Chinatown Declared a Nuisance! - American History, 1493-1945

“Yellow Peril” and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

1880

The Workingmen’s Party of California, active largely in the 1870s and 1880s was an organization whose primary aim was to highlight and protest what it saw as the “Chinese Problem” in the United States. In 1880 it released this pamphlet, in which they published their findings upon a visit to Chinatown in San Francisco, assigned blame for the situation and suggested their own radical solution.

Chinese immigration to the United States had boomed as Chinese workers were drawn firstly by the California gold rush of 1848–1855 and later to work on large labor projects such as the transcontinental railway. The need for cheap labor was such that American employers actively encouraged Chinese migration. They sent hiring agencies to China in order to set up ticketing systems where by those who could not afford their initial passage across the Pacific could go for free and pay it back out of their future wages.

A large majority of early Chinese immigrants settled in San Francisco where a “Chinatown” became established in the heart of the city. From the 1850s onwards, and as the gold became harder to find, this rapidly became a bone of contention with many locals and European immigrants, many fearing “Yellow Peril” a popular sentiment that Chinese immigrants were a danger to the Western World.

The findings published in this leaflet were damning, describing severe overcrowding, overflowing sewage systems, and warning of dangerous open tinder fires. They vividly paint a gruesome picture: “at every step the filth and slim oozes up through the cracks in the flooring, while the stench of decaying vegetables and human urine is simply and inexpressibly horrible” and come to the conclusion that “Chinese cancer must be cut out of our city”.

Despite the influx of migrants from all over the globe, most notably in terms of numbers from European counties, the Chinese were the first nationality to be excluded from immigration to the United States based solely on their nationality. In 1882 the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Act prohibited the immigration of all Chinese laborers to the United States and stopped any person of the Chinese race from becoming a citizen, even if they were a citizen of another country for example Britain. It was originally intended to last for ten years however, in 1902 it was renewed and stayed in force until the Magnus Act in December 1943 at a time when China had become an ally during the Second World War.

This act began a new chapter in American History, where the United States government began to tighten its grip on the flow of migrants to its shores. In 2012 the United States Congress passed a resolution expressing regret for its Chinese Exclusion Act.