Chinese immigration and contract labor in the late nineteenth century

EXPLORATIONS

IN ECONOMIC

HISTORY

24,

22-42 (1987)

Chinese Immigration and Contract Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century” PATRICIA CLOUD Northwestern

University

AND

DAVID

W.

GALENSON

University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Bureau of Economic Research This paper considers why the Chinese migrants who came to California in the late 19th century were not indentured, and what their contractual status in the United States actually was. We argue that existing American laws prevented the effective use of a legal indenture system when Chinese laborers began to arrive in California in the 185Os, but that Chinese merchants in San Francisco developed extralegal means of operating a bound labor system. We explore the conduct of this system, with particular attention to the methods used by the merchants to enforce the repayment of the workers’ debts for advances of passage fares. 0 1987 Academic

Press, Inc.

INTRODUCTION

Indentured servitude was a central institution in the economy and society of colonial America, but dwindled to quantitative insignificance in the United States during the fh-st quarter of the 19th century.’ Occasional attempts to revive the use of indentures to facilitate immigration to the United States during the 183Os, 184Os, and 1850s were generally unsuccessful.2 * We are grateful to Guy Alitto, Stanley Engerman, Farley Grubb, Richard Hellie, Larry Neal, and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Samuel Whalen provided capable research assistance. Support for this research was provided by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ’ On indentured servitude in the colonial period, see Smith (1947), Galenson (1977, 1981), and Grubb (1984). ’ For an account of these attempts, see Erickson (1984). 22 0014-4983/87 $3.00 Copyright 0 1987 by Academic Press, Inc. AU rights of repmiwtion in any form reserved.

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Both the decline of the use of indentured servitude in the United States and the failure of these intermittent attempts to revive it appear explicable on economic grounds. In the past, migrations tended to be made up of bound workers if the migrants could not pay the costs of migration with their own wealth and were unable to borrow the required funds from other individuals or financial institutions. Under these circumstances, the use of indentures could provide a source of capital to finance migration, as the intermediation of merchants effectively allowed migrants to borrow the cost of their passage from those who demanded their services in their region of destination, in the form of advances against their future labor.3 Existing political and legal conditions in migrants’ places of origin and destination would also normally have to permit servitude in order for bound migration to occur. In light of this formulation, the absence of indentured servitude from the United States in the early 19th century appears to have been caused by the rising wealth of Europeans and the falling real cost of transatlantic migration. Whereas many Europeans had found it necessary to indenture themselves in order to migrate to America in the 17th and 18th centuries, this was no longer the case in the 19th century, when the great migration from Europe to the United States consisted almost exclusively of free workers and their families.4 Yet the abandonment of indentured servitude by Europeans put only a temporary halt to the use of indentures by immigrants to the Americas. During the 183Os, the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies produced a renewed demand for indentured labor. The owners of sugar plantations, unhappy with the large reduction in black labor supply that followed emancipation, revived the use of indentures, this time to import Asian workers. From 1838 on, Indian and Chinese workers bound for periods of years arrived in a number of British Caribbean colonies and South American countries.’ A similar movement of bound workers, first from China and later from Korea and Japan, began in 1852 to supply labor to the sugar plantations of Hawaii6 That these migrations of Asians were composed of bound workers again appears understandable on economic grounds, since passage fares from India and China to the West Indies and Hawaii were normally too 3 For elaboration of this argument, see Galenson (1984, pp. 16-17). This analysis implies that at times when servitude was an option, the probability that a migrant would travel under indenture would vary inversely with the individual’s wealth. Grnbb (1985) has argued that this was the case for Germans migrating to Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth century, 4 For evidence on the decline in transportation costs relative to European incomes, see Galenson (1984, pp. 17-21); also see Taylor (1971). 5 For discussion of these migrations and additional references, see Campbell (19233, Engerman (1984), and Engennan (1986). 6 For discussion and additional references, see Takaki (1983).

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great for these Asian workers to pay out of their savings.7 Another episode, however, appears more puzzling. In the early 1850sa migration of Chinese workers to California began, and in the course of the following four decades, an estimated total of early 300,000 Chinese arrived on the West Coast.’ As in the case of the Asian migrants who traveled to the West Indies, South America, and Hawaii, many of the Chinese who went to California had been recruited by emigration agents to do manual labor at their destination. Like the other Asian migrants, they faced passage fares that were high relative to their incomes or wealth: the cost of passage from Hong Kong to San Francisco was $40 or $50, while annual per capita Chinese income was under $10.9 Yet unlike the others, the Chinese who traveled to California did not have written indentures, nor did they sign them upon arrival. This paper focuses on two questions about this episode: why were the Chinese migrants to California in the late 19th century not indentured, and what was their actual contractual status during their initial periods of work after arrival in the United States? THE LEGAL STATUS OF INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY

The absence of indentures from the Chinese migration to the United States after 18.50may have resulted from the legal status of servitude in the United States. The problem that plagued American employers who had attempted to import bound labor earlier in the 19th century was the difficulty of enforcing the contracts they made; in a number of cases employers advanced the cost of transportation to European workers in return for a promise of a number of years’ labor, only to have the worker renege on his agreement upon arrival. These employers apparently found litigation to enforce the contracts too costly and time-consumingto pursue.lo In response to lobbying by the American Emigrant Company and a group of northern manufacturers, Congress in 1864 passed the Act to Encourage Immigration, which legalized limited contract labor in return for assisted passage to the United States. The act specifically declared to be legally enforceable contracts in which immigrants to the United States pledged their wages for up to 12 months to repay advances for their migration. Until an immigrant’s debt was liquidated, these adLances would operate as a lien on any property he acquired.” ’ For evidence on passage fares and Asian incomes, see Galenson (1984, pp. N-20). ’ For annual estimates of Chinese immigration to the United States during 1852-1984, see Sandmeyer (1973, p. 16). On the occupations of the Chinese in California, see Chiu (1963); also Walker (1976, Chap. 2). ’ Galenson (1984, pp. M-20). ” Erickson (1984, p. 50; 1957, pp. 47-48). ‘I Sanger (Ed.) (1866, pp. 385-387). On the background to the act, see Erickson (1957, Chap. 1).

