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THE
"LABOR QUESTION" ON THE PACIFIC COAST
by Lee Meriwether |
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Harper’s
Weekly, October 13, 1888, pages 778-779 (Article) |
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If I were asked what is the most striking feature of the
Pacific coast industrial situation, I should answer, the extremely unsettled condition of
labor. Labor is none too well "settled" anywhere, but it is less so on the
Pacific coast than in the East. In the East every boy is told he may become
President. He also listens to the story of the poor young man with a mouse-trap, who
learned to make traps for larger game, and became a millionnaire. The Eastern boy hears of
these things as he hears of Aladdin and his lamp, then quits school and settles down to
learn a trade or profession, which, generally speaking he follows the rest of his life. On
the Pacific coast it is different. It is not school-boys who dream of becoming Presidents
and millionnaires; it is men. And the dream is not a dream to them, but a sober reality
that enters into their daily calculations, and shapes their daily course of action. In New
York if a man becomes a street-car driver, the chances are he becomes so permanently; but
in San Francisco your street-car driver of to-day may have been a lawyer yesterday, and
may be a doctor to-morrow. At a fashionable ball a few years ago one of the guests was
obliged to take leave of his hostess before the dancing ceased, as he explained,
"because it was four oclock, and he was required to be on his street-car every
morning at five." In former times this car-driver had been a lawyer of both
prominence and ability. I do not know his subsequent history, but it would not be rash to
surmise that he either made a fortune in mines, stocks, or otherwise, or died a pauper,
perhaps a suicide. At a public gathering you may sit between two men, one of whom, an
ex-restaurant waiter, has now an income of a million a year, the other of whom was
formerly wealthy, but has now to lay brick for a living. A resident in San Francisco for
seventeen years, who has made and lost several fortunes, said that he could count on the
fingers of one hand the men who are rich now who were also rich when he came to California
in 1870. The master carpenter who superintended the erection of the gentlemans
dwelling turned up six months later as a book agent, and offered to sell a "complete
history of the world for the small sum of ten dollars and fifty cents." When next he
appeared on the scene it was as owner of a fruit tree nursery. In that capacity he chanced
to make a hit, and having married the cook of the man for whom he built the dwelling, the
ex-carpenter and book agent and the ex-cook now drive in their own carriage, and give
entertainments that are attended by the élite of society. On trips in the interior of
California I have come across men who could read Homer in the original and solve problems
in conic sections working as farm-hands for a dollar and fifty cents a day. One man, a
graduate of Yale College, and formerly a wealthy lawyer, was ploughing in company with a
gang of Chinamen. |
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This unsettled condition of society incident to a new
country, and in California augmented by other influences, has tended to produce what at
first might seem an odd, but what is really a natural, result. Figures demonstrate the
existence of certain facts. It is the business of the statistician to find out what has
produced these facts. Careful inquiry shows that in California there is an unusually large
amount of marital unhappiness; the number of divorces is unusually large in proportion to
the population. This of course arises in part from the laxity of the law, from the ease
with which divorce may be obtained, and from the fact that residents of other States come
hither to obtain divorces. The fundamental reason, however, is the unsettled condition of
labor and society. A marriage for money may be endured as long as the money lasts, but
when the former millionnaire has to take to carpentering or driving a milk cart, the
matrimonial bonds become irksome, and there is a divorce case for the statistician to
record. The trouble may also arise not from becoming poor, but from becoming rich. A
physician who flourished in San Francisco several years ago had for a long time enjoyed a
moderate practice, and lived contentedly with his "original" wife. One day he
hung out a sign as specialist. He obtained reputation as a fine oculist; large fees poured
upon him; he became rich, and promptly obtained a divorce. His wealth continuing to
increase, he procured a divorce from the wife he had taken after his first divorce, in
order that he might again marry to suit his new standarda standard that did not
become higher perhaps, but that changed with each increase in riches. It may seem
whimsical, but it is nevertheless very probable that in San Francisco the climate is also
in part responsible for the large amount of marital infelicity. During the whole year
around it is just chilly enough to make it uncomfortable without a fire, but not quite
cold enough to induce an economical person to burn his gas or coal. A working-man, when he
comes home at night, does not sit with his wife in the doorway, as he would or could do in
the East. It is too chilly; the fog is damp, penetrating. The San Francisco work-man puts
on his hat and goes somewhere to keep warm. When the house is put to rights, the wife must
also keep in locomotion to prevent freezing. This constant gadding about of course has a
bad effect, and if the matter could be traced, it would doubtless prove partly responsible
for many of the divorces that burden the pages of the official dockets. |
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The remarks made concerning the unsettled condition of
labor apply even more closely to working-women than to working-men. The latter are
beginning to realize that all cannot become Presidents or millionnaires, and are therefore
beginning to learn trades, with some view as to permanency. But of several hundred
working-girls personally interviewed, scarcely a dozen were working from absolute
necessity, nor did more than a dozen have any idea of following the occupation
permanently. They live at home, work merely for spending-money to buy fine clothing, and
expect sooner or latergenerally soonerto marry, and let their husbands do the
wage-earning. In San José I found a type-setter earning $5.50 a week, living in an
eightroom cottage with a beautiful lawn and orchard. The furnishings were
handsomecarpets, paintings, piano, etc. The young ladys father, a well-to-do
physician, was able to support his family, but this particular daughter wanted extra
spending-money, and so sought work in a printers office. In fruit-packing factories
I have found girls preparing to become teachers. They pack fruit in summer merely to earn
"pocket"-money. The average life of a California shoe-fitter is three years.
