Fighting immorality: Chinese Prostitution in Late Nineteenth Century California

Fighting immorality Chinese Prostitution in Late Nineteenth Century California Photograph: ‘A Chinese Slave Girl’, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Laura Woolthuis, 3665615 American Immigration H. Krabbendam February 2, 2015 3817 words Introduction In 1848 or 1849, a twenty-year-old woman named Ah Toy left her home in China, and sailed for San Francisco. She made the risky and difficult journey across the Pacific to ‘better her condition’ by working as an independent prostitute. Starting off from a humble residence, her beauty made her an instant success. It was said that miners lined up around the block and paid an ounce of gold (16 dollars) just to ‘gaze on the countenance of the charming Ah Toy’. Within several years, she was in a position to employ recently arrived Chinese prostitutes, showing that she was as enterprising as she was alluring. Responding to the rising demand for female service, and undoubtedly bolstered by her success, she began bringing in prostitutes for other Chinese brothels as well. On several occasions she travelled to China herself to purchase ‘stock’ to sell. However, other traffickers increasingly began to organize the importation of females from China – women and girls who could be sold as prostitutes or concubines. These procuring rings became increasingly tight organized and powerful, and the arrival of new prostitutes controlled by male-dominated groups (tongs) meant the beginning of the end for operations of free prostitutes such as Ah Toy. By the 1860s, she had faded from the prostitution scene. Ah Toy died in 1928, just before her 100th birthday. M. Rutter, Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West (2005), 127-132; E. Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong 2013), 219-221. Ah Toy’s story highlights some key aspects of Chinese immigration to America. Connections with China, prostitution, the buying and selling of women, a source of seemingly endless supply of women from China on the one hand and seemingly endless demand for them in California on the other, characterized the phenomenon of Chinese women’s immigration in the nineteenth century. The immigration of these women to America, studied often in terms of the oppressive and discriminatory nature of American immigration policy and the problem of prostitution, is analyzed extensively within the discourse on race, gender, and class in American history. Popular lore about Chinese prostitutes led often to the belief that the influx of both Chinese men and women had a negative impact on civilized Americans. Prostitution in general was seen as demoralizing by Victorians, as it formed a threat to the institution of family and because of attitudes against interracial marriages and relations. These feelings resulted in several restrictive immigration laws, which served to diminish the numbers of Chinese immigrants arriving in the United States. J. Chang, ‘Prostitution and Footbinding: Images of Chinese Womanhood in Late Nineteenth-Century San Francisco’, http://userwww.sfsu.edu/epf/journal_archive/volume_X,_2001/chang_j.pdf (January 22, 2015), 2; D.R. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (New Jersey 2012), 98-99; Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 248 and 261-262. In this paper, I will study the Victorian attitude towards Chinese immigration and prostitution and the connection with restrictive immigration laws. My research question therefore is: Did promoters of explicit ideas about sexuality in Victorian terms encourage or discourage Chinese prostitution and transnational contacts with Chinese women by restricting Chinese immigration to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century? The study will cover the period from 1850 to 1888, the start being the aftermath of the 1848 Gold Rush and the end being the third Chinese Exclusion Law. To answer the research question, several important elements have to be studied. The first chapter deals with the question why there were so few Chinese women immigrating to the United States. This question is important because it sheds light on the enormous gender imbalance among the Chinese in California during the end of the nineteenth century and might explain an increase in transnational contacts among Chinese immigrants. In answering the question, a short historical overview is offered to understand China’s economic circumstances during the nineteenth century and the reasons for Chinese men to go abroad. Furthermore, Chinese traditions with regard to male and female domestic roles are explained to give an indication of the importance of women in Chinese society and what caused a number of them to eventually end up in the American prostitution trade. The second chapter studies the attitude towards Chinese immigrants by Victorian Americans. The question that is asked in this case is why did Victorian Americans believe that Chinese immigrants were immoral? The relevance of this question is to demonstrate how racist thinking eventually led to immigration restrictions and possibly increased foreign relations. The final chapter addresses the debates and restrictions that followed Victorian attitudes towards the increasing Chinese immigration. The