoln to declare California's loyalty to the union. Also
on that day the Pony Express went out of business. The
telegraph had rendered its services obsolete. 

The Iron Horse The problem of California's isolation from
the rest of the nation was solved with the completion of
the transcontinental railroad in 1869. The person most
responsible for launching that massive enterprise was a
young civil engineer named Theodore Judah. Judah
tirelessly pursued financial backers for the project and
found them in four ambitious Sacramento merchants, known
in the annals of California history as the Big Four. Judah
also was instrumental in securing government aid for the
construction of the railroad. Building the railroad was a
monumental undertaking. The greatest challenge was laying
rails through the heart of the Sierra Nevada. After six
years of toil, the railroad was completed with the Gold
Spike ceremony at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. Most
of the construction work on the western portion of the
line was performed by Chinese labor.

The railroad's economic impact on the state was far-
reaching, although not quite what was expected. California
agriculture was among those industries that prospered with
the opening of eastern markets. Perishable farm products
now could swiftly be shipped across the country in
refrigerated rail cars. The completion of rival rail lines
contributed to the boom of the eighties, a rapid expansion
of the population and economy of southern California.

The great wealth produced by the railroad enabled its
owners to become some of California's leading
philanthropic benefactors. The wife of the first president
of the Central Pacific Railroad, for example, became the
mother of a university. Such benefactions were not always
appreciated by those who condemned the railroad as an
octopus strangling California.

Theodore Judah Interest in building a transcontinental
railroad was strong throughout the 1850s. The United
States Congress authorized surveys of several potential
routes but was unable to agree on which route to choose.

Civil engineer Theodore Judah deserves much of the credit
for developing the specific plan that eventually won
Congressional approval. A native of Connecticut, Judah
came west in 1854 to build the first railroad on the
Pacific Coast, a short line from Sacramento to Folsom.
Having completed this modest task, Judah became entranced-
-some would say "bewitched"–by a grand vision: building a
railroad across the continent.

In 1860 Judah made an intensive search for the best
crossing of the Sierra Nevada. He located and surveyed a
feasible route, making detailed notes on the grade and
terrain. Encouraged by his discovery, he drew up articles
of association for the Central Pacific Railroad of
California. After several rejections, Judah in 1860 turned
to four Sacramento merchants for financial backing.
Judah's association with the Big Four proved to be deeply
troubling. He wanted the railroad to be built well; they
wanted it to be built cheaply so that profits would be
high. In October 1863 Judah sailed for New York where he
hoped to find other financial backers who might buy out
the Big Four. During his trip eastward, Judah became
deathly ill with yellow fever. He died shortly after his
arrival in New York. Today a simple monument to Theodore
Judah stands in the Old Town area of Sacramento. Surely
his real monument is the ribbon of iron rails that tied
California to the rest of the nation. 

The Big Four The Big Four were the chief entrepreneurs in
the building of the first transcontinental railroad. They
provided the initial financial backing for the plan
proposed by civil engineer Theodore Judah. As directors of
the Central Pacific and later the Southern Pacific, they
became the wealthiest and most powerful Californians of
their generation. 

Elected president of the Central Pacific was a Sacramento
grocer named Leland Stanford. His gregarious personality
suited him perfectly for this position of leadership. He
was active in the formation of the state Republican party,
and in 1862 he ran successfully for the governorship of
California. Later he served as a United States Senator
from California. Vice President of the newly formed
corporation was Collis P. Huntington, a successful
Sacramento hardware merchant. Huntington's business
practices became legendary. His favorite maxim for setting
prices was "How badly does the customer want it?" Within
the inner circle of the railroad, Huntington was clearly
the dominant personality. In later years he would serve as
president of the Southern Pacific.

Huntington's partner in the hardware business was Mark
Hopkins, elevated to the position of treasurer of the
Central Pacific. Several years older than the other
partners, Hopkins lacked their driving ambition. His
greatest strength was his eye for detail, keeping
meticulous accounts of all financial transactions. 

