STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP .docx

STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP
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Set A: May 12, 1894
The following articles were published the day after the strike
began.
Chicago Times Chicago Tribune
PULLMAN MEN OUT
Nearly 4,000 Throw Down
Their Tools and Quit
Refuse to Work Till Wrongs are
Righted
Firing Three Men Starts It
Almost the entire force of men
employed in the Pullman shops
went out on strike yesterday. Out
of the 4,800 men and women
employed in the various
departments there were probably
not over 800 at work at 6 o’clock

last evening. The immediate cause
of the strike was the laying off of
three men in the iron machine
shop. The real but remote cause is
the question of wages over which
the men have long been unhappy.
The strike of yesterday was
ordered by a committee
representing every department at
the Pullman works. This
committee was in session all night
Thursday night, and finally came
to the conclusion to order a strike
4:30 o’clock yesterday morning.
The position of the company is
that no increase in wages is
possible under the present
conditions. The position of the
men is that they are receiving less
than a living wage, to which they
are entitled.
PULLMEN OUT
LAY OFFS THE CAUSE
Committeemen Laid Off and
Their Comrades Act
Two thousand employees in the

Pullman car works struck
yesterday, leaving 800 others at
their posts. This was not enough
to keep the works going, so a
notice was posted on the big
gates at 6 o’clock saying: “These
shops closed until further notice.”
The walk-out was a complete
surprise to the officials. Mr.
Pullman had offered to allow the
men the privilege of examining
the books of the company to
verify his statement that the
works were running at a loss.
When the men quit work at 6
o’clock Thursday evening none of
them had any idea of striking. But
the Grievance Committee of
Forty-six held a session until 4:30
o’clock in the morning. . . . One
department at a time, the men
went out so that by 10 o’clock
1500 men were out. Only 800
came back after lunch.
Vocabulary
comrades: communist companion
grievance: complaint

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Set B: June 26-28, 1894
The following articles were written during the first week of the
national
railway boycott.
NOT A WHEEL TURNS IN THE
WEST
Complete Shutdown of All
Roads in the Territory Beyond
the Missouri River
It May Be the Biggest Tie-Up in
All History
All the western half of the United
States has begun to feel the
paralysis of the American Railway
Union’s boycott of Pullman. At
every important division point in
the west, southwest, and
northwest there are trains
blockaded because the American
Railway Union men will not run
them with Pullman cars attached.

Some roads are absolutely and
utterly blockaded, others only feel
the embargo slightly, but it
grows in strength with every hour.
The six o’clock train on the Great
Western started out with two
Pullman sleeper cars and one
Pullman diner. The conductor rang
the bell, the train stopped, the
whole crew got down and cut off
those three cars. The train pulled
out without the Pullmans. It was
the most decisive thing the
boycotters have done yet.
Vocabulary
embargo: ban on trade
DEBS IS A DICTATOR
His Warfare on the Railroads is
Waged Effectively
The American Railway Union
became aggressive yesterday in
its efforts to force a settlement
between Mr. Pullman and his
striking employees. Its freight
service was at a standstill all day
and the same is practically true of
other roads. In no case, however,
did the strikers prevent the

departure of any regular
passenger trains from Chicago.
Deb’s master stroke, however,
occurred at midnight, when every
employee on the Santa Fe
belonging to the American Railway
Union was ordered out. Whether
the men will obey the order will be
learned today.
So far no marked violence has
been attempted. Chief Brennan
says he has 2,000 men who can
be gathered at any point inside of
an hour.
Vocabulary
dictator: leader with total power
freight: shipping
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Set C: July 7, 1894
The following articles were written after federal troops had
been in Chicago
for three days.

MEN NOT AWED BY SOLDIERS
MOST OF THE ROADS AT A
STANDSTILL
Railway Union is Confident of
Winning Against Armed Capital
Despite the presence of United
States troops and the mobilization
of five regiments of state militia,
despite threats of martial law
and total extermination of the
strikers by bullet, the great strike
begun by the American Railway
Union holds three-fourths of the
roads running out of Chicago.
If the soldiers are sent to the
southwest section of the city,
bloodshed and perhaps death will
follow today, for this is the most
lawless part in the city. But the
perpetrators are not American
Railway Union men. The people
engaged in this outrageous work
of destruction are not strikers.
The persons who set the fires
yesterday are young hoodlums.

