During the first years of the gold rush, the Chinaman was welcome in California because he was necessary.  He could do so many things that the miner disdained or found no time to do.  He could cook and wash, and he could serve.  He was a rare gardener and a patient day laborer.  He could learn a new trade quickly.  In the city he became a useful domestic servant at a time when there were very few women.  In all his tasks he was neat and had a genius for noiselessly minding his own business.

As the number of miners increased, race prejudice asserted itself.  “California for Americans” came to be a slogan that reflected their feelings against Mexicans, Spanish-Americans, and Chinese in the mines.  Race riots, often instigated by men who had themselves but recently immigrated to America, were not infrequent.  In these disorders the Chinese were no match for the aggressors and in consequence were forced out of many good mining claims.

The labor of the cheap and faithful Chinese appealed to the business instincts of the railroad contractors who were constructing the Pacific railways and they imported large numbers.  In 1866 a line of steamships was established to run regularly between Hong Kong and San Francisco.  In 1869 the first transcontinental railway was completed and American laborers from the East began to flock to California, where they immediately found themselves in competition with the Mongolian standard of living.  Race rivalry soon flared up and the anti-Chinese sentiment increased as the railroads neared completion and threw more and more of the oriental laborers into the general labor market.  Chinese were hustled out of towns.  Here and there violence was done.  For example, in the Los Angeles riots of October 24, 1871, fifteen Chinamen were hanged and six were shot by the mob.

This prejudice, based primarily upon the Chinaman’s willingness to work long hours for little pay and to live in quarters and upon fare which an Anglo-Saxon would find impossible, was greatly increased by his strange garb, language, and customs.  The Chinaman remained in every essential a foreigner.  In his various societies he maintained to some degree the patriarchal government of his native village.  He shunned American courts, avoided the Christian religion, rarely learned much of the English language, and displayed no desire to become naturalized.  Instead of sympathy in the country of his sojourn he met discrimination, jealousy, and suspicion.  For many years his testimony was not permitted in the courts.  His contact with only the rough frontier life failed to reveal to him the gentle amenities of the white man’s faith, and everywhere the upper hand seemed turned against him.  So he kept to himself, and this isolation fed the rumors that were constantly poisoning public opinion.  Chinatown in the public mind became a synonym for a nightmare of filth, gambling, opium-smoking, and prostitution.