Tong Wars

by Scott D Seligman

  Tracy dispatched plainclothesmen to each of the railroad’s ferry stations on the New York side of the Hudson and detailed twenty detectives to watch the headquarters of both tongs. He ordered the immediate arrest of anyone who made the slightest hostile move. Eggers sent in fifteen of his own men as reinforcements. But no Chinese thugs arrived that night. Or if they did, they were never found.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  On August 29, 1905, the coroner began his inquest into the Chinese Theatre murders. Four On Leongs had been gunned down, and nine Hip Sings—including Mock Duck—were accused of complicity in their deaths. Mock Duck and Tom Lee were both present at the Criminal Courts Building but were kept apart until the proceedings began, one in the coroner’s office and the other in the district attorney’s. Assistant District Attorney Kernochan served as prosecutor; the attorney Eli Rosenberg appeared for the prisoners. And the first witness called was Mock Duck himself.

  The wily Hip Sing denied being in the theater on the evening of August 6, and he had an airtight, not to say inspired, alibi: he had been at the Oak Street Police Station when the killings occurred, posting bail for friends arrested for gambling. He claimed he had heard nothing about the incident until he learned of it at the station.

  “Why did you go to the station house?” Kernochan demanded.

  Mock Duck replied, “To bail out my friends.”

  “Where did you go first in Chinatown?”

  “I met Ong Lung Ong, and he asked me to go to the station. I met him in Pell Street and then got a lawyer for the men under arrest.”

  “Do you know the gun shop of R. J. Hartley & Co. at No. 313 Broadway?”

  “No.”

  “Did you buy pistols there on Friday previous to the shooting?”

  “No.”

  “Did you try to buy cartridges there on Friday previous to the shooting?”

  “No. I was never in the place.”

  “Did you try to buy cartridges in any store on the Friday previous to the shooting?”

  At this point, Mock Duck’s attorney advised him not to answer to avoid possible incrimination.

  Next up was the Chinese Theatre’s janitor, who said he had seen Mock Duck on the premises on the night of the murders with seven or eight men carrying what appeared to be packages of firecrackers. He also identified six of the defendants. An On Leong echoed his testimony and placed all the prisoners at the scene. Mock Duck’s denial of the purchase of revolvers was also contradicted. A white newspaper reporter claimed he saw him buy guns and cartridges at Hartley’s on Broadway a few days before the shooting.

  The coroner’s jury found Mock Duck directly responsible for the killings, and he was held on $5,000 bail. And without leaving their seats, they sent four of the other eight defendants to the Tombs to await indictment as accessories. These were held without bail; the four others were held as witnesses on $500 bond each.

  The trial, however, would never take place. The authorities kept Mock Duck behind bars for most of the balance of the year. They surely already knew they lacked sufficient evidence to convict him—he had not been on-site at the time of the shootings, and all of the evidence against him was circumstantial—but they were in no hurry to let him out. Finally, just before Christmas, they dropped the case.

  Many in Chinatown shuddered at the news: Mock Duck was once again on the loose.

  Chapter 9

  Profit Sharing

  Chinatown was decorated with lanterns and banners on January 24, 1906, and festivities to welcome the Year of the Horse had already begun. The crackling of firecrackers could be heard throughout the quarter.

  All the better to drown out the sound of gunfire.

  A little before 2:00 p.m., “Black Devil” Lee Toy and three other On Leongs turned onto Pell Street and entered No. 32, a lodging house, to pay a New Year’s call on friends. As soon as they disappeared inside, half a dozen Hip Sings stole into the alley next door, positioning themselves so they might watch the street without being seen. Others staked out locations on the stairway leading up from the basement of No. 28.

  After the visit was over and the men emerged, a volley of shots rang out. Windows shattered, and sightseers and pedestrians ducked for cover. As the On Leongs attempted to flee, one was felled by a bullet in his chest, and another took one in his skull. When he stirred, he was mercilessly shot in the head a second time, blowing off most of his jaw. Both men were dead before the ambulance arrived. The other two were wounded but survived. Lee Toy, deeply loathed by the Hip Sings, was hit twice in the chest.