Vocabulary
martial law: military control with
suspension of normal laws
perpetrator: person committing an
act, often a crime
YARDS FIRE SWEPT
Hundreds of Freight Cars,
Loaded and Empty, Burn
Rioters Prevent Firemen from
Saving the Property
The yards from Brighton Park to
61st Street were lit on fire last
night by the rioters. Between 600
and 700 freight cars have been
destroyed, many of them loaded.
Miles and miles of costly track are
in a snarled tangle of heat-twisted
rails. Not less than $750,00—
possibly $1,000,000 of property—
has been sacrificed to the mob of
drunken Anarchists and rebels.
That is the record of the night’s
work by the Debs strikers.

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Set D: July 15, 1894
The following articles were written as the strike was coming to
an end. On
July 10, Debs and other American Railway officers were
arrested for violating
a court order. They were held for several hours until posting
$10,000 bail.
DEBS SURE HE CAN WIN
Says the Battle is But Begun
More than 1,000 railroad men
held an enthusiastic meeting
yesterday afternoon, the speakers
were President Debs and Vice-
President Howard.
President Debs then told the men
the situation was more favorable
than it had been at any time since
the men went on strike. He said
that telegrams from twenty-five
points west of the Mississippi
showed that the roads were
completely tied up. Debs said, “I

cannot stop now . . . I propose to
work harder than ever and teach a
lesson to those bigoted idiots.
The managers refuse to work for
peace.”
“There are men who have
returned to their work, but they
are traitors. We are better without
them. We must unite as strong as
iron, but let us be peaceful in this
contest. Bloodshed is
unwarranted and will not win.”
Vocabulary
bigoted: prejudiced
unwarranted: not called for
WITH A DULL THUD
The Strike Collapses with
Wonderful Rapidity
DEB’S WILD ASSERTIONS
He is Still Defiant While His
“Union” Crumbles About Him
Eugene V. Debs’s statements were
like the last flicker of a candle that
is almost burned out. The men
who first answered his calls for
help deserted him. Those who

followed his banner of revolt and
lost their positions also
denounced him. The very fabric
of the American Railway Union
was falling upon his head and
support was rapidly slipping from
under his feet.
He said, “The Northwestern will
not be turning a wheel tonight.”
At midnight every wheel on the
Northwestern had turned. The
Northwestern people are inclined
to look at Mr. Deb’s declaration as
a huge joke.
Vocabulary
rapidity: speed
assertion: statement
denounce: speak against
Document A - Booker T. Washington
This is an excerpt from Washington’s book, The Future of the
American Negro, published in
1899.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26507/26507-h/26507-
h.htm
CHAPTER I.
After being brought to America, the Negroes were forced to
labour for about 250 years under circumstances which were
calculated not to inspire them with love and respect for labour.
This constitutes a part of the reason why I insist that it is
necessary to emphasise the matter of industrial education as a
means of giving the black man the foundation of a civilisation

upon which he will grow and prosper. When I speak of
industrial education, however, I wish it always understood that I
mean, as did General Armstrong, the founder of the Hampton
Institute, for thorough academic and religious training to go
side by side with industrial training. Mere training of the hand
without the culture of brain and heart would mean little.
It seems to me that there never was a time in the history of the
country when those interested in education should the more
earnestly consider to what extent the mere acquiring of the
ability to read and write, the mere acquisition of a knowledge of
literature and science, makes men producers, lovers of labour,
independent, honest, unselfish, and, above all, good. Call
education by what name you please, if it fails to bring about
these results among the masses, it falls short of its highest end.
The science, the art, the literature, that fails to reach down and
bring the humblest up to the enjoyment of the fullest blessings
of our government, is weak, no matter how costly the buildings
or apparatus used or how modern the methods of instruction
employed. The study of arithmetic that does not result in
making men conscientious in receiving and counting the ballots
of their fellow-men is faulty. The study of art that does not
result in making the strong less willing to oppress the weak
means little.
One of the weakest points in connection with the present
development of the race is that so many get the idea that the
mere filling of the head with a knowledge of mathematics, the
sciences, and literature, means success in life. Let it be
understood, in every corner of the South, among the Negro
youth at least, that knowledge will benefit little except as it is
harnessed, except as its power is pointed in a direction that will
bear upon the present needs and condition of the race.
There is in the heads of the Negro youth of the South enough
general and floating knowledge of chemistry, of botany, of
zoölogy, of geology, of mechanics, of electricity, of
mathematics, to reconstruct and develop a large part of the
agricultural, mechanical, and domestic life of the race. But how

