The note also reads: "Many of the trading houses are surrounded by piles of golden sand, and these trading houses receive a large amount of rent from the golden sands that arrive here, which amounts to 400,000 to 500,000 US dollars." In just a few years after 1851, the minting of gold coins in the United States alone increased twenty-fold.

In 1853, the gold rush reached its peak. California's gold production increased dramatically, and from 1851 to 1855, the United States accounted for almost 45 percent of the world's gold production. The United States quickly became the world's largest gold producer, and the washed gold sand from all over the country filled the warehouses in San Francisco.

However, the good times were short-lived, and from 1854 onwards, the gold rush in California began to cool down. The entire gold mining industry had no choice but to begin to develop in depth and breadth, and the scope of gold mining spread throughout the western region.

In Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and other places, large and small gold mining areas were discovered and established, and a new gold mining boom was revived around 1859 and continued until the end of the 70s.

However, the great development of gold mining in the second half of the 19th century was not a repeat of the vigorous gold mining of the previous period. Rather, it has deepened in depth and expanded in breadth, i.e., the further capitalization of the gold mining industry.

This period is a nightmare! ”

Seeing this, I seemed to understand what happened to the owner of the note: "In the previous period, the gold mining was mainly a mass shallow gold mining, and miners and their partners or family members could use simple machinery, or even manual labor, to carry out mining; However, the transfer of gold mining to deep development requires more equipment and more complex technology, which is beyond the power of individual miners or groups.

As a result, merchants, industrialists, and bankers formed mining companies and gradually took control of the mining areas in the west, including gold mining.

The Sierra and Tucson mining areas in Arizona. It was invested and controlled by a company called the Arizona Mining and Trading Company, which was made up of San Francisco businessmen. We poor ordinary people have no joy at all! ”

Seeing this, I don't understand why my aunt attaches so much importance to this book that remembers that there is no American gold rush? She came here with all the hard work, and she almost put her life on the line, is it just for a book that remembers the past of the United States? It's a little incredible!

But. The next content suddenly brightened my eyes. Obviously, this text is not written by the same person. I even found some newspaper clippings and stickers, as if someone had carefully prepared them for the purpose of collecting some kind of evidence.

I had a vague sense of something, so I read it carefully:

Since 1820, Chinese immigrants have been entering the country. Then. That is, before 1850, there were very few Chinese living in the United States.

However, the surging gold rush soon affected coastal areas such as Guangdong and Fujian. Among them, Siyi in Guangdong is the most typical.

The rumors about the "Golden Mountain" may be the most important motivation to inspire the golden dream. In contrast to Melbourne, Australia, which is known as the "new gold mountain", poor Chinese farmers call San Francisco "San Francisco".

This made me suddenly understand the origin of the name "San Francisco", which is still used today. So much so that this has become the customary name of San Francisco in Chinese.

In search of livelihoods, many Chinese use middlemen to make arrangements. The contract was signed in the form of "in the name of gold panning, but in fact it was sold out". They came to the United States in the form of a "credit system", which is what the Chinese call "selling piglets."

The prospectors were transported directly from the Pearl River Delta to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, where they were secretly handed over to the local townspeople association, and then went to the gold fields deep in the mountains.

They have lived in the barren mountains and wilderness for a long time, sleeping in the open air. Whether it was mining in the early days, or later building roads or working on farms. It's all busy all day long, and tired all year round. Day after day, year after year, I toiled and lived a very simple life.

Even if he has a little leisure, he is discriminated against because of his language barrier and poor status, and can only be separated from the Chinese around him. In time. In some American cities, a relatively concentrated area of Chinese has been formed - Chinatown.

From 1849 to 1882, 300,000 Chinese entered the United States. Most of them are concentrated in the west, which is the largest wave of migration in China's history. In the early days, the vast majority of them came to mine gold. Later, there was a gradual shift, and they were mainly engaged in road construction.

Beginning in 1850, the first Chinese arrived in California as cheap labor. They then built homes and homes for the gold prospectors here, which were praised by the Americans. Some friendly Americans said: "Without the help of the Chinese, it would be difficult for these gold diggers to live in California." ”

In western goldfields such as California, Chinese laborers are called "the only source of labor they can rely on"!

Another passage in the note states that among the laborers in the mines, farms, factories, and California, the hiring of Chinese is ideal. Most of the work done by the Chinese would not be sustainable if it were done by demanding white workers.

Most of the Chinese only live in the United States temporarily, work for a period of time and then return to China. The new Chinese have replaced them, so that the labor force is constantly renewed, and it is always basically young and middle-aged men.

Newspapers tentatively estimated that the Chinese were first working in the mines of California, and by 1862 there were about 20,000 Chinese miners in California. At a monthly rate of four dollars per person in the extraction tax, they pay nearly $1 million a year to the California government. If each Chinese person spends 30 cents a day on water, it will be $2.19 million a year!

Until 1880, one-fifth of the Chinese in California were still working in the mines. Between 1848 and 1883, $1.2 billion worth of gold was mined in California, equivalent to two-thirds of the total gold production in the United States during the same period. Among them, a considerable number of them are mined by the Chinese!

The gold rush drove economic development in places like California, and the Chinese also played an important role in these economic sectors. In the manufacturing industry in the western region, the Chinese are the main labor force. Fifty percent of the workers in the California factory are Chinese.

One pastor at the time said, "Without Chinese labor, California's manufacturing industry wouldn't be able to survive for a single day." ”

At the same time, the Chinese are also the main source of agricultural labor in the western region. In Sacramento, the birthplace of the Gold Rush, Chinese agricultural workers make up 86 percent of the agricultural workforce.

In 1893, the American newspaper Pacific Country commented: "The Chinese agricultural workers are professional pickers and packers. Without the Chinese, it would be difficult for us to see our annual fruit harvested and shipped to the market. ”

Most magnificently, in the construction of the railroad stimulated by the gold rush, the Chinese workers who gradually transferred from the gold mines made important contributions to the construction of the trans-American railroad.

At that time, a railroad engineer in the United States at the time published an article saying: "I want to remind you not to forget the work done by the Chinese workers to develop the western part of the country. The Chinese in California contributed at least as much to the economic development of our early California economy as any other people. ”

However, Americans, who were already deeply racist at that time, did not face up to the contributions of the Chinese and respect the Chinese personality.

The Chinese who think that they work hard and do not have high requirements for remuneration have formed a very big competition against them. It even poses a threat to their employment, thus causing a decline in their standard of living.

As a result, during that period, the rejection, attack, and insult of the Chinese by Americans occurred one after another. Later, an influential trend of thought and forces was formed.

Since the eighties of the nineteenth century, the US government has not hesitated to use laws to restrict the entry of Chinese. There are also some very unfair measures and "special treatment" for Chinese people.

At this moment, a yellowed photo suddenly fell out of the notebook. I picked it up and looked at it, and it turned out to be the same as the photo I had seen earlier. When I saw this photo, I couldn't help but be a little curious: could it be that my aunt put it in?

I flipped the photo over and saw that there was a line on it: "Father, where are you?" ”

However, this trace doesn't look like my aunt's! (To be continued......)