Race, gender, and laundry work: The roles of Chinese laundrymen and American women in the United States, 1850-1950

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 58-99

  Wang, Joan S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34247652074     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (163)

1. George A. Peffer, If They Don't Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration Before Exclusion (Urbana, Il, 1999)
2. See Appendix
3. Regarding the differences in age and sexual distribution between Chinese and Japanese immigrant populations, see Roger Daniels, Coming to America: a History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (Princeton, 1990), 251-3
4. See Tiexin, "Niuyue huaren canquan zhi jinxiquan" [The Change of New York's Chinese Restaurants], Minqi Ribao [The Chinese Nationalist Daily], 1 July 1930, 8
5. and Thomas Chow, "Chinese Laundry Associations," (WPA, Federal Writers' Project, NYC Unit, 1937), microfilm, folder 48, 1
6. For recent studies, see Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (Philadelphia, 1992), 10
7. For a discussion of the concept of gender and its uses, see Joan W. Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," in her Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 28-50
8. One source mentions that until the early nineteenth century, the term "laundry" was applied only to ironing, while washing was simply called washing, which gave rise to various terms such as launderers, laundresses, washermen, and washerwomen. See The Maytag Encyclopedia of Home Laundry (Newton, IA, 1965), 18. Nevertheless, the emergence of American commercial laundries in the mid-nineteenth century was accompanied by the use of "laundrymen" to refer to owners and managers of these establishments, since nearly all of these people were male. No doubt the term contained a class meaning in the beginning, differing from laundry workers or laundry operators
9. See Arwen P. Mohun, Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940 (Baltimore, 1999), 53-4, and 59. Because many Chinese laundries were usually operated as partnerships, without a clear class distinction among the persons who conducted the work, the term "laundrymen" fit their circumstances well and I shall apply it in this article
10. See Albert L. Hurtado, "Sex, Gender, Culture, and a Great Event: The California Gold Rush," Pacific Historical Review 68, no. 1 (1999): 1-19
11. See Stuart C. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley, 1969)
12. Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley, 1971)
13. and Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana, IL, 1973)
14. Compared to other types of service work, several conditions in the laundry trade prompted Chinese to work in this line. According to Qichao Liang, cooks and servants had the highest incomes among Chinese took at the turn of the twentieth century, about one third higher than those employed in laundries. But, the latter field, like agricultural work, was more independent. See Qichao Liang, "Xin da lu you-ji" [Journal of Travels in the New Continent], Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, [Selections of notes written abroad in the late Qing Dynasty], ed. The History Department, Fu-jian Normal University (Beijing, 1983), 203
15. This statement is in agreement with one study of Chinese in Los Angeles between 1870 and 1900. The study reveals that both domestic and laundry services offered wages higher than or the same as agricultural work and day labor. Day laborers were paid about one dollar per day. Domestics received between forty and fifty dollars per month. Laundry workers earned around thirty dollars per month. But entry into live-in domestic service was limited. In addition, the skills necessary for working as a servant in an American family were usually acquired through a long apprenticeship. Laundry work was thus an alternative. See Raymond Lou, "The Chinese-American Community of Los Angeles, 1870-1900: A Case of Resistance, Organization, and Participation" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1982)
16. Youkuan Huang, "A Brief History of Overseas Chinese in the United States," The Chinese Nationalist Daily (New York), 25 February, 1927, 5. Yet the number of Chinese laundrymen in San Francisco in the census of 1870 indicated only 1,333. It is possible that the author overestimated or the census undercounted the people of this group
17. David Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (New York, 1978), 55
18. A recent study about San Francisco, however, stated that a significant number of Chinese servants working in white neighborhoods were female, see Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford, CA, 2000), 65
