Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (2 page)

The tragedy of the mutual suspicion and misunderstanding which developed between the two groups, each so aloof from the other, was not immediately evident. It came particularly in the 1880s and 1890s as a last spasm of the symptoms of
apartheid,
just before the belated trend to Americanization on the part of the Chinese and to tolerance and acceptance on the part of the Americans. Misunderstanding created a social vacuum between the two peoples. This void between Little China and Frisco remained unfilled for a singularly and inexplicably long period of time; when it was filled by inrushing elements they were the forces of evil. The criminal class in Chinatown was small in the 1860s, just as it is today in the 1960s. But suddenly about 1880 it burgeoned and fattened and multiplied like some ugly cellular disturbance of the body politic. Held in check by the overweening prestige of the Six Companies, it burst its bonds when the Six Companies suffered a severe loss of face (
mien tzu
) in the ’90s. The leaders of respectable Chinatown gambled—and the Chinese are a nation of gamblers—on the unconstitutionality of the Geary Act. Under the leadership of Chin Ti Chu, president of the Sam Yup Company, the people of Chinatown were told not to sign the registration documents instigated by the provisions of the act. The Six Companies’ leadership was humiliated when the plan of peaceful resistance crashed down around their queues. The Geary Act was held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court. Thanks to Chin and the companies, thousands of law abiding Chinese had become technical law violators by their boycott of the alien registration offices. The Six Companies’ officers found their prestige and moral strength crumbling with their loss of face. The fighting tongs, biding their time until just such an opening should occur, exploited it and seized control of the Chinese community.

The result was the shocking phenomenon in American history of internecine war in a racial ghetto—the bloody tong wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Chinese preyed upon Chinese solely. It was a weird class of civil war; a struggle for power among bad men with the good people of Chinatown the pawns and the prey. Only Chinese suffered from the violent depredations of the hatchet men—the hired killers of the fighting tongs. They sized the police and city up correctly; kept “a family affair,” the police would not interfere too positively. A policy of
laissez faire
had worked well in Chinatown since 1850. There was little reason to change it.

The good people of Chinatown, who were the great majority, found themselves bullied and terrified by a handful of well-organized criminals who aped the very white hoodlums who oppressed them. This new Chinese criminal element borrowed the worst features of the two civilizations which collided on Dupont Gai. From old China they took the code of an eye for an eye and familial responsibility for the actions of an individual. Thus the feud and vendetta code of China and the importance of saving face—at
all
costs—was transplanted to San Francisco. The boo how doy (literally “hatchet sons”) distorted old traditions to their own ends. From the Americans they took hoodlumism, as gangsterism was called a century ago. But the hoodlum-inspired riots and head crackings of the 1870s were child’s play compared to the deadly guerrilla warfare of the tongs. From city hall the hatchet men picked up American style crooked politics, long popular in the city by the Golden Gate. The elements of blackmail and graft were available to them from both cultures. Conditioned to violence by almost three decades of hoodlumism and anti-coolie crusading, the
boo how doy
took violence as a way of life.

The typical law-abiding Chinese of San Francisco was also well adjusted to a climate of violence, thanks to the mob bigotry and hoodlumism which surrounded him. But to make matters even worse he had a built-in susceptibility to gangster rule because of certain weaknesses of his philosophical makeup. These frailties—thousands of years old and inbred—invited attack by such antisocial forces as the fighting tongs. The Chinese was subtle, reticent and stoic. He had an elaborate defense mechanism for the swallowing of insults and abuse. A qualitative analysis of the Chinese immigrant would have revealed a blend of positive Confucianism, with its respect for law and order and authority, and negative Taoism, with its “old roguery,” as Lin Yutang has termed the tendency to take the line of least resistance. It was a precarious balance at best, with the latter philosophy’s cynicism and skepticism usually winning out over any individual’s reform ideas.

It was only the Confucianism which Reverend Otis Gibson saw when he too quickly praised the Chinese newcomers for “the natural docility of their character… [and] respect for superiors; for all those who occupy positions of honor and power.”

