Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (39 page)

Construction worker A. P. Partridge spent much of the winter on the Truckee, building grade. He recalled the coming of the Chinese, who took up the old buildings and sheds in the area. One heavy snowfall collapsed an old barn and killed four. Further, “a good many of them were frozen to death.” Once he went up to Donner Lake for a dance at a hotel. When the sleigh returned to Truckee in the morning, “we saw something under a tree. We stopped and found a frozen Chinese. We threw him in the sleigh and took him into town and laid him out by the side of a shed and covered him with a rice mat, the most appropriate thing for the laying out of a Celestial.”
21

Through February and March, Partridge worked on putting up bridges over the Truckee River. He and his crew put up two 204-foot spans and one two-span bridge of 150 feet per span. The Chinese, meanwhile, were moved east to get the heavy grading done well in advance of the main force. Some three thousand men with four hundred horses and carts were sent out, a distance of three hundred miles in advance of the track. Hay, grain, and food for the Chinese, plus all the supplies they needed, were hauled by teams of horses over the desert. Water for men and animals was hauled forty miles.
22

T
HE
surveyors for the CP were way out in front of the graders, all the way to the east of the Salt Lake, working their way up Weber Canyon, then through Echo Canyon, across the Wasatch Range and on to Fort
Bridger, on the eastern slope of the range. By the spring of 1867, they were setting up their flags and stakes right beside those of the UP surveyors. The CP intended to get to Fort Bridger, whereas the UP boasted that it would meet the CP at the California-Nevada border.

E. B. Crocker wished the two lines could work together, but it wasn't to be. “Our surveys run to Weber,” he wrote, “so we're confident that well reach Ft. Bridger before they do. It can be done in spite of Durant's frantic efforts and boasts.”
23

The CP was trying to get government approval of its proposed route from the California-Nevada state line to Humboldt Wells in northeastern Nevada, but President Johnson's secretary of the interior, Orville Hickman Browning, refused to issue the permit. The Crocker brothers wanted it done as soon as possible, and immediately after Browning had approved, they were ready to present him with a route from Humboldt Wells to the Salt Lake, and then with another route from the Salt Lake eastward into Wyoming. “That will be so much gained,” E. B. Crocker commented dryly.
24

There was big money at stake. As Stanford wrote to Huntington, “Our real profits lie in the road beyond the Sierra Nevadas and to secure the line to Salt Lake if necessary we can afford to make great sacrifices in getting over the mountains.”
25
Salt Lake City was the only settled establishment between the two ends of track, the only place that needed to import goods that could be carried on trains, and the only one that had products to export. Then there was the government loan of bonds for every mile constructed to go to the railroad company that built it. And the government gift of alternative parts of land (which in truth wasn't worth much if anything in the desert, where most of it was never sold) would increase as more track was laid.

Perhaps most of all, there was the prestige to be considered. Bragging rights were to be had by one or the other of the railroads. That was the way the Congress had set it up. Congress had reserved to itself the right to pick the spot where the roads would meet, but it had not yet done so and showed no inclination to do so. It wanted the roads built as fast and as far as possible. The spot would be chosen after the grading crews had passed each other, and as the rails at the end of track approached each other. Where that would be, no one knew. So the surveyors kept surveying, the graders kept grading, the rail layers kept laying.

•   •   •

B
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companies were trying, with some success (the full extent of which is not known in any detail), to place moles, or spies, in the other railroad's camp. The UP sent two engineers to Colfax to snoop around and see what they could pick up. The Crocker brothers knew about this effort and showed them around, filling their heads full of nonsense. The UP engineers “were quite inquisitive” and took in whatever they were told. What they were told was that the tunnels were terribly long and progress was disappointingly slow and it would take a long time to blast through the granite. They went back to Omaha to report to Durant that there was nothing to worry about, that the CP would be blasting away for years. They convinced Durant that it would take at least two more years to get through the Summit Tunnel. E. B. Crocker told Huntington, “While the engineers were here we led them to think that it would take us a long time to get over the mountains. We thought that Durant, while laboring under that idea, would not be apt to be in so great a hurry.”
26