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This act did not provide for the legal enforcement of specific performance of debt labor contracts, and the status it defined therefore did not constitute genuine indentured servitude. Yet the act clearly did declare contract labor-i.e., debt labor contracts which could be discharged either by performance of the agreed work or by repayment of the advances made to the worker-to be legal. A limit of 1 year, however, was placed on the contracts. The Act to Encourage Immigration was passed at the request of brokers and employers who wished to import skilled European workers, but the act’s provisions could also have been used to import Chinese laborers.“’ What might have prevented this, and,what may therefore account for the absence of legal debt contracts from the Chinese immigration, was the limit of 1 year on the contracts, for many Chinese laborers apparently immigrated under debt contracts that ran from 2 to 5 years.” The Act to Encourage Immigration failed to satisfy the needs of the manufacturers who had lobbied for it, and it was repealed in 1868. Employers who had imported European immigrants under contract reported the failure of their efforts, as in many cases these workers simply left. But whereas the act was inadequate for control of European immigrants, for the Chinese it was apparently unnecessary. This may have been due to the constraints imposed by the companieswhich oversaw the recruitment of these workers. Frederick Low, a former congressman, governor of California, and American minister to China, drew the distinction between the two types of laborers before a committee of the California State Senate investigating Chinese immigration in 1876. Noting that many white settlers had come to California on contracts that obligated them to repay advances made by California companies, Low stated that the Chinese kept their contracts more faithfully than the white migrants. When asked why, Low replied: “They don’t know our laws here, and the companies have such absolute power over them that they keep their contracts. The guilds have absolute power over them here and in their own country.“14 Throughout its history, the Chinese immigration of the late. 19th century appears to have operated in ways that were independent of the legal provisions for contract labor that existed in the United States. What the

rz Some contemporaries noted the potential applicability of the Act to Encourage Immigration to the immigration of Chinese laborers; e.g., see Conwell (1871, p. 178); Speer (1870, p. 485). I3 Although evidence about the length of contracts for Chinese workers is scarce, it was reported that Chinese workers typically came to the United States for between 2 and 5 years; see U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 470,714; California State Senate (1878, p. 11.5); Wharton (1965, p. 98); Rudolph (1947, pp. 14-15); Canadian Parliament (1885, “The Honorable Commissioner Gray’s Report,” pp. xxv, xxxviii, and “Minutes of Evidence,” p. 29. I4 California State Senate (1878, p. 77).

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condition of the Chinese workers in America actually was-to what obligations they agreed, and how these were enforced-is the key issue addressed here. THE OPERATION

OF THE CONTRACT

LABOR SYSTEM

The form of the system under which Chinese immigrants came to California originated in “credit-ticket” emigration. Under the creditticket system, brokers advanced the cost of migration to workers. The broker then retained a lien on the worker’s services until the debt was repaid. The worker was not bound for a fixed period of years, as would have been done in a system of contract labor, nor was his obligation normally sold by the broker to a third party.15 The exact nature of the Chinese laborers’ obligation was a key issue for many vocal critics of Chinese immigration to the West Coast in the 1870s and 1880s. Many contended that the Chinese arrived and worked in America under effective conditions of contract labor or “debt slavery.” This view has been shared by later historians including Gunther Barth, who contended that the credit-ticket system “became partly a disguised slave trade. ’ ’ I6 A lack of surviving contracts makes a systematic survey of contractual conditions impossible. It is possible, however, to reconstruct many features of the Chinese workers’ contracts from extensive testimony given before three governmental commissions that investigated the desirability of Chinese immigration: a California state senate committee that held hearings during 1876, a joint committee of the U.S. Congress that met in the same year, and a royal commission constituted by the Canadian Parliament that held hearings in 1884. Though at times these hearings became little more than a forum for the virulent anti-Chinese sentiment that led to the restriction, and later exclusion, of Chinese immigration to the United States during the 188Os,the committees also heard from a number of well-informed observers. If possible biases are kept in mind, this testimony appears to provide valuable information about the Chinese immigrants’ obligations in the United States. Many observers appear to have believed that the Chinese immigrants

” Campbell (1923, p. xvii); Sandmeyer (1973, p. 28); Barth (1964, pp. 51, 55-56). I6 Barth (1964, p. 67). It should be emphasized that the discussion in this paper of the conditions under which Chinese workers came to the United States is restricted to men, who made up the overwhelming majority of the immigration; for example, in 1870, the U.S. census enumerated a total of 57,557 Chinese men compared to 4513 Chinese women, and men consistently accounted for more than 90% of arriving Chinese immigrants. Small numbers of Chinese women were imported, often to work as prostitutes under conditions described by many observers as debt slavery; e.g., see California State Senate (1878); Blackburn and Bicards (1980); Cheng (1984).

