by Judy Yung
While Chinese nationalism was what motivated Eva Lowe to engage in politics, Alice Fong Yu, the first Chinese American schoolteacher in the San Francisco public schools, was influenced to contribute to the community by her family upbringing as well as Christianity. 111 "Hoga gow [good family training]- that's what my parents gave me," said Alice. Growing up in Washington (Nevada County), California, she became aware early on of racial discrimination:
It is surprising, isn't it, that [in] just a small one-room school and [among] just a handful of children, they still thought we were queer. They would sing "Ching Chong Chinaman" and all those things to make fain of us and make you feel like nobody, and then when we would play games, they wouldn't hold our hands, as if they would be contaminated by our hands, and so they wouldn't accept us.
The Fong children, disappointed and hurt, sought comfort from their parents, who told them, "You shouldn't let those things bother you, because they are just barbarians; that's why they treat you like that. You have culture. Our people have a long history. Wait until you get your education and go back to China, where they will look up to you. But these people are barbarians; don't let them worry you."
Although their white classmates shunned them and the teachers made them feel inferior, the church welcomed them into its fold, sending a Sunday school teacher to Vallejo Chinatown, where the family had moved in 1923, to teach the children the Bible and take them to Christian retreats. "The Christians were the ones who accepted us in the early days," Alice said, and "gave us a chance to intermingle with other races." Encouraged both by her parents and by her involvement in the YWCA Girls Reserve, Alice became a community activist after she moved to San Francisco. During the 193os, Alice was involved with many Chinatown organizations, including the Square and Circle Club, YWCA, Chinese Needlework Guild, and Tahoe Christian Conference. A founding member of the Square and Circle Club, Alice helped raise funds for Chinese orphans, the elderly, and needy families. She also worked with other community organizations to register American-born Chinese to vote, campaign for the reelection of Congresswoman Florence Kahn, and lobby for improved housing and recreational facilities in Chinatown. Alice became particularly well known in the community for planning and coordinating Square and Circle fashion shows as fund-raisers and leading the boycott against the wearing of silk stockings during the War of Resistance Against Japan (11937-45). In her capacity as a teacher at Commodore Stockton Elementary School, she also helped found the Chinese chapter of the Needlework Guild, which provided clothing and shoes to needy children in Chinatown. 112 "The mothers couldn't speak English well enough to join the P.T.A., so we started our own group," she explained. "We got together to sew and talk about things. Whenever we found out about an impoverished family, we would help them get on welfare."' 13
In 1933, Alice joined with Ira Lee and Edwar Lee to organize the first Lake Tahoe Chinese Young People's Christian Conference, in which second-generation Chinese from all over California came together to discuss common problems and concerns. According to Ira, he, Al ice, and Edwar hoped to duplicate the social gospel spirit and fellowship that so moved them at YMCA conferences. They also wanted to provide a place for young Chinese Americans from different church denominations to meet outside of Chinatown. What started as an experimental retreat at the Presbyterian conference grounds at Zephyr Point, Lake Tahoe, continued as an annual conference until the i96os. At the beginning, topics of discussion focused on Christianity and the situation in China. Then in the later 1930S, as the group grew to more than one hundred participants, including some non-Christians, interest turned to discrimination, marriage and family life, political involvement, community problems, and the question of serving China. Resolutions were passed calling for increased social integration, vocational guidance, involvement in American politics, adoption of Western-style marriages and family life, and recreational interests beyond mah-jongg and dancing. Although the discussions lacked structure or follow-through, the retreats provided the second generation with an opportunity to socialize, share views, and vent frustrations. The benefits accrued were less to the church or the community as to the individual participants, who learned new organizational skills and carried the ideas for and commitment to social change back to their respective communities. One offshoot of the Tahoe Conference was the Chinese Young People's Forum, an interdenominational group started by Alice that met weekly at Cameron House to continue discussing ways to solve the community's problems. 114
Thus, although the depression was a time of economic strife for most of America, for a significant number of Chinese women in San Francisco it was a time of stable employment, social growth, and political activism. This positive side became even more evident when Chinese women went on strike for the first time against the National Dollar Stores, the largest garment factory in Chinatown.
Joining the Labor Movement: The 19 3 8 Garment Workers' Strike
Chinese women's hard-won victory in their strike against National Dollar Stores was due as much to their determination for social change in the workplace as to the economic and political circumstances of the depression that nurtured their union activism. Their ability to sustain a strike for ro5 days, supported by a white labor union as well as left organizations in Chinatown, proved that Chinese women could stand up for themselves and work across generational, racial, gender, and political lines to gain better working conditions in Chinatown. Although little was gained in terms of higher wages and job security (the factory closed a year after the strike), the experience moved women well beyond the domestic sphere into the political arena: it raised their political consciousness and organizing skills, allowed them to become part of the labor movement and to find jobs outside Chinatown, and, most important, marked their first stand against labor exploitation in the garment industry. The strike also provides insights into the class and gender dynamics of ethnic enterprises and the possibilities of organizing Chinese women workers in the garment industry.
