Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown (8 page)

Originally the Six Companies (separately) were agents of the Chinese firms in Hong Kong which established the coolie trade to San Francisco from the Crown Colony. The pioneers of this emigrant trade were two Hong Kong portrait painters, Hing Wa and Wo Hang. There was nothing new about such companies as they were set up in San Francisco. From time immemorial emigrants had tended to form clubs in Malaya and the Philippines. Each province’s group set up a
ui kun
or company house. It was as if the Californians in the Far East were to set up a chapter of the Native Sons of the Golden West, complete with lodge hall. The ui kun existed in China itself when Cantonese and Fukienese settled in Shanghai or Ningpo. In Canton, too, there were these halls for “strangers” from other parts of the empire. Since the Chinese were the most alien of aliens emigrating to California, they took special pains to band together for mutual aid and protection.

But the American public persisted in ascribing to the Six Companies all manner of evils, including the usurpation of American judicial processes among the Chinese people. The press, too, gave the companies mysterious and dictatorial (and nonexistent) powers. In later years newsmen continually confused the companies with the fighting tongs. The merchants who were being preyed upon by tong highbinders thus found themselves the targets of newspaper editorials, rather than the predators who waylaid them. To correct some of these misconceptions the Reverend A. W. Loomis wrote an article which was published in the first volume (1868) of the popular San Francisco magazine, the
Overland Monthly.
He listed the things which the Six Companies were
not
—plotting societies, despotic lawmakers, punitive organizations, hiring halls for coolies, slavers, or dreaded tribunals. In order to disabuse the public of its incorrect notions Loomis compared the Chinese companies to the Order of Hibernians or the Scandinavian Association. He tried to hammer home the point that they were simply the benevolent or mutual-aid societies of one particular group of the foreign born. Loomis reminded his readers that the poor bewildered immigrant in a strange land had to lay over somewhere upon arrival in port. He could not walk out of steerage into the trail to Hangtown or Copperopolis. He needed a caravansary or hostel. This the companies provided with their San Francisco
ui kun,
a combination hotel and Travelers’ Aid Society. Loomis reminded his audience that the Chinese were only temporary residents. This gave them all the more reason to stick together closely during their brief stay. Loomis emphasized that the Chinese never—or hardly ever—abandoned one home to go in search of another. When they went abroad, wives and children were always left behind to keep house until their return. Every man hoped to return home after having improved his worldly estate in foreign parts. Loomis could not know of the remarkable change that would take place. Around the time of the earthquake of 1906 or the fall of the Manchu Empire in 1912 the majority of Chinese temporarily resident in San Francisco decided to set down roots.

It was true, and Loomis readily admitted this, that the companies were not exactly models of democratic government. They were paternal. If despotic, their leaders were benevolent despots. These leaders—well-to-do merchants in almost all cases—set up the rules and regulations of the societies without vote or veto from the masses of the membership. They made assessments, not to enrich themselves but rather to acquire buildings for company headquarters and hostels. Governing of the group was left by common consent to a few leading businessmen or scholars, if any of the latter could be found among the immigrants. Nearly all newcomers joined their proper company but membership was optional. They wanted the security which the companies offered them. They wished to lodge with others of their own kind—men who spoke their language. In the
ui kun
they could sleep and cook until they got adjusted to the country of the Golden Mountains; until their plans could take shape. Then they were off to pick up the shining metal from the streams of the Sierra Nevada.

The single function of the Six Companies which led to more misunderstanding than any other was their arbitration of quarrels. They tried to settle disputes before they became too serious. If they could not successfully arbitrate the case it was taken to the American courts. A poor ignorant coolie would have been helpless in an American court in the 50s, so the better-educated, more socially acclimated and sophisticated businessmen acted—through the companies—as managers of the legal affairs of all Chinese settlers. This led to accusations by the press and public that secret and severe tribunals existed.

