The Barbary Coast

The underworld which naturally developed in San Francisco’s Chinese quarter was never an integral part of the Barbary Coast, but remained a separate entity throughout its existence. Nevertheless, they were so closely allied and had so much in common that it was sometimes difficult to determine where one ended and the other began. White officials and politicians protected the purveyors of sin in Chinatown, just as they surrounded the dive-keepers of the Barbary Coast with their sheltering influence, in return for a share of the proceeds. For many years the payment of graft was a recognized and accepted custom. And as the Six Companies’ memorial to President Grant in 1874 had intimated, many of the white men who thus enriched themselves occupied comparatively high positions in the municipal government. As late as 1901, only a few years before Chinatown was more or less purged of evil by earthquake and fire, a Legislative Committee appointed to investigate the rumored connection between the San Francisco police and the overlords of Chinese vice reported that it was apparent that graft was being paid in large amounts. Although the committee specifically accused no one, it strongly recommended that the Mayor, the Police Commissioners, and the Chief of Police “proceed forthwith to enforce the law.” It further urged the District Attorney to take immediate action to bring about proper enforcement and requested the Grand Jury of San Francisco County to lay charges against any public official who neglected his duty. The dives and bagnios were closed for a few days while the committee was making inquiries and examining witnesses, but otherwise no attention was paid to it or to its recommendations.

The seeker after thrills or depravity found in Chinatown no melodeons, no dance-halls, no concert saloons, and only an occasional bar-room, but he did find an abundance of opium-smoking resorts, houses of prostitution, and gambling hells, which in later years were clearing-houses for the disposal of millions of Chinese lottery tickets. Although the opium dives seldom received the full measure of white political protection granted to other resorts, they flourished in considerable numbers until well after the beginning of the present century. In 1885 the special committee of the Board of Supervisors found twenty-six of these places, with 320 bunks, open to the public in Chinatown; while there were then, and for many years thereafter, at least that many more to which the ordinary man could not hope to gain admittance. They were operated for the exclusive use of white and Chinese addicts, principally the former, who were able to pay for a certain degree of privacy. Many of the places wherein opium was smoked, or was supposed to be smoked, were fakes, tourist-shockers conducted by the professional guides to the quarter, who were licensed by the city and were organized as the Chinatown Guides Association. These abodes of synthetic sin were invariably in dank and dreary cellars, and the entrances to them were so arranged as to persuade the visitor that he was traversing innumerable and, of course, dangerous underground passages. In many of these dimly lighted ways evil-looking Chinamen, in the employ of the guides, slunk back and forth, carrying knives and hatchets and providing atmosphere and local color. It was this illusion, together with the tall tales told by tourists of their experiences in San Francisco, which gave rise to the belief that Chinatown was a veritable network of subterranean galleries. This fancy persisted until the district was destroyed in 1906. While it lay in ruins, the whole area was carefully explored and mapped. Not a single underground passage was discovered, and few cellars larger or deeper than are commonly found under dwellings and business houses.

Prostitution was the principal, and by far the most remunerative, activity of Chinatown's criminal element, although gambling was the first of the popular vices to be introduced into the quarter and was, so far as the Chinese themselves were concerned, always the most liberally patronized. By the latter part of 1854, when the yellow population of San Francisco numbered only a few thousand, the upper end of Sacramento Street and the eastern side of Grant Avenue were lined with gambling houses. They were crowded both day and night, for the Chinaman is probably the most persistent and reckless gamester on earth; he will, ordinarily, bet on either side of any proposition, no matter how fantastic. Most of the Celestial gambling resorts of the early days were small and poorly furnished; in few was there room for more than three to six tables. Even fewer offered music or other entertainment. Said The Annals of San Francisco:

“At the innermost end of some of the principal gambling places, there is an orchestra of five or six native musicians, who produce such extraordinary sounds from their curiously shaped instruments as severely torture the white man to listen to. Occasionally a songster adds his howl or shriek to the excruciating harmony. . . .Heaven has ordered it, no doubt, for wise purposes, that the windy chaos is pleasant to the auricular nerves of the natives. Occasionally a few white men will venture into these places, and gaze with mingled contempt and wonder upon the grave, melancholy, strange faces of the gamblers, and their curious mode of playing. There seems to be only one game in vogue. A heap of brass counters is displayed on the plain, mat-covered table, and the banker, with a long, slender stick, picks and counts them out one by one, while the stakers gaze with intense interest on the process. The game seems to be of the simplest nature, though white people scorn to know any thing about it.”

The white man may have scorned to acquire knowledge of Chinese gambling, but he was little less than avid in his desire to learn all there was to know about the Chinese prostitute—she was originally brought to San Francisco for his amusement, and he remained her best customer until both yellow and white prostitution were officially abolished by the California Legislature in 1914. The importation of Chinese girls for immoral purposes was begun about the middle of 1850, some two years after the arrival of the first Chinamen, and by 1869 the trade had reached such proportions that the San Francisco Chronicle referred to it as “the importation of females in bulk” and said that ”each China steamer now brings consignments of women, destined to be placed in the market.” During the middle and late eighteen-seventies, when Chinatown’s underworld was at the peak of its activity, the number of Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco was conservatively estimated at between fifteen hundred and two thousand, while there were at least a thousand at the beginning of the present century. Until the passage of the exclusion laws in the eighteen-eighties, neither the federal nor the city authorities attempted any effective interference with the traffic, although occasionally, at the request of the Six Companies or an American reform agency, the police boarded ships from China and sent to asylums or mission homes girls who had been destined for the bagnios of Chinatown. On one of these vessels, visited in June 1868 upon complaint of the Six Companies, the police found forty-three girls, ranging from eight to thirteen years, and consigned to brothel-keepers and dealers who were described by a contemporary journalist as “notorious old harridans of this place.” All of the girls were sent to the Magdalen Asylum, and the police announced that jobs would be found for them in domestic service. However, many eventually appeared in the houses of prostitution.

