This article explores the work environment as a site for interactions between Chinese and non-Chinese in New York City between 1870 and 1943. A gendered and racially stratified paid labor force, shaped by federal immigration restriction laws, migration and settlement patterns to and within New York City, state occupational restrictions, and the development of a skilled white male urban working class, created the economic conditions within which the Chinese and non-Chinese struggled to survive during the exclusion period (1882-1943). Mutually dependent relationships often developed out of these phenomena. The survival of Chinese communities depended upon whites as well as Chinese and the skills and services offered by men of European descent. In turn, white men in trades and small businesses depended upon Chinese customers and fellow merchants. Chinese/white relations during this period provide a glimpse into how both groups created livelihoods and in the process built ethnic and cross-cultural urban communities.
Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930—Population, Borough of Brooklyn, New York (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office [this publication information applies to all census references hereinafter], 1930).
2.
and Shawn Obitz, “Tracing Early Chinese Immigration into the United States: The Use of I.N.S. Documents,”Amerasia Journal14 (1988): 39-43.
3.
and Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890; repr., New York: Dover, 1971), 78-78.
4.
and “Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination with Sex between ‘Orientals’ and ‘Whites,’” in Martha Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 444-463.
5.
and Graham Hodges, “‘Desirable Companions and Lovers’: Irish and African Americans in the Sixth Ward, 1830-1870,” in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 107-124.
6.
and Paul Sui, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1987).
7.
Although I use the terms “Caucasian” and “white” interchangeably, the term “non-Chinese” is meant to encompass Caucasians/whites and other groups where appropriate. I base my use of the terms “race” and “ethnicity” upon U.S. government definitions during the early twentieth century. The primary racial categories were “white,” “negro,” “mongolian,” and “Indian.” “Ethnicity” refers to group variations within racial categories. According to the U.S. Census, “white” referred to peoples of European descent. “Colored” included all non-European groups.
8.
Arthur Schlesinger, The Rise of the City, 1878-1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 82-82. I use the term “transnational” rather than “international” to highlight the fluidity of identity and movement across national and cultural borders.
9.
and 1970 Census: San Francisco Population (San Francisco: Government Information Center, San Francisco Public Library, http://sfpl.lib.ca.us).
10.
See Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco: A Transpacific Community, 1850-1843 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).
11.
and Hsiang Shiu Chen, Chinatown No More: Taiwan Immigrants in Contemporary New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 27-28.
12.
and Eleventh Census of the United States—“Selected” occupations (1890).
13.
and Schlesinger, Rise of the City, 83-83.
14.
For a comparative analysis of Russian Jewish and Italian migration and settlement patterns in New York City during this period, see Kathie Friedman-Kasaba, Memories of Migration: Gender, Ethnicity, and Work in the Lives of Jewish and Italian Women in New York, 1870-1924 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
15.
and Twelfth Census of the United States—Occupations (1900).
16.
Judy Yung, Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), 118-118.
17.
and Fifteenth Census of the United States, Occupations. Unfortunately, it is impossible to obtain the exact numbers of Chinese from the federal census by this time, given that the census collapses the numbers of non-Negroes into the general category of “All other Colored.”
18.
The geographic contours of the “Chinatown” commercial and residential neighborhood would eventually extend beyond Mott, Pell, Bayard, and Doyers Streets to contiguous streets, including Mulberry, Grand, Canal, and the Bowery.
19.
Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900—Population, Manhattan Borough, New York City, New York (1900).
20.
and Ralph Foster Weld, Brooklyn Is America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 101-101, 104-104.
21.
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Censuses of the United States—Population, Brooklyn (1920 and 1930).
22.
Paul Siu, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Isolation (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 265-271, 84-85, 280-280.
23.
and Marlene Pitkow, “A Temple for Tourists in New York’s Chinatown,”Journal of American Culture10 (Summer 1987): 112-112
24.
and Susan A. Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 56-56.
25.
Shih Shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 105-105.
26.
and Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 49-49, 59-59.
27.
The term “merchant” was used quite loosely after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, which restricted the admission of male “laborers” into the United States. “Merchant” basically included any male who was not classified as a “laborer” and who usually had entered into a business partnership with other Chinese men through the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association.
28.
see also Shepard Schwartz, “Mate-Selection among New York City’s Chinese Males, 1931-38,”American Journal of Sociology56 (May 1951): 563-563.