19. It might be possible that the author mixed this with "mui tsai" - young girls working as domestic servants in affluent Chinese homes and brothels in San Francisco. For information about mui tsai, see Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, 1995), 37-41
20. Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States Since 1850 (Seattle, 1988), 74
21. Evelyn N. Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia, 1986), 106
22. Ivan Light, Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks (Berkeley, 1972), 7
23. It should be noticed that, during the period, the Chinese community in the United States remained, after the 1850s, predominantly male (87.4 percent) and a bachelor society (with a small female population mostly under the age of ten, according to the 1920 census record). See Roger Daniels, Coming to America; A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York, 1990), 251
24. and Chart 9.1: Age and Sex Distribution of Chinese Americans, 1920
25. Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (Berkeley, 1986), 62-3
26. S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems, and Contributions (Seattle, 1962), 183
27. also see Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943, 65
28. Betty Lee Sung, The Story of the Chinese in America: Their Struggle for Survival, Acceptance, and Full Participation in American Life (New York, 1967), 190
29. Rose Hum Lee, The Growth and Decline of Chinese Communities in the Rocky Mountain Region (New York, 1978), 66, 139-40
30. Kenneth Gaw, Superior Servants: The Legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East (Singapore, 1988), 29, 36
31. Delia Davin, "Women in the Countryside of China," in Women in Chinese Society, ed. Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke (Stanford, 1975), 251
32. Hansheng Quan, "Songdai nüzi zhiye yu shengji" [Women's occupations and livelihoods in the Song Dynasty], Funü fengsu kao [Investigation of Women's Customs], eds. by Hongxing Gao, Jinjun Xu, and Qiang Zhang (Shanghai, 1991), 673
33. Kenneth Gaw, Superior Servants, 91
34. See Ng Poon Chew, "The Chinaman in America," Independent 54 (3 April 1902): 802
35. "The Life Story of a Chinaman: Lee Chew," Independent 55 (19 February 1903)
36. reprinted in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans: As Told By Themselves, ed. Hamilton Holt (New York, 1990,) 179-81. The quotation is in 180
37. David Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 47, Table 2-1; 53, Table 2-2
38. Also see John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 (Baltimore, 1999), 251
39. Lucy Maynard Salmon, Domestic Service (New York, 1897; reprint ed., 1972)
40. The household staff mentioned in Spencer's memoir included cooks, nursery workers and helpers, domestic maids, and laundresses. Ethel Spencer, The Spencers of Amberson Avenue: A Turn-Of-The-Century Memoir (Pittsburgh, 1983), 30-43, especially 32
41. For a similar situation see the letter of Mrs. C. K. Hook to the Urban League September 12, 19. Mrs. Hook specifically excluded "laundry or porches" from the household responsibilities of general domestic servants. She indicated that "[t]he laundress you sent has been so satisfactory." Archives of Industrial Society (University of Pittsburgh), Urban League 81:11, File Folder 137, Women's Service, 1918-1919
42. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mothers: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York, 1983), 65, 98
43. The yearbook of the 44th Annual Convention, Laundryowners National Association of the United States and Canada, held on 10-14 October, 1927, (La Salle, IL: The Manager's Office of the Laundryowners National Association of the United States and Canada), 3, 8
44. Elizabeth Ross Haynes, "Negroes in Domestic Service in the United States," Journal of Negro History 8 (October, 1923): 431
45. Christine Frederick, "If Your Laundress Retired," Ladies' Home Journal 37 (September, 1920): 106
46. Amey E. Watson, Household Employment in Philadelphia, Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 93, (Washington, D. C., 1932), Part IV- Case Histories, 58-61, cases 1-2, 5, 7-9
47. Sara C. Tesh, "Household Employment: A Study of Practices in the Linden Avenue District of Pittsburgh" (Master's thesis, Margaret Morrison Carnegie College, 1934), 18, 37, Table XI
48. An article, while illustrating criteria for domestic workers to be able to graduate from vocational training classes, claimed that the worker should have learned "how to use a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, and all the other machines comprising the mechanical equipment of the up-to-date home." Selma Robinson, "Maids in America," Readers Digest, 1937
