The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920

CHAPTER 5: Articles of Contention: Chinese Children in the Missions and Courts

5 articles of contention chinese children in the missions and courts Slaves Seared with Hot Irons, While the Stars and Stripes Floated Gayly Overhead Dragged Shrieking to Death, Terrible Fate of a Chinese Slave Girl Who Tried to Escape An American Girl Sold to Slavery: Laura Lee’s Narrow Escape from Living with Chinese —headlines in the San Francisco Call Sensational articles about urban vice were common journalistic fare in American newspapers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , and San Francisco’s newspapers were no exception. Tales of white slavery, detailing the sexual exploitation of women, proved especially popular .∞ Crime in San Francisco’s Chinatown seemed even more lurid and exotic, as articles appeared almost daily with scandalous new details to entice eager readers. This chapter focuses on some of Chinatown’s exceptional and rare cases by examining the experiences of Chinese children in the missions and the justice system. Once again, various groups manipulated the facts to further their own agendas. Although entertaining to a white audience, highly publicized and exaggerated stories of opium consumption, gambling, slavery , prostitution, and tong murders tarnished the image of Chinatown and threatened the safety and security of Chinese American families. The cases presented here help illuminate the dark side of Chinatown to reveal aspects of the Chinese American experience that prove otherwise elusive. In some of these stories, Chinese and white adults fought for custody of Chinese children. The children thus became articles of contention in the Chinese Children in the Missions and Courts : 141 much larger political and economic debate over the presence of the Chinese in America. These cases also demonstrate a clash in cultural values, as Chinese and whites not only debated the best methods of caring for these children but also argued about who should be in charge of the process. Yet, Chinese parents and their children sometimes formed alliances with white reformers in their e√orts to create a stable and safe environment in which to raise their children. prostitution and domestic slavery in chinatown Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, reform-minded Americans became increasingly concerned with the moral impact of prostitution on society . Fears of the changing roles of women and the decline of the small-town community as a form of social control were exacerbated by the tensions accompanying industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. The importation of Chinese women became the subject of governmental investigations of white slavery beginning in the 1870s and culminating in the 1875 Page Act, which specifically sought to limit the trade in Chinese prostitutes. The new immigration of the late nineteenth century included Roman Catholic and Jewish immigrants from southeastern Europe as well as a small but steady stream of Chinese and Japanese immigrants from Asia. The ‘‘unassimilability ’’ of the new immigrants, and their alleged disregard of sexual morality, threatened the stability of white, middle-class, Protestant family life. Americans believed that immigrants introduced foreign, perverse, and depraved forms of sexuality that would corrupt their own children.≤ As one of the most physically and culturally distinct immigrant groups on the West Coast, the Chinese seemed to represent an imminent threat to families living in cities such as San Francisco. Stereotypical accounts of the Chinese emphasized the importation and exploitation of Chinese women and expressed fears of the use of opium to corrupt and exploit white women. Anti-Chinese writers perpetuated these images and frequently highlighted crime in Chinatown as further evidence for the exclusion of Chinese laborers. Many reformers focused on the regulation of sexuality, and Chinatown became one of the nation’s earliest battlegrounds in the fight to eradicate prostitution. Although the extent of the white slave trade is a controversial subject among historians today, the importation of Chinese women and girls for purposes of prostitution beginning in the mid-nineteenth century is an indisputable fact. Census data, the results of government investigations, and oral 142 : Chinese Children in the Missions and Courts history accounts provide evidence of the exploitation of Chinese women and girls. Entrepreneurs saw a lucrative market in the male-dominated Chinatowns overseas. Impoverished families in China sometimes resorted to selling a daughter into prostitution to provide much-needed income for the family. Brokers negotiated a price and then arranged transportation overseas, where brothel keepers in San Francisco o√ered competing bids for the girl. The powerful Chinatown tongs owned many of the brothels and controlled the trade by demanding a head...