by Judy Yung
National Dollar Stores, also seeking support from the community, responded that since the factory had been sold, the workers were illegally picketing the retail stores; the factory had in the past always complied with the law; and the Chinese community needed to unite in the face of hard times.132 To this, the Chinese LGWU replied:
If National Dollar Stores is really interested in the national welfare, they should negotiate with the workers in good faith and allow workers to make a decent living so that they can afford to buy war bonds to support the war effort in China. How can we survive on $113.3o a week and still contribute to the war effort? The worker's welfare is the nation's wel- fare.133
When the Golden Gate Company pointed out that even white factories did not guarantee work or ensure it with a bond deposit,134 the Chinese LGWU replied that its demands were not unreasonable. During the ne gotiations with Golden Gate, the local union explained, the employer had reduced work to one or two days a week, thus applying economic pressure to control the workers. The union had no choice but to demand steady work for its members. The stipulation of eleven months of guaranteed work in a year was based on the average amount of work at National Dollar Stores in its past sixteen-plus years of existence. The $io,ooo bond request was based on Golden Gate's purchase of the factory from National Dollar Stores on a $5,000 deposit and agreement to make monthly payments of $5,000. Workers needed the assurance that the new owners would be able to cover salaries for more than one hundred employees, or $13,000 a month, which is why the bond was set at $ i o,ooo. Furthermore, the Chinese LGWU said, contrary to a previous story of the benevolent treatment accorded workers at the National Dollar Stores-that they got an annual bonus at the end of the year as well as presents of new clothes-such favors were given out only in 193 5 and 1936, and then only to men who had worked at least one full year. "Women who had worked over ten years did not get a dime or half a dollar extra, and they make up 8o percent of the workforce in the factory," the union stated.135 The workers, angered by these injustices, vowed "to fight our fight to the end, and hope to raise the living conditions not only for ourselves but for the other workers in Chinatown as well." 136
At the time, most of the women workers were foreign-born and spoke no English. Although they were in the majority at the rank-and-file level, they elected men to be the key officers to speak on their behalf. Much the same situation held in the ILGWU and most other unions as well. 117 Sue Ko Lee said that although Chinese women did not usually speak up at the union meetings, which were conducted in English and Chinese, they understood the issues. More important, they were quite visible in the picket lines. The old and the young, the foreign- and the Americanborn, all did their share. "The ones on the picket line were all together," Sue emphasized. "We never mentioned anything about why we were doing this. But what is there? Maybe they won't reopen the shop for us. There was no other recourse. There was nothing else. We were determined to close them down if necessary."138
Jennie Matyas recalled, "This was one strike I had in which I was able to turn almost everything over to the Chinese members themselves. They arranged their picketing schedules; they arranged who was to be on what shift. It was all very democratically done. They took turns, they lived up to it completely.""' The first shift met at the ILGWU headquarters each morning at six o'clock. After donuts and coffee provided by the union, workers would be on the picket line by seven. Then at the end of the day, they would return to the union hall for meetings. During the strike ILGWU gave each worker $ S a week from its strike find. "That won't pay your rent," said Sue Ko Lee. "I don't know how we managed on that, but when you're young, you don't think about those things."14°
Two generations of garment workers joining efforts in the 1938 National Dollar Stores strike. (Chinese Digest; Judy Yung collection)
Aside from an offer to mediate by the Chinese Six Companies, no help was forthcoming from any of the established Chinatown organizations, local restaurants, or stores. In fact, stores stopped extending credit to the strikers. Although sympathetic, the community was hesitant about condemning Joe Shoong, who was not only one of their own but also one of the most generous contributors to community and nationalist causes. Since Chinatown was still under the control of the merchant elite class, it didn't help matters that the strike was openly supported by such leftist organizations as the Ping Sheh (Equality Society) and Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association. 141 Leftist influence was obvious from the political rhetoric of the union literature: the labeling of Joe Shoong as a "capitalist," the argument that "the worker's welfare is the nation's welfare," and the call for workers to "arise and dare to struggle for an equal livelihood. 11142 These groups' names often appeared in the campaign literature to win public support for the strike. Not surprisingly, Sue Ko Lee noted, established Chinatown organizations "didn't do anything [against us], but they didn't show us any support because we were all called troublemakers." Although the strikers were not avowed Marxists, they were well aware of the class rift. "I remember we were on the picket line and here came Mrs. [Joe] Shoong and she said, `Ni di sui tong yun!' [These rotten Chinese]. So she's not Chinese, right?" Sue was indignant even years later. 141
