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The Chinese settlers in America were all male. They had
to leave their wives and children back in China. Gerald L. Posner, author
of Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies- the New Mafia
writes about the promises that the Chinese had coming in America.
The first immigrants arrived withed the promise of high
pay, and they thought of making fortunes in and around San Francisco,
a name that in Chinese means “Golden Mountain”. Instead,
they found backbreaking work, restricted and squalid living conditions,
and constant abuse directed at their different dress and customs (Posner:
Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies- The New Mafia, 206).
Also besides these horrid conditions, the Triads from
China were making the immigrants stay even harder. Martin Booth, author
of The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the Triads
states:
They, the Chinese immigrants, were ripped off from the
moment they landed. Triads operating the travel agencies in China were
in league with confederates in San Francisco. Once the immigrants arrived,
they had to register with the appropriate Triad-affiliated hui guan,
which welcomed them, temporarily housed them, and if necessary found
them work, but also kept an eye on them, making sure they paid their
debts (Booth: The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the Triads,
296).
Then a few years later, the gold mines were completely exhausted.
Afterwards, the Chinese population started building the Trans-Continental
Railroad. The Chinese were the ones who went into the mountains and
set up the dynamite in order for the tracks to go through. The conditions
were horrible. After the railroad was completed, the Chinese had no
money to return home. Booth states:
With no laboring to do, they did as Chinese have always done. They
adapted. Some set up chophouses and bakeries, some general stores.
Chinese laundries appeared in the streets and Chinese servants in
the homes of the rich. Chinese barbers cut hair whilst by 1890, over
half of San Francisco’s fresh vegetables were grown by the Chinese
market gardeners. The more successful they became, the more discrimination
they faced (Booth: The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of
the Triads, 297).
Then during the late 1870’s, a recession hit San Francisco. This
proved to be the powder keg of Chinese immigration. Peter Kwong elaborates
on this by writing:
Employers hired Chinese at low wages, pitting them against white
workers, and triggered a chain of reactions. The labor movement, then
in its early stages of organization, considered the Chinese strikebreakers
who cooperated with the monopoly capitalists. A group of skilled craft
workers tried to use this anti-Chinese sentiment to gain political
power. “Chinamen must go!” became their battle cry; racial
demagoguery became the issue to rally white working people, many of
whom were frustrated by unemployment. The period was marked by public
hysteria over the specter of the “yellow peril”. Finally,
politicians from Western states, with the support of colleagues from
the South, pushed the Chinese Exclusion Act through Congress in 1882.
The Act barred all immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first
time and, as it turned out, the only federal law ever to exclude a
group of people by nationality (Kwong: The New Chinatown, 13).
The Chinese Exclusion Act was even supported by the Supreme Court who
said “that Congress had an inherent power to exclude foreigners
of a different race who will not assimilate with us” (Posner:
Warlords of Crime: The Chinese Secret Societies- The New Mafia, 207).
It is important to note that while this Act prohibited the immigration
of Chinese laborers into this country; Chinese merchants were allowed
to come in.
What happened to the Chinese immigrants that were already living here?
The Chinese settlers were targets of discrimination, abuse, and even
victims of mob violence. They were restricted to live in certain neighborhoods
that later coined as Chinatowns. Peter Kwong examines this movement
of the Chinese into these Chinatowns.
The shift of Chinese into these urban ghettos was not
voluntary. These were not like the immigrant ghettos of Italians, Jews,
or Poles, which tended to disappear as each group integrated into American
society. Rather, they were segregated areas where the Chinese were meant
to stay. The segregation was maintained by the exclusion of the Chinese
from the larger labor market. American capitalists had moved on to recruit
cheap labor from other Asian nations, such as Japan, Korea, and the
Philippines (Kwong: The New Chinatown, 13-14).
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