Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
Page 42
117. CSYP, May 18, z3, 1918.
,z8. San Francisco Chronicle, October 18, 1919, p. 12; and December zz, 1919, P. z.
1 2.9. The following account is derived from my interview with Eva Lowe.
13o. Li Yauguang, "World Famous Chinese American Aviatrix Ouyang Ying" (in Chinese), Huaxing, June 23, 1989-
131. San Francisco Call and Post, November 12, 1919, p. I.
13 z. See also Guan Zhongren, Study on Chinese Women Aviators (in Chinese) (Canton: Zhongshan Library of Guangdong Province, 1988), pp. 78-81.
13 3. Linking Our Lives: Chinese American Women of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 1984), PP. 72-73; Guan, Study on Chinese Women Aviators, pp. 105-14.
134. Liu Pei Chi, "Chinese Americans and the National Salvation Through Aviation Movement" (in Chinese), Guangdong Wenxian io, no. z (1980): 5; Guan, Study on Chinese Women Aviators, pp. 115-118.
13 5. San Francisco Bulletin, November zz, 1911, p. 4.
136. San Francisco Call, May 1g, 1912, p. 63.
137. Ibid.
138. Bessie Mae Ferina, "The Politics of San Francisco's Chinatown" (Master's thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1949), PP. 55-58; W. Smith, Americans in Process, p. i zz; Dare, "Economic and Social Adjustment," p. 63.
139. Lim P. Lee, "The Chinese Citizens Alliance: Its Activities and History," Chinese Digest, October 30, 1936, p. 15.
140. CSYP, July 2z, 19z6.
141. Community Chest 1930 Survey, p. z3.
14z. San Francisco Chronicle, October z, 1931, P. 4.
143. Weatherford, Foreign and Female, pp. 223-Z4•
144. The following account is derived from Bessie Jeong, "Story of a Chi nese Girl Student," Survey of Race Relations Collection, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University; and from Suellen Cheng and Munson Kwok's interview with Bessie Jeong.
145. Newspaper accounts and the records of the Presbyterian Mission Home attest to a number of Chinese American women who, like Bessie Jeong, resisted undesirable arranged marriages by seeking refuge at the Mission Home; see CSYP, January z5, 1918; San Francisco Examiner, July 14, 1922, p. i; Donaldina Cameron, "Orientals in the United States," Women and Mission 9, no. io (January 1935): 340-4r; Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, pp. 161-6z.
146. Chingwah Lee, "Remember When?" Chinese Digest, January 17, 11936, P. 8.
147. Rose Fong evidently got her way, as the newspaper also reported that her parents finally approved of her marriage to Tsoa Min after the two eloped. See San Francisco Examiner, May r2, 1909, p. 11.
148. Caroline Chew, "Development of Chinese Family Life in America" (Master's thesis, Mills College, 1926), p. 24.
149. King Yoak Won Wu, interview with Gennv Lim, October 27, 1982, Chinese Women of America Research Project, Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco.
150. San Francisco Call, July 30, 1913, P. 5.
151. T. Chinn, Bridging the Pacific, pp. z5o-5z. See J. Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter, pp. 138-46, for a similar description of a Chinese American wedding.
15z. Chew, "Development of Chinese Family Life in America," p. 31.
153. Act of September zz, 1922, 4z United States Statutes at Large, iozi.
154. Kathryn M. Fong, "Asian Women Lose Citizenship," San Francisco Journal, December z9, 1976, p. 1 z; and Chan, "Exclusion of Chinese Women," pp. 128-2-9.
155. Kathryn M. Fong, "Pioneer Recalls Earthquake and Schools," San Francisco journal, January 5, 1977, p. 6.
156. Flora Belle Jan, letter to Ludmelia Holstein, 1932.
157. Flora Belle [Jan], folder 2070/174, Chinese Departure Case Files, Chicago District Office, Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Archives, Chicago.
158. Tye Leung Schulze, "Tiny," Louise Schulze Lee private collection.
i 59. Fred Schulze, interview with author, January z6, 1989; Louise Schulze Lee, interview with author, November 7, 1988.
