Saving Face Without Words: A Confucian Perspective On The Chinese Labor Strike of 1867

Abstract

The Chinese came to the United States in the 1850s, built the Transcontinental Railroad and then were sent home; we have no written records from the workers, and there is very little understanding of how they lived or how they negotiated their employment conditions. In 1854 the California Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Hall deprived all Chinese citizens of all civil rights and recourse in court. The legal and cultural conditions in California were outright hostile to the Chinese workers, and yet, the Chinese were able to negotiate and improve their conditions despite any formal avenues to do so. This essay builds on suggestions made in lectures by Professor Gordon Chang and Professor Sue Fawn Chung that the Chinese workers used the teachings of Confucius in a coordinated collective action during the Chinese Labor Strike of 1867. My research looks at the behaviors of the strikers, including their use of Confucian values like “face saving.” The Confucian model of protest may be well-suited for asserting rights, when stripped of legal protections, because the peaceful, respectful approach “saves face” for the other party. There is very little historical record about the strike, in part, because there was no violence with employers or embarrassment to the bosses. That the strike came and went without violence has dampened its impact in the historical record, but the strike is even more meritorious of study for the very same reason that it is so unknown: what do we learn from behaviors of the strikers that might explain why this strike was peaceful, in sharp contrast to the others of the era that were violent? We use the Italics and the teachings of Confucius to help fill in the gaps in areas where the Chinese workers themselves left us no written record.

Keywords: Confucius, collective action, labor dispute, Chinese workers strike of 1867

JEL Classification: B12, J3, J4, J5, J7, J8, N11, N19, L92