The various laws which forbade Chinese immigration acted as a check upon the traffic in Chinese girls, but failed to stop the shipments entirely. Thereafter they were smuggled into San Francisco, and large numbers were always available with which to replenish the stock in the bagnios. Some arrived in heavily padded crates, billed as freight, and were admitted by bribed customs and immigration officials. Others landed at Canadian ports and were brought to San Francisco by train, carriage, and, in later years, automobile. Still others, carefully coached, disembarked openly from the China steamers and succeeded in convincing state and federal inspectors that they were natives of California and had only been visiting in the land of their ancestors. When the authorities found women in the Chinese dives who had entered the country illegally, there were always plenty of Chinamen to claim them as wives; and, likewise, there were plenty of white lawyers and politicians to fight their battles in the courts. In 1901, when the United States Marshal raided the dens in Baker Court and Sullivan Alley and arrested thirty-four girls, each was claimed as wife by half a dozen Chinamen before deportation proceedings could even be begun.

Some historians appear to have taken it more or less for granted that the Six Companies were large importers of girls, and that they were also financially interested in the bagnios, the opium joints, and the gambling houses. Such accusations are clearly unjust. The fact is that the Six Companies always actively opposed anything that might hamper the commercial growth of Chinatown, which the exploitation of vice certainly did. For many years the organization attempted to procure the deportation of notorious prostitutes and dealers in women, often complained that the laws were not enforced, and furnished much of the information upon which the police and federal agents based their infrequent raids. During the late eighteen-nineties and the early years of the present century the Six Companies were joined in their fight to rid Chinatown of vice by the Chinese Society of English Education, the Chinese Students’ Alliance, the Chinese Native Sons, and the Chinese Cadet Corps. The Society of English Education, composed principally of prominent Chinese merchants and teachers, was especially active and employed an American lawyer to assist them in trying to prevent the landing of Chinese prostitutes. They succeeded in having a few girls deported, and so aroused the ire of the slave-dealers that the latter announced publicly that the leading members of the society would be killed unless they ceased their interference. Several threatening letters were received at the headquarters of the society, in 709½ Commercial Street, and the final one of the series gave the names of the first victims of the slavers’ fury. The missive was thus translated:

San Francisco, 7th Month, 1st Date (July 28, 1897)

To the Chinese Society of English Education:

Lately, having learned that the Chinese Society of English Education has retained an attorney to prevent girls imported for immoral purposes from landing and made efforts to deport them to China, in consequence of which there is a great loss of our bloodmoney. As you are all Christianized people, you should do good deeds, but if you keep on going to the Customhouse trying to deport girls brought here for immoral purposes from China, and trying to prevent them from landing, your lives of your several people are not able to live longer than this month.
Your dying day is surely on hand.
Your dying day is surely on hand.
The dying men’s names are as follows: Dear Wo, Lee Hem, Ong Lin Foon, Chin Fong, Chin Ming Sek, Hoo Yee Hin.

A few days later the slave-dealers announced, by means of placards posted upon the billboards of Chinatown, that twelve tong killers had been employed to dispose of the six members of the society. For several weeks the latter were guarded by the police and by men of their own race whom they had employed, and the murderous plans of the slavers were frustrated. Nevertheless the threatening letters accomplished their purpose, for there was a noticeable lessening of enthusiasm on the part of the Chinese Society for English Education. Thereafter this organization was content to leave the enforcement of the law to the constituted authorities, who were not particularly interested in the suppression of Chinese prostitution. Some seven years after the intimidation of the society direct action against the brothels was attempted by members of the Chinese Students’ Alliance, the Native Sons, and the Cadet Corps. In September 1904, groups of earnest young crusaders invaded several houses of prostitution in Jackson Street, among them a particularly vile dive owned by an old Chinese woman called Mon Op, and succeeded in smashing the windows and wrecking the interiors before they were driven away by the police. In that same month the Chinese Consul-General formally complained about the fake opium dens and accused the white guides in Chinatown of staging immoral exhibitions in the Chinese bagnios for the delectation of the tourists. The Board of Police Commissioners, expressing great indignation at such a state of affairs, promptly adopted a resolution to revoke the license of any guide who “escorted any person to lewd, immoral or indecent practices, or to a place where opium was smoked.” This gesture satisfied the Consul-General, and the guides continued to operate their bawdy shows. No licenses were revoked.

Two of San Francisco’s golden courtesans—Ah Toy and Selina—achieved great fame in public amatory circles and made a considerable stir during their respective careers in Chinatown’s underworld. Ah Toy came to San Francisco in the summer of 1850 and is said to have been the first Chinese prostitute to ply her ancient trade within the confines of Chinatown. As The Annals of San Francisco put it, "everybody knew that famous or infamous character, who was alternately the laughing-stock and the plague of the place.” Ah Toy soon became amorously involved with several white men of more or less wealth and prominence, and as a result of their benefactions was able to buy her freedom and establish herself in business as an importer of girls for the bagnio trade. Thereafter she was known as Madame Ah Toy and for several years was one of the principal and most prosperous dealers in Chinese prostitutes in California. In addition, she operated a chain of dives in San Francisco, Sacramento, and other cities. Eventually she sold her various properties and returned to China to spend her declining years in comfort. Neither Madame Ah Toy nor the other traders who brought girls into California had any difficulty in disposing of their consignments at good prices. Said the San Francisco Chronicle of December 5, 1869:

“The particularly fine portions of the cargo, the fresh and pretty females who come from the interior, are used to fill special orders from wealthy merchants and prosperous tradesmen. A very considerable portion are sent into the interior under charge of special agents, in answer to demands from well-to-do miners and successful vegetable producers. Another lot of the general importation offered to the Chinese public are examined critically by those desiring to purchase, and are sold to the ‘trade’ or to individuals at rates ranging from $500 down to $200 per head, according to their youth, beauty and attractiveness. The refuse, consisting of ‘boat-girls’ and those who come from the seaboard towns, where contact with the white sailor reduces even the low standard of Chinese morals, is sold to the proprietor of the select brothels, or used in the more inferior dens of prostitution under the immediate control of the ‘swell companies.’ Those who are afflicted with disease, who suffer from the incurable attacks of Asiatic scrofula, or have the misfortune of possessing a bad temper, are used in this last-mentioned manner.”

