No sooner had Lee settled into lower Mott Street than he began his outreach to New York’s white power elite. The Six Companies had been doing the same in San Francisco for more than a decade. Late one August afternoon in 1878, he hosted a dinner for Edmund E. Price, a well-known criminal attorney; Colonel George H. Hart, Price’s partner; and a New York Herald reporter. Also present was Wong Chin Foo, a lecturer and journalist who was a prominent member of New York’s Chinese colony, a fluent English speaker, and already a good friend of Lee’s. Always gracious, the soft-spoken Lee produced fine cigars from a humidor and ushered his guests to a table laid with “snowy napkins and silver service that would not have disgraced a petit souper on Murray Hill,” the reporter later wrote.
Lee pulled out all the stops. He greeted guests on the front stoop in a high silk hat and engaged two white maids to serve tea and slice bread; male Chinese servants prepared and served the food. A roast suckling pig nestled in herbs was brought to the table, followed by sauces, salads, stewed chicken, fruit, and cake. Lee himself provided musical entertainment; he sang and accompanied himself on two traditional Chinese instruments. And he hosted more American guests at an even more lavish repast at the dawn of the Year of the Rabbit early in 1879. The New York Herald dazzled its readers by publishing the entire menu.
Tom Lee quickly became the spokesman for the Chinese colony. In November 1878, he opined to a New York Sun reporter on the virtues of citizenship for Chinese, naming several who had already naturalized. The following January, he sounded a similar theme with a New York Telegram reporter. He dismissed Chinese who returned home as “disappointed and homesick,” noting proudly, if not grammatically, that “this country good enough for me.”
Indeed it was. Tom Lee was home. He had an American wife and no intention of ever living in his native land again.
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It didn’t take long for Lee to realize that if he wanted to build bridges to New York’s politically powerful, most roads led to Tammany Hall. The Society of St. Tammany—named for a leader of the Native American Lenape tribe—had gotten its start as a social and fraternal organization in the late eighteenth century and had dominated New York politics since the middle of the nineteenth century. Over time, it had developed into a well-oiled political machine that kept Democrats of its choosing in power in the city and sometimes the state. Through an intricate system of political patronage and kickbacks, Tammany bosses had acquired functional control over government, and they used it for many decades to lucrative advantage.
Tammany Hall’s hold on power depended on securing enough votes on Election Day to keep its candidates in office, thus enabling them to profiteer from public works projects, offer employment, dole out gifts to friends and allies, and bribe political rivals. Once a nativist movement, it had begun to reach out to the growing number of immigrants from Europe, especially Ireland and later Italy, who were flooding the city. Many were unemployed, broke and desperate, and more than willing to pledge their loyalty to whoever would provide them with a livelihood.
Earning their allegiance required a complex grassroots organization able to reach deeply into the city’s neighborhoods. Ward bosses oversaw a network of precinct captains who built relationships with the families in their jurisdictions. Many were first- or second-generation immigrants themselves who could speak with newcomers in their native tongues. They helped new arrivals secure food, clothing, shelter, and jobs, either with government or with companies beholden to the bosses. They also assisted in securing emergency loans and solving minor legal problems. Most important, they facilitated immigrants’ applications for citizenship, which, of course, was necessary to turn them into voters. In exchange for all of this, those who received patronage were expected to vote the Tammany ticket. It was the responsibility of those same captains to make certain that the men showed up at the polls for city, state, and even federal elections and knew exactly whom to choose. They also stuffed ballot boxes when necessary.
Chinese were not of much interest to the machine in this regard because most could not vote, and after 1882 the Exclusion Act ensured that they couldn’t become citizens. But there were other ways Chinese could support friends in the political firmament, and Tom Lee soon figured them out. The most obvious was through offering financial support, which he did regularly. Another involved hosting grand outings worthy of any Tammany boss.
