Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown

by Dillon, Richard

  The lid really blew off in 1900. Police frustrated Hop Sing attempts to dynamite several buildings including the Suey Sing tong headquarters and an attempt on the life of the president of that tong was thwarted in March. But on the very day after the attack a Hop Sing was slashed terribly with a cleaver and almost decapitated in reprisal. More arson attempts were made that spring, and the Bing Kongs were next on the warpath, at the throats of the Suey Dongs. Police had to batter down the doors of a tong building to rescue a man from a makeshift debtors’ prison there, and the Call published its shocking roll call, the “Record of Blood,” listing the seven men murdered and four wounded in the preceding three months of the Hop Sing-Suey Sing feud.

  A bubonic plague scare that year deepened the hard times in Chinatown. The area was literally roped off and all traffic in and out was forbidden, although street cars Were permitted to pass through if they did not stop to either pick up or let off passengers. The situation was not improved when the public learned that the scare was a false one. Ho Yow had been approached by a man who offered to lift the quarantine for $10,000. “I do not know for whom this man was acting,” said the Consul General.

  The California writer, Will Irwin, who felt that the Bo On and Suey Sing tongs were the bloodiest of all, at least as of 1900—had some harsh words for the police too: “In this development of civilization, we are as children beside the Chinese, and out of this situation grew the highbinders, adventurers in crime. For they were not only criminals, they were formal and recognized agents of justice. Crime and punishment had become tangled and involved beyond any power of ours to separate them and straighten them out. The constituted police of San Francisco struggled with this paradox for a generation long, and finally, perceiving that the Chinese would settle their own affairs their own way, gave it up and let things go. They kept only such interest in the Quarter, these Caucasian police, as would permit them to gather that rich graft which made a Chinatown beat a step toward fortune.” Irwin’s cynicism was well merited but he was wrong in one respect. The police department never gave up trying to wrestle down the tong war problem.

  More and more murders were committed. Four men were killed in the ten days of November 4-14, 1901, alone. An angry Chinese Exclusion convention met at the end of the year to demand the total obliteration of Chinatown, with colonization of its people to some distant portion of the peninsula. Reverend William Rader’s words were typical of the impassioned thinking (and oratory) of the convention: “Crime is bred in Chinatown. Highbinders execute their own laws of vengeance. Murders are frequently committed. In thirty years, 1,645 [Chinese] felons have served time. During the last six months 1,140 arrests were made in Chinatown. It breeds murder, crime, licentiousness, slavery. Destroy it! Let the plow run through the filthy streets! Plant corn where vice grows! Let the fountains splash where opium fumes fill the air!”

  The next year, the Chronicle’s solution for the Chinatown problem was lifted bodily from the convention’s prescriptions. The paper asked that Chinatown be improved out of existence by running Grant Avenue right through the district, atop Dupont Street, from Market Street to North Beach.

  The usual round robin of murders in 1902 led to more criticism of the police for their ineffectiveness. The Chronicle reminded its readers that twenty tong murders had taken place in only a few years without a single highbinder being forced to pay the extreme penalty. Hatchet men were so bold that they marched into stores openly to demand money. In a brazen stroke one invaded the home of Dr. George Palmer and chopped his Chinese cook badly about the head. Typical of a dozen ante-mortem statements given police was that of Little Louie, struck down in the street: “My bodyguard and I were about to enter my gambling house when somebody fired a shot at me. I turned around and was again fired at, the bullet striking me in the groin. As I fell three more shots were fired at me, one of which took effect. The last shot struck my bodyguard, preventing him from using his revolver.”

  A Bing Kong-Suey Dong truce failed. The police padlocked the Bing Kong headquarters. The Consul General and Six Companies revived the special Chinatown force of twelve heavily armed white policemen, their morale presumably boosted by liberal rewards for tong killers. But still the tong wars continued.

