Tong Wars

by Scott D Seligman

  When the police arrived, they, too, began shooting, and Chinese gunmen returned fire. Calm was eventually restored, but the battle was most notable for its collateral damage. A twenty-nine-year-old Russian Jewish locksmith lay dead on the street, as did another, unidentified man. A fifty-eight-year-old Jersey City freight conductor was critically injured and eventually died, as did two Hip Sings.

  Ten other people, including two women, were wounded. Bullets had even injured two horses. Shards from windowpanes in half a dozen buildings on both sides of Pell lay on the pavement. The police arrested two Hip Sings and three On Leongs and held all for murder.

  The proximate cause of the scuffle, the district attorney believed, was the murder indictment the day before of Eng Hing and Lee Dock, the men accused of shooting Tom Lee’s nephew Lee Kay the previous February. Lee Kay had died of his wounds in June.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  November saw the trial of Jung Hing, the Kim Lan Association marksman who slaughtered Yee Toy, the Hip Sings’ top gunslinger. There were several eyewitnesses, so conviction ought to have been a sure bet. But the defense attorney argued it was a case of mistaken identity and that accusing Jung had been a Hip Sing plot. After ten hours of deliberation, one juror refused to convict, and the trial ended in a hung jury. Jung, well-known to the police, was retried in December, however, and this time the vote for conviction was unanimous.

  Captain Tierney sent reinforcements into Chinatown. Armed with a search warrant—Mayor Gaynor insisted on these—they forcibly entered Hip Sing headquarters on December 7. Their worst fears were confirmed when they discovered a small arsenal: seven .38-caliber revolvers, freshly oiled and fully loaded, and a double-barreled Winchester rifle. The police felt sure they had nipped “a good sized tong shooting” in the bud.

  On December 13, the judge sentenced Jung Hing to die in the electric chair during the week of January 20, and he was immediately spirited off to Sing Sing, where the execution was to take place. But on appeal, his lawyers got his sentence reduced to a term of not less than seven and a half, nor more than nineteen and a half, years.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  Mock Duck did not leave for China, as many had expected he would in order to avoid the possibility of incarceration, but his wife did. In fact, Tai Yow went to China in December 1911, a month before his arrest. Whether she ever returned is unclear, but Mock Duck was finished with her in any case. Without benefit of a divorce—if indeed he had ever legally married her in the first place—on January 16, 1913, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the thirty-four-year-old took another wife. His new bride was the eighteen-year-old Manhattan-born Frances Toy, the mixed-race daughter of Cuban-born Josephine Mendry, a white woman, and the late Charles Toy, a Chinese merchant.

  Not much of a honeymoon was possible, because just over a month after his wedding, on February 28, 1913, his guilty verdict was affirmed, and in early March the new groom was off to Sing Sing.

  Then something remarkable happened. Gin Gum, secretary of the On Leong Tong and a fifty-year-old widower, fell in love, too—with thirty-seven-year-old Josephine Toy, Frances’s widowed mother and thus Mock Duck’s new mother-in-law. The story was later told that Gin Gum approached his archenemy through an intermediary to ask for her hand. Although Josephine worked as an interpreter and had income of her own, she was probably living with Mock Duck and Frances, and given the views of women at the time—they were generally considered to be under the care of men—such a conversation might actually have occurred.

  If Mock Duck was consulted, he likely raised no objection, because on April 29, 1913—when he was already imprisoned in Ossining, New York—Gin Gum tied the knot with Josephine Toy in the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Toledo, Ohio. In so doing, the On Leong became the Hip Sing’s stepfather-in-law.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  The end of May 1913 brought an announcement that peace was at hand.

  The impetus for the latest round of negotiations had come from the Chinese consul, who met with the On Leongs, the Hip Sings, and the Kim Lans. But he failed to bring them to closure, so he appealed to District Attorney Charles S. Whitman, who decided to play hardball. Whitman threatened to prosecute for blackmail and conspiracy anyone who would not sign a truce.