16o. Fred Schulze, interview.
161. Chew, "Development of Chinese Family Life in America," p. 31.
16z. San Francisco Examiner, January z5, 1923, P. 15.
1163. San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 1192.8, p. 6.
164. Chew, "Development of Chinese Family Life in America," p. z9.
165. Daisy Wong Chinn, interview with Genny Lim, July 29, 1982, Chinese Women of America Research Project, Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco.
166. J. Wong, No Chinese Stranger, pp. 38-39.
167. Fred Schulze, interview.
168. Gladys Ng Gin, interview.
169. Flora Belle Jan, letter to Ludmelia Holstein, January 1934.
170. San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1927, p. io.
1711. Fred Schulze, interview.
172. Ibid.
173. J. Wong, No Chinese Stranger, pp. 365-66. Ming Choy is Jade Snow Wong's younger son. Earlier in the autobiography (p. 193) she translates one of the Chinese school lessons he brings home titled "The Foolish Old Man Moving a Mountain." The lesson tells of an old man who was determined to remove a 7oo-foot mountain that obstructed his doorway. People thought him foolish for trying, but he replied that as long as he kept at it and his sons and grandsons kept at it, the mountain could be moved.
4. Long Strides
i. See William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); and Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression America, 1929-1941 (New York: Times Books, 1982).
z. See Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970); John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1939); Andrea Fisher, Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: Women Photographers for the U.S. Government, 1935 to 1944 (New York: Pandora Press, 1987); and PBS's "The Great Depression" (Blackside, Inc., 1993).
3. For studies on women during the Great Depression, see Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 193 os (Boston: Twayne, 198 z); KesslerHarris, Out to Work, chap. 9; Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed: Female Employment, Feminism, and the Great Depression (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980); Jeane Westin, Making Do: How Women Survived the '3os (Chicago: Follett, 1976); Julia Kirk Blackwelder, Women of the Depression: Caste and Culture in San Antonio, 1929-1939 (College Station, Tex.: A & M University Press, 1984); and Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Random House, 1985 ), chap. 6. For studies on how specific minority groups weathered the depression, see Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a Nationallssue, vol. r: The Depression Decade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980); Raymond Wolters, Negroesand the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970); Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-193 9 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974); Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, chap. 10; Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994); and Donald L. Parman, The Navajos and the New Deal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
4. Lynn Simross, "Yees Remember the Struggles and Celebrate Their Success," View sec., Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1981, p. 2.
5. Wong Wee Ying, interview with author, May 7, 1982.
6. Helen Hong Wong, interview with author, June 17, 1982.
7. See Broussard, Black San Francisco, chap. 6. That segment of the Chinese male population which worked in these same sectors outside Chinatown suffered similar hardships.
8. According to Davis McEntire, The Labor Force in California: A Study of Characteristics and Trends in Labor Force Employment of Occupations in California, 1900-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 195 z), the Chinese and Japanese in California experienced less t
han the average rate of unemployment owing to the intragroup economic and social support system each group had developed. For example, in 1940, the Japanese had an extraordinarily low unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, compared to the general rate of 14.4 percent (p. 66).
9. Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ', pp. ioo-roi.
to. CSYP, March z3, 1931. These statistics are much higher than those reported in the U.S. censuses, and without knowing how the Shiyi Hui conducted its survey, it is difficult to determine which figures are more accurate. The U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Unemployment, vol. i (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1931), p. 156, reported z1,448 persons out of work in San Francisco: 20,327 whites, 168 blacks, z6z Mexicans, and 691 members of other races (half of whom were Chinese). In 1937, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Final Report on Total and Partial Unem- ploymentfor California (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1938), table i, p. 1, the unemployed in San Francisco increased to 29,506: z8,u8 whites, 459 blacks, and 929 members of other races.