After that period she either marries, returns home, or gives the shoe business up and goes
to a canning factory, woollen mill, or anything, just so it is a change. Though change is
the law of nature, particularly in California, the foregoing remarks must be understood to
refer to American-born labor. The Italian and other foreign labor which has but recently
settled on the Pacific coast works there, as at home, from dire necessity, and is not by
any means to be included in the list who work "sporadically" for mere pin or
spending money. In this connection it is interesting to note with what difficulty is
information obtained from this imported labor. In their own country I found them as
communicative as magpies; in America the same people are clams. By what almost seems a
remarkable coincidence, in a certain large American factory I came across an Italian whom
I had once met in Italy. There he told me everything I cared to knowhow much he
earned, what he spent, how he lived. In the American factory he refused to say a word, as
I afterward heard, because he thought I intended to levy a poll-tax upon him. The
"happy medium" of intelligence is by no means happy for the labor investigator.
A working man or woman of considerable intelligence understands the value of statistics,
and to throw light on methods of labor and the manner of living of laborers will submit to
what might ordinarily seem an impertinent examination into private affairs. On the other
hand, laborers of limited intelligence, men and women who through drudgery are becoming
mere machines, will answer questions, as they will do anything else they are bidden. But
from that portion of the working community that has just enough sense and schooling not to
be automaticlike machines, but not enough sense to comprehend the purposes of
statistical inquiriesfrom that portion it is difficult to extract any trustworthy
information whatever. Here are one or two samples of replies made by San Francisco
working-girls of this class, in answer to questions as to the effect of the work on their
health:
"Makes me feeble; troubled with corns."
"Very injurious work; gives me toothache in my left
ankle."
"Sanitary conditions bad, a young man being across
the way resulting in my having palpitation of the heart. Pass a law to remove that young
man, or make him shave his mustache, otherwise I shall die of heart-disease."
"Work is causing me to gradually grow one-sided. To
keep a straight appearance am forced to stand on an oyster can."
Those girls doubtless giggled and felt highly amused at
the humor they thought they were displaying; at the same time, if there really was
anything injurious in their work, or if there were evils admitting of legislative remedy,
they could have taken no better way to choke off inquiry, and the probable benefits that
would follow an accurate and complete knowledge of the case.
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Any description of the Pacific coast industrial situation
without allusion to the Chinese would be as incomplete as Hamlet with the Prince of
Denmark left out. The main outcry against the Chineseat least the main outcry heard
in the Eastis that they work too cheaply. From a Chinese stand-point this, if a
fact, would be just ground for discontent; but it is hard to see how it can be from the
white mans point of view. Were it conceivable, through some extraordinary change in
nature, that shoes, for instance, could be grown on bushes as cheaply as blackberries,
would any sane man deplore the change? There would be a displacement of labor.
Shoemakers would be compelled to do something else. But the energy now spent in shoeing
the world would be released, would be free to apply itself in some productive direction,
and the net gain to mankind would be enormous. In the same way, if shoes do not grow on
bushes at a cost of nothing, but do grow out of the hands of Chinamen at a cost of next to
nothing, the benefit to society at large is proportionately great.
