A Thousand Cuts: Or, How Soo Hoo Doo Got Run Out of Town. (2024)

Police whistles broke the peace of a quiet Sunday morning in thesummer of 1887. Customers collecting their finished bundles from theChinese laundries along Philadelphia's Race Street jumped aside aspolice rushed from door to door. In rapid-fire order the police chargedYee Hop, John Lee, Hop Lee, and Kim Wah with Sunday closing violationsand slapped each with a $4 fine. When the laundrymen refused to pay, thepolice marched them to Magistrate Eisenbrown who threatened them withjail if they did not comply by the end of the week.

Word spread quickly. The next evening over sixty men--nearly everyChinese laundryman in downtown Philadelphia--met to plan a course ofaction. For more than two hours, one after another shared stories ofpolice harassment. In the end, they retained a lawyer to petition JudgeBregy for an appeal. Bregy granted the appeal but postponed argumentsuntil the fall.

The next Sunday the men opened their laundries as usual. Soonafterward a customer entered the shop of Sam Chung, begging Chung tofinish a shirt so he could take his best girl to the park. Chungdidn't work Sundays but eventually he yielded to the man'spersistent pleas. The moment Chung picked up his iron the police cameand arrested him.

Chung's Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Downing, was visiting andwitnessed the entire episode. Short, stout, blackhaired, and determined,she erupted in fury at the policemen and accompanied Chung, onlysixteen, and the arresting officer to Magistrate Eisenbrown'soffice. When Eisenbrown imposed a fine, Downing exploded."That's right! That's right! Persecute the poor Chinamen.You can only see on one side of the street. You can see the poor Chinesewith their laundries open, but you can't see the white groceriesand grog shops and cigar stores and candy stores!" Eisenbrown triedto calm her but she would not calm. She denounced the magistrate, thelieutenant, and the entire police force. When Eisenbrown insisted hewould fine Chung $4 and costs, Downing cried, "Don't pay thema cent. It's downright robbery." "I won't pay nofine," replied a resolute Chung. (1) Chung was determined to stayand fight but Soo Hoo Doo (aka Mon Yuen Soo, 1865-1914), anotherPhiladelphia laundryman and manager of a prosperous bazaar, decided itwas time to move on. This is his story.

Doo moved to the rapidly-growing community of Scranton innortheastern Pennsylvania where he founded a laundry and import store.In the early 1890s he brought his wife from China as one of the firstChinese women to live in the state. (2) The couple soon had fourchildren, all born in the United States. They established close tieswith prominent members of the Scranton community and prospered. Then, inthe violence surrounding the Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, Doobecame the target of incessant police harassment. To safeguard hisfamily, he removed them to China and returned alone to manage hisbusiness interests. The harassment intensified. He moved to nearbyWilkes-Barre, but after a few peaceful years, police harassmentcommenced there as well. Doo hired lawyers, assembled witnesses, andfought extortion efforts by the Black Hand, the police, and plaincrooks. His exertions proved futile. He was tried three times and thrownin jail before charges against him were finally dropped. In despair hereturned to Philadelphia and died at the young age of forty-nine.

I tell Doo's story--parts of it at least--in Doo's ownvoice. Since few Chinese Americans of the era left personal records,this fact alone makes Doo's story a valuable addition tonineteenth-century American history. Most Chinese were illiterateimmigrants without the time or resources for journal-keeping orextensive letter-writing. They were men whose families were largelyforbidden from joining them, so few had American-born children to telltheir tales. (3) As targets of harsh laws limiting their entry andconduct, many understandably avoided the spotlight. Even census takersappear to have undercounted them. (4)

Although Doo was able to read and write, he does not appear to haveleft a diary. Doo's children were born in the United States, yethis offspring did not leave written records. In place of thesetraditional sources, what we have instead are stories Doo placed in thelocal newspapers. Perhaps hoping to distance himself from uglystereotypes in wide circulation at the time, Doo invited the press tomeet his family and to observe his business and cultural practices. Dooand his family were upstanding members of the Scranton community. Hewanted his neighbors to know it and the newspapers to report it. Therecent digitization of historical newspapers together with censusrecords, city directories, wills, ship manifests, and similar documentsmakes it possible for the first time to reconstruct and verify the storyDoo told of himself.