  “It sounded like Gettysburg,” exclaimed Captain Tracy, who had been around the corner when the first shots were fired. His officers arrested two On Leongs and four Hip Sings, including Louie Way—who had attempted to shoot the On Leong treasurer, Chu Gong, the previous March—and “Girl Face” Yee Toy, who had helped plan the Chinese Theatre shootings. All but Yee Toy were unhurt and taken to Elizabeth Street. Yee, however, had been shot through both shoulders and suffered a fractured skull. He was rushed to Hudson Street Hospital, along with the two wounded On Leongs, who were placed under armed guard lest their enemies make a second attempt at them.

  When police searched the bodies of the two deceased On Leongs, they found on one of them several dollars’ worth of quarters wrapped in red paper. These were New Year’s gifts of “lucky money” for unlucky children who would now never receive them.

  Tracy was optimistic about the chances for conviction. “If we can get a Chink or two locked up for good,” he predicted, “there is a chance to stop these outbursts.”

  The Pell Street killings were a surprise for two reasons. First, Chinese New Year is traditionally a time of comity, when friendships are renewed, obligations discharged or wiped clean, and enmities forgiven. An act of war committed at such a time signaled blatant disrespect for Chinese conventions and sensibilities.

  Chinese New Year is also a time for making amends, and the second reason the attack was unexpected was that several days earlier the local Chinese themselves had made an effort to resolve the problems between the two tongs before the New Year began. The newspapers reported that the matter had been adjudicated before a “Chinese court”—that is, the Chung Hwa Gong Shaw—and that a truce had been struck. In fact, on January 20, Captain Tracy had been invited to a meeting at Chinatown’s City Hall. Although he was given no details, he had been assured the two tongs had agreed to bury the hatchet and that peace would prevail in Chinatown in the New Year.

  But that was just the point. The Pell Street shootings were not technically violations of the cease-fire, because it wasn’t slated to begin until the following day. This had been an under-the-wire attempt by the Hip Sings to clean up unfinished business while they still could. After the coroner remanded the Hip Sing offenders to the Tombs without bail, he discovered a familiar reason for the attack: the two murdered men were slated to testify the following Monday as alibi witnesses in the trial of the men who had so savagely mutilated Hop Lee, the laundryman, the previous summer. Now they would no longer be available to give the butchers a free pass. Although the grand jury indicted the men, not one was ultimately convicted.

  Guests had been invited and musicians engaged for a grand banquet to mark the truce, but there was so little trust between the rival tongs, especially after the killings, that the On Leongs never appeared. The newspapers speculated whether their absence had been a precautionary measure or a calculated insult that signaled war anew.

  Chinese tong men detained in connection with the January 24, 1906, Chinese New Year ambush on Pell Street were photographed together with their arresting officers on the steps of the Elizabeth Street Police Station.

  The next day, the New York Sun observed, brought “the most quiet New Year that Chinatown ever saw.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  Dissatisfied with Captain Eggers’s performance, Commissioner McAdoo h
ad abolished his Central Office “Chink Squad,” as the New York Post crudely described it, and transferred him to Brooklyn late in 1905. He also restored full authority over Chinatown to Captain Tracy at the Sixth Precinct. McAdoo went out of his way to humiliate Eggers when he made the announcement, telling the press that “weak men must be weeded out at once,” possibly because he had gotten wind of a remark Eggers made in an unguarded moment that suggested he might have loyalties other than strict obedience to McAdoo himself.

  “I will continue to be a sergeant of police,” Eggers had said, “and Mr. McAdoo might not always be a Commissioner of Police.”