49. Archives of Industrial Society, Urban League 81:11, File Folder 349, "Brief on Household Employment in Relation to Trade Union Organization," material prepared by Mrs. Jean Brown, Department of Labor, the Women's Bureau, (New York: Leadership Division, National Board, Y.W.C.A., 1938), 7. Sponsored by the joint colored-white committee of the Y.W.C.A. and the Interracial Commission, the study, done in 1937, showed that only nine washing machines were found among the 114 cases in Lynchburgh, though laundry work was done by 35 employees
50. Miner and unskilled laborers accounted for 42.8 percent of all Chinese (27,045 out of 63,199), while 14.8 percent (9,349) of Chinese were domestic service workers. Numbers were drawn from the 9th Census Report, 1870
51. "Some Laundry History in Chicago 1869-1882," National Laundry Journal 59, no. 12 (1908): 56
52. The Chinese laundry, located at the rear of 167 West Madison Street, had a sign of both "Tobey & Co." and "Chinese laundries." Paul Siu also indicated that this first Chinese laundry appeared in Edward's Directory of Chicago in 1872
53. See his book, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation (New York, 1987), 23, and 43n
54. Qui Lee, Dong xing ri ji [Diary of Eastward Passage]
55. reprinted in Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, 111, 115-6
56. David Te-Chao Chen, "Acculturation of the Chinese in the United States: A Philadelphia Study," (Ph.D diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1948), 68-9
57. See Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves, 9
58. Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 250
59. Lanbin Chen, "Shi Mei ji lue" [Brief notes on the mission to America], Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, 127
60. Yinhuan Zhang, "San zhou ri ji" [Itinerary in Three Continents], Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, 131
61. and Yongni Wang, "Gui guo ri ji" [Diary of the returning trip to China], ibid., 157
62. Louis J. Beck, New York's Chinatown: A Historical Presentation of Its People and Places (New York, 1898), 58
63. "The Life Story of a Chinaman: Lee Chew," in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans, 181
64. In some cities, Chinese started to pursue the laundry trade earlier than Americans. A biographical reference to one prominent proprietor of a dyeing and laundry house in Pittsburgh commented, "As there were no laundries in Pittsburgh except those operated by Chinamen, Mr. [Charles] Pfeifer opened one in connection with his dyeing establishment." Yet the source also mentions that Pfeifer secured an experienced laundryman, Charles Pine, from the East Coast, indicating that some big cities might have had laundry service earlier than the appearance of the Chinese laundry. See Biographical Review: Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Pittsburgh and the Vicinity (Boston, 1897), 24: 146
65. Similar to the decrease in the total number of Chinese in the continental United States, the number of Chinese laundries nationwide was stagnant, or even decreased, in the years between 1895 and 1910. There was a 35 percent decrease in the number of laundries in Chicago between 1893 and 1903. See Paul Siu, The Chinese Laundryman, 30, and Figure 3.1 in 37
66. The percentage of laundry workers in the total Chinese population in Pittsburgh declined from 29 percent in 1900 to 27 percent in 1910. A government report in 1917 noted 1,200 Chinese hand laundries in the city of New York, a decline from the eight thousand laundries alleged by Louis Beck to exist in the late 1890s. See The United States Health Service, Public Health Reports 32, No. 6 (1917): 230. The total Chinese population in New York City was 5,042 in the 1920 census report
67. The newspaper report was discussed in National Laundry Journal 52, no. 6 (1904): 80
68. There were Chinese males worked as servants in American families around New York City. According to Tchen, several missionaries in the city had Sunday schools teaching English and training male immigrants from China to have employment as servants. See John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 245, 248
69. 13th Census of the United States, 1910, V. 10, Manufactures: Reports for Principle Industries, 887
70. 14th Census of the United States, 1919, V. 10, Manufactures: Reports for Selected Industries, (Washington, DC, 1923), 1026
