Knights of Labor

Chinese immigration to the United States at this time is neither uniform nor widespread.

The vast majority of the nearly one hundred thousand Chinese immigrants reside within the American West: California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington Territory, as stated by the U.S. Minister to China, George Seward, in Scribner's Magazine ("Seward's 'Chinese Immigration'," Scribner's Monthly, April, 1881, no. 6.)

The first jobs Chinese laborers had taken in Wyoming were on the railroad, working for the Union Pacific company (UP) as maintenance-of-way workers.

Chinese workers had soon become an asset to Union Pacific and work along UP lines and in UP coal mines from Laramie to Evanston.

Most Chinese workers in Wyoming end up working in Sweetwater County, but a large number settle in Carbon County and Uinta counties.

Most Chinese people in the area are men working in the mine.

Racism against Chinese immigrants is widespread and largely uncontroversial at this time.

In 1874–75, after labor unrest had disrupted coal production, the Union Pacific Coal Department had hired Chinese laborers to work in their coal mines throughout southern Wyoming.

Even so, Chinese population had risen slowly at first; however, where there are Chinese immigrants, they are generally concentrated in one area.

At Red Desert, a remote section camp in Sweetwater County, there are 20 inhabitants, of whom 12 are Chinese.

All 12 are laborers who work under an American foreman.

To the east of Red Desert is another remote section camp, Washakie.

An American section foreman lives there among 23 others, including 13 Chinese laborers and an Irish crew foreman.

In the various section camps along the main line of the Union Pacific Railroad, Chinese workers far outnumber any other nationality.

Though the 79 Chinese in Sweetwater County in 1870 represented only 4% of the total population, they were, again, concentrated.

In Rock Springs and Green River, the largest towns along the UP line, there were no Chinese residents reported in 1870.

Throughout the 1870s, the Chinese population in Sweetwater County and all of Wyoming had steadily increased.

During the decade, Wyoming's total population had risen from nine thousand one hundred and eighteen to twenty thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

In the 1870 U.S. Census, what the government today calls "Asian and Pacific Islander" had represented only one hundred and forty-three members of the population of Wyoming.

The increase during the 1870s is the largest percentage increase in the Asian population of Wyoming of any decade since; the increase represents a five hundred and thirty-nine percent jump in the Asian population.

By 1880, most Chinese residents in Sweetwater County lived in Rock Springs.

At this time, Wyoming is home to mine hundred and fourteen "Asians”.

Although most Chinese workers in 1880 are employed in the coal mines around Wyoming and Sweetwater County, the Chinese in Rock Springs work mostly in occupations outside of mining.

In addition to Chinese laborers and miners, a professional gambler, a priest, a cook, and a barber reside in the city.

In Green River, Wyoming, there is a Chinese doctor.

Chinese servants and waiters find work in Green River and in Fort Washakie.

In Atlantic City, Miner's Delight, and Red Canyon, Wyoming, Chinese gold miners are employed.

However, the majority of the one hundred and ninety-three Chinese residing in Sweetwater County by 1880 work in the coal mines or on the railroad.

California goes further in its discrimination against the Chinese, one the Chinese Exclusion Act is finally passed in 1882, by passing various laws that will later held to be unconstitutional.

After the act is passed most Chinese families are faced with a dilemma: stay in the United States alone or go back to China to reunite with their families.

Newspapers around the country and especially in California start to discredit and blame the Chinese for most things, e.g., white unemployment.

The police also discriminate against the Chinese by using the slightest opportunity to arrest them.

Although there is widespread dislike for the Chinese, some capitalists and entrepreneurs resist their exclusion based on economic factors.

The first significant Chinese immigration to America had begun with the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, and had continued with subsequent large labor projects, such as the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad.

During the early stages of the gold rush, when surface gold was plentiful, the Chinese were tolerated, if not well received.

As gold became harder to find and competition increased, so did animosity toward the Chinese and other foreigners.

After being forcibly driven from the mines, most Chinese have settled in enclaves in cities, mainly San Francisco, and taken up low-end wage labor such as restaurant work and laundering just to earn enough to live.

With the post Civil War economy in decline by the 1870s, anti-Chinese animosity has become politicized by labor leader Denis Kearney and his Workingman's Partyas well as by California Governor John Bigler, both of whom had blamed Chinese "coolies" for depressed wage levels.

Anti-Chinese agitation by “native” white American laborers had culminated in the 1877 anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco.

These riots culminate in the creation of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which aims to reduce Chinese immigration to the United States by limiting immigration to males and reducing numbers of immigrants allowed in the city.

The law will not be repealed until 1943 with the Magnuson Act.

Bitterness from the white miners in Rock Springs has increased as more Chinese arrive.

By 1883, when a "Whitemen's Town" is established in Rock Springs, the Knights of Labor have organized a chapter here.