Workers like Sue and her husband, Lee Jew Hing, who was vicepresident of the Chinese LGWU and, prior to the strike, bookkeeper for National Dollar Stores, had savings to fall back on. Others, such as Edna Lee, a presser, went hungry during the strike, but still they did not waver in their commitment to the cause. Jennie Matyas described the situation:
It was one of the most inspiring experiences I've ever had.... We had one girl, her name was Edna Lee. Pretty as could be. No parents, she was an orphan, and she had younger sisters or brothers. Anyhow, she was sort of the head of the family. I was told one day that she couldn't be on picket duty because she was sick, so I went to her house to see whether I could do anything. I saw the house in which she lived. It was one room somewhere on Grant Avenue, a kitchen was shared by the other tenants on the floor. When I went in to see Edna, she was in bed. I asked her how sick she was. "Oh," she said, "I'm not sick at all." I said, "Well, why are you in bed if you're not sick at all?" "Well, you know, it's funny, but if I stay in bed I don't get hungry. And so I often stay in bed because then I don't get hungry." Now, the International helped with strike relief, but it was just relief, it wasn't wages. This girl, Edna, said, "You see, before the strike I could buy groceries on credit. Now, none of the merchants will give us credit.". . . I gave her a little more [money], but she wouldn't take it. She was very proud. She said that if that was all the others got, that's all she got.144
Although the Chinese LGWU and the 1938 strike were initiated and sustained by determined garment workers like Edna Lee, credit must also go to the ILGWU, and Jennie Matyas in particular, said Sue Ko Lee. "We knew the union was behind us. We all worked on it, the schedules and all, with the Chinese leadership and advice from the top because we didn't know anything ... the legal stuff they had to do it for us."145 The ILGWU not only took care of legal matters, conducted the negotiations, provided relief monies, and sponsored English classes for the workers, but it also sought the sanction of the San Francisco Labor Council and the cooperation of the Retail Department Store Employees' Union. Only when the white retail clerks refused to cross the picket line at the three local National Dollar Stores, thus closing down the stores for two weeks, did Joe Shoong feel compelled to deal with the situation. He filed an injunction against picketing at his stores, then sued the ILGWU and the Employees' Union for $500,000 in damages. In response, the union went to the National Labor Relations Board and charged National Dollar Stores with unfair labor practices, arguing that the sale of the garment factory had been made for the express purpose of circumventing collective bargaining. On March 19, r938, the Superior Court of San Francisco granted National Dollar Stores a restraining order, and pickets were removed from the three retail stores but allowed to remain at the factory.146
The 105 -day strike against National Dollar Stores was
at the time the longest strike in the history of San Francisco Chinatown.147 Thanks to the support of the ILGWU and the determination of the Chinese workers to win, an agreement was finally reached on June 8, 19 3 8. National Dollar Stores withdrew its $ 500,000 damage suit, and the union dropped its charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The factory would be a closed union shop. In addition, there would be a 5 percent raise (to $ 14 per week minimum except for apprentices); a forty-hour workweek, with time-and-a-half for overtime; a paid holiday for Labor Day; enforcement of health, fire, and sanitary conditions; a guaranteed half-day of work whenever workers were called in; a shop steward authorized to collect dues and deal with grievances; the right to a hearing before an arbitration committee in the case of a dispute over the contract or a questionable discharge; and a price committee to step in whenever piece rates did not yield the minimum wages for 75 percent of the factory workers. The National Dollar Stores also agreed to continue contracting at least some work to the Golden Gate Company.148