71. 13th Census, 1910, V. X, Manufactures: Reports for Principle Industries, 887; 14th Census, 1920, Vol. X, Reports for Principle Industries, 1027
72. Isabel Taylor, Maxell Hurwitz, and Saul Held, Survey of the Laundry Industry (New York: US, The Works Progress Administration, Project 6006, 1937), 2. Moreover, the following table provides further information about the receipts of American power laundries: (Table Presented)
73. David Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 49, 52
74. Qichao Liang, "Xin da lu you-ji" [Journey in the New Continent], Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, 193
75. 12th Census of the United States, (Washington, DC, 1900), Statistics of Occupations, Table 3 - Colored Persons 10 Years of Age and Over Engaged in Each of 140 Groups of Occupations, Distinguished as Negro, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian, Classified by Sex, 14-5. The laundry business as a leading source of Chinese employment marked the distinction between the two major Asian populations in the United States. In 1910, census investigators indicated that farming, domestic service, and laundry work were the top three occupations among Chinese and Japanese employed in the continental United States. But, within the category, some differences existed in the employment patterns of the two Asian groups. While many Japanese pursued agriculture, most Chinese worked in domestic service and in laundries. See Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 127
76. Chinese and Japanese in the United States, 1910, 12
77. S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life, 57
78. The rest of the Chinese were employed as cooks, waiters, and servants (19.6 percent), merchants and clerks (13 percent), and farm laborers (9 percent). The number of those engaged in manufacturing and mechanical industries was insignificant (0.2 percent) and mainly centralized in the food industries, such as fish curing and packing or fruit and vegetable canning. In the iron and steel industries, the total number of people was no more than one hundred for the total Chinese population. 14th Census of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1920), Occupation, Table 4 - Total Persons 10 Years of Age and Over Engaged In Each Specified Occupation, Classified by Sex, 343-59. It was evident that Chinese men still concentrated their employment in so-called "women's work."
79. For example, Siu's study of Chicago demonstrated the highest point of the number of Chinese laundries as the year 1928, see Paul Siu, The Chinese Laundryman, 37, Figure 3.1
80. Youkuan Huang, "A Brief Economic History of Chinese in America," in the series of popular discourse for overseas Chinese, Chinese Nationalist Daily, 26 February 1927, 5
81. Comparing to the case of laundries, the figure for servants was reversed. That is, the number of Chinese-many of them male- working as servants in California was 2.8 times that of New York. Both of the sources are derived from the 15th Census of the United States (Washington, DC, 1930), Occupation: Color and Nativity of Gainful Workers, Table 6 - Chinese and Japanese Gainful Workers 10 Years Old and Over, by Occupation and Sex, for the United States and Selected States, 97, under the category of "Domestic and personal service." It was also in the 1920s that Chinese laundries in some eastern cities extended their business scope through vertical integration. Chinese in New York City and Boston built up large power wet-wash houses for their ethnic fellows, who then concentrated on hand work like ironing. These laundry plants picked up soiled laundry by truck on a daily basis from small laundries and washed clothes by machine. Small neighborhood laundries only had to iron, sort, fold, and bundle the clean clothes into packages. This "agency" system among Chinese laundries competed well with better equipped American laundries and the increasing growth of family laundry machines. See Bertha M. Nienburg and Bertha Blair, Department of Labor, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, no. 143, Factors Affecting Wages in Power Laundries (Washington, DC, 1936), 17, 18
82. also see Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York, 138
83. Peter Kwong, Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950 (New York, 1979), 61
84. Several factors led to a decline in Chinese involvement in the laundry trade. One of the most important elements was a shortage of manpower, though the total Chinese population increased in the decades of the 1930s and 1940s. While the practice of passing the laundry business from father to son prevailed before World War II, younger generations increasingly resented laundry work with its long working hours and lower income than, for example, restaurant work. Some Chinese laundries employed black women, which I will discuss later, while others became collection and distribution stations only, without washing and ironing clothes themselves. See Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America, 266-7
