Chinese Immigrants and Laundry?

Jorge Detlefs: In 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in Sacramento, California. Great numbers of Chinese immigrants entered the western U.S. in the gold rush that followed. When the gold rush ended, Chinese laborers worked on the transcontinental railroad, and thousands more were encouraged to immigrate as laborers. After the railroad was completed, tension increased as Chinese immigrant laborers competed for jobs with white labor. White labor retaliated with discrimination and mob violence, driving many Chinese eastward to New York. By 1880, a growing Chinatown was flourishing in New York City, and Chinese businesses began in other cities of New York. In 1882, Congress passed Exclusion Laws that prevented the immigration of Chinese laborers. The prejudice and discrimination that Chinese immigrants faced made it difficult for them to find a job. In response, many set up restaurants or hand laundries. Laundries took little capital to establish and classi! fied the operators as merchants, an allowed immigration category under Exclusion laws. “The reason why so many Chinese go into the laundry business in this country is because it requires little capital and is one of the few opportunities that are open. Men of other nationalities who are jealous of the Chinese, because he is a more faithful worker than one of their people, have raised such a great outcry about Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him out of working on farms or in factories or building railroads or making streets or digging sewers. He cannot practice any trade, and his opportunities to do business are limited to his own countrymen. . . .”...Show more