"White Labor" vs. "Coolie Labor": The "Chinese Question" in Pennsylvania in the 1870s

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 3-32

  Rhoads, Edward J M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 16344369104     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. Earlier versions of this essay were presented to the History Department of the University of Pittsburgh, the Immigration History Research Center of the University of Minnesota, and the History Department of the University of Texas at Austin. I would like to thank, in particular, Patty Stranahan, Ted Muller, Evelyn Hu-deHart, Don Sutton, Andrew Gyory, Kevin Kenny, and Rudy Vecoli for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge the hospitality and services of the following institutions where most of the research was carried out: the Beaver County Research Center, Beaver Falls; the Pennsylvania Department and the Microfilm Department of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh; and the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh. Finally, it should be noted that a companion article, entitled "Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s," was previously published in the Journal of Asian American Studies, 2: 119-155 (1999). The earlier article focuses almost exclusively on the Chinese workers themselves, whereas this one examines the reaction of the outside community to the workers. The overlap is minimal.
2. Beaver Argus, 31 January 1872, p. 3;
3. American Manufacturer (Pittsburgh), 23 November 1876, p. 7;
4. see also James Patterson, "History of Beaver County," in Beaver County Centennial Directory, ed. J. Weyand and W. I. Reed (1876; reprint 1982), pp. 34-37.
5. J. A. Caldwell, Caldwell's Illustrated Historical Centennial Atlas of Beaver County, Pennsylvania (Condit, Ohio, 1876), p. 9;
6. Albert Rhodes, "The Chinese at Beaver Falls," Lippincott's Magazine, 19: 708 (June 1877).
7. For two pictorial views of the town in the 1870s, see American Manufacturer, 23 November 1876, p. 7
8. and Denver L. Walton, ed., The Beaver County Bicentennial Atlas (Beaver, 1976), p. 61.
9. Caldwell, Caldwell's Illustrated, pp. 9, 17;
10. Joseph H. Bausman, History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and Its Centennial Celebration (New York, 1904), p. 670;
11. Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States: From Personal Visit and Observation (1875; reprint, 1966) p. 90;
12. American Manufacturer, 23 November 1876, p. 3;
13. Martha Van Hoesen Taber, A History of the Cutlery Industry in the Connecticut Valley (Northampton, Mass., Department of History, Smith College, 1955), pp. 66-75.
14. Patterson, "History of Beaver County," p. 35.
15. 1870 U.S. Census, Vol. 1, Table III, "Population of Civil Divisions Less than Counties," p. 244; Table VII, "Selected Nativities by Counties," p. 369.
16. On the churches in Beaver Falls and New Brighton, see Bausman, History, pp. 686-694, 711-718;
17. History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania (1888; reprint, 1980) pp. 413-418, 461-468.
18. On the Chinese at the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company, see Edward J. M. Rhoads, "Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s," Journal of Asian American Studies, 2:119-155 (1999);
19. on the Chinese at Calvin Sampson's factory, see Frederick Rudolph, "Chinamen in Yankeedom: Anti-Unionism in Massachusetts in 1870," American Historical Review, 53: 1-29 (1947).
20. Pittsburgh Leader, 11 January 1873, p. 1; Rhodes, "Chinese at Beaver Falls," p. 708;
21. Charles Reeves May, "Beaver County's Chinatown," a paper read at a meeting of the Beaver County Historical Society, 15 May 1925, pp. 10-11 [typescript on deposit at Old Economy Village, Ambridge, Pa.].
22. Pittsburgh Post, 12 December 1872, p. 4.
23. Beaver Radical, 2 August 1872, p. 5.
24. Pittsburgh Commercial, 1 July 1872, p. 1;
25. Pittsburgh Chronicle, 1 July, p. 3;
26. Pittsburgh Post, 1 July, p. 4;
27. Pittsburgh Gazette, 2 July, p. 4.
28. Pittsburgh Gazette, 27 July 1872, p. 4;
29. On the various definitions of "coolie," see Robert L. Irick, Ch'ing Policy Toward the Coolie Trade 1847-1878 (Taipei, 1982) pp. 2-6;
30. on the "coolie"-like status of many, perhaps most, Chinese women in the United States in the 1870s, see Lucie Cheng Hirata, "Chinese Immigrant Women in Nineteenth-Century California," in Women of America: A History, ed. Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston, 1979), pp. 223-244.
31. Pittsburgh Chronicle, 21 August 1872, p.1.
32. Pittsburgh Commercial, 12 December, p. 4;
33. Beaver Radical, 13 December, p. 5;
34. New York Times, 13 December, p. 1.
35. On Quay, see James A. Kehl, Boss Rule in the Gilded Age: Matt Quay of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh, 1981), esp. pp. 31-38;
36. on Rutan, see Encyclopedia of Contemporary Biography of Pennsylvania (New York, 1889-98), 3: 59.
