The Workman Vice Investigations
The following is an independent student report, not directly produced by The Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles.
April 2003
Michael J. Keane
The Workman Vice Investigations: A Case Study for the Anti-Chinese Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century
The Chinese-American experience in late nineteenth century Los Angeles was characterized by racism and marginalization. In contrast to more recent stereotyping as part of the Asian American "model minority," Chinese Americans in early Los Angeles were viewed as culturally strange, prone to dissolute living, and dangerous as competitors in a limited job market. Primary sources from the late nineteenth century describe the Chinese-American population as an "alien" culture filled with social ills like prostitution and gambling. Thus, when Mayor William H. Workman embarked on an investigation into vice in Los Angeles in the spring of 1888, it is not surprising that the investigation turned naturally to Chinese-Americans and especially the apparent predisposition to gambling in the Chinese American community. Interview transcripts from Workman's investigations highlight the discrimination that had become commonplace in the city and nationwide. The exposure of a police-run structure of bribery and corruption provides evidence for the continued exploitation and marginalization of immigrant Chinese. Additionally, excerpts from the interviews show the effects of Chinese-American stereotyping in the Euro-American community. The investigation provides an excellent case study for the concrete effects of a city-, state-, and nation-wide anti-Chinese movement in the late nineteenth century.
A powerful anti-Chinese movement in Los Angeles, the state of California, and the nation as a whole characterized the late nineteenth century. Suspicion and misunderstanding of Chinese culture emerged as prominent factors in the national movement. Additionally, the competition for jobs in a limited labor market engendered hatred among Euro-American immigrants for Chinese-Americans who were willing to work for lower wages. Greenwood describes the "friction between the Chinese and Euro-American working class populations," noting "some Euro-Americans resented what they perceived as job or commercial competition. Others simply feared what they did not understand: a different culture" Both factors created a context for the anti-Chinese movement that perpetuated ignorance and stereotypes.
The most prominent contributing factor to the national and Californian anti-Chinese movement of the late nineteenth century was the desire to eliminate Chinese-American competition in limited labor markets. As Roger Daniels notes, the completion of the Union-Central Pacific Railroad in 1869 created an enormous surplus of Chinese-American laborers that descended upon the California job market. The senate ratification of the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, which had commended Chinese-American immigration "for the purpose of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents" soon met with vigorous opposition, especially from constituents in California. Yet it was not simply job competition that worsened tensions between the different working classes, but the willingness of Chinese-Americans to work for low wages. Thus, employers preferred to hire the cheaper Chinese labor, and for the Chinese-American laborers, "the low level of subsistence allowed them to tolerate their meager wages" Employers, and not Chinese-Americans attempting to make a living, were clearly at fault for driving down wages in the limited job market of the late nineteenth century. Yet Chinese immigrants were a simpler target for racial hatred. The racist stereotypes that emerged during this period are thus informed by an image of the Chinese-American as a foreign meddler.
Euro-American anger over the competition with Chinese immigrants for jobs was heightened by a perception of Chinese culture as "alien" and incompatible with traditional American social structures. An editorial in Harper's Weekly in October of 1879 notes that while "the traditional policy of the country has been to encourage unrestricted immigration," Chinese immigration must be restricted, since "the European easily blends with the American, but the Asiatic remains an absolute alien." The editorial goes on to emphasize, "The new-comers are trained by centuries of want to live in a poverty and to be satisfied with wages which would barbarize our own laboring class." The fact that Chinese-Americans were forced to live in poverty due to the inadequacy of the wages offered to them is overlooked. Such criticism and misunderstanding of Chinese-American culture on a national level pervaded the anti-Chinese movement. Stereotyping of Chinese-Americans as predisposed to poverty and dissolute living was spurred by tension over job competition, and simultaneously encouraged the violent xenophobia of the late nineteenth century.
Political cartoons of the late nineteenth century offer a unique perspective on the anti-Chinese movement. In the April 1882 "E Pluribus Unum (Except the Chinese)," Thomas Nast portrays an American soldier guarding the "Temple of Liberty" against a Chinese immigrant who is shabbily dressed, carrying only a small bundle of possessions, with an exaggerated ponytail. In the March 1886 "Justice for the Chinese," Nast shows Lady Justice balancing her scales with the bodies of lynched Chinese-Americans, while vigilante bands wander in the background. In February of 1879, Nast's most sarcastic cartoon on the topic shows a Native American telling a Chinese American "Pale face 'fraid you crowd him out, as he did me," with the title "Every Dog Has His Day." The sharp awareness of the injustices of the anti-Chinese movement that Nast evokes in his cartoons seems to have been rare in the widespread xenophobia of the time.
