While the Irish and Germans were dominating the immigration situation on the Atlantic coast, the Chinese were occupying the center of the stage in the west. The stream of Chinese immigration became considerable at about the same time that the great increase in European immigration was taking place on the other side of the continent. As to its causes, Mrs. Mary Roberts Coolidge speaks as follows: “The first effective contact of China with Western nations was through the Opium War of 1840, which resulted in an increase of Chinese taxes, a general disturbance of the laboring classes, and the penetration of some slight knowledge of European ideas into the maritime provinces. Although this prepared the way for the emigration to the West, its precipitating cause lay in ‘the Golden Romance’ that had filled the world,”—that is, the news of the discovery of gold in California. “Masters of foreign vessels afforded every facility to emigration, distributing placards, maps, and pamphlets with highly colored accounts of the Golden Hills.... But behind the opportunity afforded by foreign shipping and the enticement of the discovery of gold lay deeper causes for emigration—the poverty and ruin in which the inhabitants of Southeastern China were involved by the great Taiping rebellion which began in the summer of 1850. The terrors of war, famine, and plundering paralyzed all industry and trade, and the agricultural classes of the maritime districts especially were driven to Hong Kong and Macao.”[99] By the end of 1852 there were in the neighborhood of 25,000 Chinese on the Pacific coast, almost all of them in California.