Union Pacific Railroad

Defeats in the Hayfield and Wagon Box Fights may have discouraged the hostile natives from mounting additional large scale attacks, but they continue their harassment of the forts along the Bozeman Trail, killing soldiers and civilians.

Most serious of all in the eyes of the government is the August 7 native attack on a Union Pacific Railroad train at Plum Creek near present-day Lexington, Nebraska, far from the Powder River Country in a region considered to be peaceful until now.

The population begins to grow steadily in the Wyoming Territory, which is established on July 25, 1868, after the arrival of the railroad.

Unlike Colorado to the south, Wyoming will never experience a rapid population boom in the nineteenth century from any major mineral discoveries such as gold or silver.

The Union Pacific Railroad had reached the town of Cheyenne, which will later become the Wyoming state capital, in 1867.

The railroad will eventually span the entire state, boosting the population, and creating some of Wyoming's largest cities, such as Laramie, Rock Springs, and Evanston.

The name Wyoming is used by Representative J. M. Ashley of Ohio, who introduces a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming".

The name "Wyoming" had been made famous by the 1809 poem Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell.

The name is derived from the Delaware (Munsee) name meaning "at the big river flat", originally applied to the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania.

Red Cloud's War ends in a victory for the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Dakota.

Peace commissioners had been sent to Fort Laramie in the spring of 1868, but only after the army had evacuated the forts in the Powder River country and the natives had burned down all three of them, does Red Cloud travel to Fort Laramie in November 1868, where the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) is signed.

Northern Arapaho representatives also sign the treaty.

It establishes the Great Sioux Reservation, which includes all South Dakota territory west of the Missouri river.

It also declares the Powder River country as "unceded Indian territory", as a reserve for the natives who choose not to live on the new reservation, and as a hunting reserve for the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

The treaty also accords the natives continued hunting rights in western Kansas and eastern Colorado.

Most importantly, the treaty specifies what Red Cloud sought: "no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion" of the Powder River country "or without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through" the Powder River country.

Fort Laramie Treaty--1868" http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/four/ftlaram.htm, accessed 28 Oct. 2012)

The U.S. government had increasingly sought a peaceful rather than a military solution to Red Cloud's War despite the military successes in the Hayfield and Wagon Box Fights.

The successful completion of the transcontinental railroad takes priority, and the Army does not have the resources to defend both the railroad and the Bozeman Trail from native attacks.

The military presence in the Powder River Country is both expensive and unproductive, with estimates that twenty thousand soldiers might be needed to subdue the natives.

The U.S. government had come to the conclusion after the Fetterman Fight that the forts along the Bozeman Trail are expensive to maintain (both in terms of supplies and manpower) and do not bring the intended security for travelers along the Road.

However, Red Cloud had refused to attend any meeting with treaty commissions during 1867.

The tracks of the Union pacific join those of the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, which event, through the symbolic driving of the ‘Golden Spike’, links the United States from sea to sea.

Standard Oil absorbs twenty-two of its twenty-six Cleveland competitors in less than four months in 1872, in what will later be known as "The Cleveland Conquest" or "The Cleveland Massacre".

John D. Rockefeller had in January 1870 formed Standard Oil of Ohio, which had rapidly become the most profitable refiner in Ohio and has grown to become one of the largest shippers of oil and kerosene in the country.

The railroads are fighting fiercely for traffic and, in an attempt to create a cartel to control freight rates, had formed the South Improvement Company, a Pennsylvania corporation, in the fall of 1871, in collusion with Standard and other oil men outside the main oil centers.

The cartel receives preferential treatment as a high-volume shipper, which includes not just steep rebates of up to fifty percent for their product, but also rebates for the shipment of competing products.

Founded by Thomas A. Scott, president of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1871-1872, the South Improvement Company had issued two thousand shares of stock, of which nine hundred are controlled by Rockefeller and his partners.

Rockefeller had then started negotiations to collude with the three major railroads running through Cleveland: the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Erie, and the New York Central.

The result of these secret negotiations were as follows: (1) The official rate per barrel from Cleveland to New York will be $2.56, but South Improvement will receive a $1.06 rebate; (2) The railroads will also pay South Improvement $1.06 per barrel of oil shipped that is not produced by South; (3) The railroads will also give reports of the shipping destinations, costs, and dates of all of South's competitors; (4) The commerce will be divided evenly among the railroads, with a double share going to Pennsylvania Railroad; and (5) South will provide tank cars and loading facilities.

The secret concessions would have helped lessen the "vicious" competition among the railroad lines by giving a steady, standardized flow of commerce, but word leaks out of the South Improvement Scheme, and the proposed one hundred percent increase in rail shipping rates inflames the independent producers and many smaller refineries.

Following a summit and vocal protest by the independent oil producers and refiners led by Pratt and Rogers of the Charles Pratt and Company refining interests of Brooklyn, New York, which comes close to physical warfare, including boycotts and vandalism, in western Pennsylvania in March 1872 (and comes to be known as the "Oil War"), the railroads soon agree to back down.

Pennsylvania revokes the cartel’s charter and equal rates are restored for the time being.

Although Rockefeller will become the target of many who decry Standard Oil's ruthlessness in subsequent years, the South Improvement rebate scheme had been Flagler's idea.

Undeterred, though vilified for the first time by the press, Rockefeller continues with his self-reinforcing cycle of buying competing refiners, improving the efficiency of his operations, pressing for discounts on oil shipments, undercutting his competition, making secret deals, raising investment pools, and buying rivals out.

The Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, California via the First Transcontinental Railroad on June 4, 1876, 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City.

The feat, essentially a publicity stunt, is reported widely in US newspapers.

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.