  Negotiations continued with the assistance of the Chinese Merchants Association, as well as Captain Tierney and the perennial Judge Foster. The Kim Lans held out for a large indemnity from the Hip Sings, who had killed several of their members, but eventually agreement was reached. On May 21, placards spelling out the accord were posted in Chinatown over the seals of all three societies and the Merchants Association.

  There were several reasons that agreement, so elusive in the past, was achieved this time. Raids on opium dens had cost Chinatown dearly, and not only in money: drugs, weapons, and paraphernalia had been seized. Three Chinese—two Hip Sings and an On Leong—had been condemned to death and were awaiting execution. And the relative calm in Chinatown in the months since the Pell Street shootings, coupled with the return of gambling, had resulted in an upturn in business. Everyone wanted things to stay that way.

  The treaty, signed on May 28 in Judge Foster’s chambers, ostensibly put an end to the Third Tong War. Gin Gum, who came with four colleagues, signed for his society. Tom Lee never showed up for such events; although he was always the ultimate authority in the tong, he had not held the office of president for some time. Five Hip Sings, led by the national president, Fong Foo Leung, a thirty-six-year-old China-born physician, represented their organization, and three officers of the Kim Lans were present as well. All wore Western clothing, and only two or three signed in Chinese. Times had changed since the fall of the dynasty, and these were strong indications that the men had begun to see themselves not as Chinese so much as Chinese Americans.

  The agreement opened all of Chinatown to members of all the societies; there would theoretically be no more On Leong or Hip Sing spheres of influence. It mandated that property taken from one tong by another be returned and that tong members avoid creating disturbances and refrain from interfering in pending court cases. It also provided for dispute resolution by the Chinese Merchants Association and, failing that, adjudication by the police captain.

  A large dinner to celebrate the peace was set for June 12, and because the pact struck in New York also extended to other cities, delegates from Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, and other eastern cities were invited to Manhattan. A sixty-one-course banquet for several hundred had been arranged at the Port Arthur Restaurant on Mott Street.

  Apart from representatives of the tongs themselves—even Charlie Boston, recently released from the penitentiary, was there—many New York luminaries came to Chinatown for the event. The district attorney had another commitment, but half a dozen of his assistants attended. Judge Foster, of course, was present, as were Vincent Astor, the son of the millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and a businessman and philanthropist in his own right; the suffragettes Inez Milholland and Cora Carpenter; the U.S. congressman Henry M. Goldfogle; the New York County sheriff, Julius Harburger; and the prominent attorneys Abraham Gruber and Edward Lauterbach. And of course, the Chinese consul was there, beaming throughout the evening.

  Even before the banquet, however, people began to express doubts about the treaty’s staying power. The district attorney’s office got an earful from some Chinatown figures about the role of the Chinese Merchants Association, which was to be the sole arbiter of differences but was not universally viewed as a neutral party. Although the On Leong Tong sometimes went by that English name, this was a different organization. But Chinatown wasn’t that large, and the membership of any organization of merchants would almost by definition overlap substantially with that of the On Leong Tong. The concern that it could not be counted on to be fair was therefore quite possibly justified.

  There was also an issue with the arbitration section of the a
ccord, which violated the oaths tong members took upon joining in several respects, and hence was likely to be ignored, especially when brother tong members were in trouble with the law. And finally, there was fear the fragile agreement would be unable to withstand the execution of a tong member by the government.

  Even the police were pessimistic. They welcomed the news, but they did not relax their vigilance. Bluecoats remained visible throughout Chinatown.

  Chapter 13

  Chinatown: Renovated, Disinfected, and Evacuated

  After a disgruntled former city employee shot Mayor William Jay Gaynor in the summer of 1910, John P. Mitchel, president of the Board of Aldermen, assumed his duties temporarily. It didn’t take long for the acting mayor to clash with the police commissioner, William F. Baker, and in October, Gaynor—who would live out his remaining three years with a bullet lodged in his throat—returned to a written report alleging incompetence and insubordination on Baker’s part. Among the accusations were his failure to suppress lawlessness and vice in Coney Island and a resumption of the use of plainclothesmen, which Gaynor had expressly forbidden.

