Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (9 page)

The Hip Kat Company formed in 1852, later changed its name to the Yan Wo Company, the Association of Human Concord. It was made up of Hak Kan people, or “foreigners.” (Hak Kah signifies “stranger families” in Chinese.) These were double emigrants; not only had they left South China for San Francisco but they had emigrated to Kwangtung from North China in the first place. The clannishness of the Cantonese was such that the Hak Kah were never accepted as true “southerners.” Though they had scattered through the province in such districts as Bow On, Chak Tai, Tung Gwoom and Chu Mui, they all spoke the same dialect; one quite different from the regular spoken Cantonese. Their first San Francisco headquarters was not in Chinatown at all, but just South of the Slot—that is, south of Market Street. Their building stood in Happy Valley not far from the Palace Hotel of today. This first structure was destroyed in one of San Francisco’s fires in 186S, and the company secured a Chinatown building to replace it, on Dupont Street between Washington and Jackson. The Hak Kahs contributed 5,800 arrivals to the total Chinese population by the end of the 60s. Of this figure they lost 2,500 by departure and 100 via reported deaths. Many of the men in this company were cooks, stewards and seamen; just as Sam Yups’ membership ran to tailors, merchants and herbalists; and See Yups’ to laundrymen, restaurateurs and small shopkeepers.

In the late 90s two more companies formed up, to bring the Six Companies to an actual total of eight. The Shew Hing Company, named for the region from which it drew—two central Kwangtung districts of Kao Yew and Kao Ming—also attracted members from two districts quite a distance to the southwest; Yang Kong and Yang Chun. Very shortly the last company was formed. It was the Yin Hoi Company and was composed of men from the Yin Pin and Hoi Woi districts who were pulling out of the Hop Wo Company. It was always small and weak and it did not last out the 90s. When it disappeared its membership merged with the Shew Hing Company, leaving the present total of seven companies in all. The Shew Hing Company kept on and took in companyless men from the Sam Shui, Tsing Yuen and Sze Wui districts—to end up representing more districts of China than any other company.

The district associations became very strong in San Francisco. In the city an individual’s affiliation to his company took precedence over his clan association, any smaller district group, his trade guild, and (at first) his fraternal society or tong. Yet somehow this strength collapsed before the onslaught of the ruthless tongs.

The officers and committeemen of each of the societies joined to form a congress of the six. This organization, a sort of United Nations of San Francisco Chinese, is what is usually referred to, in the singular, as the Six Companies. Really a board of presidents of the half-dozen companies, this nonsalaried group maintained a rented headquarters at 709 Commercial Street. This supercompany, or coordinating board, was the real power in Chinatown until challenged by the fighting tongs. A concomitant, almost identical, organization was the Meeting Hall of the Middle Kingdom, or Meeting Hall of the Chinese People. Disputes which arose between members of one company were settled within that company, but disagreements among members of two companies or more were referred to the supercompany for settlement. Also, matters affecting the general interest of all Chinese in the city were discussed in the Six Companies’ headquarters. A case in point was the importation of what were called “big-foot women” (peasant women with unbound feet) for immoral purposes. The Six Companies protested this traffic but lost the campaign to the vested interests.

One important function of the various companies was the keeping of rosters of members. These furnished what were probably the most reliable statistics on the Chinese population in California 75 or 100 years ago. Reverend Gibson, drawing on Six Companies’ figures, quoted an 1876 total of 151,300 Chinese in all California. He broke them down by company affiliation in this fashion: Ning Yeung, 75,000; Hop Wo, 34,000; Kong Chow (See Yup), 15,000; Yeung Wo, 12,000; Sam Yup, 11,000; Yan Wo, 4,300. This total is very large and the figures may reflect either padding, or more likely, the failure to list the many Chinese who departed from California for China or who died.

In addition to the Six Companies, the clan associations and the nascent tongs, there were trade unions or workers’ guilds in Chinatown. The strongest guilds were those of the washermen, cigarmakers and shoemakers. They were organized somewhat like American labor unions, to prevent destructive competition and to set up apprenticeship standards. They were, to some extent, benevolent and charitable institutions in that they took care of the sick and the dead of their membership. An interesting facet of these organizations—one which seems to fly in the face of the traditional frugality of the Chinese—was their method of handling surplus funds at the end of the year. Instead of carrying them over to the guild treasury for the next year’s demands, the members spent them on one glorious round of feasting; starting the new year from scratch.

