They were, however, good workers. They did not protest working long hours for low pay. They did not demand better working conditions. They usually refused to join labor unions or take part in strikes.

JACK WEITZEL: American factory owners were pleased with the new immigrants. They gave them jobs formerly held by higher-paid American workers. The owners asked the new workers to write letters to friends still in the old country, urging them to come to America.

And they came by the hundreds of thousands to take jobs in steel factories in Pennsylvania and the coal mines of West Virginia. They worked in the lumber camps of Michigan and in the stockyards and the meat-packing plants of Chicago.

American workers then began to protest, as their jobs were filled by immigrants who were happy to work for less money.

ROBERT BOSTIC: The protests were especially bitter on the pacific coast where thousands of Chinese immigrants were settling in California.

The Chinese arrived there after eighteen fifty to help build western railroads. After the railroads were completed, these Chinese new-comers turned to other jobs. More came every year. By the eighteen seventies, California's political leaders were demanding an end to further immigration from China.

In eighteen eighty-two, Congress passed a law that barred Chinese immigration for ten years. The law was extended for another ten years then made permanent.