Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (16 page)

While Cameron and the Presbyterian Mission took the leadership role
and credit for rescuing Chinese prostitutes, they did not work alone. They
sought and received the cooperation of immigration and juvenile authorities, law enforcement agents, lawyers, the judicial system, and both
the English- and Chinese-language presses, as well as civic-minded groups
and individuals. Dramatic newspaper accounts of rescue raids helped to
keep the antiprostitution campaign alive while at the same time promoting the Protestant women's crusade for moral reform. The celebrated
case of Kum Quey was one such well-publicized story that shows not
only Cameron's uncanny skills at rescue work, but also the extent of public support that was needed to free one Chinese girl from slavery.

According to popular accounts, Kum Quey was first rescued by
Cameron from a brothel in Baker Alley and was living in the Mission
Home when her owner and a constable from San Jose came to arrest
her on trumped-up charges of grand larceny. Suspecting foul play,
Cameron accompanied Kum Quey to Palo Alto and insisted on staying
with her in jail while she awaited trial. Early that morning, three men broke into the jail cell, overpowered Cameron, and abducted Kum Quey.
The men got a judge to hold an impromptu trial on a country road in
their favor, and then forced Kum Quey into marrying one of them.
Meanwhile, with the help of a Palo Alto druggist, a network of informants, and the cooperation of a policeman, Cameron caught up with
the party in San Francisco and had one of the abductors arrested. Her
retelling of the abduction, well covered in the local newspapers, incensed
private citizens as well as Stanford University students. They condemned
the affair and the complicity of local officials at a town hall meeting, raised
funds for Kum Quey's cause, and stormed the local jail in protest.

Through her Chinese contacts, Cameron found out that Kum Quey
had come to the United States two years before as one of seventy "Oriental maidens" for the Omaha Exposition but instead was put to work
in a Chinatown brothel. With this new information in hand, Cameron
solicited the help of immigration authorities. During the trial Kum Quey
defied her owner's instructions, admitting instead that she had entered
the United States illegally and been forced into prostitution. Not giving up, the abetting constable slipped out of the courtroom and attempted to run off with Kum Quey, but was successfully pursued and
apprehended by an immigration officer and a private citizen. The court
gave Kum Quey into Cameron's guardianship, and a San Jose grand jury
later indicted the judge, constable, and abductors involved in the crime.
And so happily ended the story of Kum Quey.67

The developments in the Kum Quey case were followed closely in
CSYP. Edited by the Presbyterian minister Ng Poon Chew, the newspaper was influential in molding public opinion against Chinese prostitution in the context of its overall advocacy of the modernization of
China and social reform in Chinatown. Numerous editorials in CSYP
argued that mui tsai and prostitutes were signs of Chinese decadence in
the eyes of Westerners and should be eradicated. Those involved in the
prostitution trade were told to search their consciences and mend their
ways. With the establishment of shelters for prostitutes rescued by missionaries and through the efforts of both the American and Chinese governments to suppress prostitution, "your profits will suffer and your reputation [will be] ruined," admonished one editorial.68 Attempts were
also made by middle-class institutions such as the Chinese consulate, Chinese Six Companies, Chinese Society of English Education, Chinese Students Alliance, Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and Chinese Cadet
Corps to discourage if not stop the prostitution trade in Chinatown. All
opponents had to put their lives at risk in the face of the overwhelming power of tongs in Chinatown, specifically the secret societies that had
the most to lose from the demise of prostitution. 69

By the early 19oos, however, the nation's purity crusade had reached
the West Coast.70 After the 19o6 earthquake, Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish moral reformers joined efforts to mount an all-out attack against
prostitution and commercialized vice in San Francisco. The American
Purity Federation even threatened to seek a national boycott of the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition if the city failed to clean
up its image. In the atmosphere of progressivism that had gripped the
entire nation, there rose a public outcry against venereal diseases and
the international trafficking of white slavery-"the procuring, selling,
or buying of women with the intention of holding or forcing them into
a life of prostitution. "71 Melodramatic stories of innocent white women
who had been tricked and forced into a brutal life of prostitution-not
unlike the situation of Chinese prostitutes-drew the passionate ire of
humanitarians and purity reformers committed to correcting sexual
mores in the nation.72 Their efforts culminated in the 1910 passage of
the White Slave Traffic Act (also known as the Mann Act after its author, Congressman James R. Mann), which in effect outlawed the interstate and international trafficking in women.

