willing to toil long hours for small wages. But a reversal of feeling came with the completion of the first overland railroad in 1869. With swarms of coolie laborers released to compete with white laborers for jobs that were none too many, they were soon regarded as a menace by white workers in general all along the Pacific Coast. In Oregon the idle Chinese flocked to Portland, Oregon City, and other large towns.
For many years after 1870 anti-Chinese demonstrations were frequent. In Portland men met in open lots and harangued against the Orientals, while conservative newspapers defended them. Torch-light processions marched through the streets, carrying anti-Chinese banners. A committee of fifteen was chosen to notify the hated foreigners to "git up an' git." Masked men terrorized the Chinese by dynamiting their dwellings. Chinese lives were sacrificed and little done about it. The militia was finally called out to cope with the situation, but did no permanent good. It was only through the passing of the Chinese exclusion act in 1882 that violent race prejudice was finally appeased and the anti-Chinese feeling died down.
In Portland, as in other cities of the state where Chinese live today, they reside for the most part in a well-defined section. Portland's Chinatown is about two or three blocks wide and seven or eight long. Chinese is commonly spoken and Chinese dress frequently worn. Chinese funerals are still magnificent spectacles, and debts are still liquidated on the day of the Chinese New Year. However, these people are in general very quiet, peaceful and self-sufficient and ask only to be permitted to live as they see fit. With tong wars relegated to the past, the problems of work and business constitute their principal interests.
Oregon's 4,958 Japanese are engaged chiefly in farming, gardening and small commercial enterprises. A few are employed by industry or in hotels and restaurants. As farmers, their ambition to own land raised issues of national and international import. A quarter of a century ago early orchardists of the Hood River Valley hired Japanese laborers to clear land. The Oriental stump-diggers saved money and began to buy orchard land of their own, and to build homes. The act was resented and in 1917 a Hood River senator introduced a bill in the Oregon legislature, prohibiting Asiatics from owning land in the state.
The bill was withdrawn at the urgent request of the United States Department of State, for fear that it might have serious international consequences at a time when the country was on the verge of war in Europe. A later legislature, however, adopted the bill, following the example of California in this respect. In the meantime, a Hood River
