Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

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Ties That Bind
Chinese Six Companies were formed in 1882 at the urging of Chinese Consul General Huang
Tsun-chien.
Buildout of the California railroads and an end to the Gold Rush left large Chinese communities
dispersed from the farms of San Luis Obispo and Stockton to the railroad towns of Sacramento
and Marysville. Growing discrimination in rural areas of California, Washington and Idaho
forced many Chinese back to cities where they found protection in numbers. The 1868
Burlingame Treaty with China permitted unrestricted immigration but prohibited naturalization,
resulting nonetheless in a further surge of immigration.
From the 1850s on, the Bay Area Chinese community was a significant contributor to local
economies. The dozen or so square blocks that formed San Francisco’s Chinatown spread out
from the Long Wharf that linked the financial district and northern waterfront, with its restaurants,
residential hotels and small factories. In the 1870s, Chinese fishermen came to dominate
the shrimping industry, with more than 20 camps along the section of southeast San Francisco
waterfront now known as Hunter’s Point, and on the San Rafael estuary that is still called China
Camp. The shrimps were sun dried and exported to China as a food enhancing agent. The last
Chinese shrimp companies ceased operation in the 1950s.
In 1870, 24% of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. resided in the Bay Area; by 1900 that percentage
had nearly doubled to 45%. Chinatowns became fixtures in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose,
Sacramento and Stockton. In the East Bay, Chinese laborers worked in factories and on dam
projects under construction in the late 1800s. They also grew and sold fruit and vegetables in
Oakland’s five Chinatowns in the late 1800s. Historic maps described the 1888 Woolen Mills
Chinatown in San Jose as including two restaurants, a laundry, a warehouse, “gaming and sleeping
rooms,” wok ovens along the river, a theater, two temples, the Woolen Mills—a textile and
garment factory—and the Garden City Cannery.
Since the 1850s, discrimination against Chinese immigrants—centering mainly on jobs—had
been an unfortunate reality. Repeated proposals on the West Coast for tougher enforcement of
labor contracts, a head tax on foreign miners, and outright immigration curbs, were all beaten
back but by smaller margins each time. Economic depression in the 1870s, speculative investing
and drought cost many Californians both fortunes and jobs, providing a tipping point that
turned an 1877 San Francisco labor solidarity rally into three nights of anti-Chinese rioting.
Churches close to the Chinese community, through missionary work in China and schools offering
English-language instruction and basic education in San Francisco, came to the aid of immigrant
families. Chinese ties to the Jesuit Order and the Presbyterian Church in particular remain
strong today as a result.
Congress subsequently passed the 1882 Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese Exclusion
Act, barring U.S. entry for Chinese laborers entirely, and allowing in merchants, their servants
and families, diplomats, travelers, teachers and students, but prohibiting them from obtaining
citizenship. The Act, signed into law by President Chester Arthur, remained in effect until 1943.
Chinese immigration fell from 39,500 in 1882 to 10 in 1887, although applications for entry into