RETURN TO: Fudging the facts doesn't promote tolerance: The Chinese at Promontory
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
Anonymous
Similarly,
"
... speed came at a cost. Historians estimate that more than 1,200
workers lost their lives during construction, though the true number
may never be fully known. Many deaths went unrecorded, particularly
among immigrant laborers whose contributions were often overlooked in
their time."
5/15/2026 3:22 PM
Anonymous
See, related discussion.
5/16/2026 7:14 PM
Anonymous
Chinese strike: "No violence was perpetrated along the whole line." –Crocker
5/16/2026 7:29 PM
Anonymous
See another related discussion.
5/16/2026 7:31 PM
Anonymous
Loony
Marxism,
" ... Stanford, a school with the
namesake of labor abuse and genocide. ... The same institution that
was built on the principle the laborer in the tunnel being blown up
by dynamite has no rights ... the Stanford institution sits in its
own immoral history ... their radical racist anti-labor foundations.
... human rights are anathema to Stanford, an infamous American
racist genocide architect. ... "
5/16/2026 8:12 PM
Anonymous
Similarly,
"The
work was very high risk and very little reward, and this sparked
the 1867
Chinese Labor Strike."
See related: "Key
Questions" and "Payroll
Records Gallery."
5/29/2026 4:27 PM
Anonymous
Similarly,
"Chinese
Americans have laid railroad tracks ... yet their contributions
remain either unknown or deliberately erased. ... Chinese laborers
helped build the Transcontinental Railroad. Estimates suggest that
Chinese workers comprised over 80% of the workforce on the Central
Pacific’s western section. Yet at the golden spike ceremony
celebrating its completion, their names were deliberately erased."
7/09/2026 12:54 PM
Anonymous
New
York Times, Friday, December 17, 1869
"THE
CHINESE.
The Real Views of the Democratic Governor of California
- Chinese Testimony and Not Chinese Immigration.
The
telegraph was correct in stating the other day that Governor HAIGHT,
in his biennial message to the Legislature of California, recommended
that the State aid and facilitate immigration from Europe and the
Eastern States, but it gave an erroneous impression by the additional
statement that he said "the Legislature had power to prohibit
Chinese immigration, but he was in favor of the removal of all pe
Chinese into the State.
The Sacramento Union, received last
night, gives the message in full, and to show what Governor Haight
really said we quote the following passage from it:
The
importance of facilitating immigration from the Eastern States and
Europe is felt by all who are interested in our material
development.
A moderate expenditure of money to establish
agencies in New-York and Baltimore and in Europe would probably be of
service in directing immigrants to this coast, and securing
additional means for their safe and speedy transit hither. Agents of
this character could do much toward diffusing information as to the
advantages offered by California, and making favorable arrangements
with railway and steamship corporations. We need population-not of
races inferior in natural traite, pagan in religion, ignorant of tree
institutions, and incapable of sharing in them without putting the
very existence of those institutions in peril-but we need immigrants
of kindred races, who will constitute a congenial element and locate
themselves and their families permanently upon the soil; who can be
admitted to an equal share in our political privileges, and respond
to all the obligations imposed upon citizens under a republican
government.
Continued
7/13/2026 5:38 PM
Anonymous
Continued
One
great need of California is a farming population from Germany and
other European States, accustomed to the cultivation of the grape and
other branches of agriculture, to which our climate and soil are so
peculiarly adapted. * * * The people of the State have so often and
so emphatically expressed their hostility to the importation of
Chinese laborers that their representatives will doubtless leave no
legitimate means untried to execute the popular will in this respect.
It is of vital importance, also, that the infamous business of
importing Chinese females by the hundred, for the vilest purposes,
should be arrested at once by stringent measures. I do not propose to
renew the discussion of the subject of Chinese immigration in an
economic, moral or political aspect, because it is needless to
discuss a question in reference to which public sentiment here is so
nearly unanimous. The Legislature have power, without doubt, to make
such provisions as will secure the people of the State against the
stream of filth and prostitution that has bee. pouring in from Asia
for the past twelve months, and at the same time secure the working
people of the State against the importation of a class whose servile
competition tends directly to cheapen and degrade labor. While,
however, the people of this State are with much unanimity opposed to
the importation of Chinese, both male and female, they are not
disposed to countenance any ill-usage of Chinese, or of any other
class within our borders. The exclusion of Mongolian testimony has
been occasioned by the notorious fact that their testimony is so
utterly unreliable as in many cases hardly to afford a basis for
conjecture.
Statements in direct conflict upon simple facts are
constantly made by equal numbers upon opposite sides, in criminal
prosecutions against Chinese defendants, (where their testimony i
admitted,) with no perceptible choice on their part between truth and
false-hood. Notwithstanding, however, the embarrassment which juries
must often feel to distinguish truth from falsehood in the testimony
of this class of persons, the whole policy of our legislation is to
admit all testimony which might constitute an element in arriving at
the truth, leaving the jury to judge of the weight to which it is
entitled. In pursuance of this, criminals have been allowed to
testify in their own behalf, and experience has satisfied jurists of
the wisdom of this innovation. In addition to this reason for
admitting Chinese to testify, it is true that crimes not only against
them, but against white persons, sometimes go unpunished for lack of
testimony, which, fortified by corroborating circumstances, would
suffice to insure convietion and punishment. My deliberate judgement
is strongly in favor of the removal of all barriers to the testimony
of any class or race, an a measure not simply of Justice, but of
sound policy."
–1869 NY Times newspaper with THE
ANTI-CHINESE IMMIGRATION sentiment in CALIFORNIA
Courtesy
of Steve Goldman HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS<.i>
Anonymous
Similarly.
"The Names History Left Out ... the Chinese laborers who built it, men who blasted tunnels through granite and endured winters in the high Sierra for wages and conditions that bordered on unbearable."
8/25/2026 6:26 AM
RETURN TO: Fudging the facts doesn't promote tolerance: The Chinese at Promontory