As there were few convictions, and as the act did not address voluntary prostitution, individual states next stepped in with the enactment
of "red-light" abatement laws, which sought to prosecute the brothel
owners. Prostitution was finally curtailed in San Francisco after the California legislature passed the Red-Light Abatement Act in 1913. The
first raid and test case under this act was a Chinese brothel at Dupont
and Bartlett Alley owned by Woo Sam. The prosecution was upheld by
both the U.S. District Court and the California Supreme Court in 1917,
and after that, local police closed almost all brothels in the city, including those in Chinatown.73 With the advent of World War I, further legislation was passed to wipe out the remaining traces of prostitution that
had gone underground, this time in the interest of protecting the health
of American soldiers. Public Law No. i z, signed into law by President
Woodrow Wilson in 1917, authorized the secretary of war to arrest any
prostitutes operating within five miles of a military camp. So many
women were arrested as a result that prison and health facilities in San
Francisco became seriously overcrowded. The antiprostitution measure
continued to be enforced after the war, effectively shutting down the
red-light district in San Francisco, including Chinatown, for good.74 Any
other traces of Chinese prostitution were left in the hands of Donald ina Cameron and Jack Manion, the police sergeant assigned to head the
Chinatown detail in 192.1, to finish off.7s

By 19zo, the ratio of Chinese males to females in San Francisco had
dropped from 6.8 to i in 1910 to 3.5 to 1, and there were visible signs
of family life. The Methodist Mission records showed fewer rescues and
more attention being paid to abused wives, daughters, and orphans. By
1930, the sex ratio had declined further, to z.8 to 1, and the Presbyterian Mission redirected its program to the growing numbers of neglected children. Wong Ah So-a direct beneficiary of the community's
reform climate and the efforts of Protestant missionary women-was
among the last to be rescued, Christianized, and married to a Chinese
Christian. As the presence of wives and families increased and commercialized vices associated with a bachelor society declined, Chinese
immigrant men shed their sojourner identities, and Chinatown assumed
a new image as an upstanding community and major tourist attraction.

IMMIGRANT WIVES AS INDISPENSABLE PARTNERS

Immigrant wives like Law Shee Low also found life in
America better than in China. They did not find streets paved with gold,
but, practically speaking, they at least had food on the table and hope
that through their hard work conditions might improve for themselves
and their families. Although women were still confined to the domestic sphere within the borders of Chinatown, their contributions as
homemakers, wage earners, and culture bearers made them indispensable partners to their husbands in their struggle for economic survival.
Their indispensability, combined with changing social attitudes toward
women in Chinatown, gave some women leverage to shape gender
arrangements within their homes and in the community.

By the time Law arrived in 19 z2, women's roles and family life in San
Francisco Chinatown had changed considerably relative to the nineteenth
century. U.S. census sources provide an important quantitative view of
that change. After steadily decreasing in numbers since 189o, the Chinese female population in San Francisco increased zz percent between
1910 and 19zo, primarily because of the immigration of wives and the
birth of daughters. At the same time, the Chinese sex ratio in San Francisco dropped from 553.3 males per ioo females in 1900 to 349.z in
1920 (see appendix table 3). Whereas most Chinese women in nineteenth-century San Francisco had been single, illiterate, and prostitutes,
the 19zo manuscript census for the city indicates that 63 percent of Chi nese women were married, only z 8 percent were illiterate, and there were
no prostitutes (see appendix tables 4 and 5). These figures attest to a
new pattern of life in Chinatown. More men were becoming settlers and
establishing families; and the community was heeding the call among
social reformers to educate the women and eradicate prostitution. 76