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whose passage was paid by brokers were normally obligated simply to repay the debt, rather than to serve a term of years.17Nevertheless, for many of the Chinese the issue of debt obligation rather than service obligation may have been unimportant, for their dependence on the brokerage companies that brought them to America was great. In testimony given in 1876, S. Clinton Hastings, former attorney general of California and Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, described the relationship as peonage, for in his view the Chinese laborers belonged to the brokerage companies until their debts were repaid. Although as will be seen, this view requires some qualification, Hastings argued that the Chinese immigrants were in a very different position than Europeans who came under promises to repay advances; unlike the Europeans, the Chinese workers did not realize that the companies’ power over them was not absolute.18 The provision of Chinese workers to American employers occurred in several ways. Some of the Chinese arrived without specific employment, having borrowed money from relatives and friends or contracted with a broker in China for passage fare. These men were generally taken into the jurisdiction of the Chinese territorial organizations in California, which together came to be commonly known as the Chinese Six Companies.” These were organizations in San Francisco run by Chinese merchants involved in the import trade. They functioned both as labor brokers and as benevolent associationsfor the Chinese in California. For those Chinese immigrants indebted to friends, relatives, or other creditors in China for the cost of their journey, relations with the Six Companies appear to have been straightforward. They paid membership fees and in return received a variety of benefits, including temporary lodging in San Francisco,

” For example, see U.S. Senate (1877, p. 405): “They often borrow money to get here, and agree to pay high premiums or interest, but the agreement is in the amount of money rather than in the number of years of service.” Also see U.S. Senate testimony of Low, p. 83: “If I am correct in my supposition, these contracts do not bind them [i.e., the Chinese] to work for any specific length of time; they only bind them to refund a certain sum of maney, and when that money is paid they are as free as you and I.” Barth notes, however, that a shipload of Chinese migrants in 1852 had “contracted . . . to serve for a period of five years” (1964, p. 71). The major Chinese labor importers in San Francisco, the Six Companies, admitted in 1853 that they had earlier imported workers under contracts of fixed duration, but claimed that they had by then stopped the practice, and they continued to deny the existence of contract labor for fixed terms in later years; see Sandmeyer (1973, p. 26). For an evaluation of the testimony given to the governmental inquiries of the 1870s on this point, see Coolidge (1909, pp. 50-51). ‘* U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 591-592). I9 On the development and functions of the territorial organizations in California, see Speer (1870, Chap. 19); Barth (1964, pp. 77-108).

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medical care if they became ill, and the assurance that their remains would be returned to China if they died in California.20 The Six Companies were also directly involved in procuring labor from China in response to specific requests. Otis Gibson, a Methodist missionary to the Chinese in San Francisco, stated, “It is only when large firms go to the companies to get laborers that they are imported. . . .It is only in such a case that the companies send to China for men.“*l The Six Companies were not the only importers involved in this recruitment from China, and some American firms reported dealing with independent merchant brokers. In 1876, Charles Cracker, part-owner of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, stated that he had once made a contract with a San Francisco merchant named Koopmanschap, who brought him 500 Chinese workers. On other occasions, the railroad hired Chinese workers through a firm of American merchants, Sisson,Wallace & Company, who supplied them with groups of workers.22 It is beyond doubt, however, that the Six Companies were centrally involved in the recruitment of Chinese workers. Ezekiel B. Vreeland, Deputy Commissioner of Immigration from 1873 to 1876, estimated that 80% of all Chinese immigrants were brought by the Six Companies. He noted that “those who come out under the auspices of the companies are generally attached to the companies on their arrival here, and, of course, they remain under their jurisidiction until the amount is liquidated which has been advanced to them.” Vreeland further commented that after the workers’ arrival, “they are in most casesassistedinto employment through the agencies of those companies.“23 *’ Sandmeyer (1973, pp. 23-24). That some Chinese arrived without debts to the Six Companies but might contract them during their stay is suggested by the testimony of a Chinese interpreter. When asked about the companies, he stated: “They are to take care of Chinamen belonging to their own company. . . .When Chinaman get into trouble, he get taken care of; when he wants to go from one city to another, the company furnishes money, and he pays it back again. Suppose he don’t pay it right away, he pays it after a while”; California State Senate (1878, p. 186). The same witness noted that “each Chinaman pays the company ten dollars”; Sandmeyer (1973, p. 23) described this charge as the membership fee paid by practically all Chinese immigrants. ” California State Senate (1878, p. 96). Low stated that the Six Companies had agents in Hong Kong who served as recruiters for the Chinese immigrants; also see p. 70. z U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 674-675). For further information on the activities of Koopmanschap, see Barth (1964, pp. 191-196). 23 U.S. Senate (1877, p. 175). Low noted that “practically, all Chinese come here through means advanced by these companies [i.e., the Six Companies] or individuals, or by people here, through these companies”; California State Senate (1878, pp. 70-71). Murayama (1984) provides an interesting description of how labor contractors in the Pacific Northwest supplied Japanese workers to large companies there in the 1890s that appears similar in terms of the functions of the contractors. Unlike in the case Murayama describes, however, in which competition between the labor contractors eventually dissipated their monopoly profits, the large share of the Chinese immigration controlled by the Six Companies and

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The risk of advancing passage fare to laborers in China was normally borne by the Six Companies themselves. Gibson reported that when immigrants were brought from China, “the advancing party runs the risk of nonpayment. . . .When Chinamen come here. . . [having borrowed passage money], they are taken charge of by one of the six companies, and kept until work is found for them. Sometimes they have to keep them for three or four weeks. Sometimes these men run away, and the company loses whatever was advanced.“24 Independent brokers bore the risk in other instances; one merchant claimed he was forced to petition for bankruptcy due to his inability to collect $100,000 in “notes given by Chinese for allowances and passage money.“25 The brokers of the Six Companies often retained a high degree of supervision over Chinese laborers on the job, and a commensurately high level of responsibility to the companies for whom they had supplied the workers. A California shoe manufacturer testified in 1876, “We contracted for . . . Paborers], for two years, with Yu-chuy-lung Company. We made contracts with them to furnish us so many men for a certain price, and we paid the money to that company. They furnish us as many men as we want, and we have nothing to do with the Chinamen, except to work them. . . .” When asked, “What guarantee have you that you will have the same man for two years?” the same witness replied: ‘“In the first place, the company is responsible, and in the second place, we hold back from each man’s wages a certain amount to secure fulfillment of their contract. Our contract provides that when a man goes away the company shall furnish us another.” The witness described the advantages of dealing with the company: “We tell them that we want a certain number of men. We cannot go directly and hire these fellows, because we can’t speak their language and cannot explain what we want. We save much time and trouble by having all our dealings with one company.” Furthermore, he stated that the company that supplied the workers guaranteed their performance, noting that “in case a man is dishonest, or steals,anything, the agent [of the company] shall be responsible.“26 Many of the Chinese immigrants went to work in gangs, building railroads, working in mines, and cultivating the farms of California’s Central Valley. Some revealing descriptions of the agreements under which this work was done emerged in testimony ,given to the Joint Congressional Committee on Chin&e Immigration in 1876, The president of a land reclamation company stated that Chinese workers were ideal the collusion among the companies probably served to preserve a larger amount of monopoly power for them; e.g., see Walker (1976, Chap. 3), who bases his analysis of the Chinese immigration on the assumption of an effective Chinese merchant cartel in the United States. 24 Caliiornia State Senate (1878, p. 91). 25 Barth (1964, p. 195). 26 California State Senate (1878, p. 115).