Charles Crocker, the fourth member of the group, began his
career in California as a seller of dry goods in
Sacramento. As a director of the railroad, his greatest
contribution was his unflagging energy and enthusiasm. He
would serve as overseer of the actual building of the
railroad.

Government Aid The building of the transcontinental
railroad depended upon the entrepreneurial skills of the
Big Four, the hard work of thousands of laborers, and the
generous financial aid of the federal government.

In the fall of 1861 Theodore Judah traveled to Washington,
D.C., as a lobbyist for the newly formed Central Pacific
Railroad. His task was to secure federal aid to help pay
the costs of building the railroad. He was fabulously
successful. 

Congress in 1862 and 1864 passed the Pacific Railroad
Acts. Signed into law by President Lincoln, these acts
provided enormous gifts of land and low-interest loans to
the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads. 

The Central Pacific was authorized to build the western
portion of the transcontinental railroad beginning in
Sacramento, and the Union Pacific was to build the eastern
portion starting in Omaha. The loans were paid out at
varying rates, from $16,000 to $48,000 per mile of track.
The land was doled out in a checkerboard pattern of ten
alternate sections (square miles) on each side of the
track–half the land in a strip totaling forty miles in
width. The railroad thus received from the federal
government a total of 11,588,000 acres in California,
about 11 1/2 percent of the entire land area of the state.
This vast transfer of the public domain made the railroad,
by far, the largest private landowner in California.

Building the Railroad The actual construction of the
transcontinental railroad began on January 8, 1863, at a
grand public ceremony in Sacramento. Governor (and
railroad president) Leland Stanford threw out the first
symbolic shovelful of dirt. From that point forward, the
bulk of the work was performed by Chinese labor. 

Central Pacific work crews had a relatively easy time
laying tracks westward from Sacramento across the
flatlands of the Central Valley. But formidable obstacles
confronted them once they entered the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada. Hills needed to be cut down and valleys
filled in. Enormous wooden trestles had to be built across
deep ravines. Snowsheds were needed along nearly forty
miles of track.

The greatest physical challenge was building the Summit
Tunnel, a passageway through a quarter-mile of solid
granite. Chinese workers drilled holes and packed them
with explosive black powder. The granite was so hard that
sometimes the blasts merely spurted out through the drill
holes without cracking the stone. Progress was measured in
inches a day. Construction of the tunnel began in the
summer of 1866 and took more than a year to complete.

The Gold Spike After more than six years of construction,
the tracks of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific
railroads approached each other just to the north of the
Great Salt Lake. It was there, at a place called
Promontory, that the lines were officially joined in a
famous and colorful ceremony. 

Witnessing the ceremony was a crowd of five hundred
laborers, mostly Chinese and Irish immigrants. Workers
carefully placed a final polished laurel tie on a bed of
gravel. Company officials presented several commemorative
spikes, including one of silver and two of gold. Central
Pacific president Leland Stanford attempted to drive home
the final spike with a mighty swing of his silver-headed
sledgehammer. (Unfortunately he missed on the first
attempt!) 

Telegraphers reported the ceremony to an awaiting nation.
A. J. Russell captured the significance of the moment in
his carefully staged photograph, "East Meets West."
Exactly a century after the founding of the first Spanish
settlements in Alta California in 1769, iron rails now
linked American California to its kindred states.

Economic Impact Californians expected that the completion
of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 would usher in a
new era of prosperity. Those expectations were not
immediately realized. By a cruel paradox, the completion
of the railroad not only failed to bring the expected good
times, it also marked the beginning of a deep and general
depression that continued through the next decade.

California merchants and manufacturers found themselves
suddenly exposed to intense competition from those of
eastern cities. Local merchants had overstocked
merchandise in anticipation of increased demand. Now,
after 1869, they found the market glutted with goods
shipped to California by rail. Nor did land prices rise as
expected. Land values had become overinflated in
anticipation of the completion of the railroad. When the
road was completed, land prices in California actually
fell.