The Knights are one of the major groups which spearhead opposition to Chinese labor during the 1880s; in 1882, the Knights had worked for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The white miners at Rock Springs, being mostly Cornish, Irish, Swedish, and Welsh immigrants, believe lower-paid Chinese laborers drive down their wages.

The Chinese at Rock Springs are aware of the animosity and rising racial tension with white miners, but have not taken any precautions, as no prior events had indicated there would be any race riots.

Underlying the coming outbreak of violence are racism and resentment of the policies of the Union Pacific Coal Department.

Until 1875, the mines in Rock Springs had been worked by whites; in that year, a strike had occurred, and the strikers had been replaced with Chinese strikebreakers less than two weeks after the strike began.

The company had resumed mining with fifty white miners and one hundred and fifty Chinese miners in its employ.

The Knights of Labor score their greatest victory is in the Union Pacific Railroad strike in 1884.

Union Pacific had been entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, exposed in 1872, that involved bribing congressmen and stock speculations.

Its early troubles had led to bankruptcy during the 1870s, the result of which was reorganization of the Union Pacific Railroad as the Union Pacific Railway on January 24, 1880, with its dominant stockholder being Jay Gould.

The Knights primary demand is for an eight hour day; they also call for legislation to end child and convict labor, as well as a graduated income tax.

They are eager supporters of cooperatives.

In 1869, seven members of the Philadelphia tailors' union, headed by Uriah Smith Stephens and James L. Wright, had established a secret union under the name the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.

The collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873 had left a vacuum for workers looking for organization.

The Knights had become better organized with a national vision when they replaced Stephens with Terence V. Powderly.

The body had become popular with Pennsylvania coal miners during the economic depression of the mid-1870s, and has grown rapidly.

As membership expanded, the Knights had begun to function more as a labor union and less like a fraternal organization.

Local assemblies have begun not only to emphasize cooperative enterprises, but to initiate strikes to win concessions from employers.

Powderly opposes strikes as a "relic of barbarism," but the size and the diversity of the Knights affords local assemblies a great deal of autonomy.

The Knights of Labor attract many Catholics, who are a large part of the membership, perhaps a majority.

Powderly is a Catholic.

However, the Knights' use of secrecy, similar to the Masons, during its early years concerned many bishops.

The Knights use secrecy to help prevent employers from firing members.

In 1882, to mollify the concerns of Catholic members and the bishops who want to avoid any resemblance to freemasonry, the Knights end their membership rituals and remove the words "Noble Order" from their name.

Though initially averse to strikes as a method to advance their goals, the Knights have aided various strikes and boycotts.

The Archbishop of Quebec had condemned the Knights of Labor in 1884; twelve American archbishops subsequently vote ten to two against doing likewise in the United States.

Furthermore, Cardinals James Gibbons and John Ireland defend the Knights.

Gibbons goes to the Vatican to talk to the hierarchy.

Notices had been posted from Evanston to Rock Springs in August 1885, demanding the expulsion of Chinese immigrants, and on the evening of September 1, 1885, white miners in Rock Springs hold a meeting regarding the Chinese immigrants.

It will be rumored that threats had been made that night against the Chinese, according to immigrants then residing here.

Ten white men, in ordinary garb and miner's uniforms, arrive at coal pit number six at the Rock Springs mine at 7:00 a.m. on September 2, 1885.

They declare that the Chinese laborers have no right to work in a particularly desirable "room" in the mine; miners are paid by the ton, thus location is important to the miners.

A fight breaks out, and two Chinese workers at pit number six are badly beaten.

One of the Chinese workers later dies due to his injuries.

The white miners, most of whom are members of the Knights of Labor, walk out of the mine.

After the work stoppage at pit number six, more white miners assemble near the town.

They march to Rock Springs by way of the railroad, carrying firearms.

At about 10:00 a.m., the bell in the Knights of Labor meeting hall tolls, and the miners inside the building join the already large group.

There are white miners who opt to go to saloons instead of joining the gathering mob, but by 2:00 p.m., the saloons and grocers are persuaded by a Union Pacific official to close.

With the saloons and grocers closed, about one hundred and fifty men, armed with Winchester rifles, move toward Chinatown in Rock Springs in two groups and enter Chinatown by crossing separate bridges.

The larger group enters by way of the railroad bridge and is divided into squads, a few of which remain standing on the opposite side of the bridge outside Chinatown.

The smaller group enters by way of the town's plank bridge.

Squads from the larger group break off and move up the hill toward coal pit number three.

One squad takes up a position at the pit number three coal shed; another, at the pump house.

A warning party is sent ahead of the squads into Chinatown.

They warn the Chinese they have one hour to pack up and leave town.

After only thirty minutes the first gunshots are fired by the squad at the pump house, followed by a volley from those at the coal shed.

Lor Sun Kit, a Chinese laborer, is shot and falls to the ground.

