| Show ORGANIZED CgUE CELESTIAL CRIME SAN FRANCISCO may 24 1893 one of the most interesting men in the united states at the present time is the hon john hn C quinn the united states collector of internal revenue for the southern district of california lie he is the man who has been making the fight in cali for the restriction of chinese L immigration and who had secretary carlisle not withdrawn the provision that file t he chinese must re igister themselves by photograph would by this time have practically i stopped the immense amount L of f smuggling which is continually going no go by the organized chinese of america probably no man in california knows as about the chinese as mr quinn god and certainly no one heretofore has had the nerve to enter into a day and night fight with them for the preservation of the american laws I 1 had a long chat with him the other day about these people and the wonderful power that they hold on the pacific al slope e said he se the people east of the rocky mountains do d not dot understand the chinese question as it exists here this is the battle ground of the races of the occident and the orient and san francisco L te iii the head of the government of the F chinese of america it is here that their rulers live and it is here that they look for law and punishment they for american laws and 4 S nave have no respect they do as their chinese rulers dictate they are by no meanes a poor people I 1 right here in san francisco the chinese own property which is worth more than ts coo and of the ready cash in circulation on the pacific coast they con tool at least they furnish more than one third of all the labor we ii ame and they have so woven themselves in and out through our industries that we are almost dependent upon them when en the geary act compelling the f chinese to register themselves was pass ed it was my duty to enforce the provis 9 of t the e bill ill I 1 saw that we had to keep p the chinese that were now here for a time at least and at the same time keep out the hundreds of thousands of coolies who were trying to get in As soon as the act was published a cry went up from the sand lots or the hoodlum element that the chinese must go at the same time there came word from tim the vineyards and districts of california that the wholesale deportation of them would ruin all such industries tp the result was the problem how W t keep out the coolies and keep in the present laborers THE CHINESE AS FRUIT GROWERS 1 61 I should think that you could have gotten f outside laborers lor for the vineyards Z I 1 said I 1 the ghigu thing has been tried replied mr abr quinn but t no workers seem to be tood good 6 as the down in presno not long ag ago 0 o three thousand negro men and women were brought fio in tennessee and alabama to work in the vineyards there the chinese were discharged and the negroes put in their places in less than a month there w was as not a negro able to work and ie he ere faigin ra agin growers having lost thousands 1 0 of dollars fell back again on the chreese Ch riese the picking of grapes in in california 6 oese ornia is by no means an easy job 11 tafe 0 sub pub irrigation of the soil and the lin which runs as hi high h as jr decrees in the shade mikes makes the work so terrible that only coolies can stand it and it witted wilted thi the negroes it is the same in in the orchards train loads of boys and girls were sent to the country to take the place of chinese fruit pickers and in two weeks the had houses full of sick children and the chinese again at work samong among their trees on the deserts in southern california and arizona the railroads have to use as section hands as white men cannot stand the terrible summer sun the chinese know that there ther e is a certain class of work here that they alone can do they are not fools and they ask and get as high wages as white laborers HOW THE AMERICAN CHINESE ARE RULED what are the six companies mr quinn I 1 asked the six companies was the reply constitutes the most wonderful organization am I 1 have ever heard of it rules the destinies of every chinese in america with an iron hand it has defied for years and is now openly defying the united states government during this present trouble it raised in m contributions of one dollar each from the chinese in less than thirty days and this money was asked for and and given with the understanding that it was to be used to defeat the operations of the geary law when were the six companies formed I 1 asked no white man knows 12 was the reply and I 1 doubt whether vry many chinese could tell you you cant fin find the records of the companies and no one but their presidents and secretaries know where they are their books are kept in a cypher which can be read only by themselves and all their work is done in secret the chinese in america you know come from six different districts of china they are in reality six different people having no more points in common than the different indian tribes I 1 am told that the six companies were organized at first to carry on the business between the different tribes of chinese in this country to settle their disputes without recourse to the courts