Selina flourished for a few years during the middle eighteen-eighties, when she was from sixteen to twenty years old, and many of San Francisco’s old-time citizens still recall her as one of the most beautiful courtesans of her time. She was especially celebrated for the extraordinary symmetry of her figure, as well as for her amiability and a comprehensive knowledge of her art. She never rose from what might be called the ranks, but she did enjoy the distinction of a house of her own—a little three-room brick structure in Bartlett Alley. No Chinaman was ever admitted to her quarters; she was the particular pet of the white man, and her favors were so much in demand that during her period of greatest popularity it was customary for appointments to be made several days in advance. Her fee was one dollar, instead of the seventy-five cents which was the top price in other Chinese establishments, and her visitors always paid it without protest.

To gaze upon Selina’s beautiful form, without the annoying intervention of garments, cost fifty cents, whereas other bagnio girls in Chinatown accorded the sightseer this privilege, known as a “lookee,” for twenty-five cents or, in some of the lowest dens, a dime. The “lookee” was always a source of considerable revenue, because of the widespread belief, still curiously prevalent among white men, that there are important anatomical differences between the Oriental woman and her Occidental sister. For purposes of the record, this question was definitely settled in 1882 by a writer who visited the Chinese dives in Washington Street and conducted what appears to have been a very painstaking and scientific inquiry. He wrote in his book:

“Being bent upon investigation, we enter and observe the surroundings, paying. . .for the privilege of witnessing the physical configuration of these poor, degraded creatures. . .In order to set at rest a question which has been fiercely debated by students of nature, our investigation justifies the assertion that there are no physical differences between the Chinese and American women, their conformation being identical.” (8a)

There were two types of bagnio in San Francisco s Chinatown—the parlor house and the crib. The former, comparatively few in number, was to be found principally in Grant Avenue, Ross Alley, Waverly Place, and a few other important thoroughfares in or adjacent to Chinatown. Many of them were sumptuously furnished with a great clutter of teakwood and bamboo, embroidered hangings, soft couches, and cushions of embroidered silk, while exotic paintings and clouds of fragrant incense emphasized the languorous atmosphere of the Orient. The number of girls in each house ranged from four to twenty-five, all richly clad and seductively perfumed. Cribs existed in great profusion in Jackson and Washington streets and in China, Bartlett, Stout, Church, and other alleys throughout the quarter—they lined both sides of China Alley, a dingy, fifteen-foot passage which extended from Jackson to Washington Street. Several other alleys were likewise entirely given over to cribs. In Brooklyn Alley, off Sacramento Street near Stockton, were half a dozen cribs which during the late eighteen-nineties were occupied by Japanese girls, the first prostitutes of their race in San Francisco. In these places several ancient customs of the Yoshiwara were observed—a visitor was required to remove his shoes at the threshold; and when he departed, he received a gift, usually a good cigar, while his shoes were returned to him cleaned and polished. The Japanese cribs and the Chinese parlor houses were for white men only, but the ordinary Chinese bagnio catered to men of all races and colors. The wealthy and influential Chinaman was seldom seen in the public houses, except in a few operated for his exclusive use, the inmates of which were white women who had succumbed to the fascinations of opium. These resorts, however, were not so elegantly furnished as were the Chinese parlor houses. Most of them were one-storey buildings with long hallways, on either side of which were small cubicles with barred windows. When not otherwise engaged, the prostitute stood or sat in the center of her room, with parts of her body exposed, while Chinese in quest of amorous adventure strolled along the corridor and inspected her through the bars. Such resorts were not notably prosperous, however, as the Chinaman of means usually maintained his own harem, with from one to a dozen concubines, according to his prosperity and desires. He replenished his stock of girls whenever fresh shipments arrived from China, selling or trading those of whom he had tired or who had failed to come up to his expectations. White girls rarely became inmates of these establishments, partly because they lacked sufficient docility and partly because the Chinese in general preferred women of their own race.

The crib was exactly what its name implies—a small, one-storey shack some twelve feet wide and fourteen feet deep, divided into two rooms by heavy curtains of coarse material. It was occupied by from two to six girls, each of whom wore the traditional costume of her trade—a black silk blouse with a narrow band of turquoise, on which flowers had been embroidered, extending across the front and back. In cold weather the girls were also clad in black silken trousers, but usually their attire consisted of nothing but the blouse. The back room of the crib was meagerly furnished with a wash-bowl, a rickety bamboo chair or two, and hard board shelves or bunks covered with matting. The front room was usually carpeted, and contained a cheap bureau, more chairs, and perhaps a wall mirror. The only entrance to the crib was a narrow door, in which was set a small barred window. Occupants of the den took turns standing behind the bars and striving to attract the attention of passing men. When an interested male stopped before the crib, the harlot displayed the upper part of her body and cajoled him with seductive cries and motions.

"China girl nice! You come inside, please?”
She invariably added to her invitation this extraordinary information, seldom, if ever, correct:
“Your father, he just go outl “ (8b)

These vocal enticements she varied with a more direct advertisement of her wares, a complete list of prices and services. Until the late hours of the night, in all the narrow, dirty by-ways of Chinatown, the plaintive voice of the Chinese crib girl could be heard crying in a shrill, monotonous singsong:

“Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee!”