John was no idealist or reformer. Idealism belonged to youth, and China was old—centuries old by 1850. Taoism served the Cantonese
émigré
like a morphia. This opiate philosophy benumbed his outraged sense of decency and helped him to survive during crises; to endure—but never to overcome—misrule. He did not try to remake life or even to reshape it a little, but rather to bend with it.

The emigrating Chinese brought to San Francisco his traditional distrust of courts, officials and lawyers. In the Old Country 95 percent of all legal troubles were settled out of court. The clerk’s office in China was handed down from father to son or else bought and sold. It was far more than a mere sinecure. It was an opportunity to practice what the Spaniards call
el mordido
—the bite. This bite, graft or squeeze was practiced also by the police, by officials, judges and witnesses in China. The immigrant fully expected the same conditions to prevail in Fah-lan-sze-ko. (He was often right.)

John was devoid of what Caucasians called public spirit. His outlook was self-centered and family-centered. Teamwork did not exist in his vocabulary. The new immigrant brought many virtues—pacifism, tolerance, industry, contentment—but he did not bring personal courage in the Western sense. He did not battle for his rights. Used to the bandits and war lords of China, he was not surprised when the goon squads of the tongs took over Chinatown. He did his best to make no enemies, to turn the other cheek, to dodge the ruffians as best he could.

For all his joining of societies, John did not tend to band his friends together to protect the weak or the law-abiding. Though the Chinese was supposedly a humanist of a high order by long tradition, to Americans he seemed to lack completely the virtue of compassion. He seemed to accept the murder of his neighbors as predestined—not something to fight. He was family-minded and club-oriented, but he was in no sense social-minded. His civic consciousness was nil. Civil rights were an unfathomed mystery to John. He was used only to a world ruled by Face (not the same as honor, alas), Fate and Favor. This trio came to rule Chinatown, deadening justice, law and democracy. It was more pernicious than tyrannical, being in a great measure self-imposed because of habit and tradition. With even his virtues working against him, it is no wonder that the San Francisco Chinese, under the pressure of the fighting tongs, made self-preservationand not progress or freedom the keystone of his philosophy.

With the partial collapse of the Six Companies in the mid-’90s, the cult of detachment or disaffiliation in Chinatown became more pronounced. John virtually hid in his warren. He bowed down and waited for the storm to rage and die. His attitude can be called selfishness, cowardice, pacificism or stoicism; whatever it was it embodied a surrender to the old Chinese proverb—“It is better to be a dog in peaceful times than a man in times of unrest.” A child of the most misruled nation on earth, his instinct and tradition would not allow him to act otherwise.

Only the Chinese Native Sons (later the Chinese-American Citizens’ Alliance) tried to adjust to the new rhythm of living found in San Francisco. These new short-haired, Americanized Chinese abandoned their old way of life—or at least much of it—in order to create a new life. It turned out to be an amalgam of the two—something like the Spanish and Indian admixture which has become Latin American civilization. These men had a choice of old Imperial China, new Republican China—still in the offing—or America. Overwhelmingly they chose America. The hatchet men, the exceptions to the rule, broke all Chinese tradition as it pleased them and borrowed only what was convenient from Taoism. They were the most extreme examples of the Cantonese—quick-tempered, pugnacious and adventurous. From the Northerners of China they scavenged a contempt for fair play. Since many, probably most, of the hatchet men were from the Chinese lower or criminal class, they were uneducated and less inclined to follow the old dictates of obedience, gentility of behavior and abhorrence of violence, even if they were aware of such civilized deportment. Among the Cantonese the tong men were the rugged individualists, yet paradoxically they banded together the tightest of all. They got things done, and ironically they were often better liked by Americans than law-abiding Chinese because of their cultural mobility. Little Pete, the well-known rackets’ boss of Chinatown in the ’90s, was a case in point. Dr. Rose Hum Lee pointed out that Kwangtung has not only been noted above all Chinese provinces for its progressive and adventurous people but also for its troublesome folk. There was no shortage of the latter in Chinatown and none more deadly—even on the Barbary Coast or the docks of the Embarcadero—than the swaggering bullies of the fighting tongs.