  Within days, Baker stepped down. In his place, Gaynor appointed James C. Cropsey, a Brooklyn lawyer who was a personal friend. But it didn’t take long for Cropsey, who had no experience in law enforcement, to run afoul of the mayor. He did not obey instructions to choose officers from the civil service lists, and he, too, was out of office in a few months. So Gaynor, who must have been embarrassed at the quick turnover in department heads, turned to a known commodity: Rhinelander Waldo, who had served as first deputy commissioner under Theodore Bingham.

  Waldo had earlier been appointed fire commissioner by Gaynor, and he had performed well in the position. He had adhered strictly to the civil service list in filling positions in his department, one of Gaynor’s requirements, and was credited with doing away with graft and favoritism. He assumed his new position on May 23, 1911.

  Determined to make his mark, the new police commissioner immediately appointed a special twenty-man team to break up gangs and prevent crime. Known popularly as the Strong-Arm Squad, they soon became infamous for cruel and abusive treatment of those they arrested. They were not notably active in Chinatown, but their excesses came back to haunt Waldo after one of their members was reported to have gunned down a former business partner to stop him from testifying against him in court. Although no one accused Waldo of personal corruption, persistent reports of graft in the department eventually engendered calls for his resignation for incompetence and dereliction of duty. Prominent among Waldo’s critics was District Attorney Charles S. Whitman.

  Waldo was between a rock and a hard place. He would lose credibility if he did not defend the men under his command, but he certainly realized he had a serious corruption problem in his department. So he decided to counterattack and try to shift the blame.

  If graft remained a problem on the force, he asserted, it was because policemen were underpaid. A first-year officer earned only $800 a year—about $20,000 in 2016 dollars—less 2 percent earmarked for his pension. It was simply not enough for a married officer to make ends meet. By one estimate, he would need to earn at least $1,000 just to meet expenses and $1,400 to permit him to amass a modest nest egg. “Their lives are such as to tend to make bad men of them,” wrote one observer. “The pressure to become a grafter is there.” In his 1913 budget, therefore, Waldo requested a starting salary of $1,000 for new officers and an increase of $100 per year for those already on the force. And he brazenly requested that his own salary of $7,500 be doubled.

  Waldo also struck back at Whitman. He asserted publicly that there would be far less gambling if the judges and the district attorneys would do their jobs. To make that case, he took the unusual step of publicizing a list of nearly four hundred gambling resorts raided by the police the previous year. The inventory was notable for the small number of convictions that followed. He named not only the gambling bosses but also the owners of the properties where they were operating—some of whom were prominent New Yorkers. The implication was that it was the judicial system that was failing to act, and for the wrong reasons.

  Waldo’s list included several Chinatown properties, and it offered a rare window on who was actually behind the gambling dens. Although some establishments continued to be run in the names of individual owners, as in the past, the list made clear that the tongs themselves had gotten into the business in a big way.

  The Chinatown establishments listed were

  Chu Company: Nos. 12, 14, and 19 Doyers Street and Nos. 20½ and 24 Pell Street

  On Leong Tong: No. 15 Doyers Street, Nos. 15, 16, 17, 24, 26, and 32 Mott Street

  Hip Sing Tong: No. 17 Doyers Street and Nos. 8, 10, 16, and 19 Pell Street

  Chu Lock: Nos. 16 and 18 Doyers Street and Nos. 23 and 25 Pell Street

  Mock Duck: Nos. 21 (two joints) and 22 Pell Street

  Four Brothers’ Society: Nos. 13 and 20 Pell Street

  The tongs’ earlier role had been only to exact protection money from individually held gambling halls. The fact that ownership of many of them was now in their hands, and possibly had been for some time, was significant. Because Hip Sing–owned parlors were certainly not paying tribute to the hated On Leongs, the cause of the friction between the groups had changed. The matter of who would stand between the police and the gambling halls was no longer the main bone of contention.