So far as her own person was concerned, the Chinese prostitute, even when she occupied the lowest crib, was cleanly; she shaved her entire body daily and took frequent baths. But her master always compelled her to entertain every man who applied, and in consequence at least ninety per cent of the Oriental harlots in San Francisco were diseased. Moreover, although the parlor houses refused to admit boys of sixteen or seventeen, the cribs made no such distinction. During an inquiry conducted by a special committee of the Board of Supervisors in 1885, several policemen and special watchmen testified that they had often found white boys of ten and twelve years in the cribs, and some of the youngsters regularly visited the dens two or three times a week. A member of the Board of Health, a physician, testified that he had seen white boys of eight and ten with diseases which had been contracted in the Chinese dives of Jackson Street, where prices were lower than elsewhere in Chinatown. In these cribs a man could have his choice of girls for twenty-five or fifty cents, while special rates as low as fifteen cents were offered to boys under sixteen.

“I have never seen or heard of any country in the world,” this doctor said, “where there are as many children diseased as in San Francisco." (8c)

Other physicians gave similar testimony, describing a situation to which the special committee, as well as city officials, pointed with horror, but which they did little or nothing to remedy.

The backbone of Chinese prostitution in San Francisco was a system of slavery under which girls were owned and bartered as if they had been so many cattle; as, indeed, they were in the eyes of their masters. Practically every inmate of the Chinese parlor houses and cribs was a slave, and many had been in bondage since infancy. Usually they were owned by syndicates of Chinamen, or by women like Madame Ah Toy, who had themselves been prostitutes and had purchased their freedom. The slave holdings of some of these groups were extremely large. Four Chinamen in the middle eighteen-seventies owned eight hundred girls, ranging in age from two to sixteen years. They had been bought in China at an average price of about eighty dollars, but were worth from four hundred to a thousand dollars each in San Francisco. At late as 1895 a slave-dealer named Charley Hung, together with an old Chinese woman called Dah Pa Tsin, kept a hundred girls, all under fourteen, in pens in the rear of a building in Church Alley. This precious pair not only bought and sold, but rented girls to owners of cribs for a percentage of their earnings. Another noted slaver of this period was Suey Hin, who ordinarily kept in stock no fewer than fifty girls of various ages. Suey Hin became converted to Christianity in 1898, and in preparation for the good life sold all of her girls but seven, who were valued at about eighty-five hundred dollars. These she decided to retain for a while, in case she found the white man’s religion impracticable. Eventually, however, at the behest of the Salvation Army, she gave them their freedom. One of these girls was only ten days old when Suey Hin bought her from her parents for a few coins. She was three years old when the converted slaver placed her in the Salvation Army mission, and could easily have been sold for three hundred dollars, for she was a very pretty child and free from blemishes or deformities.

The girls who filled the bagnios of Chinatown were, for the most part, bought or kidnapped in China by agents of the San Francisco dealers, although kidnapping was seldom necessary. Chinese parents, especially those in the seaports, generally regarded their daughters as nuisances and were usually willing to sell them. The girls were shipped to San Francisco in batches of from three to a hundred and, once there, were either placed in dives operated by their masters or offered for sale in the open market. Dealers and owners of cribs and parlor houses were notified when a consignment had arrived, and those who were interested assembled at an appointed place, usually a cellar or other chamber which offered comparative safety from the prying eyes of white men, and, particularly, of the white women who operated the Chinatown missions and waged unceasing warfare against the slavers. When the sale began, the girls were brought in one by one to the block. They were stripped, punched, and prodded and in some cases examined by Chinese physicians who had, more likely than not, been bribed to warrant them sound in wind and limb. A price having been agreed upon for a given girl, the amount, in gold or currency, was placed in her outstretched palms. She immediately handed it to the man who had offered her for sale. She was then required to sign a contract, in which it was set forth that she had received the money into her own hands, and that in return she agreed to serve as a prostitute for a specified number of years. During the eighteen-seventies and the eighteen-eighties this was the usual form of contract:

For the consideration of [whatever sum had been agreed upon], paid into my hands this day, I, [name of girl], promise to prostitute my body for the term of — years. If, in that time, I am sick one day, two weeks shall be added to my time; and if more than one day, my term of prostitution shall continue an additional month. But if I run away, or escape from the custody of my keeper, then I am to be held as a slave for life.
(Signed) —————————

Another type of contract or agreement, which was also much in use, stipulated that the girl become a prostitute to repay the money which had been advanced for passage to the United States and for other expenses. One of these documents was introduced in evidence before the Senate Committee which in 1876 investigated the whole question of Chinese immigration:

“An agreement to assist a young girl named Loi Yan, because she became indebted to her mistress for passage, board, etc., and has nothing to pay. She makes her body over to the woman Sep Sam to serve as a prostitute, to make out the sum of $503. The money shall draw no interest, and Loi Yan shall receive no wages. Loi Yan shall serve four and one-half years. . . .When the time is out Loi Yan shall be her own master and no man shall trouble her. . . .If she is sick fifteen days she shall make up one month for every ten days. If Sep Sam should go back to China Loi Yan shall serve another master until her time is out."

Under the then existing laws of California such contracts might conceivably have been held by the courts to be valid instruments. The real jokers, of course, were the clauses relating to illness. The regular physical disturbance which every woman experiences was reckoned as within the meaning of the agreement, and the prostitute was held to be incapacitated three or four days a month on that account. At least one month, therefore, was added to every month of service under the terms of the contract, so that a Chinese girl who entered a crib or a parlor house was at once caught in a vicious circle from which there was no escape.