On September 15, 1881, he arranged a picnic on Staten Island for fifty of his countrymen and a handful of invited guests. Among the white guests were some powerful figures: Maurice Hyland, a saloon keeper and Sixth Ward party boss; James Cowan, a well-connected civil and criminal attorney; and the Fourth District Court judge John A. Dinkel, who routinely heard cases involving Chinese claimants and defendants.
The guests assembled on Mott Street, festooned with flags to mark the occasion. As a bugler from New York’s Sixty-ninth Infantry Regiment sounded a call, everyone boarded horse-drawn coaches. The parade proceeded to the Battery without incident, save some heckling from lower-class whites, who derided the Chinese travelers loudly as “haythen” and “yaller rat eaters.” When they arrived at the pier, the police held back other passengers to allow the Chinese to board the ferry together.
They arrived to a Western breakfast of ham and eggs, clam fritters, fried eel, potatoes, bread, and coffee, and—with a bit of instruction from the American guests—the Chinese consumed it with knives and forks, in what the New York Times approvingly deemed “a thoroughly Christian manner.” There was swimming, a tug-of-war, and a hundred-yard race: Lee, playing the patriarch, awarded a $2.50 prize to each winner. There was music from Chinese percussion, wind, and stringed instruments. A caricature artist sketched attendees. And those who had brought opium wafers partook of the narcotic with impunity. After dinner, the guests departed for home, where they were welcomed by an explosion of Chinese firecrackers and Roman candles.
Truth, a New York daily, hailed the event as a signal that New York’s Chinese were learning to do and act as Americans: “Not only are they assuming the manners of Americans, but they are rapidly becoming thorough New Yorkers.”
And, indeed, many were. In at least some sense of the term.
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Lee quickly eclipsed Wo Kee as head of the Chinese colony, and early in 1880 he established a new organization. The Loon Yee Tong, whose name translates as the “Chamber United in Friendship,” was part trade union, part social club, part fraternity, and part political advocacy group. Although it was portrayed to the outside world as a Chinese Masonic lodge, in no sense was it organically related to traditional Freemasonry. It was, however, an outgrowth of a venerable Chinese institution. The Loon Yee Tong was the New York incarnation of a much larger and older organization sometimes called the Hongmen.
The Hongmen had gotten its start in China early in the Qing dynasty as a sworn brotherhood cum gang of outlaws committed to restoring the earlier Ming dynasty, which had been Chinese rather than Manchu ruled. It had arrived in North America with the earliest Chinese immigrants. It went by different names in different cities: it was known as the Chee Kung Tong, or “Chamber of Universal Justice,” in San Francisco and elsewhere in California and by the turn of the century would assume that name in New York as well.
Broadly speaking, the Loon Yee Tong served fraternal functions in the Chinese community similar to those of the Freemasons or the Elks. It charged an initiation fee of $10 and levied annual dues of $5. Within days, 150 men had signed up, and within a month it had amassed several thousand dollars. A year later its membership doubled to 300, and it had entirely eclipsed Wo Kee’s Polong Congsee. But there were apparently no hard feelings; Wo Kee would become a staunch Lee ally.
The Loon Yee Tong soon occupied sumptuous quarters at 18 Mott. Its “Joss” Hall—the term, a corruption of the Portuguese deus, meaning “God,” described a Chinese idol—was decorated with banners and Chinese paintings,
including one of Confucius and one of the emperor. At one end stood a shrine, ten feet high and six feet wide, with an altar where offerings to Guan Gong, a virtuous third-century general and hero, were made on certain days of the month and important Chinese festivals and whenever someone needed divine intervention in a life event or good fortune for an evening of gambling.
Rooms in the rear were given over to members in need, whether ill or out of work. Because nearly two-thirds of the fellows were laundrymen, the organization paid special attention to their interests. Its bylaws, for example, did not permit any member to start a laundry within two city blocks of an establishment owned by a brother.