This reasoning, however, is not necessary, for as a matter
of fact Chinese "cheap" labor is more or less a myth. Chinese farm-laborers earn
$1.50 a day. Farm-laborers in Eastern States are glad to get $25 a month and board. A New
York house-keeper pays $16 for a German house-girl and cook. In San Francisco a Chinese
cook in a small family is paid as high as $35 a month. A seventeen-year old boy earns $5 a
week. Chinese cigar-makers and sewing-machine operators earn $8 to $10 a week. In a
tin-shop I saw a Chinaman making tin cans and earning $3 a day. These men have their
unions, their boycotts, their strikes, quite in the same manner as white men. The Hong
Tuck Tong (Chinese Cigar-makers Union), of which the Hon. Mak Yan Lang is leading
spirit and director, numbers 2000 members. Each pays $1 initiation fee. There is no
regulation as to hours of labor, but no member of the union is permitted to work for less
than the union rate, nor to work with any one else who works for less. In a recent
instance forty Chinamen struck because ten new hands offered to accept less than the union
rate. The strike lasted four days. At the end of that time the employer gave in, and the
ten men were forced to join the union, and to pay a fine of $50 besides. A cigar
manufacturer who issued an order forbidding his employés taking for their own use the
finest cigars, found himself the next morning without a single Chinese employé. The white
men and girls were at work as usual, but the Chinese did not return until a promise was
made to exempt them from the obnoxious rule. The anomaly was then presented of a white
employer giving his Chinese employés privileges not granted the whites. In the same way,
in a fruit-packing factory, there was a strike for permission to work sitting on benches.
The white women failed, but not so with the Chinese. Their
"Tong"unionrefused to let a Chinaman work for that factory until
their demands were granted, and at the present time the Chinese sit, while in the same
factory the white employés are required to stand.
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The hall of the Hong Tuck Tong, in which meetings are held
and scales of wages made, is handsomely furnished. The walls are hung with labor mottoes
in good Chinese. The seats, unlike the wooden benches one would find in the hall of a
white labor union, are made of smooth black wood, and ornamented with carving. At the end
of the hall is a platform covered with straw matting, and provided with a complete opium
outfit. Reclining here, with pipe in hand, the dignified Mak Yan Lang presides over the
meetings and shapes the policy of his Tong. He spoke freely of the union, but refused the
artist permission to sketch it, or the Joss which was kept in a separate room adjoining
the hall. In reply to my objections that the big Joss, the public Joss, had been
photographed, Yan Lang smiled serenely and shook his head: "Joss no likee. Big Joss
no care; take care himself; but little Joss, him no likee."
There are few Chinese who do "likee." Bribes,
entreaty, strategy, are often alike vain. "Chinaman no likee picture;" that is
all there is to be had from them; and when the photographer sets up his tripod, or the
artist takes out his sketch-book, they vanish. In a Chinese overall factory my artist held
sole possession for two hours, while the hundred operators skulked around the alleys or
corners, at a loss of $25, rather than have their faces sketched. The Kam Yee
TongClothing-makers Unionhas 850 members. A white manufacturer, who
employed members of the Kam Yee, once succeeded in getting his men to work for ten cents a
dozen less than the union rate on his agreeing to keep a false set of books showing an
ostensible payment of regular rates. This scheme prospered for a while; then it was
discovered, the renegade members of the Kam Yee were expelled, and the manufacturer was
black-listedthat is, was not furnished with more men by the union, but was left to
the uncertain resource of "scab" Chinese and white labor. The gold and silver
workers have a union, called the Hong Wo Tong, more exclusive than the other Tongs
mentioned. To join this Tong $10 initiation must be paid, and the applicant must have
served a six-years apprenticeship in his trade. When he had done this, he hires
himself out by the year, at the rate of $1.50 for each working-day.
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There are only fifteen holidays in the year, so that,
unless sick or voluntarily idle, the Chinese gold and silver worker makes $525 a year. The
hours of labor are from ten to twelve, from half past twelve to half past four, and again
from eight until eleven at night. The intermissions at 12:30 and 4:30 are for lunch and
dinner. Breakfast is eaten at nine oclock, thus bringing all three meals close
together. Another Tong, of more importance than any yet mentioned, is the "Chi
Kung," of which Ng Ah Fook is general manager. Members of the Chi Kung claim that
they are like "Melican" masons, but those acquainted with its secret workings
know that the Chi Kungs, or "High-binders," as they are commonly called, are a
set of thugs and black-mailers. Ng Ah Fook levies a tribute of five dollars a week from
each gambling-house in Chinatown. If a Chinaman is to be gotten rid of, the High-binders
for a consideration will undertake to "remove" him. An officer of the secret
force, from whom I obtained much information on this subject, was himself once
black-listed by the Chi Kungs, and a reward of $800 offered for his head. Being a cool
man, a good shot, and always armed, he has thus far escaped, though two or three midnight
attacks and one murder has resulted from the attempts of the Kungs to remove their enemy. |
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Summing up the question, I should say that a careful
survey of the industrial situation in California would not induce a logical mind to object
to the Chinese from an economical stand-point. Considered from a moral point of view, it
might be otherwise. The Chinaman is a thorn in the side of societya foreign
substance that seems incapable of assimilation and absorption into the body. The gambling
hells, squalid hovels, dens of prostitution, slavery of women, exist in defiance of law,
and on a scale that defies description and challenges belief. Hundreds of men and women
burrow under the ground like rats. In a den sixteen feet long by two and a half wide and
seven high, reached by an underground passageway fifty feet long, I found two rows of
bunks separated by a two-foot aisle. The first tier of bunks was one foot from the floor,
the second tier was three feet above the first, and the smoke-begrimed ceiling was three
feet above that. Here in this foul, inky dark hole twenty-four persons were stretched,
either asleep or smoking opium. The den rents for six dollars a month, making a daily
price of lodging for each person the small sum of five-sixths of a cent. For the hovels of
Naples the Italian working-men pay only one or at most two dollars a month; but if an
Italian family of ten persons lived huddled in one room, it is because compelled by
necessity. The Chinese, however, seem to prefer squalor and darkness. In the den above
mentioned were several cooks for white families earning $30 a month and board. In
preference to the rooms offered by their employers they selected the quarters in which I
found them, because at night "Chinaman likee be with Chinaman and smoke opium."