The prices paid for prostitutes in the San Francisco market varied with the years and with the quality of the merchandise and was naturally dependent to a great extent upon supply and demand. Before the passage of the exclusion acts the prettiest Chinese girls could be purchased for a few hundred dollars each, but after about 1888, when it became necessary to smuggle them into this country, prices rose enormously. During the early eighteen-nineties they ranged from about $100 for a one-year-old girl to a maximum of $1,200 for a girl of fourteen, which was considered the best age for prostitution. Children of six to ten brought from $200 to $800. About 1897 girls of twelve to fifteen sometimes sold for as high as $2,500 each. The record price was probably $2,800 in gold, which Charley Hung and Dah Pa Tsin paid for a fourteen-year-old girl in the early part of 1898. At whatever price a sale was made, the transaction was completed in regular form, and the purchaser received a bill of sale in which the girl was usually mentioned in a list of other commodities, which may or may not have changed hands. A typical document of this sort, conveying a nine-year-old girl, came into the hands of the Salvation Army in 1898 and was published in the San Francisco Call:
 

BILL OF SALE Loo Wong to Loo Chee
April 16—Rice, six mats, at $2............. April 18—Shrimps, 50 lbs., at 10c........ April 20—Girl...................................... April 21—Salt fish, 60 lbs., at 10c........	$ 12 5 250 6
	—— $273
Received payment,  LOO CHEE
Victoria, B. C., May 1, 1898

All of the Chinese slave girls in San Francisco, particularly those who occupied the cribs, were shamefully mistreated by their masters. They received no part of their earnings, and most of them never left the dens except for brief periods two or three times a week, when they were taken out under heavy guard for exercise, like dogs on a leash. For the slightest infraction of the strict rules under which they lived, or for failure to please every man who visited them, they were lashed with whips and branded with hot irons; and other tortures, at which the Chinese have always been particularly adept, were also inflicted upon them. Six years was a long time for a girl to live after being placed in a crib, and since she almost invariably began her life of misery and degradation in her early teens, a Chinese prostitute of more than twenty years was a great rarity. Moreover, she was, by that time, nothing more than a frightfully diseased old hag. In later years girls who had broken mentally and physically under the hardships to which they were subjected in the cribs, and had so lost their attractiveness and become useless for purposes of prostitution, were permitted and encouraged to escape to the missions conducted by the Salvation Army and other organizations. But in earlier times, during the eighteen-sixties and the eighteen-seventies, they were carried into small, dismal rooms in the back alleys of Chinatown, called “hospitals,” and there left alone to die. One of these places, in Cooper Alley, was thus described by the San Francisco Chronicle in its issue of December 5,1869:

“The place is loathsome in the extreme. On one side is a shelf four feet wide and about a yard above the dirty floor, upon which there are two old rice mats. There is not the first suggestion of furniture in the room, no table, no chairs or stools, nor any window. . . .When any of the unfortunate harlots is no longer useful and a Chinese physician passes his opinion that her disease is incurable, she is notified that she must die. . . .Led by night to this hole of a ‘hospital,’ she is forced within the door and made to lie down upon the shelf. A cup of water, another of boiled rice, and a little metal oil lamp are placed by her side. . . .Those who have immediate charge of the establishment know how long the oil should last, and when the limit is reached they return to the ‘hospital,’ unbar the door and enter. . . .Generally the woman is dead, either by starvation or from her own hand; but sometimes life is not extinct; the spark yet remains when the ‘doctors’ enter; yet this makes little difference to them. They come for a corpse, and they never go away without it.”

So far as remedying their condition was concerned, the slave girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown were helpless. Few could speak more than a dozen words of English, none had any knowledge whatsoever of American law or legal procedure, and there was no one to whom they could have appealed for aid even if it had occurred to them to protest against a custom so thoroughly grounded in the traditions of their race. The infrequent attempts of the federal and city authorities to close the brothels and free the slaves were empty gestures which met with little or no success. For the most part they were made grudgingly, and only upon the insistence of respectable Chinese organizations and the white women who operated the Chinatown missions, especially Miss Donaldina Cameron. She devoted practically her entire adult life to rescue work among the Chinese prostitutes, and to her, more than to any other one person, credit is due for the final radical improvement in the moral tone of Chinatown. While the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed the plague spots of the district, girls continued to be held as slaves, though not in such large numbers as before, until the enactment of the Red-light Abatement Act by the California Legislature in 1914. This, at length, placed in the hands of Miss Cameron and her associates an effective legal weapon, which was backed by the police. Within a few years slavery in San Francisco had been abolished.

The most spectacular and at the same time the most powerful agencies in the underworld of Chinatown were the tongs, which were always deeply involved in every evil scheme concocted in the quarter. The complete history of these extraordinary associations probably never will be written. It is extremely doubtful if any white man has ever thoroughly understood the innumerable ramifications of tong influence or been privy to the intricacies of their organization and methods, despite the fact that they are as American as chop suey. Like that celebrated dish, they are unknown in China. (8d) The first tongs—the Hop Sings and the Suey Sings—were organized about 1860 by the Chinese in the gold-fields near Marysville, California, as mutual benefit associations. There, too, occurred the first tong war, and, in common with many of the other conflicts which have since raged in American cities, it started over a woman. The mistress of a Hop Sing man was stolen by a Suey Sing Lothario, and the Hop Sings declared war to wipe out the stain upon their brother’s honor. Several men on either side were killed, but the Suey Sings were defeated and compelled to restore the girl to her rightful owner.

The tongs soon spread to the railroad construction camps in which large numbers of coolies were employed, thence to the Pacific Coast cities which harbored Chinese settlements, and finally throughout the United States. They first appeared in San Francisco during the late eighteen-sixties, and within ten years at least twenty tongs were firmly entrenched in Chinatown, with large memberships and overflowing treasure-chests. Occasionally they engaged in legitimate business, but in particular they were the lords of the underworld—they operated gambling resorts, opium dens and houses of prostitution, and exercised practical control over the slave trade, for although the actual buying and selling of girls was done by individuals, the tongs usually collected a head-tax for every slave imported for immoral purposes. Sometimes even an honest Chinaman who brought his wife to this country was compelled to pay the tongs before she was permitted to remain.