Doo offers an inspiring example of Chinese assimilation as early asthe nineteenth century and of one mans heroic efforts to defend himselfand his family against racial violence. Doo's story is also apowerful reminder of the caustic, sometimes deadly, effects of hatespeech, especially hate speech encouraged and legitimated by powerfulpublic figures.

ANTI-CHINESE VIOLENCE

Police harassment was hardly the most intense form of hostilitydirected against the Chinese. Anti-Chinese riots, massacres, raids, androundups murdered many hundreds and injured and uprooted many thousands.Anti-Chinese union rules barred the Chinese from virtually all branchesof manufacturing. An anti-Chinese amendment to the Californiaconstitution prohibited corporations and governmental agencies fromemploying Chinese workers. Anti-Chinese municipal statutes outlawedlaundries in wood-frame buildings, targeted persons carrying bundles onshoulder poles, and limited residential density. (5)

Banned from most legitimate work, some enterprising Chinese openedwhor*houses, gambling joints, and opium dens, exposing themselves toother forms of violence. Whites who frequented these vice spots wereoften drunk and disorderly. Fights were frequent. The rival syndicateswho operated them hired armed thugs to protect their turf. Theirrivalries periodically erupted into wars that left Chinatown streets redwith blood. (6)

Solitary laundrymen living outside of Chinatowns were subject torandom attacks by ruffians emboldened by the vitriolic anti-Chineserhetoric of the day. One of them threw a stone into the window of WingLee's laundry in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. The stone upset the stove,broke Lee's lamp, and ignited a blaze that set the laundry on fire.Lee was forced to flee for his life and lost almost $1,500 in bills,equipment, and structural damage. (7) A stranger came into SamWing's laundry, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, swept clothing onto thefloor, overturned the starch pail, knocked down the stove, and crashed achair down over Wing's head, leaving him bloodied and dazed. (8)

Police harassment may seem inconsequential in comparison with theseacts, but it was ubiquitous and unrelenting. Police harassed Chineselaundrymen in New York when that city stepped up its enforcement ofSunday closing laws. (9) In Oakland, California, police harassment wasso outrageous that even the mainstream Oakland Tribune mocked it.

 In 1875, a certain Ah Sam was arrested for peddling without a license: "His vegetables are lying on the floor of the police Court office, while businessmen throughout the city are going ahead as usual, very few of whom have taken out a license." ... "Ah Dong has been arrested on suspicion of being a Chinaman." In 1887 a police officer set out to arrest Wing Hop, who ran an unlicensed laundry. Wing Hop was not at home, so the officer arrested another man "at random," and booked him as Wing Hop, "on the theory that there is little difference in the appearance of Chinamen." (10)

When laundryman Soon Hing challenged San Francisco's Sundayclosing law, arguing that its sole purpose was to harm the Chinese, hiscase became a test of the constitutionality of such provisions and wentall the way to the Supreme CourL. Hing lost. (11)

Soo Hoo Doo's story illustrates the deleterious effects ofpervasive police harassment of Chinese in the relatively small cities ofScranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. These cities were home to onlya small number of hardworking, law-abiding Chinese American laundrymenand restaurateurs. These men made no effort Lo "steal" thejobs of coal miners, machinists, or railroad workers. They and theirfamilies gave the lie lo the argument that the Chinese could notassimilate. They had to assimilate. There were only thirty-six of themin a community of almost half a million. Yet abusive racist speech haddefined the Chinese as undesirable and the police harassed them with avengeance. Like the Chinese capital punishment lingchi, "death by athousand cuts," no single assault was lethal. Done repeatedly,however, they led to a painful end. In China, the Qing dynasty wasabandoning lingchi to better align its judicial system with Westernsensibilities. (12) Through the practice of police harassment ofChinese, America imported the practice, at least metaphorically.