Then one of the UP spies told Durant that the CP wasn't going to wait for the Summit Tunnel to be finished, but was going to haul tracks over the mountains and begin working east from the Truckee. “This news was probably a small bombshell in Durant's camp,” E. B. Crocker wrote to Huntington. “He saw that if we dodged around the summit in this way that his hopes were dashed.” On the spur of the moment, Durant wrote his spy and told him that he, Durant, would slap an injunction on the CP to prevent any such dodging of the summit. But Crocker commented, “This is ridiculous.”
27

The CP, meanwhile, was planting its own spies on the UP. “I have a way,” boasted Huntington, “of finding out what is done in the Union Company's office.”
28
In April 1867, E. B. Crocker heard that “the Union Pacific has had a good deal of trouble with snow this winter—full as much if not more than we have had. The fact is that after this year while they are building between the Black Hills & Salt Lake, they will only be able to work on construction during the summer months. They will be such a high latitude that the snow will fall early and stay late and from now on they will find themselves in the fix we are now in.”
29

Still, the UP was so far winning the race. Charlie Crocker said he “felt about like resigning” at the time. He got after Strobridge, told him to hurry up.
30

•   •   •

I
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mid-May 1867, General James Rusling of the army's Quartermaster Department got on a CP train at Sacramento, bound for the mountains and beyond. He was going to inspect army posts. When he left, the day was hot and humid, but as he got to Cisco, the chill signified that the train was in the mountains. “We were shivering in winter garments,” commented the general. But the track impressed him and his companions, who were surprised at how well built it was and also at its “audacity.”

Rusling observed grades of over a hundred feet to the mile, “and in many places the track literally springs into the air, over immense trestlework bridges or along the dizzy edges of precipices that seem fraught with peril and destruction.” When the general and his party reached Cisco, the snow reached to the eaves of the hotel.
31

Rusling took a “mountain mud-wagon” out of Cisco, through a mixture of slush, mud, and ice. He changed to a sleigh and “then came a long and dreary pull for several miles till we got well across the summit of the Sierras.” Everywhere he looked, there were Chinese at work. They had pigtails coiled around their heads and were wearing blue cotton blouses. Rusling talked to a few of their foremen, who “spoke well of the almond-eyed strangers and praised them especially for their docility and intelligence.”
32

One week later, Charlie Crocker was frustrated in his strenuous efforts to put more Chinese on the CP payroll. His brother explained to Huntington that
“a want of men”
had struck the railroad. “We are scouring the state for men to put on the Truckee, but they come in very slow.” The Chinese had been discovered by the owners of mines and other employments; the CP's use of Chinese laborers “has led hundreds of others to employ them so that now when we want to gather them up for work, a large portion are permanently employed at work elsewhere that they like better.”

Getting enough Chinese to work on the grades and track was so “very important” that the directors of the CP “concluded to raise their wages from $31 to $35 per month and see if this will not bring them.” It would cost the CP $20,000 more per month, but with the Chinese going to Idaho, Montana, and elsewhere, it had to be done.
33

In late May, unbelievably and unacceptably, the Chinese went on strike. “This is the hardest blow we have had,” E. B. Crocker reported. He wanted Huntington “to see what you can do about getting laborers
from the East.”
34
Initially it was the Chinese who were employed in grading, but they were soon joined by those engaged on the most critical part of the work, the tunnelers. The spokesman for the tunnelers said the Chinese wanted $40 per month rather than the $35 they were collecting, and they wanted the workday reduced to eight hours—which it was supposed to be, but the foremen had not been enforcing that rule. Further, in what was a shock for those (including Crocker and Strobridge) who thought the relations between the CP and its workers were excellent, the
Sacramento Union
reported that the Chinese wanted to eliminate “the right of the overseers of the company to either whip them or restrain them from leaving the road when they desire to seek other employment.”
35

