In 1852, there were perhaps 10,000 Chinese in the state the anti-Chinese agitation arose in the mining camps. "California Governor John Bigler sent a special message to the legislature insisting, "measures must be adopted to check this tide of Asiatic immigration""(Daniels 35). This would only be the beginning in anti-Asian sentiment.
American miners in California felt that the overwhelming numbers of low-paid Chinese were reducing their wages. "Numerous mass meeting in the mining districts passed resolutions of protest against "unfair" competition"(Daniels 33). Not only did white laborers complain of "unfair" competition, they also stated that the Chinese were lowering their standard of living.
Then in 1862, California governor Leland Stanford used his inaugural message to decry, "the presence among us of a degraded and distinct people call for any constitutional action, having for its object the repression of the immigration of Asiatic races"(Daniels 36). In that same year, labor politicians in San Francisco began to organize "Anti-Coolie Clubs"; five years later there was one in every ward of the city. By the 1870s, California tended to place much of the blame on the nearest tangible factor as to why the economic conditions were going down, it was due to the Chinese workman and those who employed him.
In July of 1870, a number of anti-Chinese demonstrations and mass meetings had been held in San Francisco with marchers carrying signs and slogans. This agitation did produce results in California in which anti-Chinese legislation and ordinances were enacted. One of the most significant steps in the rights of Chinese in the U.S. would also take place in 1870, in which congress would debate whether Asians should be eligible for naturalization. "The ruling that Asian were "aliens ineligible to citizenship" would remain the basis for statutory discrimination at both federal and state levels until the naturalization laws were changed in 1952"(Daniels 44).