POLICING BECOMES POLITICAL

Police harassment originated in Ehe creation of formal urban policedepartments in nineteenth-century American cities. Before suchdepartments, civil order was kept by part-time, self-employed constablesand night watchmen who worked for fees and brought their cases directlyto the courts. As cities grew in size, mayors replaced these part-timerswith hierarchically organized, uniformed, and salaried police officerswho reported directly to the mayor. These policemen were not trained inthe law. Instead, new recruits "heard a brief speech from ahigh-ranking officer, received a hickory club, a whistle, and a key tothe call box, and were sent out on the street to work with anexperienced officer." (13)

The regular salaries attached to the posts made police positionsattractive political plums. Newly elected mayors typically fired the oldguard and redistributed the posts among their own supporters. Mayorsused their police to deter unsympathetic voters and attack opponents.Many operated rackets that generated extra income for the police and forthe politicians for whom they worked. They fined or arrested those whor*fused to cooperate. "Reform" may ors often authorizedpractices that were just as harmful for minorities. Their crackdowns onthe saloons, gambling halls, and prostitution rings that thrived underracketeers' protection gave the police license to harass anyonethey deemed undesirable. In the xenophobic atmosphere of thelate-nineteenth century, both "bosses" and"reformers" might target the Chinese. Policing had becomepolitical. (14)

Against this background Doo's choice of Scranton seemscurious. Scranton was home to labor leader Terrance Powderly, a manhistorian Stanford Lyman called "one of the most vitriolic andvituperative of the labor movement's Sinophobes." (15) It was,arguably, a national epicenter of anti-Chinese rhetoric. Moreover, likemany late-nineteenth-century American cities, its rule alternatedbetween bosses and reformers. For Chinese persons in particular,Scranton was a dangerous place.

SCRANTON'S DANGER

Brothers Seldon T. and George W. Scranton founded the city in the1830s. The railroad boom was in full swing, yet the United States wasimporting the t-rails for her tracks from Britain at great expense. Noone here was able to produce them. The Scrantons were determined to try.When they perfected an iron-making process adapted to the localanthracite and began making their own t-rails, the town's economytook off. (16) As they came to appreciate the quality and extent of theunderlying coal seam, the Scrantons purchased huge tracts of coal landsand transformed their Lackawanna Steel Company into one of thenation's largest coal producers. (17)

During the Civil War, Scranton's iron mills and coal mines ranat full capacity, her population grew three-fold, and she becamePennsylvania's fourth-largest city. After the war, sales of steeland coal plummeted; miners, mechanics, and foundry men lost their jobs;and wages fell. Those who could leave left. Among those who remained,ethnic tensions simmered.

Ethnic tensions had never been far from the surface. Immigrantsfrom Wales were skilled miners whose mountainous homeland greatlyresembled the Scranton area. They kept up the Welsh language andculture. They were Protestants who denounced dancing with the samevehemence they denounced murder. To a man they voted Republican.Immigrants from Ireland came from rural agricultural backgrounds, theironly mining experience occasional work as strikebreakers in Wales. Theywere Catholics and many spoke Gaelic. As their numbers grew, Irishsaloons began appearing up and down Lackawanna Avenue, the front roomreserved for drinking and the back for dancing and other amusem*nts.They voted Democratic. Later arrivals included Germans, Italians, Poles,Slovaks, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Russians. (18) They did notconsider themselves White or even American. They were Welsh or Irish,Polack or Italian.

Ethnic tensions erupted in 1869 after a fire set for ventilation atthe base of a mine shaft spread to the wooden breaker that straddled theshaft's mouth and blocked the only means of egress. The fire thenspread to the coal itself, trapping those caught below ground. Onehundred ten miners were asphyxiated. They left behind seventy-two widowsand 158 fatherless children in the Scranton area plus hundreds more backin Europe. Most of the victims were Welsh. Though ruled an accident,many believed the fire was an act of arson, perpetuated, perhaps, by theMolly McGuires, a secretive Irish society that engaged in murder andcommitted other violent atrocities to achieve what it viewed as"retributive justice." (19)

Terrance Powderly, the son of Irish immigrants, came to Scranton atthis time. He worked as a machinist in the locomotive shop of theDelaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad where he joined theMachinists' and Blacksmiths' International Union. A powerfulspeaking voice and intimate knowledge of parliamentary procedurespropelled his rapid ascent in the organization. He was elected presidentof his local, then Secretary of the District Assembly, and later GrandMaster Workman (president) of the Knights of Labor, a nationwideorganization that sought to unite all workers into a single union.Powderly forged the strategies that propelled his rise to nationalprominence in the furnace of Scranton politics.

