Posted by Coppers Dad on December 4, 2025, 7:38 am
**1870s. The Burlingame Disaster
When Washington Opened the Door and the West Coast Exploded**
By the 1870s America was still licking its wounds from the Civil War. The country was rebuilding railroads, mines, farms and cities. Labor was scarce. Wages were rising. And industry wanted a cheap replacement fast.
Washington delivered it.
In 1868, the United States signed the Burlingame Treaty with China. On paper it was a friendly agreement meant to promote trade and goodwill. In reality it opened the immigration spigot wide.
Chinese laborers began arriving on the West Coast by the tens of thousands. Railroad companies cheered. Mine owners rejoiced. Shipping companies filled every berth.
Working class Americans did not.
American miners watched wages plummet. Railroad crews found themselves replaced overnight. Small towns erupted in paranoia, fear and anger. And in Chinatown districts across California, exploitation flourished.
Employers discovered that imported labor came with extreme leverage. Chinese workers had almost no legal protections. They could be underpaid, overworked, evicted, isolated or threatened without consequence. They were locked into company towns, debt traps and labor camps where contracts were written in languages they could not read.
Americans saw two injustices happening at once.
First, they watched a cheaper labor force crush the wage floor. Second, they watched that same labor force treated in ways no American would have tolerated, creating a system where abuse became a competitive advantage.
Violence followed.
On the West Coast the 1870s became a decade of riots, expulsions and bloody confrontations. Chinatown districts burned. Immigrant workers were driven out of towns at gunpoint. Political clubs formed with immigration as their core issue. Newspapers printed warnings that the republic itself was being reshaped.
Labor leaders were blunt. The economy could not absorb two wage systems: one free and one coerced.
Politicians were just as blunt. The country had never seen a migration spike so sudden, concentrated and culturally different.
The Founders had warned that foreign influence could disrupt a republic. But by the 1870s Americans discovered something more practical. Foreign labor could disrupt an entire economy.
The Burlingame Treaty became a national disaster. By 1879 Congress tried to pass restrictions. The president vetoed them. The West Coast erupted again.
The pressure built for more than a decade.
And in the next chapter, America reaches the breaking point.
Tomorrow we enter 1882, the year of the Chinese Exclusion Act, when the federal government finally slammed the door shut after fifteen years of chaos.
To just today, Dems claim “We are introducing legislation to give illegals taxpayer funded lawyers to represent them.” True story.