Each of these organizations employed professional murderers and also recruited a force of boo how doy, or fighting men, among its own members. In later years the tong warrior fought with revolvers, bombs, and even machine-guns, but in earlier times his favorite weapons were hatchets, daggers, knives, and bludgeons, which he carried in a long silken belt wrapped around his body beneath a loose blouse. When abroad on his murderous business, his queue was wound around his head, and he wore a broad-brimmed, low-crowned black slouch hat, pulled well down over his eyes. If he succeeded in dispatching an enemy, he left beside the body the weapon with which he had struck the fatal blow. The boo how doy, popularly known as hatchetmen or highbinders, received regular salaries, with extra pay for exceptional bravery in battle, and bonuses based on the number of men they killed. They were subjected to strict discipline and were required to obey at all times, without question, the orders of the man who had been chosen by their tong to command them in action. What was expected of them is indicated in this communication from the supreme council of the Gee Kung tong to one of its hatchetmen in 1888. A translation of the document was embodied in the report of the United States Industrial Commission, which investigated the highbinder tongs in 1901:

To Lum Hip, Salaried Soldier:
It has been said that to plan schemes and devise methods and to hold the seal is the work of the literary class, while to oppose foes, fight battles, and plant firm government is the work of the military. Now this tong appoints salaried soldiers to be ready to protect its members and assist others. This is our object. All, therefore, who undertake the military service of this tong must obey orders, and without orders they must not dare to act. If any of our brothers are suddenly molested it will be necessary for you to act with resolute will. You will always work in the interest of the tong, and never make your office a means of private revenge. When orders are given, you shall advance valiantly to your assigned task. . . .If, in the discharge of your duty, you are slain, we will undertake to pay $500 sympathy money to your friends. If you are wounded, a doctor will be engaged to heal your wounds, and if you are laid up for any length of time, you will receive $10 a month. If you are maimed for life, and incapacitated for work, $250 shall be paid to you, and a subscription taken to defray all costs of your journey home to China. Furthermore, when you exert your strength to kill or wound enemies of this tong, and in so doing are arrested and imprisoned, $100 per year will be collected for every year in jail.
Dated this 13th day of the 5th month of the 14th year of Kwong Su.

In the spring of 1875 Low Sing, a member of the Suey Sing tong, then the most powerful of all these organizations, fell in love with a slave girl named Kum Ho, who was also known as the Golden Peach. He began to live frugally and save his money, so that in time he might buy her freedom and make her his wife. But the beauteous Kum Ho had also attracted the attention of the evil Ming Long of the Kwong Dock tong, a noted assassin whose hatchet had cleaved a bloody trail through the gold-fields and the railroad labor camps. Ming Long informed Low Sing that he had himself decided to buy the Golden Peach and add her to the charmers who already graced his harem, and warned the Suey Sing man to keep away from the crib wherein Kum Ho was confined. But Low Sing was too much in love to obey. He continued to visit the Golden Peach, and on an evening in May 1875, while Low Sing stood before Kum Ho’s crib and held her hand through the bars, Ming Long crept up behind him and split his skull with a hatchet.

Low Sing lived long enough to tell the head men of his tong who had attacked him, and the supreme council of the Suey Sings immediately held a solemn conclave. They considered the matter at considerable length. Witnesses who were familiar with Low Sing’s love-affair with the slave girl said that the Golden Peach was also in love with Low Sing, and that the Suey Sing man had succumbed to her charms long before Ming Long of the Kwong Docks had even seen her. It was clear, therefore, that Low Sing was entitled to the girl if he could, within a reasonable time, raise sufficient money to buy her. It was likewise clear that the assault upon Low Sing had been a direct blow at the honor of the Suey Sings, for the enmities of a member of a tong were also the enmities of the entire tong. Accordingly, the literary men of the Suey Sings indited a chun hung, or challenge to battle, painted in black letters on vermilion paper. It was posted upon the bulletin board at Grant Avenue and Clay Street:

The Kwong Dock tong is hereby sincerely and earnestly requested to send its best fighting men to Waverly Place at midnight tomorrow to meet our boo how doy. If this challenge is ignored, the Kwong Dock tong must admit defeat and make compensation and apologize for the assault upon Low Sing. However, we sincerely hope that the Kwong Dock tong will accept this challenge, and paste alongside of this poster its own chun hung.
(Signed)   Seal of the Suey Sing Tong (8e)

Within an hour there appeared on the bulletin board another strip of vermilion paper covered with black characters, signed with the seal of the Kwong Docks. The hatchetmen of both tongs immediately began sharpening their weapons and otherwise preparing for battle. Knowledge of the coming encounter soon spread throughout Chinatown, and by eleven o’clock on the appointed night, much to the amazement of the few white policemen who patrolled the district, Waverly Place was deserted, and all doors and windows on the street level were securely locked and bolted. Even the cries of the crib girls were hushed. But the upstairs windows, and the balconies which overhung the narrow thoroughfares, were crowded with Chinese, who had assembled to watch the fighting and who were excitedly laying wagers upon the result or upon the exploits of individual hatchetmen. A few minutes before twelve o’clock the warriors began to arrive, singly and in twos and threes, queues wrapped around their heads, black slouch hats drawn down over their eyes, and blouses bulging with hatchets, knives, and clubs. In silence the fighting men of the Suey Sings took up positions on one side of the street, while the boo how doy of the Kwong Docks confronted them from the opposite curb. There were about twenty-five men in each detachment, all noted killers with much experience in tong warfare.