In 193 8, when the strike against National Dollar Stores was launched, the garment industry was the largest employer in Chinatown. More than one thousand women worked in sixty-nine garment factories in Chinatown. Most of these factories were small, with fewer than fifty employees toiling under sweatshop conditions: poor lighting and ventilation, long hours, low wages. All were nonunion and operating on a piecerate basis, earning wages ranging from $4 to $16 a week-as compared to union workers who received from $19 to $3o a week for a shorter workweek.' 15 Ben Fee, a labor organizer and Communist Party member, stated in CSYP that Chinatown's garment industry had reached a crisis situation in part because of the depression, but more so because small contractors with inadequate capital and unsound management practices persisted in underbidding each other and cutting workers' salaries in order to compete in the highly seasonal industry. As a result, he pointed out, there was a high turnover and shortage of skilled labor, the stiff market competition allowed jobbers to keep contract prices low, and factories proved unable to meet NRA labor standards. He advocated that Chinese contractors unite to eliminate competition among themselves and that workers organize to improve their own lives. He also had the foresight to call for ethnic unity across class lines: "Overseas Chinese, be they factory owners or workers, are all living under the economic repression of another race, so we should work together to come up with a long-term plan that will enable us to co-exist with each other."' 16 Needless to say, he was not heeded.
Unlike other Chinatown garment shops, National Dollar Stores, which employed i z 5 Chinese workers, mostly women, was vertically integrated; that is, it controlled all aspects of production, from manufacturing to contracting out to retailing. Owned by Joe Shoong, one of the wealthiest Chinese businessmen in the country, the National Dollar Stores factory specialized in women's light apparel for exclusive distribution to National Dollar Stores' thirty-seven retail outlets on the West Coast. In 1937, gross sales for the chain amounted to $7 million, and profits to about $170,000. Joe Shoong's salary that ye
ar was $141,000, with dividends earning him another $40,000. Known as a generous philanthropist in the Chinatown community, he lived in a large stucco house in Oakland, had five cars, and was a Shriner as well as a thirty-seconddegree Mason.''7
Garment workers in San Francisco Chinatown. (Courtesy of Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University)
In all of Chinatown, Joe Shoong's factory was the cleanest and most modern, and it offered the best wages-supposedly $13.3 3 for a fortyeight-hour week, the minimum rate in California. The strike came about only after many frustrating attempts by workers to negotiate steady employment and increased wages. "Wages was the main issue," recalled Sue Ko Lee, who was a buttonhole machine operator at National Dollar Stores before the strike. "That time the [minimum] wage law was already in, but we weren't getting that. We didn't keep the hours according to law. And there was already a homework rule but they were sending work out to homeworkers."lls According to Jennie Matyas, labor organizer for the ILGWU at the time, the workers first approached the union for help in 1937.
Japan and China were at war. Most of the Chinese here had relatives back home. They all felt very loyal to their home relatives and wanted to support them. [Yet] the workers in the National Dollar factory found themselves underbid by other workers in Chinatown. They found that the work went to other Chinese contractors who did the work cheaper than they did. . . . They decided to supplicate the owner to remember that they needed money to send home to China and wouldn't he provide them with more work.119
Unable to get a positive response from the factory owner, garment workers decided to organize themselves. This was the moment the ILGWU had been waiting for, because tip to that point they had been unsuccessful in organizing the Chinese.
In San Francisco, where Chinese dominated the garment industry and often underbid union shops on contracts with downtown manufacturers, the strategy the ILGWU adopted was to organize and control the Chinese or drive them out of business. "The situation is getting more desperate," Matyas told the Chinese Digest, "and if the Chinese contractors and dressmakers do not heed the writing on the wall and organize, it is possible that the American garment workers, backed by the ILGWU, may declare war on the Chinese garment industry." The Digest, recognizing the veiled threat behind the labor union's determination to organize Chinatown workers, stressed that the community could no longer afford to remain outside the labor movement:
With the tide of the labor movement as it is in the United States today, Chinese who work in any big scale industry cannot remain aloof from the trend of unionization.... As the situation stands now, failure on the part of the Chinese to organize will mean that they will only continue to work for low wages and long hours. Eventually, as we have already hinted, it may mean that the American garment workers' unions may take drastic measures to combat the competition of the Chinese in this industry. In such an event the Chinese, in all probability, will be the losers.'20
Historically, however, Chinese workers had been regarded by white workers as unfair competition, scapegoated and attacked during hard eco nomic times, relegated to unskilled, low-wage, and dead-end jobs, and actively excluded from the larger labor movement; it was therefore not surprising that they resisted the ILGWU's attempts to unionize them. If Chinatown garment shops were to have any work at all, they had little choice but to bid low on contracts and cut into their workers' wages to make up the difference. Chinese workers who did not speak English, had few marketable skills, and faced racial discrimination in the labor market had little choice but to accept the poor working conditions in Chinatown. To compound matters, they were usually also beholden to their employers, who in most cases were kin.