  Eggers’s comment was prescient, although it didn’t take a crystal ball to recognize that McAdoo was out of favor with Mayor George B. McClellan. His zeal in combating vice had been blamed for the slim margin by which the mayor had been reelected in 1905. Before the end of the year, McClellan asked for McAdoo’s resignation and appointed the retired army brigadier general Theodore A. Bingham to his post. He also named Rhinelander Waldo, a Spanish-American War veteran, first deputy commissioner of police.

  Bingham, a West Point graduate with government experience, was an avowed anti-Semite and a racist. Like many New Yorkers, he blamed foreigners for most of the city’s crime. He reserved special enmity for Jews and called Chinatown a “plague spot that ought not to be allowed to exist.” Waldo, not yet thirty, had no experience in politics, but he was a member of the Fifth Avenue smart set. Connected by blood to many old Knickerbocker families, he was already a millionaire. The plucky Waldo had served in the Philippines, “where there are more Chinese in a minute than New York has in a year,” the New York Sun assured its readers, “so he knows something of their tricks and their manners.”

  On January 26, in one of his first official acts, Waldo paid a visit to Chinatown, where Captain Tracy took him on a walking tour. Their first stop was 18 Mott, still adorned with decorations to welcome the Year of the Horse, only a day old. They were received by Tom Lee, who continued to be known informally as the “mayor of Chinatown,” and by Gin Gum. Offering Waldo a cigar, Lee explained that the On Leong Tong was composed of peace-loving businessmen firmly opposed to the disorder in Chinatown and assured him it was the Hip Sings who were the hatchet men and the troublemakers. Waldo politely asked that Lee use his influence to preserve peace, and Lee, of course, agreed to do his utmost.

  Waldo’s next stop, naturally, was 12 Bowery, where Mock Duck and Wong Get also spouted their usual propaganda: the Hip Sings were the reformers, allies of the Parkhursts, trying to stop gambling. Although one wall of the meeting hall was adorned with an image of a Chinese god, Waldo couldn’t help but notice that the opposite wall bore a crayon portrait of none other than Frank Moss, who for a decade had served as the patron saint of the New York branch of the Hip Sing Tong. Waldo left them with a veiled threat: if the fighting did not stop, he would flood Chinatown with police and lock up all the troublemakers. Mock Duck appeared unperturbed.

  “I want to compliment you for having your precinct so well in hand,” Waldo told Captain Tracy. “I think you will be able to put down these tong wars,” he added. But Tracy’s tenure at Elizabeth Street was to be short-lived, because Commissioner Bingham was less impressed with him than Waldo was. Less than a month later, by Bingham’s order, Tracy was transferred to Jamaica, New York, where, within a few years, he would be accused of graft and suspended. Captain Herman W. Schlottman, a twenty-one-year veteran of the force, exchanged places with Tracy and became the new warden of Chinatown.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  In January 1906, a sixty-two-person delegation from China led by two imperial commissioners came to the United States to study political and social institutions. One of the delegates was thirty-one-year-old Dr. Froman F. Tong, a physician with the title of special commissioner to the United States. Tong had studied in the United States before and this time planned to stay for postgraduate work at Columbia University. He would later be named vice-consul in China’s New York mission.

  Together with Consul Shah Kai-Fu and several prominent Chinatown leaders, Dr. Tong approached the Court of General Sessions judge Warren W. Foster—who had once been entertained at an On Leong dinner—to ask him to mediate the conflict in Chinatown. A Tammany Democrat, Foster graciously consented to do what he could to bring about peace.

  On January 30, at the Criminal Courts Building after court had recessed for the day, he met with representatives of both tongs—eleven people in all. Neither Tom Lee nor Mock Duck attended; Gin Gum, second-in-command, headed the On Leong delegation, and the treasurer Huie Gow led the Hip Sing contingent. Their lawyers were also on hand. Foster sat behind a large desk, and the attendees formed a semicircle in front of him, Hip Sings on one side and On Leongs on the other. He explained that he was sitting not in his judicial capacity but rather as a mediator who wished only to help stop the carnage. The tong leaders had been called together by the authorities before but never by a judge and never for mediation. This was a first.