Late-nineteenth-century Los Angeles provided a fertile ground for the racial hatred and stereotyping which had pervaded the nation. The presence of a limited job market and a growing Chinese-American community invited racial discrimination and outright violence. Selections from the Los Angeles Times illustrate the presence of such discrimination. In the daily police report from 6 April 1888, it is recorded that "Ah Hung from San Gabriel got $15 for carrying a big gun in his inside pocket and threatening to use it on another heathen." In an article from 8 March 1888, a man questioned about the extent of gambling in Los Angeles noted, "oh, as to the Chinese tan games, I know nothing. They may be running…I don't count the tan games when I speak of gambling; I mean white men only."
Chinese-Americans in Los Angeles were thus caught in an untenable position as objects of racial hatred and put in a vicious cycle of discrimination. Euro-Americans resented the job competition and sought to drive out Chinese labor, but "employers consistently sided with the foreign laborers because they were a financial asset." Since the available work paid such meager wages, Chinese-Americans were forced to live in poverty-a poverty that was identified by Euro-American racism as endemic to their culture itself. A Harper's Weekly editorial from April 1882 identifies this cycle: "At one moment every man, woman, and child on the Pacific coast loathes and detests the leprous interlopers, and the next the same protesting people neglect the honest American and entrust the care of their homes and of their children to the leprous pariahs because they can be hired more cheaply.""
Excellent indicators of the plight of Chinese-Americans in the face of the anti-Chinese movement are selections from "An English-Chinese Phrase Book". Immigrants learned such valuable phrases as "he took it from me by force," "he cheated me out of my wages," and "the immigration will soon be stopped."
Far from simply being confined to rhetoric, the racism of the anti-Chinese movement in Los Angeles took violent form several times. The most prominent of these occurrences was the October 1871 "Chinese Massacre," in which an argument between two Chinese immigrants quickly escalated into "the first sizable mob riot on the Pacific Coast." Greenwood notes that it was the wounding of a Euro-American and police solicitation of the aid of the mob that incited the violence that left nineteen Chinese-Americans dead. In a 1934 account, Mayor Workman's son, Boyle, would optimistically state that "only the intervention of the city marshals prevented a Chinese battle in the streets," though Bonner and Greenwood give the modern interpretation that police indiscretion spurred on the mob. A second suspicious act was the burning of a significant part of the Chinese immigrant community in 1887, a fire which forced the relocation of "Chinatown" further east, removed from the city center. Bonner cites the Los Angeles Times from the period as describing that the fire was generally assumed to be arson, and premeditated as racial violence against the Chinese-American community.
In this charged environment, it is not surprising that stereotypes of Chinese-American social behavior became ingrained in the consciousness of Euro-Americans, especially those in Los Angeles who lived in close proximity to Chinese immigrant communities. Bonner notes that in this atmosphere, the anti-Chinese movement focused particularly on perceived social ills such as prostitution and gambling. As late as 1935, Boyle Workman noted "there were about 5,000 Chinamen in Chinatown, inveterate gamblers themselves." Yet gambling, a simple social vice in the eyes of Euro-Americans, became a point of great contention for Chinese-Americans living in Los Angeles.
Efforts to address a perceived gambling problem in the Chinese community of Los Angeles soon grew into a struggle to retain cultural practice among Chinese Americans. Roberta Greenwood describes the prominent place of gambling in Chinese-American culture, noting that it transcended leisure activity to become "an organized structure demonstrating a process by which Chinese Americans defended the legitimacy of an enterprise and control of their own community." In a marginalized existence perpetuated by meager wages and made more difficult by racism, gambling (among other perceived social ills) occupied a prominent place in Chinese-American culture. Ronald Takaki notes that one waiter at a Chinese restaurant, when asked about his free time, responded "When I no work? I sleep. Sometimes gamble a little." Gambling, which was widely practiced and overlooked in Los Angeles in the 1870's, came under investigation in the 1880's. Consequently, "Chinese operators actively defended the legitimacy of their activities and their right to continue: they defined an acceptable level of police intervention, paid for protection, and contributed to political parties." The struggle emerged as a response to the growing anti-Chinese movement of the late nineteenth century.
