USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22
Trusting these lines may be of some comfort from one who knows the facts, I am
Yours very sincerely, JOHN PITMAN.
280
THE TERRIBLE SEVENTIES
Mr. Ralston was only fifty; his energies-never allowed to rust-were at their supreme pitch of development; his resourceful and highly organized brain was a perfect ma- chine, equipped for every emergency. If he had lived, no doubt he would have made another fortune and con- tinued to devote himself to the advancement of his city. In spite of the nagging attacks of the Call and the Bulletin, which preceded his death for several weeks, it is doubt- ful if he ever lost the confidence or admiration of the public. And once more all San Francisco turned out for a funeral. He lies not far from Broderick in Lone Mountain.
I remember Mr. Ralston-who was the great man of my childhood-as a thick-set man with a massive face, clean-shaven above the mouth, and not too much hair below, a piercing but kind and often humorous blue eye, a tightly set mouth which could relax-rarely-into a charming and spontaneous smile-sandy hair, and a cast- iron repose. I know now that that granitic exterior sur- rounded a dynamo, and, no doubt, often an insupportable nervous tension. He was a great man set down into too small a field, and, like other great men that have ignored the laws made by lesser men, he paid a heavy price.
XX
THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA
WHEN California was admitted into the Union in 1850 the Chinese, welcome immigrants, turned out as patrioti- cally as the Americans in the great parade which cele- brated that historic episode, and were given an honor- able position. Both Governor Burnett, the first civil governor of California, and his successor, accepted the Chinese as desirable acquisitions; and Governor McDougal, in his annual message, spoke of them as "one of the most worthy classes of our newly adopted citizens," and recommended that further immigration should be en- couraged, as they were particularly fitted to work on the reclamation of the fertile tule - swamps overflowed by the rivers during the rainy season. When the Vigilance Committee of 1856 was organized the Chinese merchants of San Francisco, already a powerful and concentrated colony, contributed munificently to its funds and received a vote of thanks.
But it was far otherwise in the mines. Almost from the first there was an outcry against these frugal, thrifty, thorough, tireless Orientals. This was owing partly to an ineradicable race prejudice against color, characteristic of this land of many races, partly to an irritating sense of the economical superiority of the Asiatic, partly to the discovery that the maximum of the precious dust which
282
THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA
had been sluiced upward throughout long vulcanic ages for the benefit of honest Americans was being sent to China-from which, it is possible, California derived her ancient populations. Whatever the motive, the China- men were run out of digging after digging, laws were enacted against them; before long, although here and there they were permitted to herd together at inferior placers, they began to drift into the towns, particularly San Francisco, where they proceeded to reduce the cost of living by their low charges as laundrymen, merchants, street venders, and servants. One of the most familiar sights of San Francisco for many years was the coolie with his coarse blue linen smock and wide trousers, native straw hat (that so curiously resembles his native archi- tecture), and a pole balanced across his shoulders from which depended large baskets filled with salmon and other fish, fruits, and vegetables. These he peddled from house to house at incredibly low prices.
The children were never weary of standing in front of the Chinese wash-houses and watching the "pigtails" fill their mouths with water and eject it in a hissing stream over the underclothes and linen that their vindictive rival, the laundress, sprinkled occidentally. The Chinese quarter gave a complete illusion of the Orient, particularly at night, with its gaudy Chinese architecture and crowds and smells, its thousands of swaying lanterns, often nebu- lous blots of light in the fog, its ornate Joss house, its theaters of gorgeous costumes and no scenery, its under- ground opium-dens, its hanging balconies, over which on the occasion of a merchant's banquet drifted the hopeless monotonous wailing of the women, singing to entertain their lords, The shops were fascinating both to tourists
283
CALIFORNIA
and Californians with their prodigal stock of kimonos ranging from one dollar to seventy-five dollars, their china of all prices, their jades and carved cabinets and bed- spreads. Until the fire of 1906 San Francisco's China- town was one of the sights of the world, but to-day the shops alone have their old attraction.