  As the early years of the new century rolled on it became evident that some restorative had been applied to the tongs to prolong their lives. Men on the inside knew the magic ingredient—graft. Before the earthquake and fire San Francisco had been riddled with graft, from the Embarcadero to Seal Rocks. Chief William Sullivan, alarmed at the continuing growth of crime in Chinatown, did his best by removing Sergeant Patrick Mahoney and his entire Chinatown squad and replacing them with a brand-new, untainted squad under Sergeant Bernard McManus. He told the city “I made the change in the Chinatown Detail because I believe it will be beneficial to the service. I discovered conditions in Chinatown which convinced me that the squad was not as aggressive as it should be….” But graft continued and crime went on.

  Each year tong troubles appeared to increase. The Chinese New Year celebration of 1903, for example, was spoiled by several murders as the Hop Sing vs. Suey Sing feud continued. That year Mayor Eugene Schmitz raided six notorious hangouts, seized documents, and pored over them to try to find out who was demanding and getting protection money from Chinese gamblers and others. Little evidence seems to have been found by Schmitz, but one lead was discovered in a payoff man—a Chinese gambler named Buck Guy. Schmitz pledged, “I mean to push this matter and to learn all that I can concerning the charges that have been made to me that money is being extorted from Chinese gamblers for police protection. The story the two men told me was that they were informed that their new club must pay to Buck Guy for police protection $400 or their new club would be raided. They refused to pay and the club was raided. They then paid the amount and have not since been molested.”

  While the mayor was making reform noises war broke out between the Hop Sings and Hip Sings. A prominent Hop Sing was interviewed and boasted, “We will not allow our rivals to insult us in this way and as they have threatened to put me out of the way, I will state that we maintain the same attitude toward the members of the Hip Sing tong. We can shoot as well as they and our aim is just as good. For every Hop Sing man that falls, we will demand that two of our rivals give up their lives.”

  One of these turned out to be a Sen Suey Ying member as well as a Hip Sing, so the Sen Sueys joined the fracas, shooting up the Hop Sing headquarters. Reporters counted twenty-two bullet holes in doors, windows and walls but not one Hop Sing was hurt by the barrage. Two days later a second fusillade was directed at the building after a member of that tong bungled an assassination attempt on one of the enemy. The Chinatown squad now took a hand and raided the place, seizing revolvers, ammunition and slung shots. The squad arrested seven men found there, and obliging Sen Suey Yings identified three of them as murderers.

  When a Sen Suey Ying went to a joss house to call down a curse on the Hop Sing tong he found three killers from that society waiting for him in ambush in the temple. They wounded him and in so doing brought the Chee Kongs into the wars, for he was also a member of that tong. There were killings within the Suey Dong tong, and the Si On tong almost entered the frays when one of its gunmen shot the outstanding female singer in Chinatown. But this tong sensibly paid a sum of money in damages and averted further bloodshed. Usually all tongs involved in warfare were anathema to the public, but increasingly the Hop Sings were becoming the villains of the battles after the turn of the century.

  By late 1903, the situation was more grave than at any time since Little Pete’s murder. A hatchet man stepped on the stage of the Washington Street Chinese theatre, and in full view of a packed house shot down a well-named (Gong) cymbalist. The audience panicked and stampeded. Not one person who had been present could be persuaded to give testimony as a witness. A policeman with many years of duty on Dupont Gai shook his head
and observed: “There has seldom been a time when Chinatown has been so thoroughly cowed as at present.” The Six Companies’ rewards for information on murderers were finding no takers. The all-white police force the Six Companies had set up was scrapped as useless and Chinatown’s merchants hired a force of Pinkerton-like private police, the Morse Patrol. This force soon proved its worth. One of the patrol captured Yee Foo, a Suey Dong highbinder long wanted by police, and in one of the pitched battles between tongs Morse Patrolman Thomas P. Spellman was shot in the leg. For once, a force of specials was earning its pay—on the side of the law.

  The tong wars continued. Truces were made and broken. The long-smoldering war between the Hop Sings and the Wah Ting San Fongs broke into flame again in 1904, with a battle at Waverly and Washington Street. The Wah Tings soon struck by stealth too. A Hop Sing told police of the death of his roommate: “I was sleeping with my friend when three men entered the room. One held a pistol to my head while the other two proceeded to kill Muck Ling. They struck him on the head with a butcher’s cleaver and then stabbed him through the lung with a long knife. I was powerless to assist him for I feared if I made an outcry they would also kill me.” All San Francisco was shocked by the retaliatory attack of the Hop Sings, for they got the wrong man—not a Wah Ting at all—and hatcheted him so badly he was scalped of his queue.

