17 – 23rd – Several fires this week. Worked on R.R.. Flunkied for the Chinese cook 2 hours each day. One day last week after we had eaten breakfast & sitting around the fire waiting for it to come time to go to work an old man came along and wanted to buy a piece of soap. Well, we didn’t have any soap to sell, so he flew off his horse & called us all sorts of names. The boss told him if he did not go on that he would kick the seat of his pants for him. The old fellow says “yes, I know what you are, you are a scotchman & I’m an Englishman & I’m glad of it”. Well, we went on to work & when we got back at noon the old Englishman had a big board across the side of the track. Well, the boss took the board off & told him not to put it back on any more. When we had done our dinner & started back to work I just happened to look around & saw boards flying in the air & men rolling on the ground. The Englishman & the “scotchman” (Irishman, the boss really is) had come together & a little more the Englishman would have picked himself up in the river. The boss knocked him pretty near in the waters edge. When the boss got done with him he was glad to leave the area.
California has two fire seasons. Jesse was putting out fires during the early summer season where the fires are caused by heat. The fall fire season is caused by winds spreading the fires.
Jesse’s bachelor trip gave him more opportunities to interact with international people, especially non-European immigrants, than he would have had if he stayed home. In the mid-1800s, large numbers of Chinese immigrated to California to take their chance in the Gold Rush and help with railroad construction. The railroad construction was such difficult work that laying track was not the first choice for white men who had other opportunities for an income, thus creating a large demand for Chinese employees, possibly as high as 90% of the laborers. Chinese contribution to railway construction was so great that when the last section of track was laid at Promontory Point in 1869, it was a Chinese crew that had the ceremonial final honor to place it.
The large Chinese workforce on the railway meant a large demand for Chinese, specifically Canton, cooking was needed to feed the men. It was deemed such a necessity that an impressive trans-Pacific distribution chain was quickly established so that dried ingredients from China could be brought to even the remote locations in the Northwest to feed the workers. At this point the Chinese were cooking for their segregated work crews, and the white employees were eating American fare.
Unfortunately, in the second half of the 19th century, racism, fear of outsiders, and fear of competition lead to laws discriminating against the Chinese so that they could no longer work in the mines or on the railroad. Locked out of opportunities they previously had, many of them took to cooking in Chinese restaurants and for the railroad along the West Coast.
By 1901 when the Bench boys were working on the railroad, Chinese cuisine provided by Chinese cooks to white laborers would have been completely normal, even expected fare for railway crews in California. While it was also possible that by 1901 Chinese railway cooks could hand out standard American fare, it is more likely that Jesse was trying fried rice and American-hybrid chop suey.
It would be fascinating to know how Jesse ended up working for the Chinese cook for a couple hours each day. Was he directed to help because the cook was short-handed and people had to be fed? Maybe all the white employees took turns helping the cook for a week. Or did Jesse volunteer, and if so, what was his reasoning? In 1901, taking orders from a Chinaman could easily be seen as a subservient position too demeaning for a white man. Maybe helping to cut up ingredients, dishing out the food to the workers, or washing dishes could be considered too feminine. Was Jesse so open-minded and curious that he didn’t want to pass up such a novel opportunity? Did he have a sense of humor about it? Or did he view it as some humbling exercise that fit his Midwestern Christian values? Maybe was he avoiding less desirable, physically demanding tasks. Was there a language barrier, and did the Chinaman’s accent cause anxiety for Jesse? We can’t know from this single sentence, but it invites so many possibilities for his motivations.
A first-hand account of an 1890s American child’s experience of Chinese cooking for the section hands might describe what Jesse helped to cook:
The cooks built their own type of outdoor ovens in the dirt banks alongside of the sidetrack, and their stake pot spits alongside their hunk cars, where they did most of their cooking when the weather permitted. Each cook would have the use of a very big iron kettle hung over an open fire, and into it they would dump a couple of measures of Chinese unhulled brown rice, Chinese noodles, bamboo sprouts and dried seaweed, different Chinese seasonings and American chickens cut up into small pieces….When the cook stirred up the fire, the concoction began to swell until finally the kettle would be nearly full of steaming, nearly dry brown rice with the cut-up chicken through it.
The fight between the transient Englishman and the Irish boss is much less mysterious. While it is easy to identify trespassing, loitering, disturbing the peace, possible vandalism, and assault, there is no 911 to call, no immediate law enforcement available to remove this possibly mentally-ill person from the scene. Only a strongman in authority could send the hostile person on his way, and it was necessary to do so to avoid work stoppages and endangering the employees in an already dangerous line of work.