The antagonism in San Francisco toward the Chinese grew slowly. In 1851 the immigration had reached about twenty-seven hundred. In 1852 there were eighteen thousand four hundred additional Chinese in California, and the uneasiness had spread from the mines and entered politics.
The celebrated phrase "The Chinese must go" is at- tributed to one Dennis Kearney, the "sand-lot agitator"; but Bigler, third governor of California, came out flatly with the sentiment in a special message to the legislature, April 23, 1852, giving expression to the growing belief that it was important to check Chinese immigration, particu- larly of coolies, who were sent out under contract to work at the mines, and would be returned to China after a fixed period by one or other of the six companies. These coolies, he advised the legislature, came to California influenced by cupidity only (here we find no mention by his excellency of the motives influencing the stupendous white immigration of 1849-50, which included clergymen, school-teachers, lawyers, editors, and other exponents of the high occidental standard, who had deserted their avocations and stampeded for the mines); he went on to say that these coolie miners received from the companies a mere wage, that not one of them intended to settle in the country, that as their standards in all things were so low (the American has always despised frugality), opposed
284
THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA
diametrically to those of the United States, they were necessarily the most undesirable class of citizens which the country could adopt. He made no reference to the fact that in spite of the prejudice against the Chinamen at the mines it never had been found necessary to lynch one of them, whereas every white race had been repre- sented at the end of a rope up the gulch.
However, there is no logical argument that can make the least headway against race prejudice; and if the Orientals, who, we are all willing to grant, are vastly our superiors economically, would appreciate this fact once for all, much trouble and possibly bloodshed would be averted. It is the masses that rule in this country, not the enlightened few, who, whatever their breadth of mind, are always forced to yield to the popular clamor.
Bigler, who was anything but broad-minded, attributed all the vices of all the ages to the Chinese, and in his mes- sage, at least, left them not one rag of virtue to cover their corruption. He went so far as to discourage the keeping of the contracts with the companies, and intimated that it would be an impertinence if the Chinese attempted retaliation; the conditions of California were peculiar, therefore she should enact peculiar laws; having examined the constitutional question involved, he believed that the state had the right to prevent the entry of any class of persons that it "deemed dangerous" to the interests or welfare of its citizens.
But although Bigler with this message encouraged the prejudice against the yellow race among the unruly members of the population, subjecting it to abuse and indignities, he was unable to obtain any legislation on the subject; and the answers of the Chinese merchants so far
285
CALIFORNIA
exceeded his message in logic and dignity that many Californians resented the position in which their governor had placed them. On March 9, 1853, five members of the Committee on Mines and Mining Interests-James H. Gardner, T. T. Cabaniss, Benjamin B. Redding, R. G. Reading, and Patrick Cannay-presented a report which indicated that among legislators at least there was a reaction in favor of the inoffensive race that had played so important a part in developing the industries and resources of the state.
Their report asserted that there were twenty-two thousand Chinese in California, mostly from the Canton district. They had divided themselves into four de- partments, representing that district. Each department had a house in San Francisco presided over by two men who were elected by the department in the state. All coolies that came to the country were under the super- vision of these houses, and were not allowed to leave the country until debts were settled. In sickness they were given care in hospitals in Chinatown, and in the same district all legal matters were attended to without refer- ence to the California courts. The heads of these houses, men that stood high in the estimation of all reputable San Francisco business men, had appeared before the committee and stated that the original practice of bringing coolies to the country under contract to labor for em- ployers had been abandoned; most of them now came as their own masters and with their own means; some had borrowed money and pledged their property; some had agreed to give the proceeds of their labor for a certain time; others had pledged their children to be owned as slaves in case of non-payment. They estimated the Chinese
286
THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA
capital in the state, other than that employed in mining, at two millions of dollars.
There was much palaver, and then the matter was dropped for a time, although Bigler in his successive messages took occasion to scold the legislature for doing nothing to arrest Chinese immigration; and the small boy, and sometimes his father, continued to stone China- men in the streets or pull his pigtail when the mood was on him. Weller, the fourth governor, in response to a petition for aid from Shasta County to put down an anti- Chinese riot, sent a hundred and thirteen rifles, and the message that the spirit of mobocracy must be crushed at no matter what cost of money or blood.
