The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [212]
72 two-thirds of the vegetables: Jack Chen, The Chinese of America, p. 84; Origins & Destinations, p. 437.
72 reclamation of the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta: C. D. Abbott, a landowner who employed Chinese laborers, asserted that “white men refused to work up to their knees in the water, slime and filth”; Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region (Capitola, Calif.: Capitola Book Company, 1985), p. 286.
73 left the Chinese behind, to scream out at passing ships: Julian Dana, The Sacramento: River of Gold (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), pp. 160-64, as cited in Sucheng Chan, “The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1900,” in Genny Lim, ed., The Chinese American Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies (1980), p. 71.
73 “tule shoe”: Sylvia Sun Minnick, Samfow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy (Fresno, Calif.: Panorama West Publishing, 1988), p. 69; Jack Chen, p. 87.
73 two or three dollars an acre: Tzu-Kuei Yen, p. 103.
73 seventy-five dollars an acre: Ibid.
73 hundreds of millions: The value of Chinese labor to the construction of the railroad and the reclamation of the tule land was estimated to be $289,700,000 in 1876-1877 dollars. Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, eds., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), p. 56. Also Jeff Gillenkirk and James Motlow, Bitter Melon: Inside America’s Last Rural Chinese Town (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), p. 9.
73 lice and fleas: Robert A. Nash, “The ‘China Gangs’ in the Alaska Packers Association Canneries, 1892-1935,” The Life, Influence and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776-1960, Proceedings/Papers of the National Conference held at the University of San Francisco, July 10, 11, 12, 1975, sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1976), p. 273.
74 more than three thousand Chinese: Thomas W. Chinn, H. Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, p. 42. By 1881, 3,100 Chinese cannery workers were employed by Columbia River canneries.
74 “Only Chinese men were employed in the work”: Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1923), pp. 33-34, as cited in Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942, p. 25.
74 “not so much like men”: Chris Friday, p. 30.
74 “as with the whip”: Ibid., p. 40.
74 debone up to two thousand fish: Ibid., p. 30.
74 “the Iron Chink”: Ibid., p. 84.
75 special four-dollar-a-month fishing license: Jack Chen, p. 100; Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 112-14.
75 withhold fishing licenses: Arthur F. McEvoy, pp. 112-13; Sylvia Sun Minnick, p. 74.
75 almost a quarter of all of the Chinese: Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Little, Brown, 1989; reprinted by Penguin Books, 1990), p. 79.
76 Description of San Francisco in the 1870s: Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. xxxvii.
76 “narrow, revoltingly dirty”: Ibid., p. xxxviii.
77 nearly half of the labor force in the city’s four major industries: Benson Tong, Unsubmissive Women, p. 76.
77 80 percent of the workers in woolen mills: Jack Chen, p. 111. According to Jack Chen, 80 percent of the shirtmakers in San Francisco were also Chinese.
77 90 percent of the cigar makers: Stephan Thernstrom, ed., Ann Orlov, managing ed., Oscar Handlin, consulting ed., Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980), p. 219.
77 had five thousand highly successful Chinese businessmen: Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America, p. 59.
77 owned half the city’s cigar