85. The invention of the detached collar had to do with women's housework. Mrs. Hannah Montague of Troy, New York, was credited with creating the detached collar. Legend had it that one day in 1827, to reduce the drudgery of producing a fresh shirt every day for her blacksmith husband, Mrs. Montague simply snipped off the collar, usually the only dirty part of the shirt, and washed it. Thus was born the first detachable collar. See Fred DeArmond, The Laundry Industry (New York, 1950), 1
86. Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele, eds. Men and Women: Dressing the Past (Washington, DC, 1989), 83, 85
87. O. E. Schoeffler and William Gale, Esquire's Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Men's Fashion, 184, 198
88. Marion M. Mayer, "The Art of Starching," Good Housekeeping 73 (September, 1921): 69, 173
89. Cited from National Laundry Journal, 52, no. 11 (1904): 13
90. Pauline Beery Mack, "Textiles from Test Tubes. IV. Textile Fabrics Maintenance," Journal of Chemical Education 6 (April 1929): 757
91. and Fred DeArmond, The Laundry Industry, 1-2
92. The next important articles sent to commercial laundries were flatwork from ships, hotels, and restaurants, and, in this way, a branch of the power laundry known as the linen-supply division was created. This bachelor bundle was known as "bundle work" in the 1940s and 1950s. It normally consisted of work that was completely finished, starched where necessary, minor mending done, and hand ironed, which was exactly what bachelors needed. Unlike flatworks, which charged by the piece or pound, bachelor bundles were charged by the piece only. See Appendix D, Explanation of Terms, under "Laundries, cleaning and dyeing plants, and related services," the Appendixes of U. S. Census of Business, 1948, Vol. VI, Service Trade-General Statistics, (Washington, DC, 1952)
93. "Rapid Development of the Laundry Industry," Laundryman's Guide and Dyeing and Cleaning Trades Journal 2, no. 5 (1909): 16
94. F. B. Fletcher, "Selling Laundry Service," the yearbook of the Thirty-ninth Annual Convention, Laundryowners National Association of the United States and Canada, held on 2-6 October 1922, 102-3
95. Indeed, commercial laundries in the United States and in European countries had been chiefly a shirt and collar business before 1915. See Taylor, Hurwitz, and Held, Survey of the laundry Industry, 2
96. Charles A. Boyce, The Steam Laundry and Its Method: Essays Read at the Convention Held at Buffalo, October, 1889 (Chicago, 1894), 124
97. Louis Beck, New York's Chinatown: A Historical Presentation of Its People and Places (New York, 1898), 59
98. "Laundry Hazards," National Laundry Journal 73, no. 8 (1915): 26
99. "Attached Collars and Cuffs," ibid., 51, no. 10 (1904): 38
100. also "Evolution of the Shirt," ibid., 53, no 2 (1905): 32
101. O. E. Schoeffler and William Gale, Esquire's Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Men's Fashion, 199-200
102. Leonore Dunnigan, "Being Your Husband's Valet," Good Housekeeping 97 (August, 1933): 87, 169
103. Helen W. Kendall, "A Man's Shirt is a Woman's Problem," Good Housekeeping 125 (September, 1947): 126-7
104. Althea Lepper, "What Price Washdays?" Delineator 128 (April, 1936): 11, 13
105. For instance, see Nell B. Nichols, "Doing Up His Shirts," Women's Home Companion 61 (January, 1934): 78-9
106. Grace L. Smith and Margaret Hinde, "Ladies Launder," ibid. 69 (August, 1940): 48-9
107. and Margaret Davidson, "Can You Wash and Iron a Shirt?" Ladies' Home Journal 60 (October, 1943): 139
108. Helen F. Clack, "The Chinese of New York," The Century 53 (November, 1896-April, 1897): 110
109. Chien-shiung Wu, "The Chinese in Pittsburgh: A Changing Minority Community in the United States, 1872-1978," (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1983), 79-80
110. Qichao Liang, "Xin da lu youji" [Journey of Travels in the New Continent], Wan Qing hai wai bi ji xuan, 196, 202-3
111. Ming Mars, interviewed by Judith Luk and Tak C. Wong, 19 March and 24 April 1981, the New York Chinatown Historical Project
112. Shun Huang," Wo zai Meigou congshi xiyiye de jingguo" [My experience working in the laundry business in the U. S.], in Huaqiao shi lunwen ji [Essays on Overseas Chinese History], (Guangzhou: Ji'nan Dazue Huaqiao Yanjiusuo) 2:319