question that is raised here is: in what ways did the American government act upon the increasing number of Chinese immigrants and what was the effect of this intervention? The importance of this question is to show how immigration restriction on the one hand led to the decrease of Chinese immigration but on the other hand led to the increase in both prostitution and foreign contacts. The status questionis regarding the topic is quite advanced. Many scholarly books and articles have been written about Chinese prostitution in nineteenth century California. However, few of them focus on the impact the Victorian ideology had on the proliferation of Chinese prostitution. Moreover, most of these studies have been written by (Chinese) Americans. In my study I will make use of a cultural approach, as I will be studying the beliefs, habits and public opinion of both the Chinese and the American society during the nineteenth century. Because it is a short study I cannot speak of a discourse analysis, which requires the use of many primary sources. Instead, I will base my study solely on secondary sources, which provide me both a historical context of the study as a critical analysis of the topic and offer a close focus on the cultural elements that surround the subject. The use of primary sources can be useful in further research, as they offer a more detailed insight in the issue. For example, the study of documents from anti-Chinese movements can demonstrate in what ways Chinese immigrants where seen by those movements, what solutions they suggested to limit the immigration of the Chinese to the U.S. and how they acted upon their beliefs. Also, Californian newspapers reflected the general public opinion with regard to Chinese immigration and prostitution. Other useful primary sources are official immigration records, which provide inter alia information on numbers of immigrants arriving in California during a certain time period; law documents, that give a detailed insight in immigration restrictions; and immigrant letters, which shed a light on their living conditions and demonstrate transnational contacts. 1. Gender imbalance and prostitution Chinese immigration to the United States increased after China had faced several disasters. After losing the Opium War with Great Britain in 1840, China was forced to open its doors and take on economic trading partners, which was difficult for the financially strapped country. In addition, the country had just weathered four years of natural disaster and had hardly enough food to feed its large population. Further complicating the situation was the Taiping Rebellion in the southeast from 1850 to 1864, which cost millions of lives. Victimized by population pressure, landlord oppression, and foreign imperialism, many peasant families in nineteenth century China lived on the edge of subsistence. In a number of communities where immigration to distant lands was feasible, a large proportion of the male population left home in search of employment. Even though an ocean passage and transportation costs were expensive, the Gum San, the Golden Mountain of California, seemed to offer opportunity and prosperity in times when there was little of either in China. L.C. Hirata, ‘Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century America’, Signs, 5:1, Women in Latin America (Autumn 1979), 4; Rutter, Upstairs Girls, 41-42; Chang, ‘Prostitution and Footbinding’, 2; Sinn, 226. The number of Chinese women who immigrated to the United States during the nineteenth century was small. However, this was not uncommon with regard to other immigration streams: by the late nineteenth century, the gender composition across almost all the world’s immigration systems was overwhelmingly masculine. In case of the Chinese, almost all scholarly studies describe both the free and indentured immigrant workers from China as heavily and persistently male. D. R. Gabaccia, ‘Connecting the Gender Histories of Migration in the Atlantic and the World, 1500-present’, https://www.academia.edu/4140689/Connecting_the_Gender_Histories_of_Migration_in_the_Atlantic_and_the_World_1500-present, 9-10. Table 1 shows an example of the imbalanced sex ratio among Chinese immigrants in San Francisco at the end of the nineteenth century. Year Chinese males Chinese females Males per 1000 females 1860 33.149 1784 18.581 1870 58.633 4566 12.841 1880 100.686 4779 21.068 1890 103.620 3868 26.789 1900 85.341 4522 18.872 Table 1. Chinese male and female population and sex ratio in San Francisco, 1860-1900. N.L. Shumsky and L. M. Springer, ‘San Francisco’s zone of prostitution, 1880-1934’, Journal of Historical Geography, 7:1 (1981), 76; S. Lyman, ‘Marriage and the Family among Chinese Immigrants to America, 1850-1960’, Phylon (1960-), 29:4 (4th Qtr., 1969), 322-324. The reasons for the low number of Chinese women coming to America lay in the customs of nineteenth century Chinese society. Chinese women generally did not travel during that time due to their patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal based society: women’s acceptable role was bearing children, and serving their husbands and parents-in-law at home. Given the key of importance of filial piety, the moral duty of wives to remain in China to care for their parents-in-law overrode the