In this context of a national and local anti-Chinese movement, the records of Mayor William H. Workman's investigations in gambling and police corruption in the spring of 1888 are particularly interesting. The investigation is remarkable enough for exposing widespread corruption in the early Los Angeles Police Department, extending even to Chief of Police Thomas Cuddy. It is equally significant as a case study of the local anti-Chinese movement, and provides concrete evidence for exploitation and stereotyping in Los Angeles.
The primary sources available for the Workman vice investigation center around the transcripts of six interviews conducted between 6 March and 11 April of 1888 in the Mayor's office. The men present for the interviews vary, but Mayor Workman and Mr. Humphreys, a fellow member of the Board of Police Commissioners, are constant. In each session, the interviewee is questioned about his knowledge of reports that policemen are accepting bribes and abusing their power in the community, especially in relation to the widespread gambling that Workman intended to expose and discourage. The interviewees report that officers who are assigned to patrol areas in which gambling is known to occur often are bribed to prevent police raids on gambling houses. Additionally, a complex hierarchy in the Chinese-American community is exposed in which a prominent Chinese-American acts as a buffer by accepting payment from gambling houses and funneling money to officers on the street and even Chief Cuddy as insurance against police raids on the gambling houses. An examination of the interviews in the light of the local anti-Chinese movement reveals two major themes: exploitation and stereotyping.
Exploitation of the Chinese-American community emerges as the most prominent feature of the interview transcripts. The first interview, on 6 March 1888, highlights the police exploitation of the Chinese-American community by exposing the hierarchy of bribery among the gambling houses. A man identified as "Walter Fong" describes the structure of gambling within the Chinese-American community. Fong stresses in broken English that the main concern of the gamblers is to preserve their way of life unmolested: "They all say if anybody, or anyone, to go to the city, or anybody, they would rather to pay a certain number of money in a week, or in a month, to be a bribe, or license-anything that they can run tan games, free from the arrest."
Fong's testimony describes that for the Chinese-American gamblers, any process by which they can continue the gambling is acceptable. Thus, they naturally turn to paying thirty dollars per week to a man who claims that he can offer protection from "the arrest". A lack of knowledge about city government and police department structure in the Chinese-American community leads to a perception that this bribe is synonymous to a gambling license. When the Chief of Police and police officers are directly involved with the bribes, it is not unlikely that the gambling-house operators considered the bribe system to act effectively as a licensing system. Indeed, the gambling house operators had no reason to seek any other type of protection if bribery and corruption functioned effectively.
The gambling-house hierarchy and system of exploitation are more clearly explained in the interview of 26 March, which involves four Chinese-Americans described as "Ah Sing, Ah Him, Ah Mow," and "Ah Fong." The four residents explain that the thirty dollars per week are paid to a mysterious individual named "Tang Woh," who promises protection from police raids and pays the jail bond for anyone imprisoned that had paid for protection, as Ah Fong and Ah Him relate:
Ah Fong: He make arrangement to get thirty dollar every week for him to fix up everything all right-the Chief and everything like that.
Ah Him: All the officers.
Mr. Humphreys: All the police officers?
Ah Him: All the police officers.
As Greenwood notes, "it was the business leaders-in this case, gambling operators-who had the language and political skills necessary to exert power and interact with the municipal and police authorities in defense of an activity important to the community." Yet this system also perpetuated a distinctly exploitative structure. Enterprising men like Tang Woh could use their English skills and knowledge of their community to work with police officials to perpetuate the problem in order to keep open the flow of bribery money. Woh took advantage of "an activity important to the community" in order to make money-an activity which corrupt police were happy to ignore so long as the payments from men like Woh continued. The exploitation further marginalized the typical Chinese immigrant: "While merchants and professional gamblers grew steadily richer from the profits which these means of escape in Chinatown produced, the picture of the losing indentured emigrant appeared again and again." Boyle Workman, in recalling his father's vice investigations, describes a man strikingly similar to descriptions of Tang Woh: "the town had a boss who was as powerful as any Tammany leader. He would not take anti-gambling laws seriously."
The exploitative structure of bribery and corruption exposed in the interview transcripts was perpetuated deliberately by a police force eager to benefit from the presence of such "social ills" in Chinatown. In the 6 March interview with Walter Fong, Colonel Ayres and Detective Emil Harris questioned him about the nature of the protection offered through bribery:
Ayres: Well, those fellows they arrested last Saturday-did they pay?
Fong: Oh, the Chinaman paid.
Mr. Harris: No, no, you don't understand.
Fong: Yes.
Harris: Did they pay in the pool?
Fong: Yes.
Ayres: Then they were taken in notwithstanding they were protected?