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for their projects: “The special advantage of Chinese labor in work of that,kind is owing to the contract system. They form little communities among themselves, forty or fifty or a hundred, and they are jointly interested in that contract. We could not get white men to do that. . . .We first give a large contract to one or two Chinamen, and they sublet it in smaller contracts; that is the general system.“27 In describing the contracts made by his railroad with San Francisco merchants, Charles Cracker told how workers were paid: They come together in gangs of twenty-five and thirty . . . and the account is kept with the gang. . . .Each gang has a book-keeper to keep the account’among themselves. We have a foreman and he keeps the account with the gang and credits them. Every night the Chinese book-keeper, who is one of the workmen and works in the pit along with the rest, comes up with his book, and he says so many days for that gang. . and they count it up and they agree, and each puts it down. Then the Chinese keep their own accounts among themselves; but we keep an account with the gang. When the pay-day comes the gang is paid for all the labor of the gang, and then they divide it among themselves.

Cracker was then questioned

about this system:

Q. Does the same thing obtain with the white men? A. No, sir; we get the individual names of the white men. Q. You do not pay the individual Chinaman when he works for you? A. We pay the head-man of the gang. , . Q. You do not pay them in the same manner that you pay white men? A. In the same manner, except that we cannot keep the names of the Chinamen; it is impossible.‘We should not know Ah Sin, Ah You, Kong Won, and all such names. We cannot keep their names in the same way, because it is a different language. You understand the difficulty. It is not done in that way because they are slaves.”

Other employers gave similar descriptions of the recruitment of the workers and the organization of the work gangs. One described the arrangement as follows: “Every man who employs Chinamen, has one that he calls the boss Chinaman. When he wants men he does not go around over the country to look them up, but he just says to the boss, ‘I want so many more men next week,’ and that obtains the men. He gets a small percentage, I suppose. I know it is the case with my Chinamen.” To the extent that Chinese immigrants worked on such gangs and were paid in the manner described by Cracker, the employment agents or zI U.S. Senate (1877, testimony of George D. Robert, p. 437). 28 U.S. Senate (1877, p. 675). ” U.S. Senate (1877, testimony of William W. Brier, pp. 579-580).

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brokers were in a convenient position to enforce the repayment of their loans in regular installments by having the foremen withhold some portion of the workers’ pay and remit it directly to them. One description by the owner of a California gold mine appears to suggest an even more direct intervention by Chinese companies in some cases: Companies bring up scores of them [i.e., Chinese workers] and hire them out, or buy or locate claims, and set them to work on them. The company comes down in the evening and takes possession of the gold. These companies supply the rice and other provisions, tools, etc., for these fellows who work in the mines. When a person hires one or more of these Chmamen, it is usual, if not universal, to settle with the head man of the company; and if you turn off one he will bring you another. They appear to control all their movements, and take their earnings as if they were their property.30

Yet while the Six Companies were well placed to recapture their debts from immigrants who worked in gangs, through the intervention of foremen in their employ, this cannot have been their only method of debt enforcement. Some Chinese workers were apparently paid individually by their employers. 3’ Furthermore, even if withholding from the wages of gang workers had typically occurred, other methods of enforcement of the immigrants’ debt contracts would also have been necessary to ensure repayment. Some Chinese workers left the work gangs, either with or without the permission of their foremen.32 The difficulty of doing this j” California State Senate (1878, pp. 220-221). Interestingly, a contract labor system was widely used in 19th-century China, particularly in industries requiring large gangs of unskilled workers, including mining and agriculture, in which “the labor force was recruited by the owner or manager of an enterprise through an intermediary, who was given full or partial authority over the workers he recruited throughout their term of employment, and upon whom they were completely dependent for payment of wages and arrangements about working conditions”; Chesneaux (1968, p. 57). The workers often agreed to work for the recruiting agent for fixed periods of years, and received a guarantee of food, Lodging,and clothing from the agent. It was common under this system for the recruiting agentregularly to take a portion of the worker’s wages as payment for his services, and he often received this payment directly from the employer; also see pp. 58-62; also Wright (1981; 1984, pp. 165-168). This system might have been a model for the operations of the Six Companies described by Crodker and other American employers, and a familiity with this system from China might account for the Chinese workers’ acceptanceof its conditions in Californir. 31U S Senate(1877,pp. 404-405). For similar Canadianevidence, see CanadianParliament (1885, p: 128). 32The president of an irrigation company in the San Joaquiu Valley stated of the Ctrinese in 1876: “I think that they are perfectly independent of their foreman. In hiring these men in large numbers you generally employ a foreman to get the amQtmt of men you require; and I have noticed that sometimes some of them leave without the wish of the foreman”; U.S. Senate (1877, p. 746; also see pp. 470, 511, 771). That the control of the Chinese foremen over gang workers was less than absolute was also attested to by the president of a laud reclamation company, who stated: “I find my Chinanien entirely independent of the bosses. When the bosses do not pay them they come to me. If the boss does not pay them any wages, they tie hii up and call on us. That has been the case in several instances”; U.S. Senate (1877, p. 442).