much of it is brought to a focus along lines of practical work?
In cities of the South like Atlanta, how many coloured
mechanical engineers are there? or how many machinists? how
many civil engineers? how many architects? how many house
decorators? In the whole State of Georgia, where eighty per
cent. of the coloured people depend upon agriculture, how many
men are there who are well grounded in the principles and
practices of scientific farming? or dairy work? or fruit culture?
or floriculture?
For example, not very long ago I had a conversation with a
young coloured man who is a graduate of one of the prominent
universities of this country. The father of this man is
comparatively ignorant, but by hard work and the exercise of
common sense he has become the owner of two thousand acres
of land. He owns more than a score of horses, cows, and mules
and swine in large numbers, and is considered a prosperous
farmer. In college the son of this farmer has studied chemistry,
botany, zoölogy, surveying, and political economy. In my
conversation I asked this young man how many acres his father
cultivated in cotton and how many in corn. With a far-off gaze
up into the heavens he answered that he did not know. When I
asked him the classification of the soils on his father's farm, he
did not know. He did not know how many horses or cows his
father owned nor of what breeds they were, and seemed
surprised that he should be asked such questions. It never
seemed to have entered his mind that on his father's farm was
the place to make his chemistry, his mathematics, and his
literature penetrate and reflect itself in every acre of land, every
bushel of corn, every cow, and every pig.
Let me give other examples of this mistaken sort of education.
When a mere boy, I saw a young coloured man, who had spent
several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South,
studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness,
the want of system and thrift, that existed about the cabin,
notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic
studies.

Again, not long ago I saw a coloured minister preparing his
Sunday sermon just as the New England minister prepares his
sermon. But this coloured minister was in a broken-down, leaky,
rented log cabin, with weeds in the yard, surrounded by
evidences of poverty, filth, and want of thrift. This minister had
spent some time in school studying theology. How much better
it would have been to have had this minister taught the dignity
of labour, taught theoretical and practical farming in connection
with his theology, so that he could have added to his meagre
salary, and set an example for his people in the matter of living
in a decent house, and having a knowledge of correct farming!
In a word, this minister should have been taught that his
condition, and that of his people, was not that of a New England
community; and he should have been so trained as to meet the
actual needs and conditions of the coloured people in this
community, so that a foundation might be laid that would, in the
future, make a community like New England communities.
Since the Civil War, no one object has been more
misunderstood than that of the object and value of industrial
education for the Negro. To begin with, it must be borne in
mind that the condition that existed in the South immediately
after the war, and that now exists, is a peculiar one, without a
parallel in history. This being true, it seems to me that the wise
and honest thing to do is to make a study of the actual condition
and environment of the Negro, and do that which is best for
him, regardless of whether the same thing has been done for
another race in exactly the same way.
There are those among the white race and those among the black
race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no
difference between the white man and the black man in this
country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles the fancy; but,
when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it must be
acknowledged that there is a difference,—not an inherent one,
not a racial one, but a difference growing out of unequal
opportunities in the past.
If I may be permitted to criticise the educational work that has

been done in the South, I would say that the weak point has
been in the failure to recognise this difference.
Negro education, immediately after the war in most cases, was
begun too nearly at the point where New England education had
ended. Let me illustrate. One of the saddest sights I ever saw
was the placing of a three hundred dollar rosewood piano in a
country school in the South that was located in the midst of the
"Black Belt." Am I arguing against the teaching of instrumental
music to the Negroes in that community? Not at all; only I
should have deferred those music lessons about twenty-five
years. There are numbers of such pianos in thousands of New
England homes. But behind the piano in the New England home
there are one hundred years of toil, sacrifice, and economy;
there is the small manufacturing industry, started several years
ago by hand power, now grown into a great business; there is
ownership in land, a comfortable home, free from debt, and a
bank account.
In this "Black Belt" community where this piano went, four-
fifths of the people owned no land, many lived in rented one-
room cabins, many were in debt for food supplies, many
mortgaged their crops for the food on which to live, and not one
had a bank account. In this case, how much wiser it would have
been to have taught the girls in this community sewing,
intelligent and economical cooking, housekeeping, something of
dairying and horticulture?
The boys should have been taught something of farming in
connection with their common-school education, instead of
awakening in them a desire for a musical instrument which
resulted in their parents going into debt for a third-rate piano or
organ before a home was purchased. Industrial lessons would
have awakened, in this community, a desire for homes, and
would have given the people the ability to free themselves from
industrial slavery to the extent that most of them would have
soon purchased homes. After the home and the necessaries of
life were supplied could come the piano. One piano lesson in a
home of one's own is worth twenty in a rented log cabin.