Like all Hongmen chapters, the Loon Yee Tong had secret rites. Initiations involved suspending a sword over a neophyte’s head as he recited thirty-six oaths of allegiance. The candidate’s finger was pricked and a drop of his blood spilled into a cup of wine, which was then drunk by all to symbolize his admission into a blood brotherhood. And a rooster was ritually decapitated as an illustration of what would befall him if he broke his oath to obey tong leaders without question. Loyalty and obedience were valued above all else.
From the start, it was clear that the Loon Yee Tong would also have a political agenda. One officer predicted to a New York Herald reporter that “before the next Presidential election we will have over five hundred Chinese voters in New York, and then we can speak not only as residents, but as citizens.” His dream was not to be realized, however, because in 1882 the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act ended any further naturalization of Chinese.
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Shortly after the Loon Yee Tong was established came a startling announcement: Under Sheriff John B. Sexton, a powerful Tammany Hall figure, had appointed Tom Lee a deputy sheriff of New York County. Lee’s relationship-building efforts had paid off handsomely: he had asked for—and certainly paid for—the nomination. Although not a member of the police department, a deputy sheriff was a civil law enforcement officer authorized to make arrests, issue summonses, and carry firearms, and the appointment was ostensibly made to help keep order in Chinatown, where Chinese were sometimes taunted and assaulted by Americans and where fights occasionally broke out among the residents themselves.
Lee was the first Chinese to hold any government office, appointive or elective, in New York’s history. And he wore his new title, quite literally, as a badge of honor, affixed to his suspenders. The New York Herald reported that “the Celestials are delighted over the success of his application, and feel sure that they will not be molested in their own neighborhood.”
But not all of New York’s “Celestials”—a term that meant “Chinese people”—were so delighted with one of their own strutting around flashing a badge. Vesting so much power in one individual—first by the Six Companies and now by municipal authorities—caused resentment, and it did not take long for the new deputy sheriff to be tested. Soon after he took office, a fight broke out in a gambling house at 17 Mott after a sailor claimed to have been cheated out of $2.50. He appealed to a local boardinghouse keeper named Lee Sing for help, and the dispute quickly grew into a general riot that spilled out onto Mott Street.
Tom Lee, named deputy sheriff of New York County in 1880, was the first Chinese to hold any government office, appointive or elective, in New York’s history.
The two beat policemen stationed nearby were unequal to the task of breaking up the brawl, so when one spied the new deputy sheriff, he called on him for assistance. Aided by Loon Yee Tong members, Tom Lee attempted to restore order, but he and several others were knocked to the pavement by Lee Sing, a bulky man with a considerable weight advantage. He blackened both of Tom’s eyes and kicked him as he fell.
The police overcame and arrested Lee Sing, but the Court of General Sessions later acquitted him of felonious assault, infuriating Tom Lee. Irritated at the lack of respect shown him and his position, he sued Lee Sing for $10,000 in damages. It was highly unusual to involve civil authorities in an altercation between two Chinese; such disputes were normally adjudicated within the Chinese community. But because Tom Lee was the authority within the community, he was hardly in a position to mediate.
When the case was heard, both the plaintiff and the accused appeared in court in Western dress. The New York Sun noted that the portly Lee Sing was as big as two Tom Lees. Lee Sing persuaded the jury he had acted in what he believed was self-defense. He not only won the case; the judge assessed Tom Lee $100 to cover Lee Sing’s legal fees.
Although no one could have known it at the time, Lee Sing’s assault was the first blow dealt between the two Chinatown factions that would eventually become the Hip Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong.
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There was nothing professional about the New York Police Department of the 1880s. There were no accepted hiring standards beyond the requirements that officers be citizens of the United States, residents of the state for at least a year, and free of criminal convictions. The longshoremen, teamsters, and other blue-collar workers who became officers, many of whom were Irish immigrants, were not well educated, but they were well connected, because it took a politician to appoint them. The job of policeman was much sought after; for most, it was considered a step up in the world. By the mid-1880s, recruits were required to submit to examination by a board before they could be hired, but it still took a $250 payment to a local politician to seal the deal.