punish the offenders take care of the sick and above all send bones of the chinese who died in in america back to china this they do today but they have grown from a small organization to a great power and great wealth they have the power of life and death over the here were I 1 to tell you that the six companies have sentenced not one but twenty men to death and that the sentence in every case has been executed 1 I would tell you only what such men as C B harton a newspaper reporter who has raj made work among the chinese 4 specialty for ten ye years ars has time and again published over his his own signature MILLIONS FOR CHINA how do these six companies stand in china they are recognized by the chinese government as the real power of that empire in this country the chinese consul general is an ex officio member of their executive committee and counsels with their president these companies have for years taken charge of the moneys of the chinese of the pacific slope from alaska to guatemala and of the united states and they have constantly scantly on deposit an enormous amount of m oney money i here their deposits in the banks of san francisco often run up as high as three millions of gold coin and within the last forty years they have shipped out of this country to china the enormous sum of in in goll gold this money was made up of the savings in of chinese C laborers and the profits of chinese Cs merchants and if today the chinese were sent out of the united states they would carry away with them more than of money my figures for these sums sum s are from the banking houses of san francisco los angeles portland and from the offices of the six companies they are an under estimate rather than an over estimate ORGANIZED CRIME IN SAN FRANCISCO how do these companies work I 1 asked they do their work openly to a great extent replied mr quinn they act as a court for the chinese and the celes bials come hundreds ot of miles here to san francisco to have the presidents of these companies settle their troubles there is no appeal from them the who refuse to obey them will certainly disappear and no one but the six companies will know what has become of them As to their business there is no doubt but they have been engaged for years in smuggling opium the he importing of chinese women tor for immoral purposes and the importing of chinese laborers in defiance of the exclusion act it is estimated that a handsome chinese girl of twelve to fourteen years of age is worth when landed in san francisco clear of the customs officers white men are hired to perjure themselves in swearing that these girls were born in america ame ric a return to china for an education and and then come home again hundreds of women have been bee n brought in this way and the six companies pay pa the perjurers per jurers defend and hire the lawyers to defend the cases the reporter harton hartanto Har tonto to whom I 1 have already referred ran two white men to the earth about six months ago they had just landed a chinese girl aged only ten years the men were arrested and the girl was found at a disreputable place where she had been taken immediately after being landed the pe pei jurers and the girl were bailed baided out of jail by money furnished by the six companies and a lawyer was paid by the same organization it is estimated that it cost the companies between five and six thousand dollars to land this girl and the companies stick to their own people to the last rhey spare no expense to accomplish their ends and they are honest in carrying out the most immoral of their contracts THE GREAT CHINESE LOTTERY how about the chinese lottery I 1 asked this is one of the greatest sources of revenue for the companies they run ruji lotteries in in every eve city and town in the united states zanada canada mexico british america and alaska the lottery is ii honest as far as the drawing is is concern ed it is a chinese affair and a man can win if he happens to mark the right number of spots on his ticket ten thousand dollars for the first payment of twenty five cents A drawing Js is held twice a day morning and evening and it is estimated that the six companies make a day out of it this lottery is corrupting san francisco the whites as well as the chinese engage in it T the he polke police have tried to break it up and both the city and state have passed laws against it but it does a greater business today than ever SOMETHING ABOUT THE HIGH BINDERS suppose a chinaman refuses to obe obey the six companies mr quinn said I 1 what happens then in the first place he is ostracised ostracized was the reply next begins the persecution that will ruin his business if he is a merchant or cost him his place if he is a laborer all help in time of sickness or financial trouble will be denied him and fourth his bones will have to lie after his death in alien soil instead of being boiled cleaned scraped and polished and sent back to china this means disbarment from the heaven of confucius forever so much for lawful persecution if his crime of dis obedi ence is is important enough it may cause his death and this will be brought about by the highbinder societies of the chinese or the