Governors Latham and Downey do not seem to have taken any stand on the subject, probably because it was engulfed in the all-absorbing war; but Governor Stanford in 1862 took as positive a stand against the Chinese as the first governor had done, maintaining that Asia sent us the dregs of her population and that immigration should be discouraged by every legitimate means. Governor Low, with more independence-for the Chinese antipathy was increasing daily and had been made an issue in the recent campaign -- "took strong ground against the illiberal and barbarous provisions of the law excluding Mongolian and Indian testimony from the courts of justice where a white person was a party."
Governor Haight, in his message of December, 1869, alluded to Chinese immigration in the choicest English incorporated in our democratic vocabulary: "The' Chi- nese," said he, "are a stream of filth and prostitution pouring in from Asia, whose servile competition tends to cheapen and degrade labor." He also declared Chinese
19
287
CALIFORNIA
testimony to be utterly unreliable, but in the next breath announced himself in favor of "the removal of all barriers to the testimony of any race or any class as a measure not simply of justice but sound policy."
Governor Booth's remarks, which might have been written yesterday, are worth quoting:
It may be true that the interests of capital and labor are the same [said he]; but in practice each is prompted by self-interest, and avails himself of the other's necessities; and any system that introduces a class of laborers whose wages are exceptionally low gives capital an advantage; and in so far as it has a tendency to establish a fixed line of demarcation between capital and labor and create a laboring caste, it is a social and political evil. But, however this may be and what- ever the course of action the federal government, which has exclusive control of the subject of Asiatic immigration, may take in relation to it, there is but one thing to do in reference to the Chinese, and that is to afford them full and perfect protection. Mob violence is the most dangerous form by which the law can be violated, not merely in the immediate outrage committed, but in the results which often follow: communities debauched, jurors intimidated, and courts con- trolled by the political influence of the number that are guilty. . . .
Romualdo Pacheco, who as lieutenant-governor admin- istered for ten months after Booth resigned to take his seat in the United States Senate, seems to have had no time to devote to the question; but Governor Irwin opposed Chinese immigration in 1875. By this time, however, the opinion of a governor on this vital subject counted for little save as it affected his chances of election. It was become the especial prerogative of the mob agitators.
Periodically labor is disgraced and crippled by agitators whose only ambition is a Utopian condition in which they can, after looting, loaf for the rest of their lives, and whose shibboleth is the brotherhood of man. The mass of laborers, unionist or otherwise, go about their business, protect themselves by well-thought-out methods, and
288
THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA
possess brains enough to realize that all changes must evolve slowly; if radically, the result will be mob rule and, its inevitable sequence, a dictator-and a reversion to first principles after the destruction of all that steady progress has achieved. But, as in every other class, there are thousands without brains, and these are easily manipu- lated when conditions have arisen that present a striking opportunity to those of their number that live without work.
In the 'zo's, when everybody was excited and enormous fortunes were being made in the Virginia City mines- many on paper, as the events proved, for few were wary enough to sell before it was too late-agitators in San Francisco began holding meetings in empty sand-lots on the outskirts of the town and shouting that it was time for the rich to disgorge in favor of his superior in all the virtues, the day-laborer; that no man should be permitted to own more than a few acres of land. But this was a mere preliminary skirmish. They were quite willing to appropriate all the capital in the state; but as that drastic measure presented difficulties they concentrated on the unfortunate Mongolian. This was the easiest way of currying favor with the masses during that era; it was the war-cry of the politicians after votes, and the stock in trade of the agitators. And, as has been pointed out, the temperature of the 'zo's was high. Everybody was excited about something all the time, or if he enjoyed a brief respite he feared that he was worn out.