29.
and Beck, New York’s Chinatown, 48-48.
30.
and Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 205-206.
31.
Elliot Willensky, When Brooklyn Was the World, 1920-1957 (New York: Harmony Books, 1986), 189-189, 194-195.
32.
and Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943, 197-198.
33.
and Arthur Bonner, ALAS! What Brought Thee Hither? The Chinese in New York, 1800-1950 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 105-105.
34.
James W. Loewen, The Mississippi: Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 60-61.
35.
as cited in Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Now Hiring: The Feminization of Work in the United States, 1900-1995 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 113-113.
36.
and William Foote Whyte, “The Social Structure of the Restaurant,” in Paul E. Mott and others, eds., Sociological Perspective: Understanding Human Society (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill, 1973), 170-170, 175-175.
37.
Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Box 71, Case no. 12/1048, National Archives and Records Administration, Northeast Branch, New York.
38.
See also Yung, Chinese Women of America, 118-118.
39.
and “From Vice District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns, 1880-1940,”Pacific Historical Review43 (1974): 85-85.
40.
and Fifteenth Census of the United States—Population, Manhattan (1930).
41.
Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Box 174, Case no. 25/254.1.
42.
Michael and Ariane Batterberry, On the Town in New York from 1776 to the Present (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 56-56.
43.
T. F. Pierce, Chinese Immigration Inspector to Chinese Inspector in Charge, February 21, 1917. Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Box 67, Case no. 12/914, File Folder 2.
44.
and Who Was Who in America, vol. 1 (Providence, RI: A.N. Marquis, 1943), 655-655.
45.
and City Directory of New York, 1899-1900 and 1920-1921.
46.
T. J. Molloy, Chinese and Immigrant Inspector, to Inspector in Charge, Chinese Division, Ellis Island, NY, March 16, 1936. Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Box 67, Case no. 12/914, File Folder 2.
47.
Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930—Population, Borough of Brooklyn, New York (1930).
48.
and John Haddad, “The Laundry Man’s Got a Knife!”Chinese America: History and Perspectives, Expanded Academic Index, annual (2001), para. 18-19.
49.
and Bonner, ALAS!68-70.
50.
and Vernon M. Briggs Jr., Immigration Policy and the American Labor Force (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 27-27.
51.
See also Milton R. Konvitz, The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1946), 178-178, 196-197, 203-203.
52.
Twelfth Census of the United States—Population, Manhattan (1900).
53.
American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), conference, 1892, as cited in A. Michal McMahon, The Making of a Profession: A Century of Electrical Engineering in America (New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 1984), 37-37.
54.
Fourteenth Census of the United States, vol. IV, Occupations by State (1920), 1158-1158 (1920).
55.
Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, Box 172, no. 176.2.
56.
See Richard Schneirov, Pride and Solidarity: A History of the Plumbers and Pipefitters of Columbus, Ohio, 1889-1989 (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1993), 105-107.
57.
and L. T. Townshend, The Chinese Problem (Boston: Charles T. Dillingham, 1876), 7-7.
58.
and Wong, “Chinatown: Conflicting Images,”4-4.
59.
and Moss, The American Metropolis, 413-413.
60.
and George Washington Walling, Recollections of a New York City Chief of Police (New York: Caxton Boo Concern, 1887), 419-419.
61.
and Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press).
62.
Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, 27-28.
63.
and San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1892.
64.
and John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 74-75.
65.
S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems and Contributions (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962), 77-77.
66.
Konvitz, The Alien and Asiatic, 203-203.
67.
Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census. Special Reports. Occupation at the Twelfth Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 643-643.
68.
and Habenstein and Lamers, History of American Funeral Directing, 226-227.
69.
and New York Tribune, February 3, 1901, section II.
70.
New York Evening Post, December 29, 1900.
71.
New York World, February 3, 1877, 5-5.
72.
and Gordon Fulton and Donna Harris, “Architectural Surveys of New York City’s Chinatown by Columbia University Students” (Manuscript, 1980).
73.
Bonner, ALAS!149-149.
74.
and Bonner, ALAS!149-149.
75.
New York Times, October 30, 1888.
76.
and Willensky, When Brooklyn Was the World, 223-223.
77.
Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 104-106.
78.
New York Times, February 24, 1945.
79.
see http://www.switchboard.com.
80.
and Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), 303-305.