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would have varied with the location of the work, but would probably not have been great in many cases. In addition, some immigrants were not involved in gang work, and were therefore not readily subject to this method of enforcement. Although a variety of other methods of contract enforcement were described in testimony and might have been used to some extent, the mechanism mentioned most often derived from the economic power of the Chinese Six Companies in the Pacific passenger traffic to California. The Six Companies required each migrant to obtain a certificate stating that he had repaid his debts before he could return to China. The steamship companies that served these routes enforced this requirement by refusing to sell tickets to Chinese who did not have these certificates. While some attributed this to infiltration of the shipping companies by agents of the Six Companies, it appears that the shippers agreed to this arrangement in order to retain the business of the Six Companies, which together controlled the greater part of freight and passenger cargoes from China to the West Coast. In 1876, Frederick Low gave the following responses to the inquiries of ,congressionalcommittee members investigating Chinese migration to California: Q. How is the contract enforced here? For instance, a Chinaman Iands on our shore; there is no law here to enforce a contract made abroad. By what means do they compel the Chinaman to pay the price per month to the six companies? A. You can very well conceive that Chinamen coming here, ignorant of our laws, language and customs, with these six companies or any one firm or company telling him what his duties are, with the surveillance that they exercise over him, and with an arrangement which they are supposed to have, in fact I know they have, with the steamship companies, that no Chinaman can purchase a ticket to return home unless he brings a certificate from the heads of these companies, that he is free from debt; it is very natural that he will pay his pro rata per month until he works out his debt. Q. That is, he invokes other than the laws of our country to collect his debt? A. He cannot invoke the laws of this country. . . .It is more of a moral obligation than a legal one. r\ say they have an arrangement with the steamship companies that no -..,lmman shall be taken back to China until he produces a certiticate from these companies that he is free from debt? A. They will not take a Chinaman back unless in that way. That was the arrangement. Q. Is it a written contract? A. No; it is an understanding between them; no written contract. In other words, they say that it is proper for a Chinaman to pay his debts before he leaves the country, and they want to see that his debts are paid. Q. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, a common carrier, subsidized by the General Government, refuses to take a Chinaman home unless his associates say he has paid his debt?

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A. Not only that company, but all the companies-other companies aside from the Pacific Mail. There was a company here, of which Macondray & Co. were agents, and complaint was made to me by missionaries on behalf of the Chinese. I remember going myself to Major Otis, who was the head of the house of Macondray & Co. I told him I thought it was a great outrage that they should put this exaction upon the Chinese. Otis said, “This is the custom; it has been in existence for years; the Pacific Mail Company do it, and if we do not conform to the custom all the trade will go over their vessels and we will not get any.” I presume it is a custom that exists today.33

Given a widespread desire among Chinese migrants to return to their homeland, this control of access to transportation could have been au effective means of enforcing debt contracts, and a number of other contemporaries agreed with Low’s, belief that it was. Its effectiveness would clearly have declined if many Chinese had come to California with the intention of settling, although many of those who eventually did remain as settlers had apparently not originally planned to do ~0.~~ There were other sanctions on the Chinese immigrants that might also have played a significant part in assuring their repayment of debts. The historian Hubert Howe Bancroft described the settlement of outstanding debts at the New Year as a matter of honor among the Chinese, and noted that the Chinese in California had a better reputation for honesty 33 U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 82-83). 34 In November 1876, a San Francisco attorney named Alfred Wheeler presented annual estimates of the numbers of Chinese departing from San Francisco by sea to return to China. He estimated total departures at 93,723 between 1852 and October 1, 1876; in comparison, Wheeler estimated total Chinese arrivals at 233,136 from 1848 through October 1, 1876; U.S. Senate (1877, p. 11%; also pp. X2-513, 795-796). Estimated departures were therefore equivalent to 48% of total cumulative estimated arrivals. The other 68% would of course include those Chinese migrants who had died in California and those who would return to China in future years as well as permanent settlers in the United States. Wheeler estimated past deaths of Chinese in Caliiomia at 25,900, and although the quality of this estimate is uncertain, it would imply that 45% of the surviving migrants had returned to China; continuing departures in later years of those present in 1876 would have raised this proportion. Another comparison can be brought to bear on this same question. Cumulative arrivals of Chinese at the San Francisco customs house between 1852 and 1880 totaRed an estimated 253,722 migrants, while the total Chinese population in the United States in 1880 was placed at 105,465 by the tenth federal census; Sandmeyer (1973, pp. 16-17). Although precise estimates of mortality would again be useful, that the stock of Chinese in the United States in 1880 was less than half the tqtal of the estimated flows of arrivals during the previous three decades indicates high levels of return migration to China. Similarly, the total Chinese population in the United States grew by only 42,266 between the federal censuses of 1870 and 1880, in spite of estimated immigration of between 116,ooO and 133,ooO Chinese to the United States during 1870-1879; Sandmeyer (1973). More information on the return migration of the Chinese would be valuable. Yet from these figures it can be concluded that the rate at which Chinese migrants returned to China was sufficiently high to have made the Chinese Six Companies’ control of access to return passage a powerful tool in enforcing repayment of many migrants’ debts.