New York’s police were governed by a board of four Tammany-approved commissioners. These were appointed by the mayor with the advice and consent of the Common Council—later the Board of Aldermen—for staggered terms of six years and were paid $5,000 per year. One superintendent, 4 inspectors, 34 captains, 126 sergeants, 142 roundsmen, more than 2,000 patrolmen, and 73 doormen made up the force. The city was divided into thirty precincts led by captains, each under the jurisdiction of an inspector.
There were also detectives, twenty-five at headquarters and one to four in each precinct, who investigated crimes. Like roundsmen and patrolmen, detectives earned $800 per year. Sergeants, assigned four to a precinct, earned $1,250 annually; captains were paid $1,800 and inspectors $3,000. Police officers were a step above longshoremen and on their way toward middle-class wages. Neither seniority nor merit brought salary adjustments; promotion was the only path to a raise.
The commissioners exercised broad powers over internal discipline, appointments, and promotions. They also had charge of the Bureau of Elections and the power to choose election inspectors and poll clerks. Both sets of responsibilities offered myriad opportunities for graft and abuse, however, and it was well understood that the department was corrupt, from the commissioners on down. In 1875, a select committee of the state assembly had found that
one of the greatest difficulties experienced in procuring an efficient Police has been . . . the continual intermeddling of politicians with the government of the force. Patrolmen have generally been appointed through political influence; promotions have been made on the same ground, and even details for duty have frequently been regulated in the same manner.
Tammany Hall demanded standard fees for promotions, payable to political bosses. An officer could become a roundsman for $300; a roundsman could advance to sergeant for $1,600, and a sergeant to captain for $12,000 to $15,000. Because such payments were normally beyond the reach of the individuals involved, many of whom struggled just to make ends meet, most of those hopeful of advancement had to find backers to raise money.
The obvious sponsors, apart from friends and family, were the merchants who operated within their jurisdictions. They had the most to gain from good relations with local police, and those with resources were often willing to “invest” in a promotion or were pressured into doing so. Payback was expected not only in cash over time but also in other ways. When the lenders were gambling bosses, saloon owners, or brothel keepers who operated outside the law, they expected to be permitted to
continue to do so on a wink and a nod.
Looking the other way was easy for a new sergeant or a captain. Raising the money to repay lenders was more challenging. An accepted way to amass funds was to shake down smaller merchants in exchange for “protection.” In Chinatown, however, this was problematic because most Chinese couldn’t speak English very well and no one on the force could speak Chinese. There was, therefore, a gap between the police and the Chinese merchants. Whoever filled it would be well positioned for lucrative rewards.
The idea was not lost on Tom Lee.
Chapter 2
The Gamblers’ Union
Tom Lee’s businesses in San Francisco, St. Louis, and Philadelphia had earned him enough to rent and furnish his first New York home at 20 Mott. By 1880, he had also leased buildings at 2 and 4 Mott Street, where he opened a variety store and a tobacco shop and sublet the rest of the space. With Chinatown growing quickly, his businesses—legitimate and otherwise—prospered over the next several years, and by 1883 his net worth was estimated at $200,000.
Even if that was an exaggeration, he had amassed enough to purchase, rather than simply rent, real estate in the nascent Chinese quarter. In 1880, when four Mott Street properties had become available, only the Polong Congsee, a collective, had had the resources to make an offer on them. But by 1883, at least four Chinese capitalists, Lee among them, were in a position to buy property in their own right, albeit with mortgages.
In early April, it was suddenly announced that Wo Kee—who had started with $10 but was now worth an estimated $150,000—had bought 8 Mott for $8,500. Other Chinese merchants bought No. 10 for a similar amount and No. 15 for $5,000. Tom Lee purchased the best property—No. 18—for a princely $14,500.
Tong Wars Page 4