113. Tin-chiu Fan, "Chinese Residents in Chicago," (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1926), 41, Table XIV
114. Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967), 157
115. Win Hay Louis, no interviewers and interview dates, the New York Chinatown Historical Project
116. China Daily News, 16 October 1941, 6
117. The money sent back to Chinese were used to not only raise families but also upgraded the general welfare of the hometowns. For instance, in 1912, the immigrants from Taishan financed construction of the Xin-ning Railway, as well as other public works like building modern roads. In addition, remittances were invested in various business lines, such as establishing stores in old market towns and founding new market towns. Other investments were made in municipal development projects like electric lighting works, telephone companies, bus companies, and steamboat services. See Yuen-Fong Woon, Social Organization in South China, 1911-1949: The Case of The Kuan Lineage in Kai-Ping County (Ann Arbor, 1984), 59, 65-7
118. Portions of the following sections were published, in slightly different form, as "The missing chapter of racism: The gender aspects in the lives of Chinese laundrymen in the United States before WW II," EurAmerica, Vol. 33, No. 4, 801-49 (in Chinese)
119. Ronald M. James, Richard D. Adkins, and Rachel J. Hartigan, "Competition and Coexistence in the Laundry: A View of the Comstock," Western Historical Quarterly 25, (Summer 1994): 164-84. The quotation is in 181
120. For a general view of the issue of the competition between Chinese laundries and American power laundries, see Joan Wang, "Gender, Race, and Civilization: the Competition Between American Power Laundries and Chinese Hand Laundries, 1870s-1920s," American Studies International, Vol. 40, No. 1: 52-73
121. also see Arwen P. Mohan, Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880-1940 (Baltimore, 1999), 58, 67-8
122. Paul A. Frisch, "'Gibraltar of Unionism': Women, Blacks and the Anti-Chinese Movement in Butte, Montana, 1880-1900," Southwest Economy and Society 6:3 (1984): 3-13
123. "War Declared By Soldier Wife Laundresses," Laundryman's Guide, 1, no. 2 (1909): 16
124. W. E. B. Du Bois, Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (together with a Special Report on Domestic Service by Isabel Eaton) (Philadelphia, 1996), 102-3
125. Nancy Farrar, The Chinese in El Paso (Southwestern Studies, Monograph No. 33, The University of Texas at El Paso, 1972), 3
126. Florence C. Lister and Robert H. Lister, The Chinese of Early Tucson: Historic Archaeology from the Tucson Urban Renewal Project (Tucson, 1989), 1
127. See Tera Hunter, "To Joy My Freedom": Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 78-9, 80
128. The Chinese in Galveston presumably were part of the group working on the Louisiana and Texas Railroad in 1870, see Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850-1870 (Cambridge, MA, 1964), 196
129. "Washerwoman's Union," National Laundry Journal 53 (January 15, 1905): 40
130. Black washerwomen turned out to be a major deterrence to the development of not only Chinese laundries but American power laundries in the following years. In the late 1900s, a number of American power laundries in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Atlanta launched an anti-disease advertising campaign against black washerwomen as well as Chinese. See "Spreading Disease Through Unsanitary Laundering," Laundryman's Guide 1 (January, 1909): 5
131. Nevertheless, black washerwomen remained the foremost competition to power laundries. Even in the 1920s, big power laundries in the South expressed their annoyance at the traditional practice of black women. See "Washerwoman Only Real Competitor," Laundry Age 1 (September, 1921): 56
132. and "Rub-A-Dub-Dub Is Passing in South," ibid., 1 (January, 1922): 10
133. "The Steam Laundry Versus The Chinaman and Negro Washerwomen," Laundryman's Guide 1 (May, 1909): 6
134. National Laundry Journal 53, no. 10 (1905): 54
135. David M. Katzman, Seven Days A Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (New York, 1978), 85-6
136. The dominance of black women as laundresses reached a peak during the black migration northward of the 1910s. Laundry work was considered by black women to be a job which offered higher wages and yet allowed them to spend more time with their own families, rather than living in the master's house. See Archives of Industrial Society, Urban League 81:11, File Folder 137, Women's Service, reports of women's employment from secretary, January-April 1919
137. See James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White (Cambridge, MA, 1971)