Another operation of the Six Companies which led to attacks was their issuance of what virtually amounted to exit visas for Chinese. To prevent the absconding of debtors, the Six Companies entered into agreements with shipowners. No tickets were sold to Chinese returning to their homeland unless they could present a certificate from the Six Companies. This certificate—actually a simple receipt—was their clean bill of (fiscal) health. This exit control was the one major area of power which the companies really did wield; therefore their motives in this area were particularly suspect. But among the merchant population, white and Chinese, this system was well liked. Creditors knew that bankrupts and thieves could not abscond. It made the Chinese live up to their reputation of being good financial risks. They had to pay their debts or they could not go home. The mass of the American public overestimated the extent of this control, however, and saw the company presidents as mandarins enslaving coolies.

Opposition to the Six Companies from the Chinese of California themselves was small. Little ever reached the ears of whites, although Loomis—who knew Chinatown very well—did report a few individuals who were disgruntled by the company system. The grumblers were men who found the assessments a hardship and who were convinced that they could do well without the shepherding of the Six Companies and its Meeting House of the Flowery Kingdom. Some alluded to the company presidents as “rice ladles,” meaning they cost a great deal and were of absolutely no use to anyone. A few inferred that all funds raised did not end up being put to the proper use. By and large it appears that dues were spent on proper activities—paying salaries of company officials, purchasing fuel, oil and candles, paying water bills, assisting the sick to return home, buying medicines, taking care of coffins and funeral expenses, repairing tombs, and taking on the expenses of drayage and lawsuits. There were a few temptable Six Companies men, of course. A gentleman named Wong, elected interpreter for his society, used his key office to sell the company’s house and to go home
to
retirement on the proceeds. He had been trusted thoroughly by both Americans and Chinese as the sole elected business agent of the company. The company repaid the money in full, got its property back, and made the Wong clan assume full responsibility for the individual’s crime.

There were joss chapels, or temples, in the headquarters’ houses but they were furnished by voluntary subscriptions. There were no priests in the company houses. The companies did some charity work, caring for the indigent, the sick and the disabled if they were not being helped by their relatives—the normal thing among the clannish Chinese. The gathering of the bones of the deceased for shipment home was not usually the responsibility of the companies. However, sometimes people from one district or another selected their company president to handle the business end of this transportation. These company heads, after all, had close ties with shipping firms. From time to time the Six Companies contributed funds to famine and flood relief in China. After the disastrous Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania in 1889 they sent $1,000 for relief work there.

In 1850, the Six Companies’ structure was begun with the formation of a single company to assist all newcomers to Chinatown. It rented a Sacramento Street room and called itself the Kong Chow Company. This catchall organization took in all the immigrants from 6 of the 72 districts of Kwangtung Province. These 6 districts contributed all but a fraction of the migrants to California. Probably 10,000 of the 12,000 Chinese in California in 1851 were members of the Kong Chow Company. The name was taken from that of the geographic area of China encompassed by the half-dozen districts.

The 62,000 Chinese who resided in California by 1868 were members, with very few exceptions, of one or another of the Six Companies which grew out of the Kong Chow Company. The 6 were the Sam Yup Company, the See Yup Company, the Ning Yuen Company, the Yeung Wo Company, the Hop Wo Company and the Hip Kat Company. Only two of them came to be known widely to the non-Chinese of the Pacific Coast: the See Yups and Sam Yups. But it was more of a case of euphony than importance gradients. Out of either laziness or bewilderment, Chinatown reporters for the dailies tended to place all Chinese into one or the other of these camps. When the tong wars erupted, the press often identified the combatants as See Yups versus Sam Yups, instead of naming the actual fighting tongs involved in the mayhem. It was also a convenient way of breaking down the many factions of Chinatown into two. The See Yups and Sam Yups did represent the two major dialect groupings of the immigrants. The See Yups spoke the common tongue of Dupont Gai; the Sam Yups, a more courtly Cantonese.

