One of the tragedies of Chinese exclusion is that the anger toward the immigrants was likely misplaced. Chinese workers were not usually in direct competition with white workers. In an economic study published in 1963, the historian Ping Chiu found that in California the two groups were mostly stratified into different labor pools, with the Chinese concentrated in lower-wage jobs in agriculture and industries such as textile and cigar manufacturing. It was competition from more technologically advanced and efficient factories in the East, along with the broader shift to mass production, that were the biggest factors in the economic travails buffeting white workers in California.
Other scholarship has similarly suggested that excluding Chinese labor failed to lift the fortunes of white workers. This past fall, a group of economists released a working paper on the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on Western states. They found that it took a significant toll on the economies of Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming—the states with the largest Chinese populations––until at least 1940. The economists also found “no evidence that the average white worker benefitted from the departure of the Chinese” and concluded that the positive effects of Chinese immigrants in the workforce, including the economies of scale achieved by their presence, outweighed any employment opportunities that emerged from their absence. The findings are hardly surprising. A recent study from the Brookings Institution asserts that a surge in immigration helps to explain the strength of the U.S. economy since 2022, benefitting employers who need workers and contributing to consumer spending.
In the nineteenth century, the Chinese had few public defenders. John C. Weatherred, a bank executive in Tacoma, Washington, wrote in his diary on October 1, 1885, a month before the Chinese were driven out of his town, that there were a “great many fools on the anti-Chinese subject” and that he felt like “taking up for the underdog in the fight.” He praised “the Chinaman” for his “industry, economy & sobriety.” But Weatherred and other sympathizers mostly kept their feelings to themselves. As an emboldened Trump Administration prepares for a new crackdown on immigrants, history offers lessons on the cost of silence.