138. Robert Seto Quan, Lotus Among the Magnolias: The Mississippi Chinese (Jackson, Miss., 1982)
139. Shi-Shan Henry Tsai, "The Chinese in Arkansas," Amerasia Journal 8 (Spring-Summer, 1981): 1-18
140. Katzman, Seven Days A Week, 60
141. "Brief On Household Employment In Relation To Trade Union Organization," material prepared by Mrs. Jean Brown of the Women's Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C., (Published by Leadership Division, National Board, Y.W.C.A., New York, N. Y.), 1938. Archives of Industrial Society, Urban League (81:11), File Folder 349
142. Bertha M. Nienburg and Bertha Blair, Factors Affecting Wages in Power Laundries, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, # 143, (Washington, DC, 1936), p. 17
143. National Laundry Journal 52, no. (1904): 2, 56
144. American power laundryowners often argued that labor union members would rather patronize Chinese laundries than American laundries. In the fall of 1905, one local labor organization in Maryland urged the Frazee-Potomac Laundry Co. to employ union labor for its plant erection, implying that otherwise there would be trouble. In a meeting with three representatives of the union, Mr. Broadbent, the company's manager, "sized them up and observed that each one wore a collar laundered by a Chinaman." Ibid., 54, no. 6 (1905): 18
145. Apparently, patronizing Chinese laundries became a counter argument for the power laundry industry to deny the demands of labor organizations. The most ironic statement was heard during a laundry workers' strike in Carbondale, PA. The town's labor unions threatened to open a laundry agency for sending the work out of town. To counter this intimidation, the employers advocated the abolishment of the Chinese Exclusion Act and letting in cheap labor to solve the industrial problem. See ibid., 54, no. (1905): 2
146. L. Toddy, "Solidarity of Negro and Chinese Workers Against U. S. Imperialism," The Liberator (by American Negro Labor Congress), (March 22, 1930), 3
147. Nienburg and Blair, Factors Affecting Wages in Power Laundries, 18-9
148. Such accusations of prejudice against white laborers appeared as early as the 1900s, also see Laundryman's Guide, 1, no. 3 (1909): 10
149. Fu'er Fang and Manli Zhang, Guangzhou wenshi ziliao (xuanji), 188-9
150. However, Chinese usually relied on family and clan authority to prevent dishonest employees, hiring persons outside one's own group brought disturbances. As Fang stated, while most Chinese laundries maintained good relationships with their black female employees, some were bothered by thefts from their black employees, since the latter might know where the Chinese employers hid their savings. On another occasion, a black employee set up a fraud scheme by tricking her Chinese employer with a telegram. Since the Chinese owner could not read, the black woman translated the telegram as a request from the city government asking him come to the police station immediately. The black employee then stole money from the cash drawer. See China Daily News, 11 November 1940, 7
151. For the case of Chinese women in San Francisco working in laundries, see Judy Yung, Unbound Feet, 43
152. San-min Morning Paper, 22 February 1935, 5
153. In 1931, the Chinese population in Toronto was 2,635, of which 153 were female. In 1941, the number declined to 2,326, of which 253 were female. See Edgar Wickberg, ed., From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: 1982), 303, Table 7: Chinese Population of Some Major Cities, 1911-1941; 306-7, Table 10: Male/Female Population and Sex Ratio of Specific Communities
154. Siu, the Chinese Laundryman, 286
155. Nyok Zoe Dong, "Chinese Family Life in Philadelphia and New York," (Master's thesis, Columbia University, 1923), 17
156. Yutang Lin, Chinatown Family (New York, 1948), 73
157. Dong, "Chinese Family Life in Philadelphia and New York," 8
158. Chinese Nationalist Daily, 21 February 1928, 8. It was not clearly stated whether the wife was Chinese or not. Yet, Chinese newspapers usually
159. Daniel Chu, Interview by John Tchen, 18 February, 1982, the New York Chinatown Historical Project
160. John Stewart Burgess, "A Study of the Characteristics of the Cantonese Merchants in Chinatown, New York, as Shown by Their Use of Leisure Time," (Master thesis, Columbia University, 1909), 27
161. Georgina G. Negley, East Liberty Presbyterian Church, With Historical Setting and A Narrative of the Centennial Celebration (Pittsburgh: 1919), 28
162. Pittsburgh Bulletin, 5 August 1899, 6
163. prostitutes of other nationalities and races, ibid., 252, 254-6, 263, and 267