Fong: They make believe that they protected them; but then they were arrested.
Fong's testimony illustrates that even while the flow of bribery money continued, the police would use occasional raids to intimidate the population and ensure that the gambling house operators realized the importance of the hierarchy of corruption. Workman himself had identified the blatant corruption in the police force, noting "zealous officers find that they do not advance their interests by carrying out the orders of the police board to raid games wherever they find them." Chief Cuddy had replied in a later news article, "to carry out orders of that kind would tend to demoralize the force." The Chief had even appeared before the city council on 3 April 1888 and "asked that the salaries...for three officers employed to work on the tan games in Chinatown, be ordered paid." In the interview transcripts there is very little evidence that Chief Cuddy encountered difficulty in keeping the bribery structure in place.
The interview transcripts also illustrate a type of exploitation in which the police force seems to demand bribes only from Chinese gambling houses, and a type of licensing system is only discussed for white gambling. In the 6 March interview, Humphreys inquires if "the Chinamen speak of the white gamblers doing the same thing," to which Fong responds that he hears nothing of the white gambling. The prominent Euro-American gambling structure at the time appears to have been poker games at the "Turf and Grain Exchange," as one resident described: "Of course poker is played-it always has been, and always will be, and I don't believe that it is against the law to play poker anyway; if it is, it should not be." In a conversation with interviewee Pete Donelick on 6 March, Harrison Gray Otis had asked his opinion, "from the number of games of various kinds-white games-that would probably run if they were licensed." Later in the interview, Otis asks again, "with reference to this Turf business...if the council puts that in shape, and allows it to run, and considers it legal, would there be probably others will want to run?" The evidence is intriguing because it makes no mention of possibly licensing the Chinese gambling houses for legal gambling, though in the transcripts Walter Fong relates that the Chinese gambling houses are interested in paying legitimate city authorities for legal protection. Otis goes so far as to specify, "white games." Additionally, there is no mention in the interviews of police officers raiding "white games" or perpetuating the same cycle of bribery and corruption as they were in Chinatown.
The system of exploitation described in the interview transcripts creates a losing situation for the average Chinese-American in Los Angeles. Anti-Chinese movements in the city had provoked an investigation into the perceived Chinatown gambling problem. Yet gambling had become an escape for many marginalized immigrants living in poverty. In the resulting compromise, men like Tang Woh benefit from the desire of their fellow immigrants to seek respite from extremely difficult lives, while police officers benefit from the enterprising nature of men like Woh. Yet Chinese-Americans living in poverty continue to lose their meager wages to the gambling houses.
In addition to describing exploitative structures of bribery and corruption, the Workman investigation interview transcripts illustrate stereotyping of Chinese-Americans in Los Angeles. In the 6 March interview, Otis asks Walter Fong to verify that the Chinese immigrants consider gambling "a kind of national pastime...they have been used to playing it all their lives," and inquires if "they consider it just the same as drinking coffee...or working in the garden." While gambling had certainly become a prominent part of leisure-time escapes for marginalized Chinese immigrants, Otis' comments point out the common Euro-American perception that vices such as gambling defined the lives of immigrant Chinese and were natural parts of a dissolute culture.
The investigations into vice and corruption commissioned by Mayor Workman in the spring of 1888 were sincere attempts to improve the young city of Los Angeles, and certainly there was sufficient corruption in the police force to occupy investigators for years. Yet the revelation of the complex gambling and bribery structure within the Chinese-American community emerges as a more interesting aspect of the investigations. Examining the transcripts of the interviews in the context of a local, state-, and nationwide anti-Chinese movement reveals that the investigation serves as a case study for concrete implementation of discriminatory sentiment. All levels of the Los Angeles Police Department acted in concert with enterprising members of the Chinese community to perpetuate a cycle of bribery and corruption which ensured the flow of illegal money to the police just as surely as it guaranteed the continued marginalization of Chinese-American immigrants. Comments by city government officials during the interviews show the extent to which stereotypes of Chinese culture and social norms had pervaded the Euro-American mindset. The true significance of an examination of the Workman investigations lies not only in revealing the staggering corruption in the police force, but also in exposing police attempts to marginalize Chinese immigrants and exploit their weaknesses.
