The Chinese Must Go
Page 16
that after noon. Only hours after he was released, Chin and four prominent
Chinese merchants sat down with anti- Chinese leaders to discuss plans for
voluntary exile. Under the looming threat of vio lence, Chin and the other
Chinese merchants agreed to send away all Chinese workers as fast as funds
would permit. For Chinese businessmen like themselves, they requested ad-
ditional time to pack up shop. Chin pointed out that Wa Chong Com pany
was owed some thirty thousand dollars by the city and they had property in
Seattle worth a hundred and thirty- five thousand dollars, so he could hardly
be expected to leave overnight. It appeared that the merchant- contractors
were good to their word and began sending away Chinese workers. Within
two days, an estimated one hundred and fifty Chinese left Seattle by train
or boat.31
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This “voluntary” withdrawal from Seattle suddenly ended on November 6
with news that Tacoma’s Chinatown was burning. Arson added new urgency
to appeals for federal protection. By the morning of November 8, 350 federal
soldiers marched into Seattle to prevent all further expulsion. For the Chi-
nese, the ten- day presence of the troops meant a temporary end to expul-
sion, but not the end of harassment. One soldier knocked down a Chinese
man who was walking down Front Street, grabbed his basket of laundry,
and threw it over a bluff onto the beach. Another soldier grabbed a Chinese
man, cut the queue from his head, and nailed it to a railroad car. In addi-
tion to physically harassing Chinese, some soldiers deci ded to turn a profit
at the Chinese community’s expense. A group of soldiers went door to door
in the Chinese quarter demanding a “special tax” from each man, netting
$150. In spite of the soldiers’ dubious loyalty, the Chinese consulate trusted
that the vio lence would end. On November 9, the consul general telegraphed
Chin: “Tell the Chinese to remain in Washington Territory.” The workers
appear to have listened; the exodus from Seattle slowed.32
With the crisis adverted, Chin found time to focus on justice and redress.
For redress, he turned to the Chinese consulate and the U.S. federal gov-
ernment. He gathered together over forty Chinese workers who had been
expelled from nearby Coal Creek and had them declare him their “lawful
attorney.” Chin prepared an affidavit, swearing to each worker’s individual
losses— ranging from $14 to $191— and to his businesses’ collective loss at
more than $1,000. Then he submitted these claims to the Chinese consul,
who forwarded them to the secretary of state.33 Seeking justice, Chin turned
to the local court system. He testified before a grand jury in a case against
fourteen vigilantes. According to the indictment, the men had engaged in a
conspiracy “to threaten, intimidate, harass and annoy” all Chinese in King
County. But the defense argued that all the men did was exercise their right
to free speech. While Chin would ultimately win his bid for federal redress,
he lost his local fight for justice. In January 1886, a jury found all fourteen
defendants not guilty.34
This local loss portended that worse was to come. On February 6, anti-
Chinese agitators celebrated their legal victory. The next day, Seattle’s Chi-
nese community awoke to a white mob marching through Chinatown, a
scene that must have borne eerie resemblance to Tacoma three months ear-
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107
lier. Armed vigilantes knocked on each door, telling the Chinese that they
had to vacate Seattle by 1 p.m. No one was exempted.35
When the mob came to Chin’s boarding house, he learned a horrific lesson
about the limits of his local power. The mob pushed their way into his house,
stormed upstairs, and found his pregnant wife, who was known by the family
as Madam Wong. Was he there to witness the scene that followed? Perhaps
not, but either way, it must have left a vivid imprint. From the mob, someone
caught ahold of his wife by the hair, dragging her down the stairs and pushing
her into the street. In a matter of minutes, the vigilantes had violated all that
Chin held dear: his business, his house hold, his first wife, and his unborn
child. All he could do was later tell this story. He wrote to the Chinese consul,
which later described the violent scene to Secretary of State Bayard. “The
fright and bodily injuries received made her seriously ill,” Minister Zhang
Yinhuan (Chang Yen Hoon) explained, “and three days afterwards she was
prematurely delivered of a child.” Madam Wong, after much time and pain,
eventually regained her health. But the child perished.36
Yet Chin successfully resisted expulsion from Seattle. When others fled,
he refused, and soon federal troops returned. To keep federal protection for
as long as pos si ble, Chin again used his surprising line of communication
to the State Department. On May 6, he telegraphed the Chinese consulate:
“United States troops ordered from Seattle. See President and have them re-
tained two months.” If troops were to withdraw, Chin explained, “[the]
Knights of Labor say they drive us out in thirty days.” Chin’s appeal was
forwarded to Secretary Bayard, who quickly granted the request. The troops
remained through late July.37
As the vio lence abated, Chin once again turned to the fight for redress.