Thanks to the unifying influence of the Six Companies, the Chinese of San Francisco were able to reach President Ulysses S. Grant’s ear—for whatever good it did—during the heyday of political manipulation of bigotry. In a “Memorial” to President Grant they pointed out that “it has often occurred, about the time of the state and general elections, that political agitators have stirred up the minds of the people in hostility to the Chinese. But formerly the hostility has usually subsided after the elections were over.” They reminded Grant that they had wives in Chinatown, that there were perhaps 1,000 United States-born Chinese children, although it was generally against Chinese custom to bring virtuous women so far from home. The Six Companies’ spokesmen added that the outbursts of violence against the Chinese in San Francisco did not encourage them to bring in their wives and families. (In New York there were
no
decent Chinese women as late as 1874, if we can believe
Harper’s Weekly.
On March 7 of that year the periodical ran a story on the English, Irish and American girls who had married Chinese in Gotham. It reported, “There has not been a Chinese woman resident in New York for years.”)

The Six Companies admitted to the President that unprincipled Chinese were bringing in prostitutes from China. But the petitioners claimed that the trade was begun for the gratification of white men. They were probably right in part in saying that the proceeds from “the villainous traffic” were going to enrich Americans. They reminded President Grant that their attempts to return prostitutes by steamer had been thwarted earlier by American shysters who flashed writs of
habeas corpus
to protect the “businessmen” involved.

“These women are still here,” stated the memorialists, “and the only remedy for this evil and for the evil of Chinese gambling lies, so far as we can see, in an honest and impartial administration of municipal government in all its details, even including the police department. If officers would refuse bribes, the unprincipled Chinamen would no longer purchase immunity from the punishment of their crimes….”

This appeal did little if any good. The derision, the segregation and the occasional violence in San Francisco was not only able to continue as before but increased against the people whom the press angrily began to call pagans, heathens and Mongolians.

Apparently Reverend Loomis’s article of 1868 simply did not take. Misconceptions multiplied. Senator Eugene Casserly inserted them into the Congressional Record in 1870 by warning his fellow solons against “the secret organizations, rules and regulations of the Chinese in the United States [The Senator was not inveighing against the still undercover tongs; he was after the companies]… From thirty to forty thousand men are controlled by an organization of mercantile houses in San Francisco known as ‘the Six Companies.’ ” He warned his colleagues that “the system is most like one of the secret associations of the Middle Ages of which we have but a vague idea because they were shrouded in darkness, but which we know were as energetic and formidable as they were mysterious. It is,” he concluded, “the most complete specimen of an
imperium in imperio
of which we have an example in the United States.”

Casserly backed up his claims by lifting chapter and verse from an earlier report of a Legislative committee of the State of California. (The cycle would soon be completed; the 1876 State committee investigating the Chinese would cite Casserly’s words.) Quoting from the report, he claimed that:

The Chinese are under a government as absolute and perfect as any that ever existed, which system of government is maintained and enforced in this State, so far as the Chinese are concerned, wholly independent, outside of and in derision of the authority of the State of California as well as that of the Government of the United States.

This system of government is maintained and enforced by what is known as “the six Companies” and is, in fact, in derogation of the dignity of our national and state governments and in contempt of their lawful authority. This Chinese Government in California has its offices, its tribunals and executions of its decrees. It has been demonstrated by the police authorities of our principal city that individuals have been repeatedly imprisoned in Chino-California prisons, flogged, beaten, otherwise maltreated, and their property confiscated under the authority and by the command of the Chino-California government, and there is no reasonable grain of doubt (though this is not susceptible of proof) that the death penalty has been frequently inflicted under the same authority. The peculiar habits and customs of the Chinese, together with ignorance of their language, has heretofore made it impossible for the ordinary civil force of the State (the utmost our citizens are able to maintain at their own cost) to break up this extraordinary, tyrannical and illegal organization.

