Social History for Every Classroom

Search

Social History for Every Classroom

menuAmerican Social History Project  ·    Center for Media and Learning

A California Newspaper Deplores the Foreign Miner's Tax (with text supports)

Within months of statehood, the California legislature passed the Foreign Miner’s Tax, which required immigrant miners to pay $20 a month for the privilege of mining in the state. The unbearably high tax drove many Latin American miners back to their home countries. Immigrant miners who stayed organized protests in Sonora County. Business owners also protested the tax, because they depended on foreign miners, especially Mexicans who could easily buy goods in the United States and take them back to families in Mexico, as customers.


Source | Alta California, newspaper, circa 1850; quoted in Sucheng Chan, “A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush,” California History, Vol. 79, No. 2, Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California (Summer 2000), 44—85.
Creator | Alta California
Item Type | Newspaper/Magazine
Cite This document | Alta California, “A California Newspaper Deplores the Foreign Miner's Tax (with text supports),” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, accessed March 19, 2024, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1810.

Print and Share