The completion of the railroad released thousands of
workers, most of whom drifted back to the California labor
market. The oversupply of workers depressed wages and
contributed to widespread unemployment.

On the positive side, the railroad did help California
farmers and other producers transport their products to
distant markets. Fruit growers benefited especially from
the development of the refrigerated railroad car that kept
fruit cool and ripe during shipment across the country. 

The Boom of the Eighties

Southern California experienced tremendous growth in the
1880s, stimulated in part by the railroad. The Southern
Pacific was the largest landowner in the state and it took
a leading role in the advertising of California. The
railroad's publicity department flooded the nation with
articles and stories extolling the charms of California's
natural beauty, climate, and romantic heritage. 

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad reached Los
Angeles in the mid- 1880s and began a rate war with the
Southern Pacific. Passenger fares from the Midwest to
southern California dropped from $125 to as little as $1.
More than 200,000 newcomers arrived in southern California
in 1887, the peak year of "the boom of the eighties." Real
estate sales in Los Angeles County exceeded $200 million
during a single year. Dozens of towns sprang up. A hundred
new communities with 500,000 homesites were established. 

Chinese Labor Most of the workers who built the western
portion of the transcontinental railroad were immigrants
from China. Letters from California reported that working
on the railroad was hard and dangerous. But immigrants
continued to come, lured by the promise of earning higher
wages than they ever had dreamed of back home.

Once the railroad was completed in 1869, thousands of
workers were laid off. A depression hit California in the
1870s and white Californians blamed the Chinese for the
hard times. Anti-Chinese sentiment led to acts of violence
and the enactment of discriminatory laws in cities
throughout the state. The Workingmen's Party swept to
power in San Francisco, demanding that "the Chinese must
go." Californians in 1879 adopted a new state constitution
that contained strongly worded anti-Chinese provisions.
Three years later the United States Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting further Chinese
immigration. 

Working on the Railroad It was Charles Crocker, one of the
members of the Big Four, who first experimented with
Chinese construction workers on the transcontinental
railroad. The experiment was so successful that railroad
agents soon were recruiting Chinese workers by the
thousands. "Come over and help!" said the recruiting
posters in China. "We have money to spend, but no one to
earn it.

At the peak of construction, the Central Pacific employed
more than 10,000 Chinese laborers. "They are equal to the
best white men," Crocker said proudly of his new labor
force. "They are very trusty, they are intelligent, and
they live up to their contracts."

The Chinese worked under incredibly dangerous conditions–
for a dollar a day–to overcome some of the world's most
extraordinary obstacles to the building of a railroad.
Workers were suspended in wicker baskets over nearly
vertical cliffs in the Sierra Nevada, chipping away with
hammers and chisels to make a ledge for the track. In
unknown numbers, Chinese workers were swept away in
avalanches and rock slides. "The snowslides carried away
our camps and we lost a good many men in these slides,"
reported one railroad official. "Many of them we did not
find until the next season when the snow melted."

Chinese rail workers made one brief attempt to strike.
Near Cisco, in Placer County, thirty-five hundred workers
in July 1867 demanded forty dollars a month and a ten-hour
work day. They gave up even these modest demands when the
Central Pacific cut off the food supply and threatened to
discharge the strikers.

Anti-Chinese Sentiment Thousands of Chinese rail workers
were laid off following the completion of the
transcontinental railroad in 1869. Most drifted back to
crowd the already glutted labor market in California.
Thousands of additional Chinese immigrants arrived each
year during the next decade as California entered a period
of hard times. Unemployment rose sharply and many
businesses failed during "the terrible seventies."

White Californians often blamed the Chinese for the
depressed economic conditions. Anti-Chinese riots broke
out in cities and towns throughout the state, in places
like Auburn, Petaluma, Roseville, Chico, and Santa
Barbara. The worst anti-Chinese riot occurred in Los
Angeles. On the evening of October 24, 1871, an angry mob
looted and burned the local Chinatown, leaving fifteen
Chinese immigrants hanging from makeshift gallows.

