by Judy Yung
Then in October 193 5 , when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) went into action, 331 single men and 164 families were transferred from the relief rolls to the federal work program. The idea was to shift the unemployed from direct relief to work relief before family relations eroded any further and men became too dependent on public assistance.20 WPA jobs required U.S. citizenship and benefited both bluecollar and white-collar workers. Because most unemployed Chinese men fell into the former class, they were employed by WPA mainly as unskilled labor on public projects-constructing public buildings, parks, roads, bridges, and airports. Fong was one of the "lucky" ones hired under the WPA program. As he put it,
Then Roosevelt come out and he created the word NRA [National Recovery Administration], gave work to people, a lotta guys, but later on it got so sour. Like they got jobs, for instance I went in on one of them, a railroad job inside Elko. They paid seventy-two dollars, I think, and they give you jobs like that so you can make a living, and I worked there a few months. It was awfully hot, hot like everything! In fact you could see the blaze movin' around hotly. And people come back workin' in the railroad, they come back for dinner they practically stink because their clothing been in that sunlight so damn long. And that's the way it is, I lived out there. You don't go nowhere, it's right out in the middle of the desert, see, that's the way it is. There's quite a few jobs similar like that that Roosevelt put out later on.21
But not everybody who needed a job qualified for relief work. Because U.S. citizenship was required, many Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos could not apply, which explains their low percentages on the WPA employment rolls as compared to blacks. In 1940, for instance, only 7 percent of unemployed Japanese in California, 12. percent of Chinese, and 114 percent of Filipinos were employed by WPA, as compared to 6o percent of all unemployed blacks in the state.22 The monthly wage of $6o for a minimum of izo hours of work was four times the sum granted in direct relief for single men, but there was no supplementary assistance in cash, medical services, surplus clothing, or food. Since each family could have only one WPA worker, for large families of six to eleven persons WPA employment resulted in less money per month than direct relief; thus wives were forced to look for work in order to make ends meet.23 Over 70 percent of racial minorities on relief projects did hard work as semiskilled and unskilled labor.24 Whether one was considered "lucky" in landing a WPA job was therefore debatable, according to Fong:
They're always trying to push you down to these jobs, no matter how much or how good you are. Like that NRA was like all the other things, at first you don't realize, but nevertheless, in due time and in the long run, you find out it will never have any advantage toward the Chinese. The thing is that they do it in such a close way, undercover way, that you barely notice it. So, as I said, that NRA, "Never Rebuffed American," pretty soon the thing went sour all around and people began to sneer at it.2'
However, over zo percent of racial minorities employed by WPA were in the white-collar sector.26 Chinese American men like Lim P. Lee and women like Ethel Lum were hired as social workers, recreation aides, teachers, and clerks at prevailing professional rates to dispense financial aid to the needy, extend services to individuals and families, and help improve living conditions in the community. Aside from earning this group of white-collar workers a salary, their services assisted individuals through the depression and were instrumental in procuring a public health clinic, nursery schools, improved housing and street lighting, and English and job training classes for the Chinatown community. Overseeing a staff of twenty-five, Lim P. Lee headed the Real Property Sur vey in 1939, which resulted in the construction of low-cost public housing in Chinatown after World War II.
Chinese Americans also had the option of returning to China to escape the depression. As Jade Snow Wong wrote in her second autobiography, many Chinese did just that, which explains the uncongested streets and vacancy signs on Chinatown apartment buildings she recalled seeing as an eleven-year-old.27 China was at the time also in the thick of fighting the Japanese on its soil and in need of any help that overseas Chinese could give. One editorial in CSYP recommended that Chinese with technical skills consider returning to China to work and that those with capital use it to develop industries in China.28 Another article provided instructions on how Chinese Americans could reclaim their assets in their ancestral villages.29 This was also the time when the Chinese Digest published the winning essays on "Does My Future Lie in China or America?" From 1930 to 1934, 7,000 Chinese departed from the port of San Francisco, while only z,5oo entered.30 Most had sufficient personal resources to return with their families, but at least twenty-five older men took advantage of the U.S. government's offer of a one-way ticket to go home alone in 1936.31 According to the Chinese Digest, most of these men were hard-working laborers in their senior years and now on relief. The periodical interviewed four of the repatriates, "all [of whom] had wives, children, and grandchildren in China and were glad to be sent back to their families to spend their remaining years."32
