The California gold rush started in 1948 and ended until 1955. It took place in California and was mostly found in Sierra Nevada. The gold rush started because James W. Marshall had discovered gold near the area and soon many people discovered that there was gold everywhere around the area which then led to more and more people wanting to go there to find gold. This was basically why the gold rush had happened in the first place all because one person had found gold by luck. This is the reason why the gold rush had started in the first place.
During the gold rush, many people went to California to find gold. The top two races that went there to earn money were Chinese people and Irish people. They were both discriminated but came since there were a large opportunity in earning gold which caused people to sacrifice the time with their family for gold which wasn’t a good thing but wasn’t a very bad thing as it shows that those people are loyal and would give up many things just to give their family a better life than before since family always come first.
Foreign miners often faced broken human rights and discrimination due to racism. Some examples of racism are Foreign miners had to pay a tax of 20$ per month which was unfair as they needed to pay more than the locals.Another example of racism was that the foreign miners could only look for gold alongside the other miners unlike the miners from California. Not only that but, they were forced to work in harder conditions with less privileges which made their lives much harder than the locals. Also, they had lower salaries compared to interiors.
Unlike other immigrants, Chinese immigrants faced the most racism. For example, they would need to work for more than the other races as it wasn’t very fair but the Chinese people didn’t complain for some reason. Secondly, even though Chinese people work more they still get paid much less than the other people. This would be very unfair as we can see that they deserve better just for not being as lazy as the others. The last reason would be that unlike the others, Chinese people like to save their money so that they can buy other stuff in the future but all the others are always jealous.
I would not come to California for the gold rush because firstly, it would not be fair to get discriminated against by the locals even when you had done nothing wrong which is not very worth it. Secondly, getting paid less just because I’m Chinese is something obnoxious to do which makes it not worth it at all to migrate to California just for a 50% chance of getting gold. Lastly, going to somewhere where you have to adapt in a much different area can be very hard and mentally challenging.
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