The ILGWU felt that while not a complete victory, the settlement was fair; it therefore urged workers to accept the terms.149 The Chinese LGWU was divided on the contract. "I had the time of my life to get the workers to accept that settlement," recalled Matyas. "Some of the members upon whom I relied very greatly and who had become personal friends left the union because they thought the acceptance of such a settlement was a hurt to their pride, it was so much less than they had hoped to get." 110 The debate was intense, and the vote was close: thirtyone for the agreement, twenty-seven against.15' "Some of the militant members were against it. It wasn't good enough for them," recalled Sue Ko Lee. That's when she spoke out. "I said, `At least that's something to begin with."' After all, she explained, "You had to start someplace. There was nothing, right? At least you got something for one year. And maybe something better would come out of it. If you take longer, people are not going to stand around. They can't afford to."' S2
Workers went back to their jobs a few days later, and although the National Dollar Stores continued to contract work out to other shops, there were enough orders to keep the Golden Gate factory open. When the year was up and the contract expired, the factory conveniently went out of business, claiming "financial losses."'-" Despite a long history of Chinese workers not being hired at the white shops downtown, the ILGWU was eventually able to find jobs for many of its Chinese members. With the closing of the factory and the dispersal of its workers, membership in the Chinese LGWU dwindled from more than one hundred to less than forty. The remaining members finally voted to disband and join the predominantly white Local 101.114
Patricia M. Fong has argued in her study of the 19 3 8 National Dollar Stores strike that everyone gained from the strike except the workers: "Who received the most satisfaction from the outcome? Probably the ILGWU, the National Dollar Stores Ltd., and the Golden Gate Manufacturing Company. The workers were (sold out by the union?) dissatisfied with the terms of the contract, they all lost their jobs within two years, and the union could not really help them much afterwards." 155 Sue Ko Lee disagreed with this opinion. In her view, the experience changed the course of history for Chinese American women like herself.156 For the first time in their lives, Chinese American women-both foreign- and American-born-banded together, supported by the ILGWU and Chinese leftist organizations, to challenge unfair labor practices in the Chinatown garment industry. Determined to win, they were able to sustain a strike for fifteen weeks despite economic hardships to themselves and their families and with little support from the local community. Complicating matters, they were constantly harassed by American Federation of Labor (AFL) organizers, who were in competition with the ILGWU to recruit Chinese workers into their union. But as Matyas proudly wrote, the Chinese LGWU refused to desert the ILGWU. "Can these Chinese stick together? Can they build a Union?" she asked. "In the face of heartbreaking adversity they have shown that they can stick together, fight together and build together." 157
Moreover, Sue pointed out, the ILGWU was able to help the Chinese workers break the racial barrier and find jobs in white shops downtown after the Golden Gate Company closed the factory. This was no easy task. As if the language barrier, the different sewing machines used by the Chinese workers (with horizontal instead of vertical stitching), and the reluctance of Chinese workers to venture outside Chinatown were not enough, there was also the problem of racial discrimination. Jennie Matyas had to convince white employers that Chinese workers were just as good as white workers. "They didn't want any Chinese because of the reputation that the Chinese will work for nothing and cut the wages down," Sue recalled. "Finally she got Edna [Lee] in, and she proved her worth. And after that, the door was open and employers began asking for Chinese workers. . . . And that was how the Chinese workers got out of Chinatown to work elsewhere." She concluded emphatically: "The strike was the best thing that ever happened. It changed our lives." 158
Sue and her husband were successfully placed as machine operator and cutter, respectively, in union shops outside Chinatown. "You made more money and you had set hours," she said in comparing the working conditions in shops downtown with those in Chinatown. "It was still piecework, but the price had to come up so that you made your minimum. It's controlled that way. So the faster ones can make more but at least the slowest one made the minimum."159 In her new job, she also had the benefits of holiday and vacation pay and, later, health benefits and a pension. When Koret Corporation took over the small shop in which she worked, Sue was promoted to quality control. A loyal union supporter, she became secretary of both Local ioi and the San Francisco ILGWU Joint Board.