In contrast, large numbers of unemployed Mexicans and Filipinos were pressured to return home. Between 1929 and 1939, approximately half a million Mexicans, or close to one-third of the Mexican population in the country, were either deported or repatriated, even though many had been horn in the United States.33 In 193 5, in response to the demands of exclusionists on the West Coast, Congress passed the Repatriation Act, which offered Filipinos on the mainland free transportation back to the Philippines on the condition that they not return to the United States. Only 2,190, or approximately 7 percent of the Filipino population, took up the offer and repatriated.34
Chinese workers actually came out ahead after Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (a.k.a. the Wagner Act) in 1935, which granted organized labor the right to collective bargaining. Between 19 3 6 and 1941, as a result, the strength of the labor movement doubled in numbers. Communist Party organizers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations were particularly instrumental in promoting industrial unionism and recruiting minority and women workers into unions. Strikes became commonplace across the country as workers successfully fought for improved hours and wages in the needle trades, coalfields, steel and rubber industries, and agriculture. Chinese and black workers in San Francisco, who had historically been excluded from the labor movement, joined white workers in picket lines during the maritime strike of 1934 and the hotel strike of 1937, after which they became welcomed members in major labor unions such as the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union, Culinary and Miscellaneous Workers' Union, and Apartment and Hotel Union.35 Chinese and black workers were also involved in picketing the Alaskan Packers' Association, which resulted in the abolition of the contract system and the establishment of the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association.36 Given the overall liberal temper and China's alliance with the United States at the time, local unions openly solicited Chinese members and worked with them to protest fascism abroad.37
Because of the foresight of the younger generation of Chinese American businessmen, who were quick to take advantage of the repeal of prohibition laws and promote tourism, recovery for San Francisco Chinatown came earlier than for the rest of the country. Chinese import trade, which had declined precipitously since 1931, recovered to about a fourth of the i 9 z9 level by 193 5.38 To encourage tourism, entrepreneurs renovated stores, invested in modern bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, and created an atmosphere of "Old Chinatown" to attract outof-towners attending conventions and the 1939 International Exposition at Treasure Island. As Fong observed:
Then around the middle of the Depression the change come along and everything goes zoom! The whole place begins to look different because they start building it up.... Before that, not that there wasn't any bars in Chinatown, but they weren't noticeable nowhere. They were just down, beatup places, the bars for low-down people and drunks and all that. But during the Depression a bar changed names to some kind of a club, and then all those fan
cy names comes. Then the same thing happens with the restaurants.... In fact, maybe Chinatown is the place that start everything rumbling during the Depression. Such as like these dance halls, the bars, and all that.39
Taking note of the brisk business these newly established enterprises were enjoying, the Chinese Digest concluded in 1936 that Chinatown had "passed its winter" and was "now greeting the loveliest of all seasons, the season of gentle awakening and of growth. 1140 As the New Deal continued to provide jobs for the unemployed and as business improved in Chinatown, the number of unemployed Chinese dropped from 2,300 in 193 5 to 700 in 193 7.41 For the rest of the country, however, recovery was delayed by a recession in 1937-38 and was not frilly achieved until the United States entered World War II in 1941.
Ironies of the Depression: Immigrant Women
Compared to their men and the rest of the country, Chinese women in San Francisco were relatively unaffected by unemployment. Following the national pattern-in which the unemployment rate for men, who were concentrated in hard-hit production jobs, was almost twice as high as for women, who tended to work in protected clerical and service occupations-Chinese immigrant men who had been chiefly employed as seasonal workers, laundrymen, and cooks were the first to lose their jobs. Immigrant women, however, who worked primarily in the garment industry, continued to find employment. This situation made some immigrant wives the breadwinners, albeit marginal ones, during a time when their husbands were unemployed and relief funds were either unavailable or inadequate to support their families. While a significant number of urban black and white working-class families experienced discord and disintegration during this time, Chinese women were able to keep their families together by providing them with emotional support, stretching family means, and tapping resources in the community. And while the reversal of gender roles proved controversial in many parts of the nation,42 the social status of Chinese women in San Francisco was elevated as a result of their indispensable contributions.