The modern portrayal of Asian Americans as the "model minority" obscures the racial hatred and discrimination that Chinese Americans were subjected to in the late nineteenth century. Euro-Americans who feared Chinese influence in America and Chinese competition for a limited number of jobs fostered the widespread idea that "the Chinese were dirty and disease-ridden people." Chinese immigrants to Los Angeles and other urban areas faced a daunting task in simply making a living on inadequate wages and intermittent work due to a limited labor demand. Discrimination on a local and national level only exacerbated their difficulty in adjusting to new life in America. Gambling, among other perceived vices, offered the immigrant a chance to connect with neighbors and seek respite from a difficult life. Yet when a corrupt police force sensed an opportunity to make money by exploiting the Chinese-American community, even gambling became a tool by which Chinese immigrants were marginalized. In this way an examination of the Workman investigations is significant in highlighting one of many periods of discrimination in the history of Los Angeles. For a city that is distinguished by its multicultural identity, the history of Los Angeles is marred by racial tension. The transcripts of the Workman investigations offer a unique view into one of the first of these periods of racial tension.
End Notes
Greenwood, Roberta S. Down by the Station: Los Angeles Chinatown, 1880-1933. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology, 1996. p. 11.
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle: Washington UP, 1988. p. 37.
Daniels, p. 38.
Bonner, Dean. "The Anti-Chinese Movement in Los Angeles." Gum Saan Journal. June, 2000. Vol. 23. p. 2.
Editorial. Harper's Weekly, 18 October 1879. p. 822. Database on-line. Available from http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/4ItemsByIndex/AntiChineseTopPage.htm. 21 April 2003.
Editorial. Harper's Weekly, 18 October 1879. p. 822. Database on-line.
"E Pluribus Unum (Except the Chinese)." Harper's Weekly. 1 April 1882. Database on-line.
Available from http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/4ItemsByIndex/AntiChineseTopPage.htm. 21 April 2003. All three political cartoons referenced here are available in the appendix to the paper, following the endnotes.
"Justice for the Chinese." Harper's Weekly. 27 March 1886. Database on-line.
"Every Dog has His Day." Harper's Weekly. 8 February 1879. Database on-line.
"The Police Court." Los Angeles Times. 6 April 1888.
"Thinks There Is No Gambling." Los Angeles Times. 8 March 1888.
Bonner, p. 3.
Editorial. Harper's Weekly. April 1, 1882. p. 194. Database on-line.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Distant Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 1989. p. 128.
Bonner, p. 8.
Greenwood, p. 10.
Workman, Boyle. The City that Grew: 1840-1936. Los Angeles: Southland Publishing Co., 1935. p. 145.
Bonner, p. 8.
Bonner, p 3.
Workman, p. 226.
Greenwood, p. 142.
Takaki, p. 127.
Greenwood, p. 143.
Transcript of 6 March 1888 interview of Walter Fong and Pete Donelick by Mayor William H. Workman, Mr. Humphreys of the City Council, and Harrison Gray Otis. (Typescript, los Angeles). Workman Family Papers. CSLA-9. Center for the Study of Los Angeles Archives. Loyola Marymount University. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Transcript of 26 March 1888 interview of Ah Sing, Ah Him, Ah Mow, and Ah Fong by William H. Workman, Mr. Humphreys, and Det. Emil Harris. (Typescript, Los Angeles). Workman Family Papers. Center for the Study of Los Angeles Archives. Loyola Marymount University. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Greenwood, p. 143.
Bonner, p. 3.
Workman, p. 227.
Interview transcript. Workman Family Papers. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Untitled and undated. Newspaper clipping, found in William H. Workman scrapbook, "1887, Extracts from Los Angeles daily newspapers." David Workman Collection. Los Angeles. The articles cited in footnotes no. 30 and 31 are included in the scrapbook but provide no information as to date of publication or newspaper.
Untitled and undated. Newspaper clipping, found in William H. Workman scrapbook, "1887, Extracts from Los Angeles daily newspapers."
Untitled. Los Angeles Times. 3 April 1888. The excerpt is part of an article that is untitled, as occurred with many of the articles from the early L.A. Times that were researched for this project.
"Thinks There Is No Gambling." Los Angeles Times. 8 March 1888.
Interview transcript. Workman Family Papers. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Interview transcript. Workman Family Papers. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Interview transcript. Workman Family Papers. Series 3, box 9, folder 8.
Bonner, p. 4.
Appendix A: Political Cartoons
Harper's Weekly. Database on-line. Available from
http://immigrants.harpweek.com/chineseamericans/4itemsbyindex/antichinesetoppage.htm
"E Pluribus Unum (Except the Chinese)" 1 April 1882
"Every Dog has His Day" 8 February 1789