  The On Leongs’ monopoly was now clearly a thing of the past. But in any event, recent clashes had been about other things: “ownership” of a young woman; arrests of compatriots; elimination of informers and tong leaders; and the heading off of potentially damning court testimony. Graft would still be a fact of life, but future battles would center on defections, protecting their brethren, and saving face. And most would break out on their own, without any formal declaration of war.

  ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

  In the eyes of the men of the Chinese Merchants Association, charged with refereeing the May truce, another tong war would have a devastating effect on business. But like the police, they still stubbornly believed the best way to ensure quiet was to suppress gambling. The summer of 1913 saw an initiative to accomplish just that.

  For several weeks, members of the association gathered evidence against what seemed a growing number of betting parlors in the Chinese quarter. And in early August, its head, Lee Frank, presented the information to Assistant District Attorney Aaron J. Conlon. Accompanying him were nine Chinese men willing to testify that the establishments were indeed gambling houses.

  This effort was actually part and parcel of the association’s responsibilities under the treaty. In cases in which the law was being violated, the organization was obliged to aid in prosecuting the offenders. And to demonstrate that they were acting evenhandedly, the merchants made sure their list of eighteen establishments—which must have been quite similar to Waldo’s list—included both On Leong and Hip Sing properties.

  Conlon pledged to secure warrants to search the dens, although it is not clear whether any raids took place. The following month, however, came the news that Mayor William Jay Gaynor had collapsed of a heart attack on a transatlantic voyage and died. It had been Gaynor, a Democrat, who had promoted Waldo. But the mayor’s immediate successor, the Republican Ardolph L. Kline, had no love for him, and the police commissioner was widely expected to be fired, although Kline made no immediate move to do so. He was only slated to be in office until Gaynor’s term expired in just over a hundred days.

  The gambling bosses could hardly wait to see the end of Waldo. They anticipated that his departure might end the campaign being waged against them. The commissioner, however, was determined to keep up the pressure as long as he remained in office.

  Two weeks after Gaynor’s death, Waldo made a surprise visit to Chinatown and didn’t like what he saw. Showing up unannounced just before midnight on September 25, he got out of his
car and walked around. At 18, 26, and 28½ Pell Street, there was unmistakable evidence of gambling. When he ran into Captain Tierney, he led him and two of his officers to No. 18, where access was blocked by three “icebox” doors. These were fashioned out of several layers of new wood, nailed together with the grains crossing; it was impossible to split one with a single blow. By the time such a door could be demolished, the gamblers inside would have had ample time to hide the evidence and flee.

  “Well, what shall we do, Commissioner?” Tierney asked. “Break it in?”

  “No,” Waldo replied coldly. “If that door isn’t opened legally within five minutes, you will cease to be a police captain.”

  He was serious. After two years in the Sixth Precinct, Tierney had become lax in going after gamblers. Waldo’s insinuation, of course, was that the casino was operating with his tacit approval and that it would therefore take only a word from him for the owner to open the door. A few minutes later, Waldo looked at his watch and said, “You have just one minute left.”

  Thirty seconds later, a key materialized.

  No arrests were made; the gamblers had had sufficient time to cover their tracks. But Waldo had seen enough. He ordered Tierney and the two officers back to the station. There he stripped them of their badges, ordered them to remove the police insignias from their uniforms, and suspended them on the spot. The next day, he installed Captain Dominick Riley as interim station head.

  Riley, transferred from the Greenwich Street Station, took the example of his predecessor to heart. But a tactic that had served him well on the West Side—disguising undercover policemen as players to collect evidence against gambling houses—was useless in Chinatown. There were no Chinese on the force, and it was impossible to disguise white officers as Chinese. Reconnaissance in Chinatown required the cooperation of Chinese stool pigeons, and these were not easy to come by, nor could they necessarily be trusted.