der exploded yards away from them. To speed up construction, the Central Pacific managers forced the Chinese laborers to work through the winter of 1866. Chinese workers were forced to camp in thin canvas tents. Snowdrifts more than 60 feet high covered the construction operations. The Chinese workers lived and worker in tunnels under the snow, with shafts to give them air and lanterns to light the way. Many workers were swept away by avalanches and werent uncovered until the snow melted in the Spring, where they were found still upright, grasping pick and shovel. That spring, the Chinese went on strike. Their demands were for a raise up to $40 and workdays in the open to be limited to ten hours and that in the tunnels reduced to eight. As one spokesman put it "Eight hours a day good for white men, all the same good for Chinamen." They also objected to the right of the overseers of the company to either whip them or restrain them from leaving the road when they desired other employment." A San Francisco newspaper speculated that the strike had been drummed up by agents of the rival Union Pacific Company. The newspaper writer could not believe that the Chinese had minds and wills of their own, or that they were able to organize and take action to protect them selves without encouragement. Meanwhile, the Central Pacific managers moved to break the strike. They sent telegrams to New York, asking if they could get 10,000 blacks to replace the striking Chinese. At the construction camps in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Superintendent Crocker isolated the strikers and cut off their good supply. I stopped the provisions on them, he stated, stopped the butchers from butchering, and used such coercive measures. Coercion worked. Imprisoned in their camps in the Sierra Nevada and forced into starvation, the strikers surrendered within a week. In mid-1868, the Central Pacific finally broke through the Sierra barrier. The true cost in hum...
