. Our country: West. rings from theold country a custom of personal cleanliness which whitenavvies can never be brought to emulate. Each coolie has hislittle wooden foot-tub, and his first move at the end of hisdays work is to get it full of the hot water which it is thecooks duty to have ready, and then to take a complete bath. Then follows supper, all sitting about on the ground andchattering like schoolgirls to the rattle of chop-sticks and thebanging of tin cups. After supper appear the queer littlepipes for tobacco ; or perhaps a surreptitious whiff ofmuch-adulterated opium will be indulg
. Our country: West. rings from theold country a custom of personal cleanliness which whitenavvies can never be brought to emulate. Each coolie has hislittle wooden foot-tub, and his first move at the end of hisdays work is to get it full of the hot water which it is thecooks duty to have ready, and then to take a complete bath. Then follows supper, all sitting about on the ground andchattering like schoolgirls to the rattle of chop-sticks and thebanging of tin cups. After supper appear the queer littlepipes for tobacco ; or perhaps a surreptitious whiff ofmuch-adulterated opium will be indulged in. Many may CHINESE RAILWAY LABORERS. 93 then be seen reading or ciphering or playing native gameswith their queer little cards. The Northern Pacific in Idaho and Montana had some sixthousand of these Orientals in service during all of 1882,besides many hundreds of white people and a few Pacific coast roads employed similar numbers, the totalreaching about thirty thousand ; and it became a matter of. New Work. anxiety to the leading Chinese in San Francisco and Portlandas to how this influx should be provided for when the railwayswere completed. Certain kinds of work considered not fit for a white man,chiefly because they required patience, were relegated wholly g4 CHINKSE RAII^WAY LABORERS. to the meek foreigners; but in general their work wasshovelling and rock excavation, always under white bosses,toward whom they sometimes exhibited great animosity,often with good reason. White bosses were necessary on account of the dishonestyof the Chinese in reporting hours of labor ; but they wouldbribe so unblushingly and successfully that a special set ofindependent watchmen, called time-takers, was necessary. In many cases the foremen were inexperienced, so thatthe older coolies knew better than they how things shouldbe done, particularly in regard to blasting. Hence gangsfrequently struck, under conviction that their foremansdirections were wrong and dangerous. Thr
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