Many California cities also passed laws to harass the
Chinese. San Francisco, for instance, passed an ordinance
in 1870 that prohibited anyone form occupying a sleeping
room with less than 500 cubic feet of breathing space per
person. This "health law" allowed the police to make raids
on crowded tenements in Chinatown and roust out any
sleeping Chinese residents who were violating the
ordinance while they slept. The law was vigorously
enforced and soon the jails of San Francisco were so
overcrowded that the city itself was in gross violation of
its own ordinance.

The Workingmen's Party Many white Californians blamed the
Chinese immigrants for the hard times of the 1870s. Groups
of unemployed whites gathered on the "sand lots" of San
Francisco to denounce the Chinese and to castigate the
railroad company that had employed so many of them. Such
meetings occasionally erupted into violence, leaving
Chinese businesses looted and burned.

Unemployed San Franciscans and their allies in 1877 formed
a new political party that would represent their views. A
fiery young Irish American named Denis Kearney emerged as
the leader of the Workingmen's Party of California.
Kearney acquired a large following mainly through his
emotional and melodramatic style of oratory. On one
occasion, he shouted to a crowd that "every workingman
should have a musket."

Fearing that Kearney's speeches would lead to more
violence, the city government adopted a ordinance that
restricted public speaking that advocated violence.
Kearney was arrested but acquitted because no violence had
actually resulted from his speeches. Whatever his speeches
may have advocated, one thing was clear: the leader of the
Workingmen's Party won thunderous applause from his
followers whenever he shouted "And whatever happens, the
Chinese must go!" A New Constitution At the peak of anti-
Chinese sentiment and the rise of the Workingmen's Party,
Californians adopted a new state constitution. Voters in
June 1878 elected delegates to a constitutional
convention; a third of the delegates were members of the
Workingmen's Party. The document the delegates produced
was far longer and more complex than the original
constitution drafted at the Monterey convention in 1849.
It was approved by the voters of California on May 7,
1879.

The new constitution included provisions for regulating
the railroad and other corporations. It also modified the
tax structure to benefit farmers and established a state
board of equalization.

The anti-Chinese provisions of the constitution were long,
elaborate, and emotional. The ban on the public employment
of Chinese was absolute: "No Chinese shall be employed on
any state, county, municipal, or other public work, except
in punishment for crime." The constitution also instructed
the legislature to "delegate all necessary power to the
incorporated cities and towns of this state for the
removal of Chinese without the limits of such cities and
towns, or for their location within prescribed portions of
those limits." Thus California cities were empowered to
exclude Chinese residents or to require them to live in
Chinese ghettos. The presence of Chinese immigrants,
ineligible by race to become American citizens, was
declared "to be dangerous to the well-being of the state,
and the legislature shall discourage their immigration by
all means within its power." Chinese Exclusion 

Anti-Chinese sentiment in California found its ultimate
expression in the Chinese Exclusion Act, approved by the
United States Congress in 1882. The act prohibited Chinese
immigration for ten years. In 1892 the law was extended
for another ten years, and in 1902 it became permanent.
The law was repealed during World War II, when China and
the United States were allied in the struggle against
Japan. 

The exclusion law contributed to an economic and
demographic decline of the Chinese immigrant population.
Boycotts of Chinese-produced goods by white consumers
reduced significantly the economic opportunities for the
immigrants. Most Chinese workers were relegated to the
ranks of common laborers or farm workers. Few Chinese
women lived in California at the time of exclusion, and
thus the immigrant population faced extraordinary
difficulties replenishing itself through natural increase.
The Chinese population in the United States declined from
107,000 in 1890 to just 75,000 in 1930. 

The exclusion law not only made it nearly impossible for
additional Chinese to enter California, it also caused
great hardships for those who were already here.