For a little while neither side seemed to be aware of the other. But promptly at midnight the leaders began screaming insults. After a moment or two of this sort of preparation, they gave the signal, and with a flash of knives and hatchets the boo how doy rushed forward and clashed in the center of the street. For at least fifteen minutes the hatchetmen fought with great ferocity, and the tide of battle surged back and forth while the spectators leaned over the balcony railings and the window-sills and cheered or groaned, accordingly as they had placed their bets. Then the blast of a police whistle shrilled above the roar of combat, and reserves from a dozen precincts charged into Waverly Place with drawn revolvers, swinging night-sticks. The fighting stopped immediately, and the hatchetmen vanished into the dark and dingy passages of Chinatown. None had been killed, but nine had been seriously wounded—six Kwong Docks and three Suey Sings. Of the latter, one died within a few days, and three of the former. The police made no arrests and were never able to learn the cause of the fighting nor the identity of anyone engaged in it, although for weeks little else was talked of in Chinatown. The Suey Sings considered that they had been victorious because the Kwong Docks had suffered the greater number of casualties, and next day they dispatched a truculent missive to the Kwong Docks, again demanding indemnities and apologies. After many lengthy conferences the Kwong Docks paid a small sum of money to the relatives of Low Sing and made formal apology for the assault upon him by Ming Long. A treaty of peace was signed, and the boo how doy of both tongs celebrated the occasion with a great love-feast, at which the men who had so recently been at each other’s throats became as brothers under the mellowing influence of rice wine, bird’s-nest soup and other delicacies of the Chinese cuisine. Under the code of the tongs the life of Ming Long was forfeit to the Suey Sings, and for several days he was assiduously hunted by hatchetmen eager for the distinction that would come to his slayer. But he escaped and fled to China, where he was safe from the vengeance of the Suey Sings.

This was the first of the great tong wars that shattered the peace and quiet of San Francisco’s Chinatown, but it was by no means the last. For at least half a century—the power of the tongs began to decline only about half a dozen years ago—they raged with alarming frequency, although none was fought with the ferocious spectacularity that distinguished the memorable combat in Waverly Place in the spring of 1875. But from the ranks of the boo how doy came many killers of great renown, whose exploits entitle them to rank beside the best of the gunmen produced by the white man’s gangland. There was, for example, Hong Ah Kay, in his peaceful moments a scholar and a poet of distinction, who stood against a cellar wall and with seven blows split the skulls of seven foes. For this notable feat of arms he was greatly honored by his tong, but, unfortunately, he was hanged by the white man’s law before he had a chance to wear his laurels. There were, too, Sing Dock, called the Scientific Killer because he carefully planned each murder down to the minutest detail and never struck until he was certain that his schemes would not miscarry; Big Queue Wai, who induced in himself a murderous state of mind, and incidentally perfected his aim and timing, by swatting flies for several hours before he went forth to sink his hatchet into the cranium of an enemy; and Yee Toy, otherwise Girl-Face, a dandified assassin whose ferocity belied his nickname. It was Yee Toy’s pleasant custom, when time permitted, to straighten the clothing of his victim and comb his hair and otherwise make him presentable. Nor did Yee Toy neglect to remove from the dead one’s pockets any money or other property that might cause unseemly bulges.

The greatest and most successful of Chinatown’s tong chieftains was Fung Jing Toy, better known as Little Pete, who was head of the Sum Yops and in control of other tongs with which the Sum Yops were allied. For nearly ten years he was the most powerful Chinaman on the Pacific Coast, and although it is doubtful if he ever swung a hatchet or fired a pistol, he was responsible for the deaths of no fewer than fifty men. He had a fair command of English, which he acquired at American night-schools, but if the stories told about him are true, he could neither read nor speak Chinese and employed an interpreter to assist him in communicating with many of his henchmen. He lived with his wife and two children on the third floor of a three-storey building at Washington Street and Waverly Place, from the balcony of which, as a boy of ten, he had watched the great fight between the Suey Sings and the Kwong Docks in 1875. He slept in a windowless room behind a barred and bolted door, on either side of which was chained a vicious dog. During his waking hours he wore a coat of chain mail, and inside his hat was a thin sheet of steel curved to fit his head. He employed a bodyguard of three white men, and when he went abroad, one walked beside him, and another in front, while the third brought up the rear. And prowling within call were half a dozen of his own boo how doy, heavily armed. Also, wherever Little Pete went he was accompanied by a trusted servant bearing his jewel-case and toilet articles, for the tong leader was a great dandy, and much concerned about his appearance. He possessed many diamond rings, a dozen handsomely engraved gold watches, and half a score of gold and platinum match-boxes set with diamonds and other precious stones. He changed his jewelry several times daily and never wore a suit, though he had forty, two days in succession. Two hours each morning he spent combing, brushing, and oiling his long and glossy queue, of which he was inordinately proud. In his leisure time he played upon the zither, listened to the music of his crickets, or wrote comedies, which were translated into Chinese and performed at the Jackson Street Theatre. He owned the playhouse and never had any trouble getting his pieces produced.

Little Pete was five years old when his father, a merchant, brought him to San Francisco from Canton. He began his career as an errand-boy for a Chinese shoe-manufacturer, and during his late teens peddled slippers from house to house in Chinatown. When he was about twenty-one years old, he embarked upon the only honest business venture of his adult life—a shoe-factory under the firm name of J. C. Peters & Company. Soon afterwards, attracted by the profits in vice, he became interested in gambling houses and opium dens and also entered the slave trade in partnership with Kwan Leung and the latter’s wife, Fong Suey, a noted procuress. Backed by the Sum Yop tong, of which he gained complete control before his twenty-fifth birthday, he soon enlarged his activities. Instead of buying girls, he began to steal them, particularly from dealers and crib-owners who were members of the Sue Yop tong, one of the most powerful organizations in Chinatown. He also interfered in other Sue Yop enterprises, and the two tongs were soon engaged in one of the bitterest and bloodiest of all the wars of Chinatown. During the early stages of this conflict Little Pete overreached himself. He forgot that in the final analysis vice in Chinatown existed only upon the sufferance of the white authorities. When one of his killers was arrested and placed on trial for the murder of a Sue Yop man in 1887, Little Pete boldly tried to bribe the jurors, the District Attorney, and everyone else connected with the prosecution. He was promptly clapped into jail, later convicted of attempted bribery, and sent to San Quentin Prison for five years.