As coal prices continued their fall into 1871 the mines cut wagesand miners went out on strike. This time, for the first time inScranton's history, the Welsh, Irish, and Germans stood togetherand idled every mine. Scranton's Republican mayor chose the momentto authorize a crackdown on the city's Irish and German saloons.There were 125 of them, all in flagrant violation of the city'sSunday liquor ordinances. Brawls and crime were rampant; saloon ownersdefiant. Attorney Edward Baker (E. B.) Sturges, the son of acongregational minister who came to Scranton from Connecticut, and HenryBoies, an explosives manufacturer who came to Scranton after hisgraduation from Yale, organized a group of reformers, all men ofproperty, and vowed to break them. Despite threats of bodily harm,Sturges and Boies obtained 113 indictments against sixty-three saloonmen and put an end to the all-night drinking. The Irish and Germansfumed.

As the strike dragged on, worker solidarity eroded. Angry crowdshooted and jeered those who returned to work. The governor sent thePennsylvania National Guard's Ninth Division, Hazelton Brigade, andits Fifteenth Regiment to escort strike breakers to and from work eachday. In early May a group of several hundred men and women throwingstones at the marchers drew the militia's fire. Two strikers andtwo militiamen were killed in the chaos that followed. Strikers returnedto work. (20)

The incident led Powderly to define the Knights of Labor'schallenge as forging a "common bond of brotherhood" amongworking men hailing from different countries, speaking differentlanguages, practicing different religions, and often engaging in heatedcompetition with one another. (21) Powderly proposed to tackle thisherculean challenge by scapegoating the Chinese.

There were no Chinese in Scranton when Powderly first adopted thistactic. He was directing his remarks to a national audience. While otherlabor leaders also attacked the Chinese, Powderly took this racistrhetoric to new extremes. The Chinese are "coolie slaves,"Powderly roared. "Their labor is slave labor.... The Chinaman isignorant, conscienceless, and corrupt. He is crafty, he is criminal, heis depraved. His only virtue is his industry; and in this he acts withdeadly results upon that of our own people. [Chinamen] hate and detestour people. They have no conception of our free institutions; they knownothing of our schools, our charities, or our religion. They are a setof thieves, cut-throats, and pagans." (22) By comparison with thispejorative portrait, differences among the Welsh, Irish, Germans,Russians, Slovaks, and Italians paled to insignificance. In comparingthem with this caricature of the Chinese, Euro-Americans became White.(23)

The Scranton economy continued to worsen. The nationwide panic of1873 hit the region hard. With investment at a standstill, demand foriron collapsed. Even coal sales declined as unemployed workers could nolonger afford to fuel their stoves. To spread what little work remained,the mines and mills reduced wages and instituted short time. Until heheard the morning toot of his company's whistle, a man did not knowif he would work that day. Whistles were silent for weeks on end. (24)

Scranton's Democratic Party, the party of Irish and Germanworkingmen, grew in strength and organization. By the mid-1870s Irishimmigrant Frank Beamish, the Democratic Party's Lackawanna Countyleader, had established a political machine his critics described as"a smaller edition of New York's Boss Tweed." Reformers,again under the leadership of Sturges and Boies, launched a legal battlethat sent Beamish to the state penitentiary on an embezzlementconviction. (25)

In the summer of 1877, with wages already near subsistence levels,major railroads across the nation announced yet another coordinatedround of pay cuts. Upon hearing the news, freight hands at the Baltimore& Ohio repair shop in Martinsburg, West Virginia, stopped work andbrought traffic along a long stretch of that road to a complete halt.Within a few days the strike was nationwide. State militias were orderedto open the rail lines. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in the SecondU.S. Artillery. Cities became war zones. Only the troops' sympathywith the striking workers averted a bloodbath. (26)