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than Americans.35 Another factor was a widespread desire among the Chinese that the remains of deceased migrants be returned and buried in their homeland. The shipment of coffins out of San Francisco, which was undertaken by the Six Companies, grew to be an important part of the China trade.36Anyone who severed his relationship with the companies by abandoning his debt obligation might have feared that his remains would be denied return to China. VIEWS OF THE CHINESE

IMMIGRATION

SYSTEM

The view of the operation of this migration system presented in this paper contrasts with the views of many contemporaries. An important source of the campaign of the 1870sfor the exclusion of Chinese workers from the United States was a widespread and growing belief among Americans that this immigration constituted a new form of slavery.37 While many examples of statements by contemporaries could be cited, sticient illustration is provided by a statement made by President Ulysses S. ,Grant in his address to Congress in 1874: I call the proportion volustariIy, prosperity, solutely. . as well as

attention of Congress to a generally conceded fact-that the great of the Chinese immigrants who come to our shores do not come to make their homes with us and their labor productive of general but come under contracts with headmen, who own them almost ab. If this evil practice can be legislated against, it will be my pleasure duty to enforce any regulation to secure so desirable an end.”

In contemporary discussion, the slavery in question was not necessarily restricted to that of the immigrant alone; in a popular book about Chinese immigration published in 1871, the author explained how the family of a migrant would literally be sold into slavery in China if the migrant failed to repay his debt for passage.39 This view of the system of Chinese immigration as based on coercion also appears in treatments by recent historians. A prominent example is the authoritative study of the Chinese in the 19th-century United States, Bitter Strength, by Gunther Barth (1964). Although Barth recognized that the Six Companies used a number of mechanisms for enforcing repayment of the migrants’ debts, including the prevention of return migration by those who had not discharged their debts, he stressed the importance of intimidation and violence, against both the migrants and ” Bancrofi (1890, Vol. 38, p. 341). 36 Bancroft (1896, VQI. 31, p. 394); Janisch (1971, p. 362); Zo (1978, p. 59). 37 Saudmeyer (1973, pp. 25-27); Miller (1969, pp. 1.50-154); Coolidge (1909, pp. 41-54). For contemporary contributions that attempted to counter this belief, see Seward (l&81, pp. 136-158); Gibson (1877, pp. 333-345); Speer (lg70, pp. 462-492). y( Richar$son (1900, p. 2sq. 39 Conwell (1871, pp. 224-235, and illustration facing p. 141).

CHINESE

IMMIGRATION

AND CONTRACT

LABOR

35

their families in China, in the companies’ control of their debtors, Thus, as mentioned earlier, Barth referred to the Chinese migration to the United States as “partly a disguised slave trade.” He furthermore argued that the migrants in California lived under a “system of oppression” governed by the “dictates of their overlords.” He argued that this system was controlled by the Six Companies, which “bullied the vast majority of sojourners into submission” with the threat of violence both to them and their families, “with parents, wives, and children [in China] as hostages within the reach of their creditors.“* The effectiveness of a system based on coercion and intimidation of this kind might be questioned in principle. Although the companies could have treated migrants’ relatives in China as hostages, locating them would often have been costly, and the rewards generally small, due to the poverty of those who remained in China. Similarly, violence could have been used by the companies as a threat, as well as occasional punishment in California, but if commonly employed such acts might have been expected to lead to action against the companies by the government and courts of Califomia.4’ The extralegal nature of the system of migration used by the Chinese meant that many aspects of its operations occurred clandestinely; this has made it impossible to document many of its characteristics, including the extent of coercion used by the Six Companies against the immigrants, through the use of direct evidence. The analysis of a large body of indirect evidence, however, does appear to point to a likely resolution of the question. Many references were made in the course of the testimony presented to the three governmental commissions mentioned earlier to mechanisms by which the repayment of loans made to immigrant Chinese workers to the United States and Canada was enforced. Several hundred witnesses, with a wide variety of attitudes toward Chinese immigration, testified before these commissions. Whereas some witnesses spoke favorably of the Chinese and their effect on America, others were openly hostile, and references to the inferiority and depravity of the immigrants were commonplace. Commission members themselves were hardly neutral; the introduction to the published report of the California state senatecommittee, titled “[a]n address to the people of the United States upon the evils of 4o Barth (1964, pp. 67, 86, 93; in general, see Chaps. 3-4). Barth presents little ,direct evidence of the use of violence by the Six Companies to enforce labor contracts. He appears to explain the absence of observed instances of physical violence as a result of the “ready submission” of the Chinese to the dictates of the Six Companies; also see pp. 82, 93.

4’ On the absence of legal evidence of the common use of violence by the Six Companies to enforce contracts, see Janisch (1971, pp. 42-49). For a parallel contemporary statement, see U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 404-405).

36

CLOUDANDGALENSON

Chinese immigration,” characterized the immigrants as drawn overwhelmingly from the “criminal classes” and concluded that “[o]n the whole, it is our judgment that unrestricted Chinese immigration tends more strongly to the degradation of labor, and to the subversion of our institutions, than did slavery at the South, It has all of the disadvantages, and none of the compensations.“42 In the course of these hearings, therefore, there was no need for witnesses to refrain from criticizing any characteristics of the Chinese and their system of immigration, and a reading of the testimony suggests that many felt few inhibitions. What is striking about this investigation, therefore, is the almost total absence from this testimony of references to the systematic use of violence, against either the immigrant workers or their families in China, by labor importers to ensure repayment of their loans by the immigrants. What emerges from the testimony is that although a variety of extralegal means were used to ensure repayment of these loans-as detailed in the previous section of this paper-these did not depend on physical violence or intimidation.43 It is tempting to believe that this conclusion was apparent to dispassionate observers of the commissions’ proceedings even at the time. The two American government@ commissionsof the 1870smet in a volatile climate of rising American hostility toward Chinese immigration that led to legislated exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States in the early 188Os,and their conclusions and recommendations reflect this tensi:political situation. The atmosphere was less highly charged for the Canadian commission of 1884. In the report submitted to Parliament, the chairman of the commission, Secretary of State Joseph Chapleau, provided his conclusions on Chinese immigration based on a review of the testimony given before the American congressional committee of 1874and testimony heard by the Canadian commission of 1884. His views on the operation of the system of immigration are of considerable interest: 42 California State Senate (1878, pp. 29, 54). 43 The mechanism of debt enforcement mentioned by far most frequently in the testimony is the arrangement under which steamship companies refused to sell return tickets to immigrants who did not have a certificate from the Six Companies; California State Senate (1878, pp. 78, 91, 122, 131, 137, 206), U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 82, 176, 406, 447). Other mechanisms mentioned, as discussed earlier, included the commitment of the Six Companies to return to China the bones of immigrants who died in California, and the withholding of payments out of the immigrants’ wages. Several witnesses mentioned that immigrants’ relatives in China might act as guarantors of loans for passage (U.S. Senate, 1887, pp. 82, 827), but specified that the only actions against these relatives in case of default on these loans would be through legal proceedings. (Low, when asked whether a sister who guaranteed the loan of a brother could be sold to pay the penalty, replied simply: “Hardly.“) Very few references to the use of violence to enforce the labor contracts of immigrants can be found, and in no such case are specific statements made by witnesses who appear to have been well informed. For statements claiming the use of violence by the Six Companies, see U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 94, 318).