A Chinese working-mans trousers and blouse cost $1.50; his shoes cost $1.40. Here is
a tabulated statement of the earnings and spendings of a Chinese broom-maker:
Lives twenty feet under ground in den ten feet long, seven
feet wide, and six feet high. Six men sleep in same den. Eats breakfast of rice and pork
at nine oclock; dinner at four, of rice and pork and tea. Earns 90 cents a day, $315
a year.
Cost of Living Per Day Per Year
Two pounds of rice a day
10
cents
$36.50
Pork
5 "
18.25
Bread
3 "
10.95
Oil, vinegar, etc
2 "
7.30
Food
20 cents
$73.00
Clothing
5.00
Lodging, @ ½ cent per day
1.82
Two queues, @ 75 cents each
1.50
Shaving head twice a month 3.50
Total yearly cost of living $84.92
To this actual cost of living must be added, in the vast
majority of cases, a sum for opium about equal to the sum spent for food. The broom-maker
works in the "Quong Sang Lang Co-operative Broom Factory." The Chinese idea of
co-operation, however, does not, I think, extend beyond the sign over the door. The men
are hired and paid so much per hundred brooms, just as they are paid in factories laying
no claims to "Co-operation."
No. 8 Bartlett Alley is a typical Chinese tenement
rookery. Bartlett Alley is about the width of a boulevard in Naplesfifteen feet. No.
8 is entered by a passageway three feet wide. Ascend the narrow, rickety steps seven feet,
and a sliding panel in the side of the staircase opens into the first tier of rooms or
bunks, occupied by a family of eight. Continue to the top of the stairs and a nine by
eighteen foot court is entered, with eight rooms opening into it, each room holding on an
average seven persons. Another flight of rickety stairs leads to more layers of cramped
box-like compartments, each filled to overflowing with muddy-colored human beings. A hole
five feet square in the centre of the court lets light down into the cellar, thirty feet
below. Here, deep in the earth, are cells, dark, without ventilation, occupied by men who
work, perhaps, two days out of seven, and the other five days smoke opium and sleep. By
the aid of powerful calcium-lights photographs were taken of some of the lowest dens in
Chinatown. The miserable occupants had never seen their own filth before. The light
dazzled and blinded them. They hid their heads while the bright rays searched out every
nook and corner, and photographed the scenes that is impossible for pen to describe. Each
of these dark cells rents for one dollar a month. The number of persons in each
compartment averages six, so that the lodging costs each person five-ninths of a cent per
day. In the centre of the cellar, under the square hole in the court above, is the brick
oven, with as many compartments as there are cells. The tenants of each cell have the
exclusive use of one hole in the oven, on which they set their kettle of rice and cook
their five-cent meals. There is no chimney or smoke-stack, consequently the kitchen of a
Chinese tenement-house is generally filled with an opaque atmosphere, which almost
suffocates the unacclimated.
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Chinese business places are on a scale similar to their
dwellings. A shoe-store half a block from the lodging-house just described is precisely
six feet deep, two and a half feet wide, and seven feet high. A ladder, which is set out
on the pavement during the day, enables the two shoe merchants at night to climb up to
their bunk over the shop. There, amid a pile of old shoes, rolls of sole-leather, post,
and kettles they sleep, apparently as contentedly as if in the Palace Hotel. Before
climbing to their nest these pious China-men light a bunch of "punk" to keep the
devil away. Punk, which burns very slowly, is an important adjunct to every Chinese
workmans bench. If he has an imaginative mind, and sees spooks during the day, all
he has to do is to reach over, light his punk, and the troublesome spook at once retires.