tongs as they are called the six companies claim that they have no connection with the tongs but not long ago when two of these societies were engaged in a murderous war upon each other and the chinese consul general and the chinese merchants joined with the police to try to stop their murders the six companies refused to do a thing or give a dollar to hinder the crime crime or to punish the guilty FOR OBEYING THE LAW what are the high binders I 1 asked the chinese high binders was the reply is a chinaman who never works but lives off of the earnings ot of bad women and the proceeds of blackmail lack mail he need to have a mans secret to threaten him but he has merely to go to him and say unless you pay the highbinder society 00 or more as the case may be before saturday night we will kill you V there is no half way measure about it and should the merchant thus blackmailed cause the high binders arrest his doom is sealed the highbinder cares nothing for the law clothing himself with a coat of mail made either of fine steel chains or of twenty or thirty of newspaper quilted together and made into a garment that covers the entire body from the throat to the thighs he arms himself with a long revolver and knife and goes into the streets and waits for the man he is to kill when the man comes along he begins his work regardless of the presence of the tolice police and he finishes it though he may know now he is to hang for it the next day this sounds horrible but such things have been done in san francisco and will I 1 doubt not be done again only a few weeks ago one of th these se men named lee sing killed a chinaman chinaman named yik with three policemen in sight of him he had bad drawn the black bean of the society which sentenced him to kill this man yik and he killed him there were four men killed by the hi high h binders at this time they were killed killed because they had registered themselves and had urged other to do the same in other words to obey the laws of the united states the highbinder society held a meeting and drew lots as to who should kill the men and they were all killed according to the drawing do you wonder that the chinese are afraid to fight their own people rather than the laws of the united states I 1 have had opposition of this kind to contend with ever since I 1 have been in office out here I 1 have promised to protect the who eave have obeyed the laws but what can you do it is an outrage but how can you help it you have to fight organized crime and organized money 1 I suppose the chinese of this city are very wealthy yes there are at least twenty millionaires among them and the 27 chinese of san francisco have their their hands on all the chinese money in the united states As to rich men take for instance wong fat one of the twenty chinese millionaires of san francisco he owns a little store on dupont street and the room he occupies is only twenty by fifty but he has has branches in every town in southern southe T california and he has establishments in in denver salt lake kansas city omaha st louis chicago minneapolis st paul indianapolis and new york his branches in these other towns have smaller branches radiating over the whole country and he gets reports fron from every one of of them the chinese in in new york and washington report to the six companies he here reust just the same as the man who lives a few doors away from the companas comp anys offices wong fat himself controls more than 2 2000 laborers and the most of these have been een smuggled into this country it costs a chinaman to be smuggled into the united states and he pays this money over to the six companies out of his wages he is landed and rented out by the companies to one of these rich wong fat for instance at 20 20 a month wong fat berents him at 30 30 a month to some one else and of the money he earns the laborer gets only from six to eight dollars a month till the due the six companies is paid if he is sick however he is taken care of and i if he dies his bones are sent to china THE MISTAKE AS TO photographs 1 I think that the greatest mistake that has been made in in the geary act was the removing of the provision requiring photographs A chinaman will maim himself in anyway in order to fit any description needed and one of the m most ost skillful chinese doctors in the united states was employed to help along the s smuggling 1 ing this was dr la po tai who had a practice of something like io oooo a year about one third of which he got from white people la po tai I 1 ai made moles scars and hair lips to hold his countrymen in this country he died only a few weeks ago and he was buried with great honor the photographs however beat the being of nearly the same height and looking much the same they can make themselves correspond to other mens passports but they could not make themselves look like ot other hermens mens photographs the smuggling of them nets the chinese large fortunes every year a and nd I 1 dont wonder t that hat they fought the law what I 1 have said to you au is nothing in comparison with what I 1 i might say the whole situation is an outrage upon america and american civilization FRANK G CARPENTER |