CHINESE

IMMIGRATION

AND CONTRACT

LABOR

37

The evidence establishes that Chinese are as a rule brought under an arrangement something like this: the money is advanced them to cross the ocean and the agree to pay so much in return. Owing to the structure of Chinese society on th Coast this undoubtedly looks like contract-labor, but it is not; it is wholly differen from the contract by which coolies are carried to Peru. It might be properly described in a familiar phrase-assisted passage-only that the assisted passage in this case is a private arrangement. The objectionable feature about it is the manner in which the repayment is enforced. [Chapleau then quoted the testimony of Low, given above, concerning the refusal of shipping companies to take immigrants back to China without the permission of the Six Companies.]. . . There are Six Companies which may be said to have naturally risen from the condition of things in which Chinese immigrants found themselves in the early days. Colonel Bee [the consul of the Chinese government in San Francisco] says they are benevolent societies. They are labor bureaus. It is admitted that they take a fee from each member; that they lend him money to go into the interior; that they provide him with medicines and a hospital; that they arrange to send his remains back to China. The friends of the Chinese vehemently protest that these companies do not bring them to this continent under contract. But, again it is admitted that they cannot return to China until they are clear on the books of the company to which they belong. The inference is irresistible that they are are a good deal more,than benevolent institutions, and that those who manage them make a good profit out of the business. Nor is there any reason why they should not. . . . It is charged that they came in bondage to the Six Companies. There is no proof of this. But when the helplessness of the Chinaman without such companies is considered, it can be understood that they must have quite enough power over the laborer.”

Chapleau’s conclusions appear consistent with the view of the Chinese system of immigration presented in this paper. The testimony before the governmental commissions of the 1870s and 1880s demonstrates that the Six Companies were more than benevolent societies; they were also labor brokers who carried on an obviously profitable business importing Chinese workers for American business. Furthermore, the testimony taken as a whole appears to portray a system of effectively indentured labor based for the most part on voluntary bargains between merchants and workers who desired to migrate in order to increase their earnings. Yet an ambiguous aspect of this episode that troubled many contemporaries was raised by Chapleau at the end of the passage quoted. This problem, which was stressed in the testimony of such thoughtful men as Low and Hastings, was that many of the Chinese workers, isolated by their language and locations, may not have known or have been able to take advantage of the fact that American law limited the power the Six Comfianies held over them. The implications of this were not fully known to outside observers at the time and were a subject of serious disagreement, so M Canadian Parliament (1885, Chapleau’s report, pp. xxvi, lxxxiv-lxxxv).

38

CLOUD AND GALENSON

that whereas Low stated that the Chinese immigrated as free workers, Hastings argued that their ignorance of their legal rights made the Chinese slaves. Yet in spite of this disagreement, what does not appear to have existed in the eyes of men like Low, Hastings, Chapleau, or any other responsible and informed observers of the Chinese in California is a system of slavery of the kind referred to in the hysterical public attacks of the time, in which the Six Companies were accused of using physical violence and intimidation to establish and maintain a reign of terror that gave them virtually absolute control over the immigrants. And this is hardly surprising, for if anything like this had existed, it would seem unlikely that thousands of Chinese worke m-among them repeat migrantswould valuntarily’have continued to come to the United States each year for three decades during which time the return of tens of thousands of workers to China must have spread knowledge widely aboutconditions of work and life in California,45 Thus although the Six Companies had a power over the Chinese workers who came to California that gave responsible Americans cause to condemn the companies’ system of labor importation as restrictive and illegal, the system appears to have been based on the willing participation of immigrants eager to earn high American wages for a time, with no need for the routine use of violence and intimidation that was claimed by some contemporaries.46 45Augustus Loomis, who had spent 6 years as a missionary in China, made this point forcefully in his testimony. When asked whether the Six Companies brought workers to California against their will or coerced them in California, he replied: “I never heard anything of the kind in China, and never here. It is a fact that in later years a very large proportion of those coming to California are men who have been here before, showing that their former experiences here have not been very horrifying”; U.S. Senate (1877, p. 471). When asked whether Chinese workers ever returned to the United States after having been back to China, Ezekiel Vreeland, former deputy commissioner of immigration, replied that “a great many of them do. Those who have stayed here awhile and made some money go back and then return”; U.S. Senate (1877, p. 177). On the large numbers of migrants to the United States who returned to China, see note 34. r(6 The economics of Chinese labor in California remains obscure because of the lack of evidence on the workers’ dealings with the importers, but a few figures can be cited. Seward stated that Chinese farm workers in California earned monthly wages of about $20, with board provided; Seward (1881, p, 58); Low quoted a wage for Chinese railroad workers of $31 per month, without board, U.S. Senate (1877, pp. 78-80). In comparison, Low gave the wages of unskilled workers in Canton as $3-5 per month; p. 67. A range of passage fares was quoted for the voyage from Hong Kong to California, from as little as $12 (Gibson, 1877,p. 341) to an apparently common range of $40-50 (Barth, 1964,pp. 61-62). Barth gives the normal return fare to China as $20: Barth (1964, p. 62). Depending on the interest rates labor importers charged the workers on their debts for passage and the fees these brokers charged the workers for their services in CaliBomia, annual earnings net of maintenance of perhaps $240against total transport costs of $70 provided a potential for savings over the course of a period from 2 to 5 years that was considerably greater than would have beenpossible in China. Many Chinese workers in California sent remittances back to their relatives in Ch’ma-one witness estimated these as an average of $30 per

