Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (35 page)

Helen Hong Wong, who in 1928 had just arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as a young bride, also saw her husband's restaurant business decline because of the depression. "The restaurant used to make over two hundred dollars a day with the lunch meal alone," she said. "During the
depression we were lucky to make two or three dollars a day. People had
no jobs and of course no money. The department stores were all empty.
You couldn't find a single person in there." When they couldn't pay the
rent anymore, the Wongs closed their restaurant and moved to Chicago.
Too intimidated to stand in the food lines, her husband finally went to
the Chinatown gaming tables to borrow "lucky money" from the winners. The winter months were the hardest because the family couldn't
afford heat. "A bushel of coal would have to last us a whole week. I would
wrap my two daughters in blankets and heavy coats all the time and only
burn the coals at night. But even at that, it was still down to forty degrees at night."6

Americans across the country were hard hit by the Great Depression.
The Chinese community in San Francisco, however, was not only spared
some of the worst hardships, but in some ways, Chinese women came
out ahead. Ironically, the segregated economy and community resources
of Chinatown-developed as an outcome of Chinese exclusion and exploitation in America-protected residents from the worst effects of the
economic downturn. And for the first time in their history, Chinese
Americans, who had always been marginalized, became beneficiaries of
federal relief programs and were welcomed into the rank and file of the
growing labor movement. Although hundreds of Chinese men lost their
jobs as cooks, seasonal laborers, and laundrymen, most Chinese women
continued to find employment in the female-dominated areas of sewing,
domestic service, and sales and clerical work. Less affected by unemployment than their men and encouraged by the political conditions of
the depression era, Chinese American women were able to improve their
circumstances as well as to assume a larger share of responsibility for their
families and community. Thus, the depression both required and allowed
them to make long strides during a time of setbacks for most other Americans.

Ironies of the Depression:
San Francisco Chinatown

The silver lining in the Great Depression for the Chinese
in San Francisco should be viewed in its proper perspective; that is, given
their low socioeconomic status, Chinese Americans had less to lose by the economic catastrophe and more to gain by government assistance
than the average American. In a strange way, it might be said that the
Chinese benefited from past discrimination. Even during the worst years
of the Great Depression, before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
New Deal went into effect, there were no breadlines or traces of
Hoovervilles in Chinatown; nor were Chinese violently scapegoated by
white workers as happened in the depression of the 18 70s. Overall, because their ethnic economy afforded them some protection against unemployment, the Chinese in San Francisco did not suffer as severely as
Chinese, black, and Mexican Americans in other parts of the country.
Almost all the Chinese in the city lived in Chinatown, which provided
them with essential foods and services as well as jobs that relied primarily on trade with China. They were not in competition with white workers for work, nor were they greatly affected by plummeting agricultural
prices or the closure of industrial plants. In contrast, blacks in San Francisco suffered the highest rate of unemployment among all groups
throughout the depression because they were concentrated in those occupational areas-unskilled labor and the service sector-most vulnerable to unemployment.' Likewise, because few Chinese invested in stocks
and bonds, were able to own property, or had accumulated much savings in banks, they were less affected by the stock market crash, property foreclosures, and bank runs than the rest of the country. Chinatown was also blessed with its own backup support of local district and
family associations. In combination with churches and other charitable
organizations, the kin network provided a stopgap resource for most Chinese in needs The unemployed could always count on their family or
district associations to hoifan-provide dinner for a nickel-while families relied on the tradition of wan fan-the taking of leftovers from the
dining tables of Chinatown businesses that provided meals to their workers. It was not unusual for six to eight single men to share one room and
to chip in for food. Fong, a laborer, described how this worked in the
documentary study Longtime Californ':

Now during the Depression I was so broke, quite often I was with no
money in my pocket.... You wonder how I lived? .... We got a room,
there's five or six of us and sometimes we pay rent, sometimes we don't.
We got a sack of rice for a coupla dollars and we all cook every day and
we eat there. Sometimes one night you see forty or fifty guys come in and
out, the old guys go to each's place, sit down, talk all night long before
they go to sleep the next day.... So we got our food one way or the other,
lots of vegetables real cheap at the time, and that's how I passed by.9

As the depression deepened and the Chinese kin associations and community charities found themselves no longer able to handle the situation, the Chinese discovered a new source of relief in the local, state,
and federal governments.

Accustomed to solving the community's problems in their own autocratic and patriarchal way, the merchant elites that ruled Chinatown
did not seek outside assistance. But as conditions for the Chinese working class deteriorated, the unemployed found a new political voice in
the Huaren Shiyi Hui (Chinese Unemployed Alliance), a group formed
by the Chinese Marxist left in January 1931 to organize the working
class and aid the unemployed. Reflecting the rise in radical politics
throughout the country, the Shiyi Hui joined with the Unemployed
Council of the U.S.A. (organized by the U.S. Communist Party) to call
for racial and class unity on unemployment issues and to demonstrate
for relief aid from the U.S. government. In March 193 1, the Shiyi Hui
reported that there were 3,000 to 3,500 unemployed Chinese in the
city, is percent of whom were women and more than i,ooo of whom
were heads of households with an average of three dependents. Those
below the poverty level amounted to zo percent of the unemployed.'0
The alliance then organized several hundred unemployed Chinese workers to march on the Chinese Six Companies and demand immediate relief, thereby challenging the ruling merchant class. At the end of the
march, a mass meeting was held, at which Eva Lowe, the only female
member of the Shiyi Hui, presented the organization's demands for (1)
shelter and food for the unemployed, (z) free hospital services for the
unemployed, (3) free education for unemployed women, and (4) an employment office, to be administered by a board selected by the Shiyi Hui.
Later, many participants also joined a massive demonstration of the unemployed in San Francisco's financial district, marking one of the earliest instances of Chinese involvement in a political event outside Chinatown.) i