The blood brotherhood of the tongs ruled Chinatown from the 1880s until the earthquake of 1906. During this period the highbinders or hatchet men took over control of the tongs from the more peaceful membership. It required a motley, chaotic and disorganized alliance of forces to finally eradicate them. These forces came mainly from the Chinese community. The police and the courts were in a great measure responsible for the crushing of the tongs, but it was the long-abused Chinese people themselves who really won the battle. They began to fight back quietly by identifying themselves as Americans, by participating in government, and by respecting and obeying Yankee notions of law, order and justice rather than their own extra-legal codes. The courts gave them an opportunity to seek justice before American juries and to place their trust in the American bench and bar. The police offered protection. Although it was hard to forget the old system of corruption, the humble people of Chinatown began to place confidence in the police department. Before, they had always viewed the patrolman on his beat with suspicion; he was a potential oppressor rather than a protector.

If the Chinese were going to stay and raise their families as Americans, they had to abandon the old codes of life which conflicted with American law and which made possible—even
necessary
—the constant series of vendettas which in turn bred highbinders and murder. The people of Chinatown finally realized this. They made their decision, and the hold of the tongs on the quarter was forced to slacken.

The American community, on the other hand, offered the Chinese more respect and understanding as it outgrew its stupid bigotry. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, not exactly a model piece of legislation
in toto,
was a powerful third force which cut down on the importation of fresh highbinders and which banished gunmen, and kept them out as undesirable aliens unless they were smuggled in.

As the hatchet men killed one another off or were jailed, the older men began to regain control of the tongs. There were more family men in Chinatown too. The san doy, bachelor, no longer ran the town. The Six Companies—the welfare organization based on the immigrants’ provinces of origin—regained the powerful position it had long held. The family associations began a renaissance. The Chinese-American Citizens’ Alliance began to grow in numbers and strength. Many members were Christians and not just “rice Christians” (converts who embraced Christianity only because of mission handouts), and they were appalled by the bloodletting in Chinatown. Many lived outside the Quarter and felt about the tong wars as any other horrified San Franciscan felt. The Chinese-Americans were not subjects of either the Consul General or the illegal tongs. They were Americans and their numbers had leaped from but one percent of the country’s Chinese population in 1870 to 10 percent in 1900—some 15,000 individuals ready to rally against the dead hand of tradition as represented by the killer tongs.

Finally, the tongs themselves had had enough. In 1913 they created a Peace committee which secured an armistice. Their power was declining as that of the mercantile class, Chinatown’s quasi elders, rose. Chinatown was eventually united against the hatchet men as implements of the old way—the wrong way—of settling disputes. But the Americanization process had to grow out of a blood bath of two or three decades before the old customs were thrown off.

The tong wars continued sporadically until as late as the 1920s. But the heyday of the
boo how doy
was over. In that last era they took on some of the coloration of Chicago gangsterism. They died out later on New York’s Pell, Mott and Doyers Streets than on Dupont Gai. There are still tongs in San Francisco and other American cities—the On Leongs, Hip Sings, Ying Ons, Chee Kongs, Bins Kongs and Suey Yings—but most are benevolent or merchants’ associations now. Their vendettas are political and bloodless. Some people, like Dr. Rose Hum Lee, caution that the tongs may try a comeback in two areas—narcotics and Communist subversion. A revival seems unlikely, but wary eyes are always kept on them by law-enforcement agencies.

The manner in which the American-Chinese community has integrated into our society so fully, bringing us so much to enrich it, is a testimony to the worthiness of these people to full citizenship. They had to overcome enormous obstacles in order to reach the position to which they are now welcomed.

From the 1880s until the earthquake and fire of 1906 wiped out ghetto Chinatown, San Francisco paid heavily for its sins of commission and omission. This book attempts to tell the story of the high cost of bigotry and intolerance. It is no condemnation of San Francisco’s Chinatown nor of its citizens, past or present; it is a condemnation of the criminal classes which flourished there. And it is, I hope, a very thorough condemnation of intolerance.

Richard H. Dillon

San Francisco

False Spring, 1962