  The police did their best. They kept all pedestrians on the go, broke up all gatherings—no matter how peaceful—and repeatedly searched suspects for weapons. To add to their troubles there was a revival in the slave-girl trade because of a new exposition, the St. Louis Fair, and because of corruption in the Chinese bureau of the Customs House.

  Indeed, things were breaking so well for the tongs and illegality in general by 1904, that there was a successor to Little Pete and Big Jim. He was Wong Yow, called King of the Chinese Gamblers, the director of five clubs and Chinatown’s richest citizen. His abode on Waverly was luxuriously furnished and had all the latest improvements including a telephone, electric lights, and a Victrola. His silk curtains were decorated with precious stones. On a wall of the reception room of the former cook of Deadwood, South Dakota, was a silken banner made by Imperial embroiderers in Peking at a cost of $20,000. His home was his office, and Wong directed his gambling empire from there by telephone. Like Pete, Wong Yow was no hatchet man. He was said to despise the boo how doy, in fact, but there was a truce between them. They did not bother him and he allowed them the run of his clubs. They respected him, although they did not actually fear him as they had Little Pete.

  The unusual and welcome sight of tong toughs turning state’s evidence occurred in 1904. Nine tong leaders were indicted and one of them convicted in the Tom Yick murder case. Yick was a member of the Chinese Society for English Education—the sometimes trusted, sometimes suspect organization. (In the latter case, the police derisively called them the Reform Highbinders.)

  At the moment of upswing in tong troubles one of California’s giants decided to take a hand in the game. Fremont Older, crusading editor of the Bulletin and muckraker extraordinary, was not so much a new Crusader Farwell as he was a man beset with the idea of using Chinatown to topple the crooks of city hall. He thought he could crack the hard shell of Chinese criminality and expose it and the roots which ran to the mayor’s office. Older printed the pictures of the men he called the Unholy Four (Mayor Eugene Schmitz, Boss Abe Ruef, Police Commissioner J. A. Drink-house and Chief of Police George Wittman) on the front page of his paper. He surrounded their pictures with a frieze of human hands and ran a caption which read ONE OR MORE OF THESE MEN ARE TAKING BRIBES IN CHINATOWN. Corner newsboys were almost mobbed as the public bought up the edition. Ruef ordered the police commissioner to subpoena Older to appear and testify before the commission as to what evidence he had of bribe-taking in Chinatown. Older blithely told them that as yet he had no information, only belief—but added that he was positive some of them were taking money and that he was going to prove it.

  Older sat tight and waited for a break. At last it came when Grant Carpenter, attorney for the Six Companies, came to his office and told him that Chan Cheung, or Big Cheung, was the police paymaster. Carpenter also had the idea that Cheung had commissioned several of the recent hatchet-man murders. The lawyer thought that if Older could pressure Cheung enough on these killings he might get him to squeal on police graft. The editor was delighted. This was just the break he had been waiting for. His first step was to work over Sergeant Tom Ellis of the Chinatown squad. Older got ex-Police Chief John Seymour to contact Ellis and give him Older’s promise of two years on the Bulletin’s payroll at $120 a month if he would confess to having accepted bribes in Chinatown. Seymour got a statement from Ellis that Big Cheung had paid him $200 a week for seven weeks. But Ellis did not know who had paid other policemen, how much, or even which patrolmen—or so he said. He reported to Older that he was sure that a number of ordinary officers were getting a “blind man’s bonus,” as he put it, of $40 per week. Ellis assumed that Schmitz, Ruef and Wittman were taking payoffs, but though he had no proof he was quite willing to go before the Grand Jury and make a statement. One day Ellis dramatically entered a Grand Jury session, walked to a table, and threw down $1,400 in bills. He said, “I received that from Chan in Chinatown. That’s seven weeks’ pay to ignore Chinatown gambling.” This was good theatre, but it did not involve the city’s leaders. The Grand Jury could do nothing.

