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Chinese laborers. To his surprise, they proved to be strong, diligent
and far more reliable than the Irishmen he had been using. In addition
to their meager pay, they were given opium to smoke, which made
them very tranquil, and reduced their libido and aggressiveness. They
were able to toil through the winter snows working in snow sheds or
galleries, constructed to protect the rails from winter avalanches,
blasting tunnels through obdurate granite with the newly invented
dynamite. Crocker imported thousands of Chinese workers for his
railroad.

Meanwhile in the polite literate societies on both sides of the Atlantic,
many famous authors were using opium to stimulate their muses. In
Europe, these included Keats, Colleridge, Dickens and Browning. An
Englishman named deQuincy wrote a memoir entitled "The
Confessions of an Opium Eater", in which he graphically and
enthusiastically described the effects of his habit. In America, Edgar
Allen Poe, Walt Whitman and Jack London were among those who
frequented the raptures of the poppy.

Late in the 19th Century, a most tragic irony took place. Chemists had
discovered that by simple means they were able to convert morphine
into another compound that they believed would be very effective in
treating morphine addiction. They enthusiastically described how
they had been able to substitute the new compound for the morphine
and cure people of the terrible addiction. The Bayer Company in
Germany began to market and supply this wonderful compound. They
named it "heroin." Only after many people were so treated did they
realize to their horror that heroin was more addictive than morphine.
Bayer quickly took it off the market.

This incident and others brought the international community to focus
on the perils of opiate addiction on a worldwide basis. The
International Opium Commission met in Shanghai in 1909. The
British were convinced to stop the opium traffic between India and
China, to the relief of the Chinese. The international pressure led the
U.S. to pass of the Harrison Narcotics act in 1914.