Chinese workers at the National Dollar Stores factory were aware of the union's motives. "They wanted to organize us," said Sue Ko Lee, who became involved in the 193 8 strike. "They tried and tried, but they couldn't break the barrier. The white shops were already organized and they were clamoring that the contractors were sending work out to the Chinese workers, and that was a thorn in their sides. So they had to organize the Chinese. 11121 This was indeed the situation in 1934, when Rose Pesotta, a committed labor organizer for the ILGWU, blew the whistle on the deplorable working conditions in the Chinese "subterranean sweatshops" in an attempt to bring Chinatown into the union's fold.112 NRA code enforcers were called in, and a number of Chinese garment shops were cited or shut down for code violations. 121 But try as she did, Pesotta was not successful in unionizing Chinatown shops. She simply could not convince Chinese employers or employees that the ILGWU could protect them from racial discrimination in the open market. Nor could she get other trade unions to support her on the issue.124
Next Ben Fee was hired by ILGWU to organize garment workers in Chinatown. The son of an American-born Chinese interpreter, he arrived in the United States in 192.2. when he was thirteen years old. He was one of the first Chinese to be recruited into the U.S. Communist Party and was active in such leftist organizations as the Chinese Students Association, the Alaska Cannery Workers Union, and the Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association. Neither the Chinatown establishment nor the ILGWU appreciated his radical views. Shortly after his appointment, he was forced out of the ILGWU because of his Communist background. In 1938, Ben Fee left San Francisco for New York because of marital problems that had destroyed his credibility in the Chinese com- munity.'25
Jennie Matyas, who next took on the challenge, had more success. A dedicated Socialist and union organizer, she was able to gain the trust of the Chinese workers because of her gender, strong personality, and cultural sensitivity. According to Sue Ko Lee, "She's not Chinese, but she's a woman. She's dedicated and she's honest. Now you read about the corruption in the unions. I don't think you could corrupt her. She really wanted to help us. . . . Everyone trusted her within the group." 126 Jennie Matyas, moreover, arrived on the scene when the legal protections accorded by the Wagner Act were bolstering the greatest organizing drive in the history of the American labor movement. Whereas in 1933 only 6 percent of American workers were unionized, by 1939 a f=ull 17 percent were; female membership in unions grew from zoo,ooo in 1924 to 8oo,ooo in 193 8. Women strikers were now highly visible in the pecan fields of Texas, the garment plants of Michigan, and retail stores throughout Ohio. 117 In 1933 alone, the ILGWU, which had been on the wane since the 19 zos, increased its nationwide membership 400 percent (from 40,000 to zoo,ooo strong) after mounting a massive organizing drive in sixty cities. Operating on the principle of racial equality, it welcomed large numbers of black and Mexican American women into its rank and file.12s But organizing Chinese workers proved more difficult-until frustrated workers at the National Dollar Stores factory decided enough was enough.
With Matyas's assistance, eighty workers at the National Dollar Stores signed certification cards favoring a union shop, and in November 1937 Local 341 of the Chinese Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (LGWU) was chartered under the ILGWU. In response, the factory fired four of the active union members and demoted Willie Go, the chief organizer. (Later, however, under pressure from the ILGWU, which threatened to call a strike during the Christmas season with support from the Retail Department Store Employees' Union, which had jurisdiction over employees at Shoong's retail stores, National Dollar Stores reinstated the men.)129
National Dollar Stores then insisted that a vote be taken to prove that the workers wanted the ILGWU as their collective bargaining agent. The bilingual-ballot election, supervised by the regional National Labor Relations Board on January 24, 193 8, endorsed the ILGWU, and an agreement was reached the next day between factory and union representatives. Wage increases, to be agreed upon at a later date, would be paid retroactively to January z4, 19 3 8, and the factory would become a closed shop (all employees had to join the union), with all hiring to be done through the union. Two weeks later, National Dollar Stores announced that it had sold the Chinatown factory to Golden Gate Manufacturing, though it was keeping the retailing sector. The garmen
t workers saw this move as a subterfuge to freeze them out and break up the union. Now having to negotiate with the new owners, G. N. Wong and Hoo Joe Sun-the former foreman and manager of the National Dollar Stores, respectively-the ILGWU demanded that National Dollar Stores buy all its manufactured goods from Golden Gate and that Golden Gate guarantee work for a minimum of eleven months of the year and ensure this minimum with a $io,ooo bond. These demands were in addition to recognition of a union shop and $zo wages for a thirty-five-hour workweek. National Dollar Stores and Golden Gate Company refused to comply with any of these demands, and on February z6, r93 8, at 8 A.M., the Chinese LGWU officially called a strike and began picketing the factory and three National Dollar retail stores in San Francisco.130
According to the Chinese LGWU's official releases and flyers directed at the public, the unscrupulous practices of the National Dollar Stores were the catalyst that caused io8 workers to go on strike:
We are on strike for increased wages to support our livelihood.... We have tried repeatedly to negotiate in good faith with our employer, but he has consistently used the oppressive tactics of the capitalist to delay us. He forced us to have an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board which resulted in recognition of our union. His legal representatives signed an agreement with ours, but he continued to use all kinds of unscrupulous tactics to try and break up our collective effort, even to the point of changing the ownership of the factory. His goal is to break our ricebowl strategy. We have no choice but to strike for fair treatment.131