"Independent of the unskilled Chinaman": Race, labor, and family farming in California's Santa Clara Valley

Western Historical Quarterly

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 475-495

  Tsu, Cecilia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149542966     PISSN: 00433810     EISSN: 19398603     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25443417     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. H.S. Foote, Pen Pictures from the "Garden of the World" or Santa Clara County, California (Chicago, 1888), 268.
2. Santa Clara County Leases (hereafter SCCL), book D, 598
3. and SCCL, book J, 23-6.
4. Geographer Don Mitchell argues that the California landscape can be portrayed as part of the American Dream only when seen from afar, without visible labor: "Only by erasing - or completely aestheticizing - the workers who made that way of life is its celebration possible." Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis, 1996), 20.
5. David Vaught, "State of the Art - Rural History, or Why Is There No Rural History of California?" Agricultural History 74 (Fall 2000): 774.
6. Pioneering works on California growers include David Vaught, Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920 (Baltimore, 1999);
7. Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (Berkeley, 2005);
8. Steven Stoll, The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California (Berkeley, 1998);
9. Ian Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930 (Berkeley, 1999).
10. On Mexican farm workers in Southern California, see Matt Garcia, A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970 (Chapel Hill, 2001)
11. and Gilbert G. González, Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950 (Urbana, IL, 1994).
12. The most comprehensive work on California farmworkers is Richard Steven Street, Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913 (Stanford, 2004).
13. See also, Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 (Ithaca, 1981).
14. Rich studies of rural women and gender have focused on regions other than California. See, for example, Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940 (Baltimore, 1995);
15. Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, 1991);
16. Joan Jensen, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850 (New Haven, 1986).
17. Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (Berkeley, 1986);
18. Valerie J. Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982 (Ithaca, 1993);
19. Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York, 2005);
20. Masakazu Iwata, Planted in Good Soil: The History of the Issei in United States Agriculture (New York, 1992).
21. Glenna Matthews, Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century (Stanford, 2003)
22. and Stephen J. Pitti, The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (Princeton, 2003).
23. For local history perspectives on farming in the Santa Clara Valley, see Yvonne Jacobson, Passing Farms, Enduring Values: California's Santa Clara Valley (Los Altos, CA, 1984)
24. and Gary Y. Okihiro and Timothy Lukes, Japanese Legacy: Farming and Community Life in California's Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino, CA, 1985).
25. Jacobson, Passing Farms, Enduring Values, 18
26. and Picturesque San Jose and Environments: An illustrated statement of the progress, prosperity and resources of Santa Clara County, California (San Jose, 1893), n.p.
27. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 8-9, 36-9;
28. California's Richest Realm. Santa Clara Valley, some views of the San Martin Ranch subdivision (San Jose, c. 1901), n.p.;
29. Henry George, Our Land and Land Policy (1871) in The Writings of Henry George, vol. 9 (New York, 1901).
30. For more on the evolution and persistence of the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, see Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (New York, 1950), 215
31. and Garcia, A World of Its Own, 19-21.
32. Quotes from Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York, 1985), 134.
33. See Jan Otto Marius Broek, The Santa Clara Valley: A Study in Landscape Changes (Utrecht, 1932), 64-5
34. and Historical Atlas Map of Santa Clara County (San Francisco, 1876), 17.
35. Picturesque San Jose, n.p.
36. S.F. Leib, "Address of Welcome," in Transactions of the Sixteenth State Fruit Growers' Convention Held at San Jose, November 15-18, 1892, 113-4. Transactions, Proceedings, and Official Reports found in bound volumes, California State Library, Sacramento (hereafter CSL).
37. Vaught, Cultivating California, 52-3 and 48.
38. Annual Report of the State Board of Horticulture of the State of California (Sacramento, 1892), 245.
39. Leigh Irvine, Santa Clara County, California (California Lands for Wealth, California Fruit for Health) (San Jose, c. 1910), 22
40. and Gen. N.P. Chipman, "Fruit vs. Wheat" in Transactions of the Sixteenth State Fruit Growers' Convention Held at San Jose, November 15-18, 1892, 167-8. CSL.
41. Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, 1998), 11-2
42. and Peter G. Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (Baltimore, 1998), 79.
43. For more on changes in American masculinity at the turn of the century, see Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995);
44. E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993), 194-283;
45. Filene, Him/Her/Self, 74-99.
46. California's Richest Realm, n.p.
47. and Irvine, Santa Clara County, 11.
48. Brooklodge Farm containing five hundred acres choice valley land (San Jose, 1899), Yvonne Jacobson Collection, California History Center, De Anza College, Cupertino, California.
49. E. Alexander Powell, "The Valley of Heart's Delight," Sunset 29 (August 1912): 119.
50. Louis S. Warren, "Cody's Last Stand: Masculine Anxiety, the Custer Myth, and the Frontier of Domesticity in Buffalo Bill's Wild West," Western Historical Quarterly 34 (Spring 2003): 49-69, presents a fascinating parallel argument on domesticity, manhood, and the myth of the "Wild West." Not unlike the sea captain's dreams of "homecoming" in the Santa Clara Valley after his voyages, Warren writes, "The story of the Wild West thus ended with a homecoming, a return to the scene of a white family domicile, settled, rural, and virtuous." (p. 61).
51. Mrs. Georgie McBride, "A Woman's Orchard," Transactions of the Sixteenth State Fruit Growers' Convention Held at San Jose, November 15-18, 1892, 193, CSL
52. "Women as Fruit Growers," California Fruit Grower (14 March 1896): 206.
53. McBride, "A Woman's Orchard," 193-5.
54. San Jose Board of Trade, Santa Clara County, California (San Jose, 1887), 76, 93.
55. Flora M. Kimball, "Welcome Address," Official Report of the Eleventh Fruit Growers' Convention of the State of California (Sacramento, 1889), 12, CSL.
56. "Proceedings of the Nineteenth Fruit Growers' Convention of the State of California," in Official Report of the Nineteenth Fruit Growers' Convention of the State of California (Sacramento, 1896), 92, CSL
57. Street, Beasts of the Field, 237-57
58. and Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York, 1998), 84-91.
59. Statement of John Summerfield Enos, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of California to the California State Horticultural Society (Sacramento, 1886), 14, State Government Report, CSL.
60. Census figures for 1880 and 1890 counted 2,695 and 2,723 Chinese in the county, respectively. Though there are no exact Census figures for the number of male Chinese in Santa Clara County, my calculations from the 1890 Census indicate that at least 83 percent (probably closer to 95 percent) of the Chinese in the county were male. Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890. Part I. Population (Washington, DC, 1892), 477, 586-7, 769.
61. Chan, This Bittersweet Soil, 124-31. The 1860, 1870, and 1880 manuscript population census listed no white berry cultivators at all.
62. San Jose Mercury, Santa Clara County and Its Resources, Historical, Descriptive, Statistical (San Jose, 1895), 180;
63. book D, 207-10;
64. book F, 164-6,330-2, 519-22, 531-34;
65. book G, 100-2, 244-5, 385-6;
66. book H, 412-3;
67. book I, 430-2.
68. Beginning in 1905, the Youngers leased farmland to Japanese tenants. Details of the Younger clan's landholdings can be found in: "Coleman Younger," will book G, 385-91
69. and "Augusta Younger," will book O,306-8, documents found at Records of the Santa Clara County Recorder's Office deposited at History San Jose.
70. "Strawberry Culture," Palo Alto Times, 23 August 1901;
71. Santa Clara County and Its Resources, 180.
72. H.L. Wells, "Onion Beginnings: Seeding, Packing and Shipping in California,"
73. and Jessie Juliet Knox, "In a Garden of Sleep: Onion Growing in the Santa Clara Valley," Sunset 8 (January 1902): 123-6 and 121.