The Octopus Many Californians in the late nineteenth
century came to believe that the Big Four had accumulated
far too much wealth and power. Angry citizens portrayed
the railroad as a monstrous octopus that was strangling
other businesses and corrupting the affairs of government.
The Big Four's mansions on Nob Hill were denounced as
evidence of their ill-gotten wealth. Political cartoons
showed the Big Four under attack by those who wished to
free the state from railroad domination. Author Frank
Norris criticized the Southern Pacific in his muckraking
novel The Octopus (1901). Embarrassing revelations in the
press alleged corrupt dealings by railroad officials.
Although the railroad suffered a few defeats at the hands
of its enemies, its power remained substantial as
California entered the new century. Scholars today
continue to offer conflicting interpretations of the role
of the railroad in the history of California. 

The Big Four under Attack Following the completion of the
transcontinental railroad, the Big Four established a
virtual transportation monopoly in California and
exercised great political power. Many of their fellow
Californians came to believe that these four railroad
tycoons had amassed too much wealth and power. They
complained that the Big Four's transportation monopoly was
draining the profit from other business enterprises in the
state and that their political machine was corrupting
California government.

Anger against the Big Four was frequently expressed in
contemporary editorials and political cartoons. One of the
most devastating cartoons appeared in the San Francisco
Examiner in 1898. "Highwayman Huntington to the Voters of
California" pictured the president of the Southern Pacific
Railroad as a vicious gunman, complete with skull
cufflinks and a garish diamond stickpin. Collis P.
Huntington was not amused.

The following year, several bills aimed at silencing
offending journalists were introduced in the railroad-
dominated state legislature. One bill effectively banned
the future publication of political cartoons. It
prohibited the publishing of any drawing which reflected
adversely upon the "honor, integrity, manhood, virtue, or
reputation" of any individual. This anti-cartoon bill
became law in 1899 and remained on the books for fifteen
years, a chilling legacy from the era of the Big Four.

Revelations Several embarrassing revelations in the late
nineteenth century provided powerful evidence for those
Californians who believed that the Southern Pacific
Railroad had corrupted state politics. Two of the most
damaging episodes involved the top leaders of the company.


David Colton was the confidential manager of the
railroad's political interests in California. Following
Colton's death in 1878, his widow sued the Big Four for
cheating her out of part of her inheritance. During the
trail, she introduced hundreds of letters between her late
husband and other railroad officials. The letters starkly
revealed the railroad's activities in influencing
elections, reelections, and votes of members of the
California Legislature.

Two members of the Big Four, Collis Huntington and Leland
Stanford, became involved in a public feud in the early
1890s. Huntington publicly rebuked Stanford for using
large amounts of railroad money to secure Stanford's
election as a United States senator. Stanford's private
secretary later published a series of letters filled with
further charges of the wholesale corruption of national,
state, and local officials by the railroad.

Anti-railroad candidates, pledging to end the corruption
of government, won wide support from their fellow
Californians. Adolph Sutro declared himself the defender
of the people against the greed of The Octopus and was
elected mayor of San Francisco in 1894.

Defeats Although the Big Four wielded considerable
political power in the late nineteenth century, they also
suffered several major defeats at the hands of their
opponents.

Collis Huntington, president of the Southern Pacific
Railroad, supported proposals for federal aid to construct
a harbor at Santa Monica where the railroad had exclusive
access. Many of the leading citizens of Los Angeles wanted
the harbor to be built at San Pedro, at a place that was
free of railroad control. Huntington waged his battle
throughout the 1890s but eventually had to concede defeat
when a board of Army engineers approved the building of
the harbor at San Pedro. 

Government aid for the building of the transcontinental
railroad in the 1860s included federal loans of nearly $28
million payable in thirty years. As the loans became due,
Huntington proposed a delay in payment of fifty to a
hundred years. Huntington's proposal created a firestorm
of opposition. When the proposal was defeated by the
United States Congress in 1897, the governor of California
proclaimed a public holiday in celebration.