LIFE ON THE RAILROAD
Work on the railroad was a very hard labored job. The first hired employes got paid only $28 a month which would be worth about $560 today. This was a really low pay, but it gave about 3,000 men jobs.
"They built the Great Wall of China, didn't they?"
- Charles Crocker's famous justification for bringing Chinese workers to the Central Pacific, 1865
The Chinese immigrants were a huge part in finishing the railroad so fast. Most of them had already had experience in building railroads and were quite fast.
"They built the Great Wall of China, didn't they?"
- Charles Crocker's famous justification for bringing Chinese workers to the Central Pacific, 1865
The Chinese immigrants were a huge part in finishing the railroad so fast. Most of them had already had experience in building railroads and were quite fast.
The average weight of the rails on a railroad are fifteen pounds per foot. The Transcontinental Railroad is 1,080 miles long for a total use of 85,536 tons of steel. All the steel used for the railroad came from American steel companies creating more jobs for the unemployed while at the same time boosting the economy.