All that I have just written, and the various examples
illustrating it, show the present helpless condition of my people
in the South,—how fearfully they lack the primary training for
good living and good citizenship, how much they stand in need
of a solid foundation on which to build their future success. I
believe, as I have many times said in my various addresses in
the North and in the South, that the main reason for the
existence of this curious state of affairs is the lack of practical
training in the ways of life.
GOOD STOPPING PLACE
Until there is industrial independence, it is hardly possible to
have good living and a pure ballot in the country districts. In
these States it is safe to say that not more than one black man in
twenty owns the land he cultivates. Where so large a proportion
of a people are dependent, live in other people's houses, eat
other people's food, and wear clothes they have not paid for, it
is pretty hard to expect them to live fairly and vote honestly.
Document B - W.E.B. DuBois
In this 1903 speech, “Training Negroes for Social Power,”
W.E.B. Du Bois describes his educational philosophy and in the
process, contrasts his views with those of the Tuskegee educator
Booker T. Washington who was then at the height of his power.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/w-e-b-du-
bois-training-negroes-social-power-1903/THE
RESPONSIBILITY for their own social regeneration ought to be
placed largely upon the shoulders of the Negro people. But such
responsibility must carry with it a grant of power; responsibility
without power is a mockery and a farce. If, therefore, the
American people are sincerely anxious that the Negro shall put
forth his best efforts to help himself, they must see to it that he
is not deprived of the freedom and power to strive.
Men openly declare their design to train these millions as a
subject caste, as men to be thought for, but not to think; to be
led, but not to lead themselves. Those who advocate these

things forget that such a solution flings them squarely on the
other horn of the dilemma; such a subject child-race could never
be held accountable for its own misdeeds and shortcomings; its
ignorance would be part of the nation’s design, its poverty
would arise partly from the direct oppression of the strong and
partly from thriftlessness which such oppression breeds; and,
above all, its crime would be the legitimate child of that lack of
self-respect which caste systems engender.
Such a solution of the Negro problem is not one which the saner
sense of the nation for a moment contemplates; it is utterly
foreign to American institutions, and is unthinkable as a future
for any self-respecting race of men. The sound afterthought of
the American people must come to realize that the responsibility
for dispelling ignorance and poverty and uprooting crime among
Negroes cannot be put upon their own shoulders unless they are
given such independent leadership in intelligence, skill, and
morality.
Let me illustrate my meaning particularly in the matter of
educating Negro youth. The Negro problem, it has often been
said, is largely a problem of ignorance-not simply of illiteracy,
but a deeper ignorance of the world and its ways, of the thought
and experience of men; an ignorance of self and the possibilities
of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by training; and
primarily such training must take the form of that sort of social
leadership which we call education.
To apply such leadership to themselves, and to profit by it,
means that Negroes would have among themselves men of
careful training and broad culture, as teachers and teachers of
teachers. Such educational leaders should be prepared by long
and rigorous courses of study similar to those which the world
over have been designed to strengthen the intellectual powers,
fortify character, and facilitate the transmission from age to age
of the stores of the world’s knowledge.
Not all men-indeed, not the majority of men, only the
exceptional few among American Negroes or among any other

