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January January 1 1877 Labor leader Denis Kearney, an Irish immi- grant, organizes anti-Chinese movement in San Francisco and leads violent attacks on the Chinese in San Francisco. He formed the Workingmen’s Party of California al- leging Chinese workers took lower wages, poorer conditions, and longer hours than white workers were willing to tolerate. The slogan “The Chinese Must Go” was being widely repeated. The Workingmen’s Party successfully elected candidates to state office and will therefore influence California poli- cies for decades. Books Kearney, Denis. The Workingmen’s Party of Cali- fornia: An Epitome of Its Rise and Progress. San Francisco, CA: Bacon, 1878. Shumsky, Neil Larry. The Evolution of Political Protest and the Workingmen’s Party of California. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992. Neil Shumsky examines the July 1877 riots in San Francisco, and the subsequent rise of the Workingmen’s Party of California. Websites Carlsson, Chris. “The Workingmen’s Party & the Denis Kearney Agitation.” FoundSF.org. 1995. This site provides a historical overview of the Workingmen’s Party. http://foundsf.org/index .php?title=The_Workingmen%E2%80%99s_ Party_%26_The_Dennis_Kearney_Agitation. Accessed October 7, 2016. “The Fight Begins at Home: Jewett Defends Asian Immigrants.” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web. This site provides the original newspaper editorial written by B.E.G. Jewett in defense of the Chinese im- migrants and against anti-Chinese sentiment. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5045. Ac- cessed January 28, 2018. 1885 The first group of Japanese contract laborers leaves Japan to go work on the sugar plantations in Hawaii through the work of an American businessman and the Kingdom of Hawaii’s minister to Japan. Robert Walker Irwin’s major Excerpt from Kearney’s appeal to California for support to banish the Chinese from America’s shores. To add to our misery and despair, a bloated ar- istocracy has sent to China—the greatest and old- est despotism in the world—for a cheap working slave. It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth—the Chinese coolie—and imports him here to meet the free American in the Labor market, and still further widen the breach between the rich and the poor, still further to degrade white Labor. . . . These cheap slaves fill every place. Their dress is scant and cheap. Their food is rice from China. They hedge twenty in a room, ten by ten. They are wipped curs, abject in docility, mean, contemptible and obedient in all things. They have no wives, chil- dren or dependents. . . . They are imported by companies, controlled as serfs, worked like slaves, and at last go back to China with all their earnings. They are in every place, they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work it is all alike to them. . . . California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance? With great respect for the Workingman’s Party of California. Dennis Kearney, President H.L Knight, Secretary Source: Kearney, Dennis and H. L. Knight. “Appeal from California. The Chinese Invasion. Working- men’s Address.” Indianapolis Times, February 28, 1878.