It is a very strong-minded or very economical Chinaman who does not spend several dollars
a year for "punk"; and many in addition seek the astrologers, or
fortune-tellers, to be found on street corners. These Oriental Solons, for the trifling
sum of ten cents, drive away evil spirits and tell your fortune besides. Punk, opium, and
fortune-telling may be called the three principal weaknesses of the Chinese laborer. If he
feels in a spending mood after indulging in these three luxuries he will buy a lottery
ticket, or take a chance in some gambling game. Of course it is not possible to find out
exactly how much is spent in this way, and no mention is made of these items in the
foregoing tabulated expense account of the broom-maker, but from my observations of a
number of Chinese workmen I should say at least from fifty to seventy-five dollars is
spent per year on the three items of punk, gambling, and fortune-telling. |
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The bakery of Ngiu Ngwi Tai is in a cellar eight feet
below the level of the street. At the further end of this black hole is a brick oven where
the dough is placed and cooked by a charcoal firenot under, but over, the
ovenin a swinging iron basket. The dough is kneaded in as odd a manner as it is
cooked. It is spread on the work-board and kneaded with a big bamboo cane fastened at one
end of the board, making a sort of lever. When Ngwi Tai has finished his days labor
he retires to a box in his bakery. His workmen sleep in adjoining boxes, or often on the
work-bench, which is quite as comfortable, one would think, as the ordinary Chinese
beda board covered with a thin layer of straw matting and lumbered up with
opium-pipe outfits and household effects. The Chinamans wardrobe is a sheet nailed
loosely to the roof of his bunk. He stuffs his extra clothing, shoes, hats, etc., into
this sheet over his head. The roof of a well-to-do Chinamans bunk is often thus
padded to a thickness of five or six inches. It is a very common custom for Chinese
laborers to sleep and eat in the place where they work. This materially lessens the cost
of living. A cigar or overalls maker earning $40 a month will sleep in a bunk over his
machine, eat rice and bread in the back part of the factory, and spend for the actual
necessities of life not more than eight or nine dollars a month. In not a few factories do
white girls work at the same benches with Chinamen. Often the dressing-rooms and closets
are common to both sexes and races, and, moreover, are in the workshop, open to view, with
no sort of privacy whatever. Such customs, of course, cannot but produce injurious
results. At a shoe factory owned and conducted by Chinamen I found white girls with their
sense of propriety so blunted they did not seem to mind in the least the free and easy
customs around them. In Italy and several other of the southern European states the same
conditions may be noted. In the government baths at Buda-Pesth, Hungary, the sexes bathe
together without any pretence whatever of wearing bathing suits. While staring at the
bathers who were in the pool at the time of my visit, a stout, red-cheeked peasant girl
came in. She gave me an indifferent glance, then calmly took off her clothing, hung it on
a peg, and was soon splashing and playing in the water. In the United States, aside from
those Chinese factories employing white women, I have found nothing approaching the
"promiscuousness" noted in Italy and Hungary. In New York tenement-houses there
are many cases where the children of a familygrown sons and daughtersoccupy
the same sleeping apartments. There are, however, no public lodging-houses or baths in
which the sexes are not separated, and no factories with dressing-rooms and closets that
are not screened from the general view. |
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Such, in brief, is an outline of the social and industrial
condition of the Chinese on the Pacific coast. Within the limits of a magazine article it
is impossible to describe how women are imported for degraded purposes and held as slaves;
how the "Six Companies" (representing the six chief provinces of China) import,
or did once import, labor under contract, holding the laborer in absolute slavery until
the lease he had given on himself expired; and how in San Francisco the Chinese have laws
unto themselves, their secret courts executing even sentences of death; of which the State
of California knows nothing. All this would require much space. Enough has been said to
show that the Chinese do not assimilate with Caucasians; his presence is as the presence
of a thorn, of a foreign substanceinjurious in its effect just in proportion as the
number of Chinese is large. It is this, and not "cheap labor," that is at the
bottom of the dislike of white men for Chinamen. Whites and Chinese seem as incapable of
mixing as oil and water. Their presence deters the immigration of more desirable labor
from the East and from Europe. If that watch-word of the California working-man, "The
Chinese must go, " can be sustained on any grounds, it will because the Chinaman has
no power of assimilation, because he is not a desirable citizen, and because he keeps away
those who are desirable citizens. The objection that he works cheaply and lives
economically cannot, as has been shown, be sustained either by justice or reason.
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Harper’s
Weekly, October 13, 1888, pages 778-779 (Article) |
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