When Little Pete was released, he again assumed his position as head of the Sum Yops and fanned into flame the embers of the war with the Sue Yops, which had subsided during his incarceration. He also strengthened his position by retaining as counsel for the Sum Yops an influential criminal lawyer, Thomas D. Riordan, and by forming an alliance with Christopher A. Buckley, the famous blind political boss of San Francisco, whom Little Pete called the Blind White Devil.(8f) With Buckley’s support, Little Pete was soon the undisputed king of Chinatown. Every form of vice, and almost every form of legitimate business as well, paid him tribute. If the owners of gambling houses, opium dens, or brothels refused to pay, their establishments were immediately closed by the white police—and reopened a few days later with Little Pete’s men in charge. The girls in all of the cribs operated by Little Pete and his associates were supplied with counterfeit half-dollars, which they gave as change to drunken men.

Little Pete’s income from his various enterprises must have been enormous, but he was not satisfied. He looked around for new sources of revenue and became greatly interested in the possibilities of horse racing. Early in the spring of 1896 he became a familiar figure in the betting rings of the Bay District and Ingleside tracks and soon attracted attention by the size of his bets. He regularly wagered eight thousand dollars a day, and he never lost. Within two months he had won a hundred thousand dollars, and the stewards of the Pacific Coast Jockey Club began to believe that there might be some connection between Little Pete’s streak of luck and the sudden epidemic of sick horses and bungling rides by hitherto skillful jockeys. Private detectives followed several riders to the offices of J. C. Peters & Company, and further investigation disclosed the fact that Little Pete was not only paying the jockeys to lose races, but was bribing trainers and stablemen to poison horses against which he wished to wager. As a result of the inquiry Jockeys Jerry Chorn and Young Chevalier were ruled off the turf for life, while Jockey Arthur Hinrichs and Dow Williams, who had been Lucky Baldwin’s trainer, were barred from the two tracks which Little Pete had honored with his operations. Nothing could be done to Little Pete, who retired to Chinatown with a substantial addition to his fortune.

Little Pete’s star, however, was setting. He had become so rapacious that the Sue Yops determined, once and for all, to end his reign. They invited twelve other tongs, all of which had felt the weight of Little Pete’s heavy hand, to join them in a war of extermination against the Sum Yops, and a formidable force of boo how doy took the field. A price of three thousand dollars was placed upon Little Pete’s head, probably the largest sum that the tongs have ever offered for the death of an enemy. For weeks the hatchetmen of the allies kept close upon the trail of the chieftain of the Sum Yops, as did many free-lance professional killers, all eager to win the amount, which to them meant an old age of luxury in China. But none could pierce the wall of white bodyguards and boo how doy with which Little Pete had surrounded himself.

In January 1897 there arrived in San Francisco two young Chinamen, Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop, who had been prospecting in the mountains near Baker City, Oregon. They had accumulated a small fortune and had come to San Francisco to see the sights of Chinatown, after which they intended to return to China. They were members of the Suey Sing tong, now allied with the enemies of the Sum Yops, but they were men of peace. Neither had ever handled a hatchet or fired a pistol or participated in a tong fight. They knew nothing of Little Pete, and first learned of his villainies, and of the money that would be paid to his slayer, from their cousin Lem Jok Lep, who represented the Suey Sings on the board of strategy that had been created by the allied tongs to devise means of eradicating the Sum Yops. With rising indignation Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop listened to Lem Jok Lep’s recital of the many indignities which Little Pete had heaped upon the heads of their tong brothers.

“There is no reason,” said Lem Jung, “why we should not earn this money. I myself shall kill this man.”

With no experience in fighting, and with scarcely any plan of campaign, these young men rushed in where the bravest hatchetmen had trodden with the utmost caution. On the evening of January 23, 1897, which was the Chinese New Year’s Eve, Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop walked calmly into a barber-shop on the ground floor of Little Pete’s building at Waverly Place and Washington Street. There they found Little Pete bending over with his head under a faucet, while the barber wetted his hair preparatory to plaiting it into a queue. Every circumstance favored the assassins. Little Pete had left his apartment in a hurry, accompanied by only one of his bodyguard. And this man he had sent out to buy a paper only a few minutes before Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop entered the shop. For the moment Little Pete was defenseless. Chew Tin Gop remained near the door on guard while Lem Jung quickly stepped forward, caught Little Pete by the hair, brushed the barber aside, and shoved the muzzle of a heavy revolver down the back of the tong leader’s neck, inside the coat of mail. He pulled the trigger, and Little Pete fell to the floor dead, with five bullets in his spine. The murderers escaped, received their money, and fled to Portland, where they were received as heroes. Eventually they took ship to China. The police arrested four Chinese, Chin Poy, Wing Sing, Won Lung, and Won Chung, who had been found loitering near the barbershop. On each were found revolvers, knives, and hatchets. Wing Sing and Chin Poy were brought to trial for the murder, but were acquitted.

The death of Little Pete demoralized the Sum Yops, and the boo how doy of the Sue Yops and their allies promptly began a slaughter, which ended only upon the intervention of the Emperor Kwang Hsu of China, to whom Thomas Riordan, attorney for Little Pete and the Sum Yops, cabled for help. ‘The Emperor called into consultation the great Chinese statesman Li Hung Chang.

“The matter has been attended to,” said Li Hung Chang. “I have cast into prison all relatives of the Sue Yops in China, and have cabled to California that their heads will be chopped off if another Sum Yop is killed in San Francisco.”

And in far-away America the war ended with startling suddenness, and the Sue Yops and the Sum Yops signed a treaty of peace which has never been violated.

The spirit of Little Pete ascended to his ancestors in a blaze of magnificence, though perhaps without proper sustenance, for his funeral was probably the most spectacular ever held in San Francisco. A cortège more than a mile long followed the body to the grave, and the air rang with the report of fire-crackers, the “windy chaos” created by three Chinese bands, and the crackling of rattles swung by black-gowned priests. Scores of hacks had been rented for the occasion, and a dozen express wagons hauled the baked meats and the rice and the cases of gin and tea which had been provided that the spirit of the tong chieftain might refresh itself before beginning the long flight to heaven. But at the cemetery a company of hoodlums fell upon the cortège, routed the mourners, and feasted upon the funeral viands.