XXI
"THE CHINESE MUST GO"
DENNIS KEARNEY, a drayman, who had arrived in Cali- fornia in 1868 and naturalized in 1876, soon became the most conspicuous of the sand-lot agitators. He was a man of some natural ability, and, although without edu- cation, bright enough to pick up a large amount of useful knowledge. As he had that mystic quality known as personality, and made the most noise denouncing capital, monopoly, and the Chinese, he rose rapidly to the leader- ship of the most serious labor agitation in the history of California. There were nightly meetings in the sand- lots, lighted by torches when the moon was too young or the familiar fog drifted over Twin Peaks, at all of which an enormous amount of talking and hissing and shouting was done; but the first overt act which called out the police was in July, 1877. News had come over the wire of socialistic, labor, and railroad riots at Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pittsburg; and Kearney & Co. had little difficulty persuading the lighter heads among the working- men as well as the hoodlums (successors to the Hounds in intention, although less criminal in act) that these agitations "back East" were but the forerunners of a national revolution that would give the country once for all to the labor party.
On July 23d a band of choice spirits burned a Chinese
290
"THE CHINESE MUST GO"
laundry and sacked several others. Then the "Sand- lotters", indulged in a grand parade, shouting that they would drive the Chinese out of San Francisco if they had to burn all Chinatown to do it. The police force of the city numbered one hundred and fifty, totally inadequate to cope with such a mob. San Francisco was for the most part built of wood. Quite apart from the burning of Chinatown, situated in the heart of the business dis- trict, if the agitators saw fit to fire houses simultaneously at different points and then were able to obstruct the fire brigade, the city would burn to the ground.
Once more William T. Coleman was the man of the hour. In response to the general demand he organized on July 24th a strong force of volunteers to be called the Committee of Safety. The municipal government, al- though corrupt enough, was far better than that of 1856, thanks to the Vigilance Committee, and it was not neces- sary to interfere with the police force, merely to supple- ment it.
Seventy thousand dollars were subscribed, and thou- sands of citizens enrolled themselves at Horticultural Hall, the Committee's headquarters, on the corner of Stockton and Post streets. Mr. Coleman was supported by the United States Government, and provided with all the arms he demanded; five war-ships came down from Mare Island and anchored in the bay. All this within forty-eight hours, and due primarily to the state and national reputation that Mr. Coleman had acquired during his administration of the Vigilance Committee of 1856.
He organized and enrolled with the simple direct methods he had employed twenty years before. But he
29I
CALIFORNIA
had no intention of spilling any blood if it could be avoid- ed. The firearms were stacked to be used if all other re- sources failed. He ordered the purchase of six thousand hickory pick-handles, and before the night of the 5th the volunteers had been formed into companies armed with these formidable weapons and ready to reinforce the police. They became known as the Pick-handle Brigade· Only fifteen hundred went on duty that night, but there was a total force of five thousand members, who would have reached Horticultural Hall a few minutes after the tap of the alarm-bell.
Of the fifteen hundred on duty there were three hun- dred cavalry that patrolled the manufacturing districts and the outskirts of the city. There were also squads of police in boats along the water-front.
No one slept that night, and few but expected to see the city in flames before morning, in spite of the universal confidence in Mr. Coleman; for the rioters were known to number many thousand, most of whom no doubt were drunk. The large force of volunteers at the disposal of the Committee was still a secret. The result should have reassured San Franciscans once for all that when the strong, quick-thinking, self-reliant, and totally fearless men of that almost isolated strip on the edge of the Pacific rouse themselves, use their brains and superior powers of organization, they will put down the worst form of mob violence that could threaten their city. They may sacrifice blood and money, but they will do the work. There is always a William T. Coleman, a man of the hour.
But it was a wild night. All day there had been en- counters between the police and the mob. Thousands
292
"THE CHINESE MUST GO"
of people, women as well as men, stood in the streets on the long uneven ridge known as Nob Hill, where so many of the hated rich had built their big ugly houses (only the size could have excited envy in the least artistic mind) staring down upon that large flat district once known as Happy Valley; then for a time very fashionable, with substantial homes surrounded by gardens on Brannan Street, Folsom Street, and on Rincon Hill closer to the bay; now known generically as South of Market Street, and given over to factories, the dwellings of the laboring - class, cheap lodging-houses, and cheaper shops. It is bounded on the east and south by the docks.
At any moment the crowd on the hilltops expected to see one or all of the factories and dockyards burst into flames, and then a black mass of men surge forward like a tidal wave to the hills. All were prepared to break ranks and flee to the Presidio and Black Point at the first sign that the Committee's troops had been overcome by the mob.
