The Chinese Labor Experiment: Contract Workers in the Northeastern United States, 1870–1880

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early 1870s, three employers in the northeastern United States experimented with hiring Chinese men from California and Louisiana to work in factories in North Adams, Massachusetts; Belleville, New Jersey; and Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Searching for an alternative to their unionizing White workers, the employers sought to capitalize on the belief that Chinese migrants were a cheap and docile source of labor. This article examines the historical roots of Chinese labor in the United States, the stereotype of the Chinese worker, and why White fears of a “yellow peril” stealing jobs largely failed to materialize but nonetheless influenced future anti-Chinese legislation. Widespread interest in replicating the labor experiment declined in part because the Chinese workers themselves asserted control over their movement and subverted their employers’ expectations. This article aims to highlight the agency of those Chinese laborers and expand upon West Coast–centric perspectives on nineteenth-century Chinese American history.