Statistics from the 1930 U.S. census indicate that many more men than women became unemployed at the beginning of the depression. Nationally, the unemployment rate was 7.1 percent for men and 4.7 percent for women; in San Francisco, 8.3 percent for men and 4.3 percent for women.4" As a number of studies have pointed out, women experienced a lower unemployment rate owing to the rigid sex segregation in the labor force. Clerical, trade, and service occupations, in which women dominated, contracted less than the male manufacturing occupations.44 The same held true in San Francisco, where men employed in the manufacturing and mechanical industries suffered the highest rate of un- employment.45 Because the Chinese were concentrated in ethnic enterprises instead of in large-scale industrial occupations, they were less affected by these citywide contractions than other groups. The majority of the unemployed Chinese, in fact, had worked outside the Chinatown economy, as reported in a 19 3 5 study of the occupational history of Chinese men on relief. Single men who became unemployed came from the ranks of farm and seasonal workers (25.5 percent), laundrymen (zi.3 percent), family and hotel cooks (i5.z percent), and restaurant workers (14.1 percent). Among the family men, the hardest hit were family and hotel cooks (20.4 percent), clerks and salesmen (17-1 percent), and semiskilled workers (16.8 percent).46
An industrial survey of women workers, by contrast, reveals that in 1935 approximately 564 Chinese women (a 54 percent increase over 1930) were employed in sixty-five factories (forty-nine of which were garment factories), though 19 percent of their husbands were unemployed at the time.47 The majority of these women were foreign-born and married with young children. A second survey of living conditions in Chinatown in 193 5 shows that among families on relief, unemployed men outnumbered unemployed women. Of 163 families, z9 percent (48 families) were found to be on some form of relief; 37 of these families had an unemployed male head of the household. Of the zz families without fathers, only half of the mothers were on relief; the remaining half were reportedly supporting their families with their earnings as garment workers.4s It should be noted that the larger number of unemployed males relative to females among families on relief was due in part to the preferential treatment accorded male-headed households by relief programs. As Linda Gordon points out in her study on the welfare state, most welfare programs have been designed to shore up male-breadwinner families and keep women subordinate in the male-dominated family wage system.49
The stories of Law Shee Low and Wong Shee Chan (my maternal grandaunt) illustrate how the depression affected Chinese immigrant women with large families, as well as the strategies some women employed to cope with the hard economic times. Law recalled, "Those were very poor and tough years for us. When my uncle who became penniless died and we were all asked to help with the funeral expenses, we could only afford to give a few dimes. We were so poor, we wanted to die." Her husband, who had been working twelve hours a day at a Chinatown restaurant for $6o a month, lost his job. For a brief period, he lived and worked in the city of Vallejo. "Just made $4o at a restaurant. He gave me $zo and kept $zo for himself. I sewed and made another $30 or $40. So we struggled on."50 When he was laid off again, she be came the chief wage earner. There was still sewing to keep them going, and her husband helped her sew at home and did the shopping. But when even sewing became scarce for a spell, they had to dip into their small savings and seek outside help. "Joe Shoong [the owner of a large garment factory and Law's clansman] was giving out rice, so my husband went and carried back a fifty-pound sack. Food was cheap then. A dime or two would buy you some sung [vegetable or meat dishes to go with the rice ]."-'l With an unemployed man and four dependents in the house, the family qualified for free milk and food rations from the federal government. And when FERA established a much-needed nursery school in Chinatown, two of their children were among the first to enroll.
Wong Shee Chan recalled similar hard times. Betrothed when ten years old and married at seventeen to my great-grandfather Chin Lung's eldest son, Chin Wing, she was admitted to the United States in 1920 as a U.S. citizen's wife. They initially farmed land that Great-Grandfather had purchased in Oregon but, soon after, returned to San Francisco and worked at Chin Lung's trunk factory on Stockton Street. In 193 z, Great-Grandfather decided to retire to China to avoid the depression, leaving what business assets he had left to his sons. Chin Wing tried to maintain the trunk factory, but to no avail. The family had to pawn Grandaunt's jewelry in order to make ends meet. "Those were the worst years for us," recalled Grandaunt, who by then had six children to support. "Life was very hard. I just went from day to day." They considered themselves lucky when they could borrow a dime or a quarter. "A quarter was enough for dinner," she said. "With that I bought two pieces of fish to steam, three bunches of vegetables (two to stir-fry and the third to put in the soup), and some pork for the soup."52 For a brief period, while her husband was unemployed, the family qualified for federal aid; but after he went to work as a seaman, Grandaunt was left alone to care for the children. She had to find work to help support the family. Encouraged by friends, she went to beauty school to learn how to be a hairdresser. At that time, there were sixteen beauty parlors in Chinatown-the only businesses in the community to be run by Chinese women.51 After she passed the licensing examination, which she was able to take in the Chinese language, Grandaunt opened a beauty parlor and bathhouse in Chinatown, working from 7 A.M. to I I r.M. seven days a week. She kept the children with her at the shop and had the older ones help her with the work. Thus she was able to keep the family together and make it through the depression.
Women across the country likewise found ways to "make do." When their husbands and sons became unemployed, many white women entered the labor market for the first time, finding work in female-dominated occupations-clerical work, trade, and services. In the decade between 1930 and 1940, the number of married women in the labor force increased nearly 5o percent despite mounting public pressure that they not compete with men for jobs. Often, in fact, it was not men who were edged out of jo
bs by white women, but black women-particularly domestic workers-who were already at the bottom of the labor ladder. Concentrated in the marginal occupations of sharecropping, household service, and unskilled factory work, black women suffered the highest unemployment rate among all groups of women. 14 Most other workingclass women were able to keep a tenuous hold on their jobs in the industrial and service sectors even as their husbands became unemployed. Women's marginal wages thus often kept whole families alive. Women also learned to cut back on family expenditures, substituting store-bought items with homemade products. They planted gardens, canned fruits and vegetables, remade old clothing, baked bread, raised livestock, rented out sleeping space, and did odd jobs. Pooling resources with relatives and neighbors provided mutual assistance in terms of shared household duties and child care. As a last resort, some women turned to prostitution. And among those who qualified, many went on relief 55