Suddenly they did see flames. They leapt from the lumber-yards near the Pacific Mail Steamship's docks at the foot of Brannan Street, where the Chinese immi- grants were landed; and the roar of the mob came faintly to the watchers on the hills. The fire-bells, which were a familiar sound in those days of wood and carelessness, rang wildly, sounding a general alarm. Almost immedi- ately the flames were extinguished. Not a red tongue anywhere else; there had been far worse fires in that dis- trict on many other nights.
Then some one came running up with the word that the Pick-handle Brigade was administering heavy chastise-
293
CALIFORNIA
ment to the rioters. The angry roar below grew in vol- ume, but only a few shots punctuated it. Finally the uproar subsided, save for an occasional drunken shout. South of Market Street went to bed utterly routed by the hickory sticks, and having let no blood to speak of. The watchers on the heights also dispersed, vowing to erect a statue to William T. Coleman, a vow which, with characteristic American ingratitude, they promptly for- got.
The mob was cowed, defeated. On the day following what had promised to be a portentous uprising of the pro- letariat, the working-men went sullenly to their jobs, or hung about in groups with no fight in them. This was a magnificent demonstration of what can be accomplished in a republic by the superior class of citizens over demagogues and their mistaken followers-and the lawless element of a city; a vastly different thing from the tyrannies of European states ruled by mili- tarism. In republics agitators merely lie for their own purposes when they assert that all men's chances are not equal; cream will rise to the top until the day of doom.
The Committee of Safety disbanded for the moment, but its members had been so thoroughly disciplined, even in the short period of its existence, that they could be called together at the tap of the bell. Thanks were for- warded to Washington, and the marines and sailors asked permission to parade through the city before returning to Mare Island. Permission was given willingly, and they were an impressive and significant sight, especially for "South of Market Street."
But the times were hard. Hundreds of men were out
294
"THE CHINESE MUST GO"
of work. Cowed as they were, their passions had been roused; they had had a taste of red blood, and they still were grist for the mill of the demagogue.
It was then that Dennis Kearney organized what he named the Working-man's Party of California-the W. P. C .- but what the people of San Francisco promptly nicknamed the Sand-lot Party. Every Sunday after- noon those in work and those idle from necessity or choice gathered once more in the sand-lots and listened to Kearney demand the blood of the rich, the hanging of William T. Coleman and his "hoodlum Committee of Safety," the police, the municipal officials, and certain specified capitalists whose mansions on Nob Hill (hap- pily obliterated by the fire of 1906) they would burn to the ground. He predicted that in one year there would be twenty thousand laborers in San Francisco armed with muskets and able to defy the United States army. In another flight he predicted for San Francisco the fate of Moscow. But this was merely talk, talk, talk. Not one of his audience bought a musket or even reconnoit- ered Nob Hill. But the better class of these working- men, alarmed by the continued hard times, and disgusted by the colossal fortunes made by men no better than themselves and no higher in the social scale, who now ignored their existence, doing nothing to relieve their anxieties or privations, were in a mood to do something concrete. The W. P. C. grew larger daily with the spectacular Kearney (in whom it still had confidence) as president; John D. Hay, vice-president; and H. L. Knight, secretary.
As is customary with new parties laboring under real grievances, they vowed themselves to an infinite number
295
CALIFORNIA
of impossible reforms. The principles of the association were formulated as follows:
To unite all poor men and working-men and their friends into one political party for the purpose of defending themselves against the dangerous encroachments of capital on the happiness of our people and the liberties of our country; to wrest the government from the hands of the rich and place it in those of the people, where it properly be- longs; to rid the country of cheap Chinese labor as soon as possible; to destroy the great money power of the rich-and by all means in our power because it tends still more to degrade labor and aggrandize capital; to destroy land monopoly in our state by a system of taxation that will make great wealth impossible in the future. ... The rich have ruled us until they have ruined us. We will now take our own affairs into our own hands. The republic must and shall be preserved, and only working-men can do it. Our shoddy aristocrats want an emperor and a standing army to shoot down the people.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.