It is obvious from these accusations, flung mistakenly at the Six Companies, that word of the increase of crime in Chinatown was leaking outside, no matter how well the tongs kept their secrets. The situation continued to deteriorate, and in 1876 an investigating committee of the State Legislature repeated Casserly’s words, warning that tribunals were formed, taxes (blackmail, actually) levied, and men and women intimidated—particularly interpreters and witnesses in court cases. The committee was correct about the amount of crime in Chinatown but completely off in ascribing its origin to the Six Companies. It wove together the exit visa system of the companies with the criminal despotism of the fighting tongs and blamed everything on the Six Companies.

After accusing the Six Companies of exercising the death penalty upon disobedient Chinese and exerting a despotic sway over one-seventh of California’s population, the committee backed down. “We are disposed to acquit these companies and secret tribunals of the charge of deliberate intent to supersede the authority of the State. The system is an inherent part of the fiber of the Chinese mind, and exists because the Chinese are thoroughly and permanently alien to us in language and interests. It is nevertheless a fact that these companies or tribunals do nullify and supersede the State and National authorities. And the fact remains that they constitute a foreign government within the boundaries of the Republic.”

The publishers of the
Overland Monthly
decided, in 1894, to try again to illuminate their readers as to the real role of the Six Companies. They had Walter N. Fong bring the story up to date. Fong found that twenty-six years after Loomis’s excellent article in the same magazine, the Six Companies’ story still remained “as mysterious as ever to the average American citizen.” He was not surprised that public and press accepted their information from inaccurate sources, for he knew that even as late as the mid-’90s few Chinese knew English well enough to explain the organization of the companies.

Before he wrote his article Fong checked his own knowledge of the organizations against that of the president of the Ning Yeung Company and the president of the joint Meeting Hall of the Middle Kingdom.

Fong chose to explain the Six Companies by comparing the situation in San Francisco to that in China where the clan organization was far stronger. Springing probably from ancestor worship, clans were organized of all Chinese descended from a common ancestor. Their genealogies might go back more than fifty generations. All clan members, who usually gathered together in villages of their own, called each other “cousin.” In the clan those who reached the age of sixty automatically became Elders regardless of their rank or station. Also important in the homeland were the
Kong Ming
or Titled Scholars—men who had passed special government examinations. These, with the Elders, formed the officers of the clans. To aid them the clans elected secretary-treasurers. All eighteen-year-olds became “men” with a voice in the management of affairs. If quarrels developed among clan members petitions were sent to the Titled Scholars and Elders. The plaintiff and defendant met before them, and the case was decided, usually by a compromise. The traditional law held the heads of a clan responsible for the crimes committed by any member of a clan.

It is obvious that this tradition of arbitration of disputes influenced not only the Six Companies of Chinatown but the fighting tongs as well. It unfortunately helped to drive a wedge between San Francisco’s American-Chinese and the judicial processes and agencies available to them for many years. Since there were too few of a given clan in any one mining camp in California, they grouped themselves there not by clans but by province of origin. To them this was the next best thing. Many were already used to this system of grouping. (In Hong Kong, for example, Sam Yups had tended to associate predominately with other Sam Yups, and See Yups with See Yups, because of their dialectical differences and somewhat differing customs.) When the miners drifted down to San Francisco from the Mother Lode they retained the district basis in organizing socially.

Fong explained the exit system—still a thorny issue—once again. Each homeward-bound person paid $9 to the Meeting Hall of the Middle Kingdom and $3 to his own company, plus $3 toward the expense of shipping the ashes of his fellow company men home. The returnee paid his fees at his company. He then received a receipt which a Six Companies’ inspector picked up at the gangplank as he boarded ship. If an individual showed up at the dock without a receipt to surrender he could sait by paying the inspector his fees on the spot. If he refused—and refusals were practically nonexistent—the inspector, as Fong explained with some delicacy, would try “with the aid of American laws to keep him from boarding the steamer.”

By the ’90s, officers of the Six Companies served only one term. In the early days they had enjoyed unlimited terms of office, but some corruption had then crept in. At the end of the nineteenth century company heads were elected, alternating among the different clans of the company.