Response-albeit slow-came first from the city government. According to one analyst, compared to other cities San Francisco took better care of its unemployed citizens during the first two and a half years
of the depression because of its sturdier economy, strong banks and credit
rating, skillful budget balancing, effective relief programs, and generous citizens who not only gave to charities but also repeatedly voted for
relief bonds.'2 In November 1930, the city and county of San Francisco
made its first appropriation for relief in the amount of $zoo,ooo. Three
months later, it passed a bond issue of $z.5 million for work relief (pri marily to construct the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges). In the four years
from 19 z9 to 19 3 z, the public portion of contributions to Associated
Charities, a humanitarian organization that provided for the poor, rose
from 8.5 percent to 84 percent, and the city government distributed $3.8
million worth of aid in work or direct relief.

It was not until mid- 119 3 z, however, that any attention was paid to
the needs of the Chinese community. After the city passed another bond
issue, funds were finally made available to open a Chinese-staffed office
for family relief in Chinatown, enabling needy Chinese families to go
on relief for the first time. It took another year before the city established a Chinese Single Men Registry in the building of the Chinese Six
Companies so that Chinese bachelors, who were the hardest hit by unemployment, could also begin applying for relief. That same year, the
Chinese Six Companies, working with the city government, opened a
shelter with forty beds and a reading room for unemployed Chinese men.
Free showers were provided at the Chinese YMCA, where Chinese cooks
were hired to cook two free meals a day for two hundred needy persons,
and Chinese Hospital began providing free medical care to the unem-
ployed.13

Just as the city's relief funds dried up, Congress passed the Federal
Emergency Relief Act (FERA), allocating $500 million for the unemployed. Word began to spread in Chinatown about the benevolence of
wongga (literally, "imperial family"; that is, the U.S. government), and
the Chinese learned to swallow their pride and accept the concept of
public assistance as an individual's right in America-at least for the duration of the depression. By 1935, approximately z,300, or 18 percent,
of the Chinese population in San Francisco (as compared to zz percent
of the total U.S. population) were on government assistance. This number included approximately 3 50 families, z 5 unmarried women, and 500
unmarried men. The relief initially took the form of groceries that were
delivered by a local Chinese grocery store to the families. Then, beginning in 1934, the government issued a weekly check to each family for
food, rent, utilities, and clothing, supplemented by free medical care at
a local clinic.14 Lim P. Lee, who served as postmaster of San Francisco
from 1966 to 1980, was a social worker during the depression; he recalled: "Where the Chinese Recreation Center is today used to be the
Washington Grammar School. They had a backyard there, and on payday, when they came to get their relief checks, we had lines of four to
six deep."15

Both Lim P. Lee and Ethel Lum, also a social worker, emphasized that there was no discrimination in the distribution of unemployment
relief to the Chinese in San Francisco. "Because of language difficulties
and differences in habits and customs, the Chinese on relief have always
received special consideration, and have been treated fairly and justly,
wrote Ethel Lum in 193 5. "They receive identically the same allowances
for food as do the white families; whereas in several counties in California, Chinese and other racial groups, Filipino, Mexican, etc., are accorded
a lower food budget, a difference of from i o to zo per cent, on the belief that these racial groups have less expensive diets."" This egalitarian
treatment may have been due to accusations that had circulated in the
community a year before charging the authorities with providing Chinese families less relief because of their lower standard of living. In response, FERA officials had assigned a bilingual social worker to investigate and correct the matter.i" As it was, "the unemployment relief checks
were hardly enough for bare existence for the single men," said Lim P.
Lee. "The families had more allowance, but there were more mouths to
feed."18 Monthly relief for the Chinese in San Francisco was averaging
$16.43 per single person and $69.79 per family, far below the $3o a
month needed to support one Chinese person or the $ i zo required to
sustain an average-sized Chinese family of eight for a month.19

Then in October 193 5 , when the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) went into action, 331 single men and 164 families were transferred from the relief rolls to the federal work program. The idea was
to shift the unemployed from direct relief to work relief before family
relations eroded any further and men became too dependent on public
assistance.20 WPA jobs required U.S. citizenship and benefited both bluecollar and white-collar workers. Because most unemployed Chinese men
fell into the former class, they were employed by WPA mainly as unskilled labor on public projects-constructing public buildings, parks,
roads, bridges, and airports. Fong was one of the "lucky" ones hired
under the WPA program. As he put it,

Then Roosevelt come out and he created the word NRA [National Recovery Administration], gave work to people, a lotta guys, but later
on it got so sour. Like they got jobs, for instance I went in on one of
them, a railroad job inside Elko. They paid seventy-two dollars, I think,
and they give you jobs like that so you can make a living, and I worked
there a few months. It was awfully hot, hot like everything! In fact you
could see the blaze movin' around hotly. And people come back workin'
in the railroad, they come back for dinner they practically stink because
their clothing been in that sunlight so damn long. And that's the way it is, I lived out there. You don't go nowhere, it's right out in the middle
of the desert, see, that's the way it is. There's quite a few jobs similar
like that that Roosevelt put out later on.21