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8 A Terror to the Chinese Community (1879–82) The “Chinese question” continued to preoccupy the nation as the 1870s progressed. At the urging of California politicians, and with that state’s six electoral votes squarely in their sights in what promised to be a close election, both major political parties adopted planks addressing the issue in their national platforms for the presidential election of 1876. The Democrats, who were running New York governor Samuel J. Tilden, demanded modification of the treaty with China to prevent further immigration.1 The Republicans, who had nominated former Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes, merely averred that it was the duty of Congress to investigate the immigration and importation of “Mongolians” and evaluate it according to the “moral and material interests of the country.”2 The economic threat posed by the arrival of Chinese laborers in unlimited numbers was far more galvanizing to voters than any concern they might have about the religious beliefs of the Chinese. Accordingly, as early as 1876, Wong had begun to broaden his arguments in their defense. In an interview with a New York Sun reporter, he addressed the labor issue directly, if not particularly accurately or presciently: America need not be afraid that its labor will be crippled by the Chinese. No, sir. Each succeeding year the Chinamen in America will claim and receive more wages. Our people get rich in a few years, and then go back to China again. They never make this their home. They do not vote and they rarely become naturalized. There are about 50,000 of us in all in this country. The number will never amount to much more. In ten years those that are here will be so far Americanized that they will work for nothing less than what is paid to the Americans.3 78 The First Chinese American In early 1878, an ostensible solution to the “Chinese question” was put forth by the Six Companies, the San Francisco organization considered the supreme authority in America’s Chinatowns and the voice of the Chinese community in the United States. From the start, Chinese immigrants had organized mutual aid societies for social, cultural, charitable, economic, and political purposes.4 These groups fell into three general categories: region-based (dependent on the part of China from which an immigrant had come); clan-based (groups consisting of Chinese who shared a surname); and secret societies, or triads, generally referred to as tongs (tang). Chinatowns featured networks of such organizations, which provided social services, mediated disputes, enforced discipline, and offered a measure of protection and security in exchange for dues. Over time, these groups became national in scope, boasting branches throughout the country. The Six Companies was an umbrella group of the six most important region-based associations, and was unrivaled in its influence over the affairs of America’s Chinese. The Six Companies’ proposal was sent by telegram to Secretary of State William M. Evarts. It suggested a $100 per head tax on every Chinese landing in the United States as a means to curtail further immigration, with the proceeds to be used to send indigent Chinese home. But when the Chicago Tribune reported on it on March 8, Wong was outraged, immediately firing off a letter to the editor.5 He called the proposal “an insult to the better class of Chinamen,” and criticized the Six Companies as “too imbecile to respect themselves, too cowardly to defend, too ignorant of the wants of a common humanity, too selfish to pity the weak and above all too depraved to know how to honor their own country. Yet they try to live here, and want to kick others out, even men of their own blood, their own fellow-countrymen.”6 Stopping further Chinese immigration was a position Wong himself would ultimately support enthusiastically, but at this early stage he was mortified by it. Wong was in St. Louis in the summer of 1878, and from there traveled to Memphis. This was no pleasure trip; yellow fever had broken out in the city. Memphis, which lacked a sewer system, had experienced a surfeit of rain: the still water that collected in its cisterns had given the mosquitoes that spread the virus ample occasion to breed. The first victim died on August 13; more than 5,000 would die before the first frost put an end to its transmission that year. There was a popular impression that Chinese were immune to yellow fever. [18.116...

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