Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

18
Ties That Bind
typically involved a burdensome process by which immigrants obtained “certification” as merchants
from non-Chinese business owners.
Angel Island Immigration Station, on San Francisco Bay, served from 1910–40 as an entry point
for Chinese immigrants. Despite practices subjecting applicants to aggressive interrogations,
medical examinations, separation of families and detention averaging two to three weeks but in
some cases as long as two years, over 175,000 Chinese immigrants were processed. This era
ended with World War II, when the Exclusion Act was repealed as China and the U.S.
became allies.
By 1915 the Chinese community had become more integrated in the fabric of San Francisco, as
demonstrated by the assistance it gave Mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph with arrangements to
bring a large exhibit from the new Republic of China to the Panama Pacific International Exhibition
on Treasure Island. By the 1920s, Chinatown boasted six theaters featuring performances
of Chinese opera, with the largest seating up to 2,500.
Two-Way Trade Grows
Business interests in the eastern and southern U.S. were obsessed with opening foreign markets
in the 1890s, as industrial processes became increasingly mechanized and production began to
outpace domestic demand. Steel, oil and textile producers formed the American-Asiatic Association
in New York, lobbying President McKinley to enforce an ‘open-door’ China trade policy.
Their target: a vast China market, believed at the time to be as large as 400 million people, which
was under assault from European and Japanese competitors seeking exclusive trade concessions
and port leases.
Only four of the Association’s 250 members in 1898 were based west of the Mississippi. Yet
30% of U.S. imports from China, and 17% of U.S. exports to China, moved through the Port of
San Francisco in 1898, and Northern California exported large volumes of agricultural products
and lumber to China. Northern California companies introduced milled flour and kerosene
heating oil to the Chinese market. Fuller & Heather Co., a Sacramento firm later to become
Fuller Paint Co., first sold turpentine in Hong Kong in 1866, trading it for white lead, Chinese
vermillion and other pigments.
Bay Area exports to China grew from $2.6 million in 1894 to $8.7 million in 1906, according to
Chamber of Commerce reports. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce lobbied the McKinley
Administration to make it easier for Chinese merchants to enter the U.S. San Francisco shipping
and lumber magnate Robert Dollar led the first business delegation to China in 1910 at the
urging of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, “to create and increase the friendly feeling between
China and the United States, and to increase our commerce.”