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Abstract: In 1870, Massachusetts shoe factory owner Calvin Sampson did something unprecedented in the history of American labor: he hired seventy-five Chinese immigrants in San Francisco and brought them to North Adams to work as strikebreakers during a period when race and labor relations were highly-charged topics of debate. The "experiment," as it came to be known, was followed closely by the nation's press. Dr. Cronin examines newspapers in Massachusetts and New York during a three-month period following the Chinese men's arrival and reveals that publishers' political and personal beliefs about race and class, as well as their views of laborers and capitalists, influenced their coverage of the Chinese. Newspapers across the nation frequently reprinted the stories from the journals studied, thus giving these publications a central role in what became a national debate concerning the worthiness of Chinese immigrants. This debate culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
When readers of Harper's Weekly magazine opened the August 6, 1870 issue, they were greeted by a Thomas Nast cartoon titled "The New Comet." In it, a diverse group of citizens, including journalists, industrialists, members of the middle class, and laborers, were watching, some in fascination, some in anger, and some in despair, as a new phenomenon streaked into view-the arrival of low-paid Chinese laborers to a Northeastern factory.
The editorial cartoon was based on an event that had occurred two months prior: shoe manufacturer Calvin Sampson had hired seventyfive Chinese immigrants at a low rate of pay to work in his North Adams factory. The young men arrived from San Francisco via the newly-completed transcontinental railroad and took up their work within forty-eight hours.1 The industrialist hired the Chinese after he failed to entice Europeans, Canadians, and native-born Americans to replace his striking shoemakers who were members of the Knights of St. Crispin shoemakers' union. Those employees had walked out in response to Sampson's demand that they accept a ten percent reduction in pay during the slow season of shoe production.2
Despite the metaphoric portrayal of the Chinese laborers as a comet and the placement of telescopes to view the workers' arrival, Nast's illustration was strikingly similar to the actual events of June 13, 1870. The young immigrants who stepped off the train...