As the group at coal pit number three rejoins them, the crowd presses on toward Chinatown, some men firing their weapons as they go.

The smaller group of white miners at the plank bridge divides itself into squads and surrounds Chinatown.

One squad stays at the plank bridge to cut off any Chinese escape.

As the white miners move into Chinatown, the Chinese become aware of the riot and that Leo Dye Bah and Yip Ah Marn, residents from the west and east sides of Chinatown, have already been killed.

As the news of the murders spreads, the Chinese flee in fear and confusion.

They run in every direction: up the hill behind coal pit number three; others, along the base of the hill at coal pit number four; others still, from the eastern end of town, flee across Bitter Creek to the opposite hill; and more flee the western end of Chinatown across the base of the hill to the right of coal pit number five.

The mob comes from three directions by this time, from the east and west ends of town and from the wagon road.

By 3:30 p.m. the massacre is well under way.

A group of women in Rock Springs has gathered at the plank bridge, where they stand and cheer on the rampage.

Two of the women reportedly fire shots at the Chinese.

As the riot wears on into the night, the Chinese miners scatter into the hills, lying in the grass to hide.

Between four and nine p.m., rioters set fire to the camp houses belonging to the coal company.

By nine p.m., all but one Chinese camp house is burned completely.

In all, seventy-nine Chinese homes are destroyed by fire.

Damage to Chinese-owned property is estimated at around one hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars.

Some Chinese die on the banks of Bitter Creek as they flee, others near the railroad bridge as they attempt to escape Chinatown.

The rioters throw Chinese bodies into the flames of burning buildings.

Other Chinese immigrants, who have hidden in their houses instead of fleeing, are murdered, and their bodies are burned with their houses.

Those who cannot run, including the sick, are burned alive in their camp houses.

One remaining Chinese immigrant is found dead in a laundry house in Whitemen's Town, his home demolished by rioters.

The extraordinarily violent attacks at Rock Springs reveal a long-held hatred of the victims.

Besides those who have been burned alive, Chinese miners have been scalped, mutilated, branded, decapitated, dismembered, and hanged from gutter spouts.

The events amount to racial terrorism.

There are twenty-eight confirmed deaths, and at least fifteen miners have been wounded, but various sources assert that forty to fifty fatalities might be a more accurate number, as some of those who fled were never accounted for.

The Chinese consul in New York City will compile a detailed list of the massacre's victims.

Rumors of the return of the Chinese to Rock Springs circulate immediately after the riots.

On September 3, the Rock Springs Independent publishes an editorial which confirms the rumors of "the return", as a few Chinese begin to trickle back into town to search for valuables.

The Independent says of the return of Chinese laborers to Rock Springs, "It means that Rock Springs is killed, as far as white men are concerned, if such program is carried out."

The massacre is defended in the local newspaper, and, to an extent, in other western newspapers.

In general, however, Wyoming newspapers disapprove of the acts of the massacre while supporting the cause of white miners.

Wyoming's territorial Governor Francis E. Warren visits Rock Springs on September 3, 1885, the day after the riot, to make a personal assessment.

After his trip to Rock Springs, Warren travels to Evanston, where he sends telegrams to U.S. President Grover Cleveland appealing for federal troops.

Back in Rock Springs, the riot has calmed, but the situation is still unstable.

Surviving Chinese immigrants in Rock Springs flee in the days following the riot and are picked up by Union Pacific trains.

By September 5, almost all survivors are in Evanston, Wyoming, one hundred miles (one hundred and sixty kilometers) west of Rock Springs.

Once there, they are subjected to threats of murder and other crimes; Evanston is another area in Wyoming where anti-Chinese sentiment is high.

Two companies of the United States Army's 7th Infantry arrive on September 5, 1885.

One company, under the command of a Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, is stationed in Evanston, Wyoming; the other, under a Colonel Chipman, is stationed in Rock Springs.

At Camp Murray, Utah Territory, Colonel Alexander McDowell McCook is ordered to augment the garrison sent to Wyoming with six more companies.

Six companies of soldiers had arrived in Wyoming on September 9, 1885, one week after the massacre.

Four of the six companies had then escorted the Chinese back to Rock Springs.

Once back in Rock Springs, the Chinese laborers find scorched tracts of land where their homes once stood.

The mining company had buried only a few dead; others remain lying in the open, mangled, decomposing, and partially eaten by dogs, hogs, or other animals.

The situation in Rock Springs had been stabilized as early as September 15, when Warren had first requested the removal of federal troops, but the mines at Rock Springs remain closed for a time.

On September 30, 1885, white miners, mostly Finnish immigrants who are members of the Knights of Labor, walk out of mines in Carbon County, Wyoming, in protest of the company's continued use of Chinese miners.

In Rock Springs, the white miners are not back at work in late September, because the company still uses Chinese labor.