people-are adapted to this higher training, as, indeed, only the
exceptional few are adapted to higher training in any line.
The very first step toward the settlement of the Negro problem
is the spread of intelligence. The first step toward wider
intelligence is a free public-school system; and the first and
most important step toward a public-school system is the
equipment and adequate support of a sufficient number of Negro
colleges. They can teach valuable lessons as to the meaning of
work in the world, but they cannot replace technical schools and
apprenticeship in actual life, which are the real schools of work.
Manual training can and ought to be used in these schools, but
as a means and not as an end, to quicken intelligence and self-
knowledge and not to teach carpentry; just as arithmetic is used
to train minds and not to make skilled accountants.
But spread of intelligence alone will not solve the Negro
problem. If this problem is largely a question of ignorance, it is
also scarcely less a problem of poverty. If Negroes are to
assume the responsibility of raising the standards of living
among themselves, the power of intelligent work and leadership
toward proper industrial ideals must be placed in their hands.
Economic efficiency depends on intelligence, skill, and thrift.
The public-school system is designed to furnish the necessary
intelligence for the ordinary worker, the secondary school for
the more gifted worker, and the college for the exceptional few.
Technical knowledge and manual dexterity in learning branches
of the world’s work are taught by industrial and trade schools,
and such schools are of prime importance in the training of
colored children. A system of trade schools, therefore,
supported by state and private aid, should be added to the
secondary-school system.
But intelligence and skill alone will not solve the southern
problem of poverty. With these must go that combination of
homely habits and virtues which we may loosely call thrift.
Something of thrift may be taught in school, more must be
taught at home; but both these agencies are helpless when
organized economic society denies to workers the just reward of

thrift and efficiency. And this has been true of black laborers in
the South from the time of slavery down through the scandal of
the Freedman’s Bank to the peonage and crop-lien system of
today.
Ignorance and poverty are the vastest of the Negro problems.
But to these later years have added a third-the problem of Negro
crime. That a great problem of social morality must have
become eventually the central problem of emancipation is as
clear as day to any student of history. In its grosser form as a
problem of serious crime it is already upon us. Of course it is
false and silly to represent that white women in the South are in
daily danger of black assaulters. On the contrary, white
womanhood in the South is absolutely safe in the hands of
ninety-five percent of the black men-ten times safer than black
womanhood is in the hands of white men.
Nevertheless, there is a large and dangerous class of Negro
criminals, paupers, and outcasts. The existence and growth of
such a class, far from causing surprise, should be recognized as
the natural result of that social disease called the Negro
problem; nearly every untoward circumstance known to human
experience has united to increase Negro crime: the slavery of
the past, the sudden emancipation, the narrowing of economic
opportunity, the lawless environment of wide regions, the
stifling of natural ambition, the curtailment of political
privilege, the disregard of the sanctity of black men’s homes,
and above all, a system of treatment for criminals calculated to
breed crime far faster than all other available agencies could
repress it. Such a combination of circumstances is as sure to
increase the numbers of the vicious and outcast as the rain is to
wet the earth. The phenomenon calls for no delicately drawn
theories of race differences; it is a plain case of cause and
effect.
Three things American slavery gave the Negro-the habit of
work, the English language, and the Christian religion; but one
priceless thing it debauched, destroyed, and took from him, and
that was the organized home. For the sake of intelligence and

thrift, for the sake of work and morality, this home life must be
restored and regenerated with newer ideals.
How? The restoration and raising of home ideals must come
from social life among Negroes themselves; and does that social
life need no leadership? It needs the best possible leadership of
pure hearts and trained heads, the highest leadership of
carefully trained men.
Such are the arguments for the Negro college, and such is the
work that Atlanta University and a few similar institutions seek
to do. We believe that a rationally arranged college course of
study for men and women able to pursue it is the best and only
method of putting into the world Negroes with ability to use the
social forces of their race so as to stamp out crime, strengthen
the home, eliminate degenerates, and inspire and encourage the
higher tendencies of the race not only in thought and aspiration,
but in everyday toil.
And we believe this, not simply because we have argued that
such training ought to have these effects, or merely because we
hoped for such results in some dim future, but because already
for years we have seen in the work of our graduates precisely
such results as I have mentioned: successful teachers of
teachers, intelligent and upright ministers, skilled physicians,
principals of industrial schools, businessmen, and, above all,
makers of model homes and leaders of social groups, out from
which radiate subtle but tangible forces of uplift and
inspiration.
The proof of this lies scattered in every state of the South, and,
above all, in the half-unwilling testimony of men disposed to
decry our work. Between the Negro college and industrial
school there are the strongest grounds for cooperation and
unity.
We need a few strong, well-equipped Negro colleges, and we
need them now, not tomorrow; unless we can have them and
have them decently supported, Negro education in the South,
both common-school and the industrial, is doomed to failure,
and the forces of social regeneration will be fatally weakened,