The Sam Yup Company was organized in 1851 by those Chinese who did not fall into the six-district structure of the Kong Chow Company. The name Sam Yup means Three Districts and it welcomed people from Nam Hoi, Pun Yue and Shun Tak, which embraced the city of Canton and its immediate environs. By the 60s, this company owned a somewhat dilapidated company house or lodgings on Clay Street above Powell and another building on Sacramento Street, but its business headquarters was in a rented office on Commercial Street. Sam Yup dues were higher than those of most of the other companies. There was a $10 initiation fee; a $10 fee for removing the dead to China; a $2 assessment to pay off the Sacramento Street property; a $3.50 charge for miscellaneous costs incurred by the company; and a 50ft fee for the legal-proceedings fund. Officers were few and not particularly well paid. An assistant and a linguist or interpreter got $60—$80 each per month; a servant and a messenger were paid about $40 each. Rounding out the staff were the executive secretary, or
tung see,
and the treasurer. These officers each received from $80 to $100 a month.

The See Yup Company was known for some time as the Kong Chow Company as well, since it was the direct descendant of the original single company of 1850. The
raison d’être
of this sociobenevolent organization was spelled out in 1853 in a company statement translated by Reverend William Speer. “In China it is common to have councils and in foreign lands
ui kun,
company halls. The object is to improve the life of our members and to instruct them in principles of benevolence.” The See Yup Company was the Four Districts Company. It represented the area of Kong Chow which included the provincial districts of Yan Ping, Hoi Ping, Sun Ning (now called Toyshan) and Sun Wui. There were also some members from Hok Shan. See Yup fees were light. Only $5 in dues had to be paid if done immediately upon arrival. If payment was deferred the amount was $10. There was also a 50-cent assessment for the lawyers’ fund. No dues were collected from the aged, the sick or the disabled. When the See Yups set up shop they took all of the Kong Chow Company’s members except a handful from Hok Shan and part of Sun Wui.

The Yeung Wo (Masculine Concord) Company was organized in 1852. It soon had an old house on the southwest slope of Telegraph Hill as its caravansary while it secured property for a better headquarters. In 1868 it was busy building its new
ui kun
on Sacramento Street. The only assessments this company levied on its members were $10 for admittance to membership and $10 for the removal of the dead to China. The company reported 26,000 arrivals as of 1868, some 13,200 departures, and 1,000 deaths. Its members became more numerous in Hawaii than in California. The area from which the Yeung Wo drew was called Heung Shan (now Chungshan) or Middle Mountain. This took in three districts between the Portuguese port of Macao and the Sam Yup country. It constituted a sort of peninsula where the Pearl or Chu Kiang River emptied into the South China Sea.

The Ning Yeung Company was formed in April 1854 by the separation of 3,400 members from the See Yups. A dispute occurred in that company and all Sun Ning, or Toyshan, men left to form the new organization. These men came from the populous district west of Macao which stretched inland from the seacoast. Although it asked only a small entrance fee of $5, the company was well to do. It owned a three-story brick building on Broadway. In only two decades of immigration this company received 27,900 members. But some 7,800 departed for China, and about 1,000 died in California. According to the late American-Chinese historian, William Hoy, this became the most powerful of the old companies. In spite of the constant reference in the American press to the See Yup-Sam Yup rivalry, Hoy insisted that the See Yups wielded little influence after 1854 and none that the Ning Yeungs could not nullify. The enfeebled See Yup Company, after the Ning Yeung schism, actually metamorphosed into a merchants’ association rather than a true district association. Only because the seven companies tended to be broken into two major dialect groupings was the See Yup name preserved in importance. Another splinter organization was the Hop Wo Company. It was formed a decade after the others by those Chinese, mostly of the Ong clan, who came from the Hoi Ping and Yin Pai districts southwest of Canton and north of the Ning Yeung area. They had been members of the See Yup Company but in that organization they had felt their interests were slighted. Later its membership was swollen by one-time adherents of the Ning Yeung Company who had come to the New World from the Toyshan district. A very large proportion of these newcomers were of the Yee clan. The building which the Hop Wos acquired was a rented one on Commercial Street. Their entrance fees and all other charges totaled a mere $7. Some 17,000 Chinese came to San Francisco and California in general from the Hop Wo districts by 1868. Of these, 300 died and 8,200 went back to Kwangtung.