11. CSYP, January z6, February i, March z4, z9, April z5, 27, May zi, 1193 1. On January z4, 1933, CSYP also reported that the Huaren Shiyi Hui had sent representatives to participate in a statewide hunger march on Sacramento to demand state aid, unemployment insurance, and a stop to the deportation of unemployed Chinese aliens. For a discussion of Huaren Shiyi Hui and the Chinese Marxist left in the United States, see Him Mark Lai, "To Bring Forth a New China, to Build a Better America: The Chinese Marxist Left in America to the 196os," Chinese America: History and Perspectives 1992, PP. 3-82.
1z. William Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929-1933 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). The major effort made by San Francisco to take care of its unemployed is substantiated by other statistical reports. According to David Bryant, Summary Report: Civil Works Administrative Statistics, State of California, November 27, 1933, to March 29, 1934 (San Francisco: Civil Works Administration, 1934), p. 110, $4,212,630 was spent on relief in San Francisco from July 1933 to March 1934. Of this amount, the city contributed 45 percent; the federal government, 31 percent; and the state, z4 percent.
13. CSERA 1935 Survey, p. 4o; Mullins, Depression, p. 1oz; CSYP, April 1, August z3, 1933.
14. Ethel Lum, "Chinese During the Depression," Chinese Digest, November zz, 1935, P. to.
115. Lim P. Lee, interview with author, October 31, 1989.
16. Lum, "Chinese During the Depression." State statistics indicate that the Chinese in California received their fair share of relief. In 1939, the Chinese, who made up 0.7 percent of California's population in 1930, accounted for o.6 percent of the state relief rolls. Other minority groups received larger proportions: Mexicans and black Americans, who made up 6.5 percent and 1.4 percent of the state's population, respectively, accounted for 25.z percent and 4.3 percent of the state relief rolls. See H. Dewey Anderson, "Who Are on Relief in California?" in Miscellaneous Publications (San Francisco: California State Relief Administration, 1939), P. z.
17. CSYP, January 6, 1934.
1 8. Lim P. Lee, interview.
19. Ethel Lum, "The W.P.A. and Chinatown," Chinese Digest, January 1o, 1936, pp. 10, 15.
zo. See Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), chap. 3.
z1. Qutoted in Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ, p. 1o1.
zz. McEntire, The Labor Force in California, p. 67.
23. Lum, "W.P.A. and Chinatown," p. 15.
24. According to U.S. Bureau of the Census, Final Report, table 3, p. 1z, 7z percent of racial minorities employed in federal emergency jobs performed semiskilled or unskilled labor, as compared to 45 percent of white workers.
z5. Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ, pp. rot-z. Blacks also condemned the NRA as "Negro Run Around" and "Negro Ruined Again" under President Roosevelt's first administration because it excluded the bulk of black labor and failed to stop labor unions and employers from discriminating against blacks (Sitkoff, New Deal, p. 55)•
z6. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Final Report, p. 1z.
27. J. Wong, No Chinese Stranger, p. 8.
z8. CSYP, August zz, 1934.
z9. CSYP, February 5, 1935.
30. CSERA 193 5 Survey, p. 8.
31. CSYP, October 18, 1936.
31. Chinese Digest, June 1937, pp. 15-16.
3 3. See Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans; Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American, chap. 10; and Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers, chap. 4.
34. Carey McWilliams, Brothers Under the Skin (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), PP. 2.40-43.
35. Chinese Digest, July 1938, p. 6; June 1937, p. 1r. An editorial in the Chinese Digest, June 1937, p. z, remarked that the presence of Chinese picketers in the San Francisco hotel strike was "epoch-making in its implications. On the one hand it shows that organized labor's anti-Chinese predilections are on the wane, at least in this particular locality. On the other hand, interpreting the matter sociologically, it indicates the gradual integration of the Chinese into the American system of economic life."
36. H. Mark Lai, "A Historical Survey of the Chinese Left in America," in Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asia America, ed. Emma Gee (Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, 1976), p. 68.
37. For example, on October 31, 1936, CSYP reported that three unions representing fishermen, maritime stewards, and culinary workers held a meeting to solicit Chinese membership. Then on November 7, 1937, the newspaper reported that more than two hundred Chinese and white workers picketed the Japanese consulate's office to protest Japanese aggression in China.