When the Chinese consulate opened an investigation into the Seattle expul-
sion, Chin was the first to file a claim. Leaving aside the personal assault on
his wife, he instead focused on his financial losses. With the help of a lawyer,
he estimated that his business lost $67,000, “caused by the nontenancy of
[his] houses, debts owed by Chinese uncollected & discontinuance of their
labor- brokers business in several coal mines and other places.” In addition,
he had invested $85,000 in fifteen buildings that now remained unoccupied,
and $4,500 in eight farm lots that now lay fallow. Chin’s claims not only
speak to the magnitude of his personal losses, but also to the crumbling of
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Seattle’s Chinese community. He had nobody to whom to rent rooms, no-
body to hire out, and nobody to farm his land. Chin may have successfully
resisted expulsion, but his workers were long gone.38
“We Got to Get Out of Here”
Chin believed he could speak on behalf of the Chinese lower classes. After
all, it was a labor contractor’s job to represent his workers. During more
peaceful times, contractors recruited workers, supplied their provisions, and
hired them out to wealthy white men in the territory for a per- head fee.
Chinese workers, lacking En glish skills and knowledge of the local com-
munity, needed contractors to help them find work and negotiate their
wages. Contractors, in turn, needed a ready supply of pliable workers to profit.
Notably, neither group saw this unequal relationship as a permanent class
division. Merchant- contractors would draw their future shareholders and
business partners from the ranks of wage laborers. Workers knew that dreams
of social mobilit
y depended on social connections with their betters. The
result was a labor regime built on codependence, exploitation, and an un-
common allegiance between social classes. Vio lence tested these bonds
of kinship and capital. While Chin fought diligently for the right to stay in
Seattle, few Chinese workers proved willing to follow his lead.39
One who tried hard to stay was Kee Low. By the time a sociologist inter-
viewed Low in 1924, he had “amassed a respectable fortune” and “established
connections . . . that are enviable by any of the Americans or Eu ro pe ans [in
Seattle].” But at the time of the expulsion, Low described himself as an un-
skilled worker earning “pretty small wages.” By the winter of 1886, Low was
invested in his life in Seattle. He had settled in, found work, and formed
friendships. But he did not have the same stake in the community as a Chi-
nese businessman. He had no real estate, no wife, no children, no connec-
tions to speak of, and no debts owed. In other words, he had few weights to
tie him down, but also few sources of power.40
Low was living on the edges of Chinatown when, he recalled, “they told
me to get out one day.” Nearly forty years later, he still remembered it was a
Sunday. “Sunday morning,” he told the interviewer, “they come together and
drive Chinese out.” The vigilantes marched Low to the nearby wharf, where
he joined Wong Chin and nearly four hundred banished Chinese. There they
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109
waited under armed guard to embark on the Queen of the Pacific, bound that
after noon for San Francisco. But before the steamer could depart, it was
halted by a writ of habeas corpus . A merchant named Wan Lee had man-
aged to escape the expulsion and, with the help of an attorney, filed a legal
complaint with Chief Justice Roger Greene on behalf of his partner Gee Lee.
Judge Greene, a known sympathizer of the Chinese community, demanded
that the vigilantes deliver all the Chinese to his courtroom the following
morning.41
“We stayed on the wharf all night,” recalled Low, “they bring us little
black coffee and little bread in morning. We pretty hungry.” When they ar-
rived at Greene’s courtroom, the judge informed the crowd of Chinese men
that they had a legal right to remain in Seattle. Greene reportedly told the
Chinese, “You need not fear. All the power of the territory and of the United
States stands ready to defend you. . . . Those of you who remain will be safe.”
In addition to these reassuring words, Greene also made it clear that the “gen-
eral sentiment of the community is against the Chinese staying here.” With
Chinese merchants in the courtroom to translate, the workers understood
the warning.42
Although Wan Lee had fought to save them from expulsion, more than
half of the Chinese workers deci ded to leave Seattle immediately. Perhaps
they did not trust merchants to protect them against overwhelming vio lence.
Perhaps they resented contractors who were complicit in their exploitation
on the labor market. Most likely, they simply felt that better opportunities
lay elsewhere. Strategies of mobility had served them well in the past, when
they traveled across the ocean and then through the U.S. West in search of
opportunity, and it could save them once again. The workers, many of whom
moved seasonally in search of contracts, had made far fewer financial and
social investments in the local community than their social betters. Why
stay and brave the vio lence in Seattle, when they could take free passage
to San Francisco, finding safety in numbers and the next job? Once the
Chinese were escorted back to the wharf, 196 men and women, as many as
could fit, embarked on the Queen of the Pacific.
Low, for his part, “ didn’t intend to go.” Then the vio lence escalated. Since
the Queen was not large enough to hold all the Chinese who wanted to leave,
Low recalled, “some has to go back to the city and stay until next steamer.”