for the college today among Negroes is, just as truly as it was
yesterday among whites, the beginning and not the end of
human training, the foundation and not the capstone of popular
education.
Strange, is it not, my brothers, how often in America those great
watchwords of human energy-"Be strong!" "Know thyself!"
"Hitch your wagon to a star!"-how often these die away into
dim whispers when we face these seething millions of black
men? And yet do they not belong to them? Are they not their
heritage as well as yours? Can they bear burdens without
strength, know without learning, and aspire without ideals? Are
you afraid to let them try? Fear rather, in this our common
fatherland, lest we live to lose those great watchwords of liberty
and opportunity which yonder In the eternal hills their fathers
fought with your fathers to preserve.
California's Anti-Coolie Act of 1862
AN ACT TO PROTECT FREE WHITE LABOR AGAINST
COMPETITION WITH CHINESE COOLIE LABOR, AND TO
DISCOURAGE THE IMMIGRATION OF THE CHINESE INTO
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
April 26, 1862
The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows:
SECTION 1. There is hereby levied on each person, male and
female, of the Mongolian race, of the age of eighteen years and
upwards, residing in this State, a monthly capitation tax of two
dollars and fifty cents, which tax shall be known as the Chinese
Police Tax; provided, That all Mongolians exclusively engaged
in the production and manufacture of the following articles shall
be exempt from the provisions of this Act, viz: sugar, rice,

coffee, tea. . . .
SECTION 4. The Collector shall collect the Chinese police tax,
provided for in this Act, from all person refusing to pay such
tax, and sell the same at public auction, by giving notice by
proclamation one hour previous to such sale; and shall deliver
the property, together with a bill of sale thereof, to the person
agreeing to pay, and paying, the highest thereof, which delivery
and bill of sale shall transfer to such person a good and
sufficient title to the property.
SECTION 7. Any person or company who shall hire persons
liable to pay the Chinese police tax shall be held responsible for
the payment of the tax due from each person so hired; and no
employer shall be released from this liability on the ground that
the employee in indebted to him (the employer), and the
Collector may proceed against any such employer in the same
manner as he might against the original party owing the taxes.
SECTION 8. The Collector shall receive for his service, in
collecting police taxes, twenty percent of all moneys which he
shall collect from persons owing such taxes. All of the residue,
after deducting the percentage of the Collector, forty percent
shall be paid into the County Treasury, for the use of the State,
forty percent into the general County Fund, for the use of the
County, and the remaining twenty percent into the School Fund,
for the benefit of schools within the County;
Chinese Laundrymen
In this excerpt from his book Strangers from a Different Shore,
Ronald Takaki describes the circumstances that led a large
number of Chinese men to open and operate laundry businesses
in California in the mid-to-late 19th century.
The racially divided farm-labor force generated ethnic
antagonism, and Chinese became targets of white-labor

resentment, especially during hard times. “White men and
women who desire to earn a living,” the Los Angeles Times
reported on August 14th, 1893, “have for some time been
entering quiet protests against vineyardists and packers
employing Chinese in preference to whites.” Their protests did
not remain quiet as economic depression led to violent anti-
Chinese riots by unemployed white workers throughout
California. From Ukiah to the Napa Valley to Fresno to
Redlands, Chinese were beaten and shot by white workers; they
were herded to railroad stations and loaded onto trains. The
Chinese bitterly remember this violence and expulsion as the
“driving out.”
“Ethnic antagonism” in the mines, factories, and fields
reinforced the movement of Chinese into self-employment –
stores, restaurants, and especially laundries. Chinese wash-
houses were a common sight as early as the 1850s. A journalist
visiting California in 1853 commented on the hardworking
Chinese laundrymen: “What a truly industrious people they are!
At work, cheerfully and briskly, at ten o’clock at night.” By
1870, there were 2,899 Chinese laundry workers in California,
72 percent of all laborers in this occupation. Twenty years later
their number had more than doubled to 6,400, or 69 percent of
all laundry workers. During this period, the ratio of laundry
workers to all workers in the Chinese population jumped from
one out of every seventeen to one out of every twelve. Nearly
half of Sacramento’s 103 Chinese establishments listed in the
Directory of Chinese Business Houses in 1878 were laundries.
The “Chinese laundryman” was an American phenomenon. “The
Chinese laundryman does not learn his trade in China; there are
no laundries in China,” stated Lee Chew, who came to America
in the early 1860s. “The women there do the washing in tubs
and have no washboards or flat irons. All the Chinese
laundrymen here [in America] were taught in the first place by
American women just as I was taught.” In China, wrote Wong