While the Chinese LGWU was active, Chinese American women proved themselves stalwart members of the labor movement and significant contributors to the anti-Japanese war effort. When downtown department store employees went on strike, these activists beseeched the Chinese community not to cross the picket lines, and they contributed z percent of their earnings to the strike fund. They also campaigned against antilabor legislation, participated in the drive protesting the U.S. shipment of war materials to Japan, and supported the boycott of non union-made lisle stockings, which women wore in lieu of silk stock- ings.lbo The National Dollar Stores strike and its aftermath, however, did not go far enough in sustaining Chinese women's involvement in the labor movement or improving labor conditions in Chinatown. In the final analysis, the ILGWU lost its chance to organize Chinatown effectively as the labor movement dissipated with the coming of war, the end of the depression, and the repression of the left following World War II.
Ironically, Chinese women in San Francisco stood to gain more than lose by the depressed times precisely because they had been discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, and class. Their low position in the rigid race- and sex-segregated labor market kept them employed even as Chinese men lost their jobs. Experienced survivors of multiple forms of oppression, they proved resourceful, becoming the temporary breadwinners and providing the necessary support to pull their families through the depression. Nor did they hesitate to take advantage of New Deal opportunities to change working and living conditions for themselves and their families. Thus, at a time of great economic strife for most of America, Chinese women in San Francisco were able to take long strides to improve their socioeconomic status and work for the betterment of the community. World War II would afford them further chances to expand their gender roles and fall in step with the rest of the country.
Everyone, man and woman, has a responsibility in the rise and fall of a nation.
Zuo Xueli CSYP, August 19, 1936
The crisis of December 7 has emancipated the Chinese in the United States.
Rose Hum Lee Survey Graphic, October 1942
World War II was a watershed for all Americans. It brought the Great Depression to an end and marked the beginning of significant socioeconomic and political change for women and racial minorities. It also encouraged Americans from all walks of life to put aside their difference
s and pull together in a national effort to win the fight against fascism. Chinese Americans were very much a part of this effort. Indeed, because of the War of Resistance against Japanese military aggression in China since 1931, they had even more at stake in this struggle than most other Americans. Moved by both Chinese nationalism and American patriotism, Chinese American women responded with an outpouring of highly organized activities in the areas of fund-raising, propaganda, civil defense, and Red Cross work on the home front. While some enlisted in the armed services, many others went to work in the defense factories and private sector outside Chinatown for the first time. The war years thus provided Chinese American women with unprecedented opportunities to improve their socioeconomic status, broaden their public role, and fall in step with their men and fellow Americans during a time of national crisis.
As many studies on women and World War II have shown, the women's sphere-particularly their economic roles-expanded during the war, but inequities persisted in terms of wages, upward mobility, and gender relations. American women's entry into the men's work world was always seen as a temporary arrangement that would return to "normal" after the war.' Indeed, most women lost their economic gains once the war ended and they were forced back into female occupations or out of the labor market altogether. Although black women achieved a degree of economic progress during the war years despite virulent racism, they too were prevented from holding on to these gains.2 This was not the case for Chinese American women, who experienced less discrimination during and after the war because of China's allied relationship to the United States. (In stark contrast, Japanese American women-and men-suffered immense setbacks immediately after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and continuing through their incarceration in U.S. concentration camps.)' Even as Chinese American women remained subordinate to men through the war years and for some decades thereafter, they continued to move forward by taking advantage of educational, employment, and political opportunities after the war to build on the socioeconomic gains they had made during the conflict. For them, their role in World War II was not just a temporary response to a national crisis, but a turning point in their lives. Once they entered the public arena, they would not only prove their mettle and win the respect of their community but also gain a new sense of self-confidence and pride as Chinese American women.