74. William A.Z. Edwards Diaries and Account Books, 2, 10, 13 January 1880, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Edwards Diaries). Tomatoes were also grown for seed on agreement with Kimberlin.
75. F. Ralph Rambo, Remember When ... A Boy's-Eye View of An Old Valley (San Jose, 1965), 22.
76. Irene Connell, "The Garden of California," Sunset 3 (October 1899): 189.
77. On late nineteenth-century representations of Chinese immigrant men as childlike, feminine, and domestic, see Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia, 1999), 91-105.
78. U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports: Immigrants in Industries, XXV, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1911), 203, 207-8.
79. Edwards Diaries, 26 February-2 March 1889 and 5 December 1893;
80. John Francis Pyle Diaries and Memorandum Books, 30 March 1895 and I, 9 May 1895, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Pyle Diaries).
81. Pyle Diaries, 9 March 1890, 11 March 1895, 1 April 1895. In Edwards Diaries, see entries from 1889, featuring mentions of Chinese laborers on an almost daily basis.
82. Edwards Diaries, 28 October 1893
83. and Him Mark Lai, Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions (Walnut Creek, CA, 2004), 190.
84. Lai says Mock left Stanford's employ when the farm became a university campus, which is not likely, since Jane Stanford signed a lease with him in 1893, after the university was founded in 1891. "Huangliang Du (Wong Leung Do)" is the former name for a region in the southwest corner of Pearl River Delta.
85. Emigrants from this region were among the earliest Chinese to settle in North America, many becoming flower growers and agricultural specialists in California. Lai, Becoming Chinese American, 177, 190.
86. SCCL, book F, 534.
87. For more on the history of gambling in San Jose Chinatown and white attempts to outlaw it, see Connie Young Yu, Chinatown, San Jose, USA (San Jose, 1991), 69-77.
88. Yu, Chinatown, San Jose, USA, 36.
89. Pyle Diaries, 23 June 1902
90. and Rambo, Remember When, 22.
91. "Testimony taken at the Inquest on the body of Chin Yong," died 12 May 1904, 1-2.
92. All Santa Clara County Coroner's Inquests found at History San Jose. San Jose City Directory, including Santa Clara County, 1903-1904 (San Francisco, 1903), 516.
93. "Inquest Over Chinaman's Body," San Jose Evening News, 13 May 1904. Witnesses suggested tong rivalries may have been involved in the murder.
94. "Testimony at the Inquest of Ung Sing Bang," 13 November 1893, 2
95. and "Testimony Taken at the Inquest on the body of Li Sack," 9 January 1901, 3.
96. "Testimony Taken at the Inquest on the Body of Yen Ohn," 4 July 1908, 2
97. and "Testimony taken at the Inquest on the body of Ling Yen," 10 April 1913, 3-4.
98. Statement of John Summerfield Enos, 14.
99. Editorial and "The Labor Question among Vineyardists," California Fruit Grower (12 August 1893): 132 and 169.
100. For more on transnational Chinese family formation and "split-household families," see Adam McKeown, "Transnational Chinese Families and Chinese Exclusion, 1875-1943," Journal of American Ethnic History 18 (Winter 1999): 73-110
101. and Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943 (Stanford, 2000).
102. and Leigh H. Irvine, ed., A History of the New California, Its Resources and People (New York, 1905), 529.
103. "When Chinese Labor Was Employed," 27 October 1904.
104. On the history of white wage laborers' attachment to the status and privilege accrued by white racial identity, see David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991).
105. The Daily Mercury responded with an editorial lambasting its rival's "desperation" and "positively humorous" creations. See "Despicable Journalism," San Jose Daily Mercury, 3 November 1904.
106. In December 1905, Hayes made the first ever anti-Japanese speech in the House of Representatives. See Okihiro and Lukes, Japanese Legacy, 46.