But as the Chinese returned to their damaged and vacant homes, escorted
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by local militia, they were met by shouts from an angry mob. Amid flying
insults and high excitement, the Chinese could only watch as a fight broke
out between vigilantes and militia. “Chinese people get excited when gun
begin to sound,” recounted Low, “so they throw [down their] shoes, blan-
kets and every thing and run.” 43
Though he had declined the one- way ticket to San Francisco, Low
now thought better of it. He gathered a few friends and ran for the woods,
tel ing them “we got to protect ourselves. We got to get out of here.” The danger
was too great. After hours of frantic discussion, they deci ded to sneak back
into Seattle that night hoping to stow away on a steamer bound for Victoria,
British Columbia. They made it to the wharf undetected, but they found
the harbor dark and empty. As night turned to day, Low tried to hide among
bales of hops stacked for shipment, but a watchman quickly discovered him.
Fortunately, the watchman sympathized with his plight and went in search
of a militiaman. Together the two white men approached the bales of hops
and called to Low: “John, John, Come out . . . we gonna feed you.” But
finding somewhere that would serve a Chinese man proved difficult. While
the first restaurant refused their business, eventually the militiaman procured
sandwiches. The kindness of strangers bought Low a meal and the time he
needed to avoid expulsion. “Next day soldiers come,” remembered Low, “then
we all right.” 44
With the arrival of troops, Low abandoned his plan to flee. The archive
privileges men like him who stayed behind and had the chance, months or
years later, to tell their story. In truth, Low’s final decision was an uncommon
one. The next steamer bound for San Francisco took approximately a hun-
dred and ten Chinese mi grants, while the following steamer loaded another
ninety. As departures mounted, reasons to stay dwindled. Shops and build-
ings stood empty, labor agreements broke down, and social networks crum-
bled. Chinese workers continued to pour out of Seattle, seeking safety and
opportunity in California, Oregon, British Columbia, and China.45
The Chinese who chose to depart left behind no written explanation of
their decision, but perhaps their logic was simple. De cades later, a Chinese
worker in San Francisco, Chin Cheung, remembered those days of riot and
agitation, when “young fellows thr[e]w stones, cans, bricks; make lots trou ble
all the time.” “But I always run away,” Chin Cheung recalled, “I have no
trou ble that way because I never stay a[nd] fight.” His explanation for fleeing
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111
was a quick calculation of power: “Many white people; same number
Chinamen, lots of fight; not many Chinamen, no can fight.” That is, when the
odds are long, run.46
Over a period of eigh teen months in 1885 and 1886, Chinese across the U.S.
West experienced vio lence on an unpre ce dented scale. Chinese remem-
brances of this time make it
clear that each story of survival was highly
personal and specific to the individual, to the time, and to the place. And
yet vio lence also had collective and cumulative effects. Kee Low, for example,
considered himself a witness to vio lence he did not see. Though he was living
in Seattle at the time, Low described the Squak Valley massacre in his per-
sonal history. He recalled, “they start[ed] some Chinese picking hops out in
Squak Valley” but then “at night [the vigilantes] go out around Chinese tents
and they kill three.” Though he told the interviewer, “I was there at that time.
I see that. I know,” his words were not meant to be taken literally. He was
safely in Seattle, but still felt the massacre’s rippling effects and experienced
its trauma as his own. Low understood that these expulsions were not
isolated incidents, but a collective campaign to “drive Chinese out of the
country.” He was not in Squak Valley but knew the bullets were still meant
for him.47
For the Chinese, the outbreak of vio lence seemed a coordinated attack
toward a specific end. Ah Hung, a Chinese mi grant, told California’s Marys-
vil e Appeal in February 1886, “The Chinese . . . have come to the conclu-
sion that the pres ent movement is diff er ent from preceding ones, that it will
prove to be a permanent one.” The scope of the vio lence had convinced Hung
that “[the people of the] Pacific Coast are earnest in their desire not only to
restrict [us] coming into the country, but to expel those already here.” Hung
understood immigration restriction and violent expulsion as two prongs of
a single attack. Together, law and vio lence sought to deny the Chinese any
place in Amer ica.48
The Chinese minister, Zheng Zaoru (Cheng Tsao Ju), came to a similar
realization in the wake of the Seattle expulsion. In pleading letters to Secre-
tary Bayard, Zheng wrote, “The Chinese have been driven by vio lence out
of many places, their dwellings burned, their property robbed, and, in some
instances, the people murdered, without any serious attempt being made by
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the authorities to prevent these acts or afford protection.” The vio lence no
longer appeared to be a series of isolated incidents. Zheng heard rumors that
“many other towns and cities” were forming groups “with the avowed pur-