Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (6 page)

Crime in Chinatown, as the years wore on toward the tong-war decades, remained an individualistic matter except for the tong combines which ran the gambling houses and red-light district. In his 1859 annual report the chief of police asked the Board of Supervisors to appoint a special committee to investigate the evils of Chinese prostitution. But he said nothing about organized gang warfare in the Quarter.

Yet even as early as 1854, ominous portents of the protection racket of future tong troubles were being heard. The editors of the
Annals of San Francisco
noted that whereas the Chinese were generally peaceable and contented folk who seldom troubled the authorities, there were a few secret societies among them which grossly oppressed their brethren. ‘The police have attempted to interfere,” said the
Annals,
“and to protect the injured, though seldom with much effect. The terror of these, lest vengeance should somehow befall them from their persecutors, has generally prevented full disclosures of the unlawful practices of the secret societies.”

The
Wide West
also sniffed something rotten in Chinatown: “Those among them who have the opportunity are continually levying taxes for some inexplicable purpose on those of their countrymen who are able to pay them and afraid to refuse. The only reason they themselves are ever known to give for the various disturbances that arise among them is the existence of a secret society of which no member ever was seen, or known to exist, by any of the received rules of evidence.”

On October 6, 1854, police hurried to the hotel kept on Dupont Street by Ah Kuang. There they quickly quelled a disturbance, arresting a number of Chinese who were attempting to extort a fine for the benefit of the Triad Society. Here was the secret society whose existence the
Wide West
doubted. The police were still in the dark as to the evil they were trying to combat. They did not know that the seeds of future tong wars were already sown in such actions as the riots at Ah Kuang’s hotel.

Although it is commonly said there were never any tongs in China itself, only in America or other outposts of the Chinese, this is mainly a pointless quibble over semantics. Kenneth Scott Latourette estimated twenty-five years ago that fully one half of the adult male Chinese population belonged to one or another secret society. The San Ho Hui, or Triad Society, alias the Hung Society and the Society of Heaven and Earth, was a secret organization of real power in China. It was primarily a revolutionary political movement formed to oppose the Manchus. But it was destined to do more than just play a role in mainland disturbances such as the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864. It fathered all of the fighting tongs of San Francisco. This progeny differed in that their announced reasons for existence were as benevolent or legal-aid societies rather than as political parties or revolutionary clubs. But in action they were almost identical; they were secret pressure groups not at all unwilling to stain their hands with blood to reach their goals.

Five months after the Triad Society raid, on the last day of March 1855, the Grand Jury of San Francisco (unwittingly) took another anti-tong measure by indicting Charlie Ah You for assembling parties of armed men for the purpose of disturbing the peace. But things then quieted down and the coals of the tong wars smoldered on for another seven years.

In the summer of 1862, a leak developed in the wall of silence and secrecy which surrounded the fighting tongs, growing in strength every year. The police were asleep, lulled by the stereotype of the docile Chinese. Had they read one of the valley newspapers they might have learned something of what was going on beneath their very noses in Chinatown. On one of those typically mot, blistering days of summer in the Central Valley a typesetter laboriously composed an announcement which had been paid for and sent up from San Francisco. He cursed as, fumbling to spell correctly the unfamiliar “heathen” names listed at the end of his sweat-stained sheet of copy, he composed the piece.

When the Sacramento
Union
hit J Street, the Capital’s main thoroughfare, it carried the item buried back among the advertisements for Japanese salve, corner saloons and Sitka ice. It read [there were not yet six companies in the union]:

FROM THE PRESIDENT DIRECTORS OF THE FIVE CHINESE COMPANIES OF CALIFORNIA

The deceased, Yu Kow, was a See Yup man. He was connected with a bad gang. Speaking the English language well, he chose for his victims those of his countrymen who were ignorant of the foreign tongue. These he oppressed. He made fish meat of them. Innumerable were his dark deeds, injurious to life and property, sometimes committed in clear, shining day, often by stealth at night. Placed as the leader of a large gang [tong], he intimidated his victims, who were afraid to accuse him before the courts. And if ever accused, the gold and illicit gain of his villains were placed at his disposal, thereby enabling him to employ eminent counsel to escape the punishment of the law.

Verily, he was a wicked man!

It was our intention united to have accused him, for crimes committed, before the tribunals of justice and by getting him punished, save our countrymen from receiving further injuries at his hands. But who can fathom the excellent principles of Heaven! The evil leader fell, assassinated. This was indeed a great happiness for his countrymen. But his followers, animated with bad hearts, are striving now to cause innocence and excellence to suffer. They wish to confound virtue with crime. They arrested Chu Pak, charging him falsely with having aided in the murder of Yu Kow. They charge that he wrote a letter and sent money to Wong Yuen to accomplish the deed.

How easily they could have forged one and submitted it to the presiding officer of justice for scrutiny! But for what ends? They know full well that it would be impossible for the American judge to detect the written Chinese characters. The Chinese alone are able to distinguish the different handwritings of their countrymen. They, therefore, well knowing this fact, forged a letter with no other purpose than evil and to lead justice astray. Such are the false schemes, the black plots, of this wicked gang.