The manuscript censuses also indicate that fewer Chinese women were
employed in 19 zo (11 percent) as compared to 19 10 (17 percent) and
1900 (31 percent) and that most of the employed women were seamstresses who worked at home (see appendix table 6). As was true in the
previous two decades, in 19 zo the majority of Chinese husbands worked
as merchants, grocers, or business managers-occupations lucrative
enough that these men could afford wives in America (see appendix table
7). Overall, however, more women probably worked for pay than were
registered in the censuses. Indeed, except for wives of merchants and
business managers, most women had to work for pay in order to supplement their husbands' low incomes.77 Like European immigrant
women, some ran boarding houses. Others helped in family businesses
or did handwork at home for pay. Because such work was not considered "gainful labor" by census takers, though, they were not accounted
for in the censuses. Moreover, language and cultural barriers most likely
contributed to the inaccurate recording of census information on the
Chinese population.

In i9ro, a total of 5zr families (76 percent of all families) had a nuclear structure: a married couple and an average of 3.5 children (as compared to r.5 children in 188o). Although there were no three-generation families living under one roof in 188o, there were thirty such
households in i9ro. Thirty-seven households also included a motherin-law. In 188o, zo percent of the households had an average of two to
three boarders. The 19 r o census showed that z z percent of the households with a female present had an average of 3.8 boarders, and 15 percent had an average of 2.5 relatives living in the household. These statistics show an increased tendency for families to take in boarders or
relatives most likely out of economic necessity, for mutual kin support,
or in compliance with work benefits accorded employees. In the absence
of servants (only three households reported servants), it was most likely
the wife who had to clean and cook for everyone else-no simple matter considering the living conditions then. For example, the Lee household, listed at 84 6 Clay Street in 19 r o, had a total of nineteen residents:
a male head, who was listed as a grocer; his wife, who was listed as unemployed; their two children; two male relatives and one lodger, who apparently worked in the grocery store; and twelve other lodgers, who
were listed variously as porters, laundrymen, janitors, farm workers, or
fishermen. The wife, Lee Shee Jung, must have done all the housework
for the entire household and the cooking for at least her immediate family and the three household members who worked for her husband-all
without the assistance of any servants.

With the exception of twenty-one households (3 percent of the total), all of the families lived within the borders of Chinatown, which ran
five blocks north and south between Sacramento and Broadway Streets
and two blocks east and west between Stockton and Kearny Streets. Law
Shee Low joined these families when she arrived in 19z2. Her sheltered
life in San Francisco Chinatown is typical of that of most immigrant
wives, who by all appearances presented a submissive image in public
but ruled at home. Their husbands continued to be the chief breadwinners, to control the purse strings, and to be the women's points of
connection to the outside world. But, in the absence of the mother-inlaw, immigrant wives held the reins in the household, maintaining the
integrity of their families in an alien and often hostile land. With few exceptions, they were hard working, frugal, tolerant, faithful and respectful to their husbands, and self-sacrificing toward their children. As such,
they were model wives in the traditional sense, but in America, they were
also indispensable partners to their husbands in their efforts to establish
and sustain family life.

Once released from Angel Island, Law moved into a one-room tenement apartment in Chinatown with her husband, where she lived,
worked, and gave birth to eleven children, eight of whom survived. Owing to racial discrimination and economic constraints, they had little
choice but to accept the poor, crowded housing conditions in Chinatown, which had been hurriedly built after the 19o6 earthquake to accommodate bachelors, not families.78

We rented a room on Stockton Street for eleven dollars a month. We did
everything in that one room: sleep, eat, and sit. We had a small threeburner for cooking. There was no ice box, and my husband had to shop
for every meal. We did not use canned goods and things like that. We ate
only Chinese food. There was no hot water, and we would all hand wash
our clothes. We used to dry them on the roof or in the hallways. That's
what happens when you are poor. It was the same for all my neighbors.
We were all poor together.79