37. On newspapers in Beaver County, see Francis S. Reader, History of the Newspapers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania (New Brighton, Pa., 1905), pp. 65-72.
38. Beaver Radical, 21 February 1873, p. 4.
39. on the anti-Chinese riot in Los Angeles, see Paul M. De Falla, "Lantern in the Western Sky," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, 42: 57-88 (1960).
40. On the Harmony Society, see Nordhoff, Communistic Societies, pp. 63-95;
41. The Harmony Society in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1937);
42. John Duss, The Harmonists: A Personal History (Harrisburg, Pa., 1943);
43. and Karl J. R. Arndt, George Rapp's Successors and Material Heirs, 1847-1916 (Rutherford, N.J., 1971).
44. Duss, The Harmonists, p. 186.
45. On the makeup of the Beaver Falls borough council and the Board of Trade, see Beaver Radical, 12 January 1872, p. 5, and 19 January, p. 5.
46. Pittsburgh Post, 19 February 1873, p. 4;
47. Harmony Society Records, Business File, Incoming Correspondence, Manufacturers of Beaver Falls to Henrici and Lenz, 27 February 1873, microfilm roll 122.
48. Pittsburgh Gazette, 26 February 1873, p. 4.
49. Beaver Argus, 5 March, p. 2;
50. Pittsburgh Commercial, 12 March 1873, p. 4;
51. Pittsburgh Leader, 12 March, p. 1.
52. On the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862, see Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill and London, 1998), pp. 32-33.
53. Congressional Globe, 42nd Cong., 3rd Sess., p. I,237.
54. Pennsylvania Legislative Journal, 1873, pp. 698, 705-706, 843.
55. on Coghlan's bill, see Congressional Globe, 42nd Cong., 2nd Sess., pp. 199, 1, 737-41.
56. Beaver Argus, 5 March 1873, p. 2; 19 March, p. 3.
57. American Manufacturer, 21 August, p. 4.
58. Rhoads, "Asian Pioneers," pp. 125, 126.
59. Rhodes, "Chinese at Beaver Falls," p. 708.
60. Bausman, History, pp. 670-671.
61. Gyory, Closing the Gate, pp. 39-50.
62. On the Chinese launderers in New Jersey, see Daniel Liestman, "Chinese Labor at the Passaic Steam Laundry in Belleville," New Jersey History, 112.1-2: 21-33 (1994).
63. New York Times Index, 1872-1877. During the same five years, when the Chinese in North Adams were no longer in the news, there were, nevertheless, three reports about them.
64. American Manufacturer, 27 February 1873, p. 8.
65. For a spirited debate over Gyory's argument, see Stanford M. Lyman, "The 'Chinese Question' and American Labor Historians," New Politics, 7.4: 113-148 (2000);
66. Andrew Gyory, "A Reply to Stanford Lyman," New Politics, 8.1: 51-59 (2000);
67. Gyory, Closing the Gate, p. 15 and passim.
68. Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana, 1939), p. 81.
69. On the Radical Republicans, see Dale Baum, "Woman Suffrage and the 'Chinese Question': The Limits of Radical Republicanism in Massachusetts 1865-1876," New England Quarterly, 56: 60-77 (1983), especially pp. 72-77;
70. and David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (New York, 1967).
71. Allan Peskin, "Who Were the Stalwarts? Who Were Their Rivals? Republican Factions in the Gilded Age," Political Science Quarterly, 99: 714 (1984-85);
72. for an example, in Massachusetts, of how the Republican consensus was fragmented over the Chinese question, see Baum, "Woman Suffrage," pp. 75-77;
73. see also John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 (Baltimore and London, 1999), pp. 182, 187.
74. Cf. Gyory, Closing the Gate, pp. 143, 165.
75. James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York, 1897), p. 4, 242;
76. Gyory, Closing the Gate, p. 71.
77. George Anthony Peffer, "Forbidden Families: Emigration Experiences of Chinese Women under the Page Law, 1875-1882, Journal of American Ethnic History, 6.1:28-29 (1986).
78. My thanks to Kevin Kenny for bringing to my attention the issue of the social construction of whiteness.
79. Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York and London, 1996), pp. 54-55.
80. Edmund H. Worthy, Jr., "Yung Wing in America, Pacific Historical Review, 34: 270-271 (1965);
81. Tchen, New York, pp. 231-232, 247;
82. Pittsburgh Post, 19 May 1877, p. 4.
83. In Yung's case, his citizenship was revoked in 1898; see Worthy, "Yung Wing," pp. 283-284.
84. Haney López, White by Law, pp. 5-6, 54-55.
85. Tchen, New York, p. 247.
86. For another instance, in New York, where the Chinese played a role in the social construction of whiteness, see Tchen, New York, pp. 221-222.
87. See Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge and London, 1998).