But we, the Head Directors, are well acquainted with the defendant, Chu Pak. He is considered amongst the men of the Four Districts [See Yup) as the most upright For the long period of six years he presided as Chief Director, Master and Trustee of the Company, and his conduct throughout has been pure and excellent. His great virtues are known to all and farspread. During his term of Directorship, he had occasion severely to correct and reprimand Yu Kow for his evil deeds. For this, Yu Kow never forgave him but harbored in his heart a spirit of revenge and hate. All of a sudden, Yu Kow was murdered and his followers, because he fell, preferred false charges against Chu Pak. This is perjury and oppression. Behold the facts!

But we, the Head Directors, bowing our heads down, place our hope in the clear discrimination of the officials of justice, trusting that after a strict investigation, they will save the innocent from receiving wrong, thereby defeating deceitful plots to the great happiness of our merchants and people.

Wherefore we, the Head Directors of the Five great Chinese Companies of the State of California, deeming it our duty to expose wrong and evil schemes, do now publish these facts, submitting them to your high intelligence and praying you to pass a righteous judgment in the perusal of the same.

The ultimate fate of Chu Pak is not known today but the “black plots of this wicked gang” continued long after the Five Companies alerted their clansmen in Sacramento. The tong machinations continued and eventually seized control of the Chinese Quarter.

But long before the tong evil itself—the heart of the matter—became apparent to police and public, the curse of opium caught the eye of the authorities. They did not realize that it was, with gambling and prostitution, an economic foundation for the fighting tongs quietly building their strength underground. But the evil of opium which police and Federal authorities exposed in the ’60s and later, was in itself enough to shock the entire community and attract the attention of Washington.

The pressure of the press on the Board of Supervisors brought results, and the force’s strength was increased from 30 men to 40. But the population rose too rapidly for the force to catch up. In 1863, Chief Martin Burke had only 56 regulars and 37 undependable specials. With this small band he tried to keep order in a city of 83,000 to 103,000 population, including drifters from the Seven Seas, shanghaiers on the Embarcadero, and ex-Bowery blacklegs on the Barbary Coast. It was a blessing the tong wars did not erupt in 1863. As it was, the first real anti-Chinese riot occurred that year on August 4. A party of Chinese employed by a contractor to grade a lot near the sugar refinery were driven off the job by a group of Irish laborers. It was not serious but it was symptomatic of things to come.

In the East, 1864 was the year of the fall of Atlanta. But in San Francisco it was the Year of Opium. The importation and smuggling of the drug into San Francisco became not only a plague but very big business. On January 16, a large lot was brought in on the ship
Derby.
It was seized by the authorities. On April 22, another shipment arrived and it, too, was captured as attempts were being made to smuggle it ashore from the bark
Pallas.
On June 19, revenue officers seized a large consignment of the drug hidden in eggs.

Reporters of the sensational daily press sank their teeth into the opium story quickly. The degradation of the opium dens was soon as good for a story in San Francisco as a shipwreck on Point Reyes. There is no doubt they were a sickening social institution. Estimates of the percentage of the Chinese population of the city who used opium ranged from 16 percent to 40 percent, with sots, or far-gone addicts estimated to range from 10 percent to 20 percent. But there is good reason to believe that many opium denizens adhered to the habit with no more insane passion or ill effects than the John Doe who clung to his bottle. Whatever the physiological case against opium smoking, it
did
bring in big money. And it thereby attracted and bred criminals and crime. One might almost say of opium that its side effects were the more deadly. With gambling halls and brothels, opium dens supported the fraternity of brigands who plagued the Chinese Quarter for years.

The correspondent of London’s
Cornhill
magazine who signed himself “Day,” visited California in the ’80s and wrote that he never saw a street fight or other disturbance in some thirty trips to Chinatown, but he noted many opium dens operating openly in spite of the law prohibiting the sale of the drug for smoking. He observed wryly, “Occasionally, when the police are short of funds, they make a descent on some of the dens but, as a rule, the proprietors are left unmolested.”

Almost everyone who was literate at all appears to have left behind him a description of the typical San Francisco opium den. Reverend Frederic J. Masters wrote: “The air is sultry and oppressive. A stupefying smoke fills the hovel through the gloom of which the feeble yellow light of three or four opium lamps struggles hopelessly to penetrate. There are two or three wooden beds covered with matting and each is furnished with lamp and pipe. Three Chinamen lie curled up on the beds, one taking his first puffs, the others in different stages of stupefaction. The room is about fifteen feet by ten feet, ceiling and walls black with years of smoke. We have been in this den about five minutes and no one has spoken a word. It is like being in a sepulchre with the dead.”

New York Police Chief George W. Walling’s description of the effects of opium read: “Reveries, dreams and stupefaction do not come with one pipe. Again and again the smoker cooks his lump of opium, packs it into the bowl and lazily watches the smoke curl up around the lamp. After awhile the pipe drops from his nerveless hand and there is a glaze on his eyes which are half-shut like a dead man’s. His head falls upon his breast and he is in that opium trance which is either paradise or hell according to the degree of his indulgence in the narcotic.”

Trust Mark Twain to describe the sot and his pipe both colorfully and succinctly. He wrote: “Opium smoking is a comfortless operation and it requires constant attention. A lamp sits on the bed, the length of the long pipe stem from the smoker’s mouth. He puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with putty. Then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke—and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue…. “