Although Charles Crocker's construction boss, Harvey Strobridge, was against hiring Chinese workers for the Central Pacific Railroad he had no choice when his Irish workers went on strike. Now Strobridge was stuck with fifty of the small Orientals who looked too frail for such a strenuous undertaking as laying tracks. However, not only did the Irish workers hurry back to work when it was obvious that they could be easily replaced, the Chinese that Crocker had hired were working wonders. In fact, Strobridge was so pleased with the Chinese that he hired an additional fifty of them, then another fifty, and kept right on hiring them. The hiring of the Chinese went on until, to Strobridge's dismay, he learned that Crocker had nearly emptied the Chinatowns of both Sacramento and San Francisco. Strobridge now virtually had his own Chinatown moving down the tracks as the work progressed.
By the spring of 1865, Crocker had to seek out the professional labor contractors. These were the men who recruited Chinese farm boys from the Cantonese districts of Sinong and Sinwai. But this extra trouble was well worth the effort as the Chinese never ceased to amaze their bosses by their strength and endurance and their ability to quickly learn. They were also always ready to start work when the whistle blew.
As good as the Chinese men were, they weren't perfect. They tended to bicker shrilly among themselves. There was also occasional bloodshed between the Sinong and Sinwai groups. And when, in their off hours, they weren't fighting amongst themselves, they gambled constantly. But to their credit, they weren't inclined to strike, and they didn't get roaring drunk on payday as their Irish counterparts were prone to do. And they didn't visit the whorehouses in the mining towns that cropped up along the route. And perhaps best of all, they did not have the habit of leaning on their pick handles when the boss wasn't looking.
They did have one extreme habit, however, that seemed to bewilder every one else. Every day, come rain or shine, they took baths! And no one seemed to understand their other strange habit, that of consuming enormous quantities of boiled tea. It was probably that strange habit that prevented them from becoming sick as so many of the other workers did due to drinking ditchwater.
"Crocker's pets" as the Chinese came to be called were put to the test about 57 miles out from Sacramento when construction confronted a shale mass at the flank of the Sierra. Seemingly forbidding any possible passage this mass stood some 2,000 feet above the gorge of the American River at about an angle of 75 degrees. But this was where the surveyors had said the rails would be laid, along a ledge where no foothold existed.
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