Competition, Racism, and Hiring Practices among California Manufacturers, 1860–1882

This paper examines the participation of Chinese men in four California industries in the late 1800s to determine the relationship between product market structure and racist hiring practices. Because white women, a traditional source of cheap labor, were scarce in post-Gold Rush California, white employers hired Chinese men, despite widespread anti-Chinese racism. As white women became plentiful, the canning and woolen mills industries began to switch to them, whereas the more competitive shoe and cigar industries continued to employ Chinese men. Factors other than market structure, however, resulted in particularly virulent anti-Chinese attitudes in the more competitive industries, and those attitudes indirectly stimulated the exclusionary hiring practices in the less competitive industries.