Charles Crocker was convinced that agents of the UP had inspired the strike and issued its demands. The UP's motive was “to keep us in the mountains while they were building the road over the plains.” But he couldn't prove it, for the good reason that the UP had nothing to do with the strike, which was inevitable given the shortage of Chinese workers and the manifest need of the CP for more of them.
36

The CP tried to entice workers, but it wouldn't pay $40 per month or reduce the hours. “Charley will go up and attend to it,” E. B. Crocker assured Huntington, because, “if they are successful in this demand, then they control and their demands will be increased.” The CP didn't want to lose “too much time on the work.” But he also knew that, “when any commodity is in demand beyond the natural supply, the price will tend to advance.” So he had sent a CP agent to the South to try to recruit “5,000 Freedmen. 1 hope it will be successful and they will come soon.”
37

It wasn't to be. The following day, E.B. wrote, “the truth is the Chinamen are getting smart. The only safe way to beat them is to inundate this state and Nevada with Freedmen, Chinese, Japanese, all kinds of labor, so that men come to us for work instead of us hunting them up.” Good luck on that one. The next day, E.B. wrote, “Since my last letter all the Chinamen on the whole line have struck for $45 and a shorter working day.” He still was opposed to paying the expenses of men coming from the East to work, and thought that “a Negro labor force would tend to keep the Chinese quiet as the Chinese have kept the Irishmen quiet.”
38

It couldn't be done. The CP was going to have to deal with the Chinese. Fortunately for the bosses, the Chinese were not militant. Charles
Crocker later said, “If there had been that number of whites in a strike, there would have been murder and drunkenness and disorder …. But with the Chinese it was just like Sunday. These men stayed in their camps. They would come out and walk around, but not a word was said; nothing was done. No violence was perpetrated along the whole line.”
39

Crocker cut off the men's provisions. No food got through to them. E. B. Crocker reported, “They really began to suffer.” On July 1, 1867, after a week of such treatment, “Charles went up to them and they gathered around him and he told them that he would not be dictated to—that he made the rules for them and not they for him.” He said that, if they went to work right away, “all would be well, but if they did not, then he would pay them nothing for June.”

The Chinese leaders protested. “They tried hard to get some changes”—a reduction in hours, for example, or an advance of even 25 cents per month. Charlie told them, “Not a cent more would he give.” Most said that they would go back to work, but some of their leaders threatened to whip those who did and burn up their camps. “Charles told them that he would protect any who worked and his men would shoot down any man that attempted to do the laborers any harm.” He would bring on the sheriff and a posse if necessary.

Four days later, E. B. Crocker noted, “The Chinese are working harder than ever since the strike.” They were, at least according to Crocker, “ashamed of the strike. I don't think we will ever have any more such difficulties with them.”
40
Thus did Charles Crocker and his partners show other employers around the nation one way—theirs—of how to deal with strikers.

T
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UP and the CP continued to tell tall tales to each other. “I met Durant yesterday,” Huntington wrote to E. B. Crocker, “and he told me that the UP had a tunnel 2,600 feet in length and that it would take two years to get through it. Of course it was a lie.”
41
The UP also wanted to talk to the CP about jointly building a great central city at the point of meeting of the two roads. But as E. B. Crocker said, “Cities don't thrive unless there is a big, prosperous country around. It might happen in 30 or 50 years. You can give them all that great city and not give up much.”
42

Both sets of directors and engineers were telling lies to Brigham Young. They needed his Mormons to help make grade and lay track, and
they knew he wanted the line to come through Salt Lake City, and they further knew that it never would do so, because to go south of the lake was to get into terrible desert. But even as their surveyors assured them that there was no such possibility, they told Young to hang on, that they would do their best to get to his city.