Chin Foo of New York in The Cosmopolitan in 1888, laundry
work was a “woman’s occupation,” and men did not “step into it
for fear of losing their social standing.”
But why in America did Chinese men enter this line of work?
Unlike the retail or restaurant business, a laundry could be
opened with a small capital outlay of seventy-five to two
hundred dollars. The requirements were minimal: a stove,
trough, dry-room, sleeping apartment, and sign. A Chinese
laundryman also did not need to speak much English to operate
his business. “In this sort of menial labor,” said one, “I can get
along speaking only ‘yes’ and ‘no.’” And he could manage
without knowing numbers. “Being illiterate, he could not write
the numbers,” another laundryman said describing a fellow
operator. “He had a way and what a way! See, he would draw a
circle as big as a half dollar coin to represent a half dollar, and
a circle as big as a dime for a dime, and so on. When the
customers came in to call for their laundry, they would catch on
to the meaning of the circles and pay accordingly.”
But “Chinese laundrymen” were also “pushed” into their
occupation: laundry work was one of the few opportunities that
were “open” to Chinese. “Men of other nationalities who are
jealous of the Chinese have raised such a great outcry about
Chinese cheap labor that they have shut him out of working on
farms or in factories or building railroads or making streets or
digging sewers,” explained Lee Chew. “So he opens a laundry.”
Thus the “Chinese laundry” represented a retreat into self-
employment from a narrowly restricted labor market. “You
couldn’t work in the cigar factories or the jute or woolen mills
any more – all the Chinese had been driven out,” old Chinese
men later remembered sadly. “About all they could be was
laundrymen or vegetable peddlers then.” Crowded into laundry
work, one out of four employed Chinese males in the United
States in 1900 was a laundryman.

Assessment 5: Expanding Rights (60 points)
Essential Question: How did people on the margins of society
fight for change during the early 20th century?
Assignment: It is the year 2300. The United Global Government
(UGG) now runs planet Earth. Though it pretends to be a
democracy, in truth it’s run by a small group of incredibly
wealthy and powerful people who keep the rest of the world in a
state of poverty and oppression. You are a freedom fighter with
the People’s Front (PF), a revolutionary group dedicated to
equality and freedom. After years of setbacks, it’s now time for
the People’s Front to rethink their strategy for achieving their
goals. You will write a four paragraph speech (intro, two body,
conclusion) explaining how people in the past worked to
overcome similar struggles.
Evidence may include documents from these lessons:
· 0 - Pullman Strike
· 2 - Jim Crow resistance (Washington, Wells, Du Bois, Garvey)
· 4 - Women’s Suffrage
· *Lessons 1 and 3 will be helpful for contextualizing your
evidence, but not for answering the essential question*
Grading:
Criteria
Total Points
Introductory paragraph makes a specific claim/thesis that
directly answers the essential question and is clearly explained
10
Topic sentences of body paragraphs expand on the claim/thesis
by giving supporting reasons
10
Provides relevant evidence from the unit, including context, that
relates to the body paragraph’s topic sentence
10
Explains WHAT the evidence means and HOW it connects back

to the claim/thesis
10
Concluding paragraph restates claim/thesis and summarizes
arguments from body paragraphs
10
Strong organization; contains minimal spelling/grammar errors
10
Essay Outline - Assessment 5
How did people on the margins of society fight for change
during the early 20th century?
Claim:
Reason 1: Evidence & Explanation
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

Counter-Argument (what does the other side claim?):
_____________________________________________________
_____________
_____________________________________________________
_____________
Weakness (why does the other side have a weak claim?):
_____________________________________________________
_____________
_____________________________________________________
_____________

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