38. Chinese Digest, January 31, 1936, p. 14.
39. Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ, p. 105.
40. William Hoy, "The Passing of Chinatown: Fact or Fancy," Chinese Digest, January 31, 1936, p. i i.
41. Chinese Digest, December 1937, p. 16.
4z. According to William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), the depression fostered a wave of reaction against any change in gender roles. At the height of the depression, over 8o percent of the American people opposed married women entering the labor market (pp. 135, 148). As Philip Foner also points out in Women and the American Labor Movement (New York: Free Press, 1980), pp. 257-58, competition for jobs only intensified male enmity toward working women, and government legislation was passed at all levels to discourage if not prevent women from entering the labor market. For a further discussion of the controversy, see Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, pp. 255-58.
43. Ruth Milkman, "Women's Work and the Economic Crisis: Some Lessons from the Great Depression," in A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a Neu, Social History of American Women, ed. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth Pleck (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), pp. 51o-1 I; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Final Report, p. 14z. Following Milkman's example, I have combined unemployment classes A ("persons out of a job, able to work, and looking for a job") and B ("persons having jobs but on layoff without pay, excluding those sick or voluntarily idle") in computing the unemployment rates of males and females in San Francisco.
44• Milkman, "Women's Work," pp. 51o-zo; and Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, pp. 259-61.
45. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Final Report, p. 107; and Emily Huntington, Unemployment Relief and the Unemployed in the San Francisco Bay Region, 1929-1934 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939), PP. 31-36.
46. Lum, "Chinese During the Depression."
47. CSERA 1935 Survey, PP. 31-34.
48. Ibid., pp. 13-z6.
49. See Linda Gordon, "The New Feminist Scholarship on the Welfare State," in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), Pp. 9-34.
50. According to Huntington, Unemployment Relief and the Unemployed, p. 36, the subsistence rate in 1929 was S13o a month.
51. Law Shee Low, interview with author, October 30, 1989.<
br />
52. Wong Shee Chan, interview with author, March 5, 1982.
53. CSERA 1935 Survey, p. 12-; and Pardee Lowe, "The Good Life in Chinatown: Further Adventures of a Chinese Husband and His American Wife Among His Own People," Asia 37 (February 1937): 12 8•
54. See Jones, Labor of Love, pp. 196-97; Lois Rita Helmbold, "Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women During the Great Depression," Feminist Studies 13, no. 3 (fall 1987): 636; Scharf, To Work and to Wed, pp. r 15-16; and McEntire, Labor Force in California, p. 143
55. See Westin, Making Do; Milkman, "Women's Work," pp. 5z0-z8; Jones, Labor of Love, pp. 221-30; and Rosalinda M. Gonzalez, "Chicanas and Mexican Immigrant Families, 1920-1940: Women's Subordination and Family Exploitation," in Decades of Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920-1940, ed. Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 70.
56. See Helmbold, "Beyond the Family Economy."
57. Jones, Labor of'Love, pp. zz4-z6.
58. CSYP, April 30, 1933; January 17, June 9, August 29, September z5, 1934; March 19, 1937; Chinese Times, August 8, 1936; March ig, 1937.
59. Wong Shee Chan, interview.
6o. Penny Chan Huey, interview with author, November z1, 1988.
61. Jane Kwong Lee, "A Resume of Social Service," Chinese Digest, December zo, 1935, p. 10.
6z. On how the New Deal discriminated against women and racial minorities, see Scharf, To Work and to Wed, chap. 6; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, pp. 262-71; Jones, Labor of Love, chap. 6; Blackwelder, Women of the Depression, chap. 7; and Gwendolyn Mink, "The Lady and the Tramp: Gender, Race, and the Origins of the American Welfare State," in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 111-14.
63. Lum, "Chinese During the Depression"; and CSERA 1935 Survey, pp. 40-41.
64. CSYP, July IT, 1933; July 11, 1934; March 13, 1935; March 6, 1939; Chinese Times, February 16, 17, 1936; and San Francisco News, April z6, 1936, p. I.
65. See CSERA 1935 Survey.