Vol. 73/No. 31      August 17, 2009

BY JIM ALTENBERG  
Chinese immigrants on the West Coast of the United States faced an unrelenting campaign of racist terror and government attacks in the last half of the 19th century. In what the Chinese call pai hua—the driven out—Chinese immigrants were forced from their homes and workplaces in over 200 cities, towns, and work camps across the western states.

The virtually unknown story of pai hua is told in gripping detail by Jean Pfaelzer in her book Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. U.S. history textbooks make little mention of the Chinese at all, other than to note that they built the western railroads and were subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned immigration from China.

The discovery of gold in 1849 drew tens of thousands from around the world to California. The gold rush opened up a massive land grab not only for mining claims, but for agriculture, railroads, and settlements.

The gold rush was marked from its outset by anti-Chinese agitation, lynchings, and arsons, from which state and local governments refused to provide protection or to prosecute the mobs that attacked Chinese settlements. Special taxes were levied on Chinese and other “foreign” miners. Laws modeled on the defeated slaveholders’ post-Civil War Black Codes, which were used against Black former slaves, were adopted and used to restrict the rights of Chinese in innumerable ways.

Chinese defended themselves from the beginning. They bought guns and practiced marksmanship openly. Many Chinese businesses and houses were linked with underground tunnels that were used for storage and escape. They waged strikes and boycotts, and filed lawsuits and petitions to uphold their rights. They called upon the government of China to ensure better treatment of overseas Chinese. In 1867, 2,000 Chinese railroad workers in Chico, California, went on strike demanding, among other things, an end to the bosses’ authority to whip workers and prevent them from quitting their jobs.

The defeat of Radical Reconstruction in 1877 gave fresh impetus to anti-Chinese agitation as it did to racist forces across the country. Businessmen, politicians, and public figures sought to divide a growing nationwide trade union movement by scapegoating the Chinese for the horrific price all workers paid as industrial capitalism came to California. They hosted anti-Chinese conventions and organizations, and backed vigilante mobs.

Many trade union officials in California were at the forefront of the anti-Chinese agitation. They refused to admit Chinese to membership, and called for Chinese workers to be replaced with whites.

The Workingmen’s Party, led by Dennis Kearney, held street meetings that quickly turned into anti-Chinese pogroms in San Francisco; Truckee, California; and elsewhere. Kearney and others used radical-sounding demagogy, railing against the greedy bosses and exploiters for hiring Chinese at low pay. Their wrath, however, was turned not on the bosses, but on the Chinese workers.

Many of the state’s largest employers—railroads, lumber companies, large farms—had become dependent on Chinese labor. They became targets of boycotts and intimidation campaigns to force them to fire Chinese employees.

In February 1885, 15 years of anti-Chinese agitation culminated when Chinese in the Humboldt County town of Eureka were forced to board ships to San Francisco. An enraged mob gave all Chinese 48 hours to leave the city. Laws forbidding the employment of Chinese in the county remained on the books into the 1940s. The extension of this campaign of pogroms, arsons, and threats of violence became known as the “Eureka Method.” To this day, Pfaelzer says, many Chinese parents choose not to send their children to the state university campus there.

As depression conditions spread in the wake of the economic turmoil of 1893, agitation against the Chinese reached a fever pitch. The 1892 Geary Act required Chinese laborers to register with the government and wear a photo ID tag at all times. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a challenge to the law in 1893. Fears of racist terror deportation led many Chinese to leave California for the east or Hawaii.

War Kee, then editor of the Oriental Chinese Newspaper in San Francisco, expressed the pride and self-worth that four decades of pogroms and lynchings could not erase. “Chinese are human beings, not cattle,” he wrote, “and they object to having tags placed around their necks.” Backed by the Chinese consul and most powerful Chinese business interests in the United States, Chinese refused to comply with the “Dog Tag Law.” Chinese workers launched a general strike against the law on Sept. 19, 1893. Resistance by Chinese workers and the bosses’ need for Chinese labor effectively blocked enforcement of the law.

In recapturing this lost piece of history, Pfaelzer has made an important contribution. She unwraps the irrational and self-contradictory justifications used to support half a century of anti-Chinese terror and shows them to be lies. More importantly, in destroying the myth of the Chinese as docile victims, recounting the story of pai hua restores generations of proud fighters to their place in the history of the working class. As the capitalist crisis of our own day deepens, the experience of those years in California will help working people become better fighters today.  
 
 
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