CHINESE

CONCLUSION:

IMMIGRATION

LEGAL RESTRICTIONS

AND CONTRACT

39

LABOR

AND INSTiTUTIONAL

FORMS

Why the Chinese immigrants who came to Califurnia during the second half of the 19th century were not legally bound by labor contracts and what their actual status as laborers was are important questions for the history of American immigration. The migration occurred under economic conditions similar to those that had existed in an earlier era of American history, in which large numbers of foreign workers too poor to pay for their passage wished to migrate to enjoy American wage levels that were higher than those in their native countries. In the colonial period, these conditions gave rise to the institution of indentured servitude. This form of bound labor disappeared from the United States in the early nineteenth century, however, as reductions in the legal penaities for breach of labor contracts made the payment of substantial advances for labor too risky an investment for American employers. Both the weaknessof the provisions for enforcing the repayment of such advances that were written into the Act to Encourage Immigration in 1864 and the repeal of that law after only 4 years were symptomatic of the later unwillingness of Americans to endorse the revival of a system of contract labor.47 Existing American law therefore prevented the effective use of a legal indenture system when tens of thousands of Chinese laborers began to flow into San Francisco in the 1850s.The question of whether the Chinese typically worked under contracts of service for fixed periods or for only the repayment of debt is an elusive one; the very lack of direct evidence to settle the issue might suggest that the workers actually had agreed to a form of contract labor that was concealed from public view because it violated American law. The illegality of contract labor appears to have influenced the operation of the Chinese systemof immigration in a number of ways. Unlike in colonial America, labor importers in Wth-century California could not legally sell labor contracts to employers. As a result, the Chinese merchants who dominated the trade in imported labor, the Six Companies, appear to have retained the debts of the migrants themselves. The importers then effectively rented out the workers, often to large companies. The absence of a legal system of contract labor also meant that importers had to devise extralegal means of enforcing the repayment of the workers’ debts to them. When workers were rented out in large groups or gangs, the importer would send an agent to act as the foreman. This foreman often directly collected the workers’ wages year (California State Senate, 1878, p. lOl)-while others may simply have carried back savings of severd hundred dollars that would raise their economic status significantly in China. 47 Further evidence is afforded by the violent reaction that greeted the proposed legalization of contract labor by Chinese workers when it was introduced into the California legislature by Senator George Tingley in 1852; see Barth (1964, pp. 136-139); Jan&h (1971, pp. 6-

40

CLOUDANDGALENSON

from the employer, and was in a convenient position to withhold regular payments to the importer. For workers who left the gangs or worked in smaller businesses, the Six Companies devised other methods of ensuring such workers’ repayment. The major one stemmed from an agreement between the Six Companies and the steamship companies that served the West Coast; under threat of boycott by the merchants, the shipprs agreed not to sell a return ticket to China to any migrant who did not have a certificate from the Six Companies declaring him free from debt. The system of immigration used by the Chinese laborers who began to come to work in Cahfornia during the 1850swas therefore an institutional adaptation to the illegality of contract labor in the United States. The differences between the indenture system of colonial America and the Chinese immigration system ,of. the 19th century, with respect to both the locus of the worker’s debt during the term of his service and the methods by which the holder of the debt ensured his repayment, appear explicable as,responses to the differences in the legal status of contract labor between the colonial period and the late 19th century. Yet the illegality of the later system does not imply that it was based on coercion, for like the colonial immigration it might have been made up of migrants who voluntarily agreed to restrictive Iabor contracts for a term in order to enjoy the economic advantages of working in America. Although the activities of, the brokers &d employers who brought the Chinese to California were. not directly supervised by American courts, the high rates of return migration among the Chinese workers must’ have made information ,about conditions in America widely available in the harts where the importers .foUnd their recruits, and thus ‘must have served as a deterrent to widespread coercion or intimidation ‘of workers by the importers. The deftness with which Chinese’merchants devised extralegal methods of operating arrd enforcing a contract labor system that were acceptable to the workers meant that it was not until the exclusionary legislation of the, 1880s that American laws constituted an effective constraint on the importation of indentured Chinese laborers.48 48 This conclusion is of course not intended to imply tnat me Amencan legal system did not affect the way in which this system of immigration operated, for the legal system imposed limits on the system ‘in practice in significant ways beyond simply forbidding the use of legal: indentures. This may be why, for example,, the use ‘of Chinese workers in California could, not occur under the plantation conditions that, were employed with indentured Asian workers elsewhere in the Americas in the nineteenth century; e.g., see the descriptions in Stewart (1951), Laurence (1971) Corbitt (1971), and Tinker (1974). For an elaboration of this argument see 20 (1978, Chap. 2), who draws a sharp distinction between the migration of Chinese workers to Central and South Americas and that of the Chinese to California. Stewart (1951, pp. 21.5-216) makes an interesting comparison after describing the, contracts offered to Chinese workers in California when the Peruvian government attempted to reemit workers there in 1877. Noting that the conditions were significantly better than those under which laborers had previously been brought from China to Peru, he suggests this might be taken to indicate the advantages that the Chinese in California had enjoyed in comparison to their counterparts in Peru.

CHINESE

IMMIGRATION

AND CONTRACT

LABOR

41

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