  Older had an ace up his sleeve in the person of Ed Bowes, later Major Edward Bowes of radio amateur hour fame. Bowes was not only his friend, he was head of the police committee of the Grand Jury. Like Older, he was willing to cut comers if the goal was important enough. Bowes helped Older plan a campaign. They decided to drag hatchet men before Chan and the Grand Jury, getting them to testify against him. They plotted another scare they would throw into Big Cheung. Older would take him to the Grand Jury room in absolute, frightening silence. Then the carefully coached district attorney would walk in and threaten Chan with hanging. Next, the hatchet men would be led in, one at a time, and asked the same question—”Is this the man who hired you to kill?” Older was sure Cheung would weaken after several of these accusations. Then the district attorney would promise him complete freedom if he would tell them whom he paid off regularly.

  The stage was set but the “star” did not appear. Someone had tipped off Chan. Older had a private detective look for him, but he had disappeared. Older phoned Bowes and told him to ask a friend of Chan’s to call him. A meeting was arranged; Bowes kidnapped Chan in a hack and drove off, telling him that he was an officer of the Grand Jury. He took Chan to the Occidental Hotel and stood guard over him, keeping him in the dark as to what was going on and keeping him off opium. The next day he brought Chan to the Grand Jury room, the Chinese shaking from nervousness, fright and the effects of opium deprivation.

  The district attorney knew his lines perfectly. “Chan Cheung, you think that you are going back to China to live the rest of your days in comfort and prosperity with your children. This will never happen. You will be hanged.” The impassive Chinese did not blink an eye. The highbinders entered, identified Chan as their murder broker, and were excused. The district attorney then went into his carefully rehearsed speech. “Chan Cheung, we don’t want to hang you. We don’t want you to die in prison, on a scaffold with a rope around your neck. Tell us who takes the money from you for protecting the gambling and we will let you go. You can go back to China and live in peace and comfort and plenty all your days… We know how much you paid to Chief Wittman and how much you paid to the officers. But you are a merchant, a man of standing in the community, and your word will go far and will help us. The police have told us, but we want your word. If you tell, you will not be hurt and you will not suffer. You will simply be called as a witness. But unless you tell us what we wish, we will indict you for murder.”

  All eyes were on the gambler. Those watching him leaned forward
expectantly as he began to speak. He looked at the police committee of the Grand Jury and said, “Where you nineteen men? One, two, three, four… Grand Jury nineteen men. I no sabe.” Chan would not say another word.

  The news was rushed to Fremont Older. The latter was far from nonplussed. “Give him his nineteen men,” he said. Older secured the use of a Superior courtroom to impress Chan, seated the nineteen Grand Jurymen with Foreman Andrews on the judge’s bench. The foreman demanded that Big Cheung tell them about the payoffs to Chief Wittman. But he refused to speak. “All right,” snapped Andrews, “you don’t tell us; we will indict you for those murders and hang you.” Handcuffs were clamped on Chan’s wrists and he was loudly and dramatically indicted for a part in the murder of Tom Yick. But the wily Chan would not be tricked. He said only, “Gentlemen, this is your country and if you can indict me for murder, go ahead.” No threats could elicit anything further from him. Chan was not long in jail.

  San Francisco’s great crusader appeared to have been routed. He had to watch Ellis go before the Grand Jury and demand his bribe money back, and get it. But Ellis was found guilty of bribe-taking and was dismissed from the police department in 1905. Shortly thereafter Chief Wittman was also dismissed. Ruef and Schmitz themselves were evicted by Older with the help of Hiram Johnson and Francis J. Heney.

  In 1905, Lieutenant Price, the Terror of Chinatown and the White Devil to the tongs, retired. The boo how doy breathed sighs of relief. But they had little time left. Neither they nor Lo Mo herself could guess that another female would align herself with the latter in her crusade against Chinatown vice and crime. It was Mother Nature. On April 18 of that year she rearranged the city of San Francisco more to her satisfaction with the help of the San Andreas Fault which underlies the city. In purging San Francisco with earthquake and fire she cleansed it of its blighted Chinatown by wiping out the Queen’s Room, the tongs, every sorry brothel—and everything else—in the Quarter. Like the very tongs which controlled them and waxed fat upon their profits, the bagnios and gambling dens were never able to make a comeback.