  Rhinelander Waldo, ca. 1908. He became New York City police commissioner in 1911.

  “This business has gone on too far already, and it must be stopped at once,” he cautioned. “The rivalry between the tongs has reached such a stage that it reflects on the good name of this city, and threatens the business of that particular section. Now, if you wish your business to go on successfully, if you want to encourage sightseers down there, you must stop this bloodshed. If you can’t agree among yourselves, then the law will bring about a settlement.”

  It was, of course, an empty threat. The law had proven quite powerless to stop the bloodshed up to then, which was why mediation was being tried in the first place. Attorneys for both tongs asserted that all their clients wished was peaceful coexistence, which, after so many years of fighting, might well have been true. Consul Shah seized on that statement and suggested that the two declare an immediate armistice and set the goal of agreeing on a written peace treaty in a week’s time. In the meantime, both tongs would appoint commissioners empowered to sign a binding agreement.

  Judge Warren W. Foster, dubbed “the Great White Father of Chinatown” for his peacemaking efforts.

  The pact, as negotiated, forbade the purchase or carrying of deadly weapons by tongs or their members. It limited the tongs’ receipts to member dues, prohibiting the levying of tribute on local businesses or the acceptance of payments for concessions or favors. It included a pledge not to interfere with each other’s property. Each tong was to designate a representative to meet monthly with the Chinese consul to adjudicate any infractions and punish misconduct. And each pledged a bond of $1,000 to ensure adherence to all obligations.

  That was the extent of the public agreement. But the two tongs had also reached a tacit understanding—not codified in the treaty and likely not even discussed in English—concerning the traditional territorial boundaries that separated them. Mott Street would henceforth be understood as the preserve of the On Leongs, and Pell would be recognized as Hip Sing territory, with Doyers Street considered neutral ground.

  And although the pact was clear that no “protection” money was to be collected by anyone, there was nonetheless a widespread belief that tong business would continue more or less as usual, except that the Hip Sings would now be let in on the graft, free to exact tribute from businesses within their sphere of influence—that is, Pell Street.

  “The truth of the treaty, which will be a surprise to Judge Foster,” the New York Times confided, “is that the On Leongs have consented to share the profits derived from the protection of Chinatown’s gambling industry with the Hip Sings.”

  Signing was set for February 6. The On Leong delegation got to the criminal court on time, but the Hip Sings did not; they arrived only after the On Leongs had left in a huff. Dr. Tong persuaded the Hip Sings to sign anyway, and Chong Pon Sing, Huie Gow, and Yip Shung, president, treasurer, and secretary, respectively, all did
so. The On Leongs didn’t sign until two days later. A ratification meeting, including the formal exchange of copies, was scheduled, with a celebratory banquet to follow. In the meantime, both tongs were expected to file bonds with the judge to guarantee their observance of the treaty.

  As soon as the On Leongs had committed, the Hip Sings issued three hundred invitations to a New Year’s banquet at the Hung Far Low Restaurant on Pell. Among those asked were the police commissioner, Bingham; the deputy commissioner, Waldo; judges of the Supreme Court of New York County and the Court of General Sessions; and, of course, the Parkhurst superintendent, McClintock. Tom Lee was also on the invitation list, together with several of his On Leong brethren, and although the On Leongs failed to show, Lee did observe the nicety of sending written regrets. Without a single On Leong in attendance, but with forty-five policemen on patrol to be sure the peace was kept, the Hip Sings turned the event into a victory celebration.

  Lee’s decision to boycott did not mean the agreement was void; it was surely a precautionary measure. A signed agreement notwithstanding, the On Leongs still had little reason to trust their longtime antagonists, especially in a Pell Street venue. The following night, they held a more muted affair of their own on Mott. Gin Gum insisted that Hip Sings had been invited, but even if they had wanted to come, having been snubbed by the On Leongs the night before, they could hardly have attended and preserved face.