DBWI: No Yellow Pearl

For those members of the board not familiar with it, "the Yellow Pearl" was a the movement in the late 1800s/early 1900s that saw an uncharacteristic popularity of Asians in the US. It loosely translated into lax immigration laws for people from Asia whether as immigrants or (intending to be) temporary workers, as well as an affinity for Asian culture and goods. While not universally loved (unions on the west coast and in the central US hated the cheap immigrant labor), the presses were overall favorable to the process in a self-reinforcing cycle that roughly climaxed after the First World War.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to prevent/corrupt the Yellow Pearl from ever happening, and to explore some effects.
 
What about a war between America and China during the period? No Yellow Pearl in that scenario, it may have caused a very unfavourable view of Chinese maybe up until the 1920's.

Or alternatively, the CSA win the civil war and make their racism universal, far worse than it was.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to prevent/corrupt the Yellow Pearl from ever happening, and to explore some effects.
That's a difficult challenge. Asians were pretty much the ideal immigrants from an American perspective: law-abiding, self-disciplined, hard-working and willing to take up any job no matter how undignified or dangerous. Their upward economic mobility whenever given half a chance was testament to the reality of the American Dream. Also, they were seen as thoroughly unthreatening due to their small stature and general discretion, and the fascination most white men felt for their womenfolk didn't hurt either.

One way to get there, though I'm not sure even that would work, could be to have one key advocate of the Yellow Pearl movement, James Strobridge, die early, say in an accident during construction of the Transcontinental Railway. Strobridge had started out openly prejudiced against the Chinese, but after working as a construction superintendant for the Central Pacific, he became convinced that a large Chinese workforce was a boon to the US, and used his fame after the well-publicized completion of the project to lobby in their favor.

This being said, I think that even without men like Strobridge, the American public at large could only be favorably disposed towards people like the Chinese. Only the basest racism and most callous prejudice could get in the way, and those were never American traits save possibly in the Deep South.

The Railroad Act of 1864 was signed on July 2, by Lincoln. This act authorized the railroad companies to sell their own bonds. It limited the Central Pacific to building no more than 150 miles past the Nevada border. Crocker supervised the work in the field for the Central Pacific. The construction superintendent was James H. Strobridge. Their chief engineer was Samuel S. Montague. The Union Pacific construction superintendent was Samuel B. Reed. Their chief engineer was Grenville M. Dodge. John S. and Dan T. Casement held the tracklaying and grading contract.

More financial difficulties followed. The government bonds only paid half the bill. No one private would invest because it would take too long for the investment to pay off. Both railroads engaged in some creative financing to cover their costs.

The Central Pacific reached Newcastle on June 4, 1864. But from that point on, it was a long haul up the Sierra. Deep fills, switchback routes, high trestles, huge rock cuts, and 15 tunnels were necessary to make it over the Sierras. They also had to build 37 miles of wooden snow sheds to keep the train going through. The Central Pacific had to ship their supplies and tools around Cape Horn. Each mile of track required 100 tons of rail, about 2,500 ties, and two or three tons of spikes and fish plates (metal pieces that joined the rails and prevented climatic expansion and contraction of the metal). Other tools needed were wheelbarrows, horse drawn scrapers, two-wheel dump carts, shovels, axes, crowbars, blasting powder, quarry tools, and iron rods. Then there were the locomotives, wheel trucks, switch mechanisms, foundry tools needed. The Union Pacific had a little easier because supplies could be sailed up the Missouri or brought in by wagon. When the Chicago & Western railroad to Council Bluffs was completed in November 1867, supplies arrived from that direction. However, it was difficult for the Union Pacific to get railroad ties, since there were few natural trees like there were in the Sierras. They had to import them until the line reached the Black Hills of Wyoming and the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.

In January 1865, Chinese were hired to work on the Central Pacific to replace some strikers. Hiring Chinese crews became even more necessary because white workers kept abandoning the line when news of each new mining boom reached them. At first, construction superintendent J. H. Strobridge resisted hiring them, insisting they were "too puny" for heavy railroad work. Crocker insisted, and the first gang of fifty was hired. The white crews didn't like it and Chinese crews were immediately segregated.

But they pulled their load. Though they moved smaller amounts of material at a time, they did not take time out for gossip breaks or to smoke. Plus they were experts in the use of gunpowder since it was a Chinese invention. They drank a cup of tea two or three times a day, then went right back to work. At the end of the day, their portion of track was longer and straighter than the white crews. They also worked for less money: They also provided their own cooks and kitchens as long as the railroad would provide the food. When Strobridge saw the results, he hired more of them.
 
I like those thoughts, Hendryk.

In conjunction, how about a healthier labor movement that isn't as tainted by Socialist-radicals as there was OTL? It a pretty uniform fact that while the US will take the gifts of social justice and what not, they absolutely reject the label of Socialism. If early labor unions aren't associated with Socialism as strongly as they were OTL, surely they'd have more influence in opposing cheap labor?
 
The Yellow Pearl was a complete disaster for the former slaves and their children. Immigrating the Asians into the South, destroyed all the opportunities for the blacks. The simple fact that miscenegation laws were ignored with regards to Whites and Asians, cemented the cultural bond in the South, making it even harder for blacks to eke out a living.

I think that a gentler Reconstruction, perhaps Lincoln isn't assassinated, would delay the Yellow Pearl by at least a couple of decades.
 
Well, obviously Washington and Oregon wouldn't even be close to being the majority-minority states that they are today...and California, Arizona [ooc: TTL's combined Arizona & New Mexico], Idaho, Alaska, and Nevada would probably look pretty different without their substantial Asian-American populations...to say nothing of states like Samoa or Hawai'i.

I'd say without the Yellow Pearl movement, the USA would be a much poorer place, economically and culturally.

Not to mention any butterflies from not having the Pearl Movement would probably mean that we wouldn't have our current "Special Relationship" with the Republic of China to this day.
 
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The Yellow Pearl was a complete disaster for the former slaves and their children. Immigrating the Asians into the South, destroyed all the opportunities for the blacks. The simple fact that miscenegation laws were ignored with regards to Whites and Asians, cemented the cultural bond in the South, making it even harder for blacks to eke out a living.

I think that a gentler Reconstruction, perhaps Lincoln isn't assassinated, would delay the Yellow Pearl by at least a couple of decades.

Well something like half of Albion black population are descendant of black looking for new home North of the border

((OOC: I assume Albion refer to an Alt Canada))
 
People seem to forget that there was lots of racism even at the time of the movement. If Stobridge was killed, it would just make it that much easier for popular prejudices against those "damn chinks" to mor realdily manifest themselves.
 
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