need to stay close to their sojourning husbands. Even when the parents-in-law passed away, it remained the wives’ duty to make offerings to ancestors and keep the home in order. One needs to remember the vital relationship between the living, the dead, and the as-yet-unborn in a patriarchal society, and relocating a primary wife to a foreign land would sever that relationship. With the immigrant’s intention to return, it was all the more important that she would stay behind to uphold his interests in the lineage and family during his absence. Moreover, there was a fear of moral corruption of women leaving home. For transnational households that were amenable to long-term dispersion, the act of bringing women and children to a distant environment like the United States, with little supportive infrastructure, was seen as more destructive than constructive. These factors limited the number of Chinese women who came to America and prevented the formation of a stable Chinese community with a more balanced ratio of men and women. Sinn, 225-226; Lyman, ‘Marriage and the Family’, 324; Chang, 3. But in times of natural disaster and war, norms and values change. Chinese families, seeing no other way out of their miserable circumstances, often resorted to infanticide, abandonment, mortgaging, or selling of children. Females, whose labor was less valuable than that of males, were frequently the first victims of extreme poverty. Furthermore, in the patriarchal and patrilineal Chinese society, the family that raised a girl would not benefit from her labor and she could never carry on the ancestral line. One remunerative solution for relieving the family of its female members was prostitution: the family did not have to provide for the girl’s upkeep and her sale or part of her earnings would help support the family. Though, not all parents sold their daughters in full awareness of sending them into the sex trade; others were misled, believing their daughters were going to be married off to older, wealthy men in the United States. Women were often tricked as well. Flesh purveyors would tell the young lady about the opportunities that awaited her in America and offered her a contract of indentured service that she would sign; having no idea was she was getting into or even what indentured service meant. She assumed it would be some form of ‘honorable’ work and in some cases it was also hinted that she easily might find a husband. Hirata, 4; Rutter, 45; Sinn, 226-227. The number of these victimized women is debatable. Some scholars argue that as many as 90 percent of the Chinese women who worked as prostitutes where physically forced to do so, while others believe that some numbers of Chinese women came to America voluntarily to work as independent prostitutes. In this case, they were fully aware of their purpose and did not object to being sold into the sex trade because of filial obligations to their families. Some of those women even became victimizers by speculation in the trade of human chattel and selling the services of other women as a ‘madam’, for example the aforementioned Ah Toy. Rutter, 43; Chang, 2-3. China’s poor economic conditions and the recent discovery of gold caused the increase of Chinese immigration to the United States, mainly by men. Chinese society traditionally did not encourage women to travel abroad, as they needed to manage the household. The women who did travel to the United States were often forced to do so, either by their families or by cunning flesh purveyors who promised them golden opportunities in the new country. The combination of strict Chinese tradition and poor economic circumstances explains the enormous gender imbalance in California during the second half of the nineteenth century, as well as a possible increase in transnational contacts among Chinese immigrants, especially among those who planned to return, sending money and letters home to their families. 2. Morality The increasing number of Chinese immigrants arriving in the United States became a controversial issue during the second half of the nineteenth century. There were several igniting debates about the nature of cheap Chinese labor and how Chinese immigration affected America. At first, Chinese immigrant laborers were welcome in America; they were industrious and undemanding, filling menial jobs for low wages. While many Chinese men came in search of gold, many others were willing to labor as carpenters, cooks, laundry men, and servants. However, as mining yields slowed down, wages and employment levels began to fluctuate. Gold-seekers who had come hoping to make a vast fortune in the mines were bitterly disappointed when these dreams did not materialize. This resentment created much xenophobic feelings towards Chinese workers, a large and conspicuous body of foreigners in California. Anti-foreign voices started to declare that California’s resources belonged to Americans and not to outsiders. Chang, 3; Rutter, 42; Sinn, 239; Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 95. Entwined with the labor debate was the belief in essential Chinese villainy, which focused on Chinese prostitution. The existence of large numbers of Chinese prostitutes was often referred to as a ‘fearfully demoralizing influence.’ The ways in which Chinese prostitution was demoralizing could be linked to Victorian issues of sex as a commodity, interracial relations, and venereal diseases. But most importantly, prostitution was seen as a threat to the institution of family, and Chinese prostitution was more of an evil because of attitudes against interracial marriage and relations. While some attacked Chinese prostitution directly, others argued against Chinese immigration by describing the Chinese race as sexually depraved in a way that was offensive to Victorian ideas of family, marriage and sex. The underlying belief was that because Chinese practices were so unchristian and offensive – referring to the practices of foot binding and the caging of Chinese prostitutes – the Chinese presence would pollute the ‘wholesome populace of America.’ These critics also cited biological reasons to argue the case of Chinese morality. Evoking the Victorian belief that virtue was linked to physical health, some contented that the most vile and disgusting diseases existed among the Chinese because they were evil. Moreover, it was believed that the diseases affected the corporeal and intellectual qualities of the Chinese, making them physically immoral on the level of their blood and cell organisms. Chang, 3-5; Rutter, 42. Most Victorians tended not to elaborate on the sort of diseases, but they might refer to the venereal kind, which were often transmitted by prostitutes. The combination of the labor and morality debate resulted quickly in the establishment of several anti-Chinese movements in the United States, which demanded protective measures by the Federal Government with regard to the increasing number of Chinese immigrants. 3. Exclusion The aggressive racist thinking about Chinese immigrants brought forth a number of laws designed to limit ‘foreigners’ and economic competition. At first, tariffs served as the most important expression of Americans’ desire for protection from negative, foreign influences. With regard to the unwanted Chinese, the Foreign Miners’ Tax was imposed. It required all non-natives to pay a fee of $20 a month to the state of California to work in the mines. This was a huge sum for a miner making $5 to $7 a month. But for some Americans this was not enough. Critics began to argue that tariffs did not protect American workers, since the Tax only targeted Chinese immigrants indirectly, and demanded stricter protection. In a short period of time, congressional debates over protective tariffs gave way to debates over immigration restriction as the preferred mechanism for protecting Americans from foreign threats. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 93 and 95; Rutter, 42-43. Two branches first collided over Chinese immigration under the provisions of the 1868 Burlingame Treaty. The treaty established formal friendly relations between the United States and China and encouraged Chinese immigration to America. However, the outcry against the Burlingame Treaty from anti-Chinese movements was enormous and immediate, and became a national force during the 1870s. Both houses of Congress debated the merits of restricting or excluding immigration from China. The first legislative product of these debates, The Page Law, passed in 1875 and sought to end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women. The Page Law contained two important sections. First, it attempted to strengthen the ban against indentured (‘coolie’) labor by imposing a fine up to $2000 and a maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who transported involuntary Asian immigrants to the United States. Secondly, a new and stiffer penalty was added, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese women for prostitution. The law required action from the consulate in China as Section 1 of the law demanded Asian women to obtain certificates declaring that they were not emigrating for ‘lewd or immoral purposes’ at the port of departure. In contrast, the examination of male passengers remained largely unchanged, and only one document was required for the entire group that no one was a contract laborer or criminal. When a vessel arrived at San Francisco, the Port Commissioners checked every woman’s certificate individually, while for men all that was required was to confirm that the number of arrivals matched the number appearing on the single certificate. Together, the two sections of the Page Law were supposed to compromise the legislative tool needed to stop the flow of the ‘yellow peril’ to American shores. Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 98-99; G.A. Peffer, ‘Forbidden Families: Emigration Experiences of Chinese Women under the Page Law, 1875-1882’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 6:1 (Fall 1986), 28-29; Sinn, 248-250. Interestingly, the law sailed through Congress without any expressed concern that it might contradict the Burlingame Treaty, but it seems that targeting women whose sexual behavior fell outside acceptable standards simply did not appear to be a restriction of immigration. Moreover, as one might guess from the relatively light punishment established in the first section, the Page Law failed miserably in its attempt to halt the immigration of Chinese laborers. In fact, the number of Chinese immigrants during the law’s enforcement exceeded the total for any other seven year period, before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, by at least thirteen thousand. With regard to female immigration, however, the humiliating interrogations required by the Page Law were likely to have prevented some women from even attempting to immigrate as the number of Chinese women entering the United States from 1876 to 1882 declined 68 percent from the previous seven year period. However, the irony is that it would have been ‘good’ women who were most likely to be discouraged and in the marketplace, such screening hurdles, by making women more rare, would only have resulted in raising the price of the commodity. It would not have eradicated the immigration of women altogether. Peffer, ‘Forbidden Families’, 28-29; Sinn, 252. By 1880, just five years after the passing of the Page Law, the immigration of Chinese women had become less of an issue. By then the US government worked hard at introducing laws to restrict both Chinese men and women. The Chinese Exclusion Laws of 1882, 1884 and 1888 expressed the American’s uncompromising attitude. The 1882 Act suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, though Chinese laborers residing in California before November 17, 1880 were allowed to remain. Initially, these laborers had the right to leave and return to the United States if they obtained a certificate of identification before leaving. However, the Act of 1888 took this right away: once a Chinese laborer left America, he could not return. The statutes did not address explicitly the admissibility of Chinese women and children, but in effect they made it even more difficult for women to immigrate. In addition, since the mechanism for limiting prostitutes’ immigration was well in place before the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the main impact of the Act fell on women other than prostitutes. Sinn, 261-262; Gabaccia, Foreign Relations, 98-99. There is great irony in the moral arguments against Chinese immigration. With the passing of the Page Law and the Chinese Exclusion Acts that limited female immigration from China and the Victorian attitudes that prohibited interracial marriages, Chinese men residing in the United States had few sexual outlets aside from prostitution. Particularly in San Francisco Chinese prostitution proliferated because of the great demand, yet this proved Chinese wickedness to Americans. Another ironic point is the fact that the Chinese, like the Victorians, placed great emphasis on the institution of marriage. The Chinese believed that marriage was one of the three most significant events in one’s life (the others being birth and death), and that all men and women of marriageable age must marry and produce children to extend the family line. Thus, Chinese beliefs regarding family and marriage were very similar to Victorian views, but the great gender inequities, anti-Chinese legislation, and anti-miscegenation attitudes made it very difficult for Chinese men to marry and to have the kind of family life idealized by both Victorian and Chinese societies. Chang, 6. As a result of Chinese immigration restrictions, Chinese men were practically forced to resort to prostitution and in doing so, increased the trade in Chinese women to serve for this purpose. Furthermore, the diminishing number of Chinese women immigrating to the United States might have caused an increase in Chinese foreign relations, as Chinese men were not able to find a wife in California and therefore needed to look for one in China. Conclusion In the climate of ardent anti-Chinese sentiments, prostitution became both a moral and a social issue. There can be no doubt that the sexual exploitation of Chinese women was regrettable, but nineteenth century critics may have failed to recognize the social factors that led to the proliferation of Chinese prostitution. The increasing feeling among anti-Chinese movements of Chinese laborers taking American jobs created social unrest under American laborers who demanded protection from immigrants. Also, the ‘demoralizing’ activities that accompanied the prostitution trade led Victorian Americans to think of the Chinese population as violent, sexually deviant, and unable to live under the principles of a civilized Christian society. Finally, Western interpretations of morality reinforced the sense of gender distinctions and racism. While Victorian ideology placed great emphasis on the sanctity of the family, these beliefs did not include the Chinese population of California. The prohibition of the immigration of Chinese women reflected a double standard which did not value Chinese men’s needs to have a family of their own. As a result of this, the demand for Chinese prostitutes increased and prostitution flourished in Californian cities like San Francisco. Moreover, as the chances for Chinese men to find a wife in the United States were slim, they needed to look for them in China, resulting in an increase in transnational contracts among Chinese immigrants. Therefore it can be claimed that promoters of Victorian morality encouraged both Chinese prostitution as foreign relations by restricting Chinese immigration to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. 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