In Scranton, workers put their ethnic differences aside and allthirty-five thousand of them joined the strike. No longer Welsh, Irish,German, Russian, Polish, Slovak, or Italian, they were proudly, iftemporarily, "Labor." Fearful of property damage,Scranton's mayor recruited a private militia to supplement thecity's constables and night watchmen. W. W. Scranton, cousin of thecity's founders and manager of Lackawanna Iron & Coal, turnedover the company's general store for use as headquarters for thisScranton Citizens Corps. Colonel Ezra Hoyt Ripple, Civil War POWsurvivor and partner in one of the independent mines, drilled threetimes daily in the city center. After a week without work, men beganreturning to their jobs. Some five thousand of those remaining on strikeassembled on the city's outskirts and marched into town. The chaosthat ensured when the strikers met the corps left four strikers dead.(27) In the view of Labor, workingmen had been gunned down by a posse ofvigilantes. Aldermen called for an inquest and a week later announced athree-fold indictment for "wilful murder" against more thantwenty-one members of the corps, all prominent men of property. To thepropertied class, these men were "patriotic public servants who had[the] wisdom to discern the City's danger and the patient courageto provide for its defense." Fearful for the corpsmen'ssafety, the governor ordered federal troop to place them in protectivecustody. A few months later a judge in neighboring Wilkes-Barreexonerated them. (28)

The next year, Powderly was elected Scranton's mayor. Once inoffice, he launched an ambitious program of civic improvement thatincluded the suspension of the entire police department and itsreplacement with a full-time, hierarchically organized, uniformed, andsalaried force. Other Powderly policies helped revive the Scrantoneconomy and mend the social compact. He established a board of health,built a public hospital, paved the city's streets, and constructeda modern sewer system. When a small pox epidemic struck he quicklyquarantined the sick and vaccinated the well, saving many lives. To payfor these initiatives he revamped the city's tax code and licensingpractices to broaden the tax base, close loopholes, and enforcecollections. To discourage speculators and encourage investment heimplemented Henry George's scheme of taxing unimproved land at ahigher rate than improved. (29)

In spite of the prosperity that ensued, many laborers foundPowderly too willing to compromise with business interests. In 1884 theyelected Frank Beamish, Lackawanna County Democratic Party boss andconvicted embezzler, as Scranton's mayor. (30) Two turbulent yearslater Colonel Ezra Hoyt Ripple, former captain of the Scranton CitizensCorps, replaced him. Under Ripple's leadership the city electrifiedits street lights and inaugurated its electric trolley system, the firstof its kind anywhere in the world. Scranton became the "ElectricCity." (31)

Meanwhile, the city's Board of Trade had begun recruitingmanufacturers of silk, buttons, lace, and underwear--all traditionalemployers of women. (32) More jobs for women would sustainhouseholds' incomes during the frequent downtimes at the mines andkeep single women from having to leave town for work. As a consequenceof the Board's successful efforts, women's manufacturingemployment grew and domestic help became increasingly scarce andexpensive. Demand for laundry services soared. John Highriter, amanufacturer of custom-made mens shirts, established the city'sfirst commercial steam laundry. (33) The Chinese took note.

THE CHINESE ARRIVE IN SCRANTON

Attracted by the brisk demand for commercial laundry services, SamLee came to Scranton in the late 1870s. (34) Apparently pleased withLee's work, the Board of Trade recruited Charley Sing, a handsome,Americanized laundryman. (35) Soo Hoo Doo and several other Chineselaundrymen arrived soon afterward.

Doo and his countrymen were part of a large-scale relocation of theChinese American population that occurred in the years following passageof the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Exclusion Act ended theunrestricted immigration that brought over two hundred and eightythousand Chinese to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century andushered in wide-ranging restrictions on Chinese employment. The Chinesepopulation fell. Those who remained and the few who were able to entermoved outside the West. In 1880 only 156 Chinese lived in Pennsylvania,about half of them in Philadelphia and the rest dispersed across fifteendifferent counties, including Lackawanna. Twenty years later thePennsylvania Chinese population had grown to almost two thousandscattered across fifty-six of the commonwealth's sixty-sevencounties.

The Chinese who came to Scranton and to the many other communitiesthroughout Pennsylvania bore no resemblance to the ugly stereotypePowderly portrayed in his rantings. Doo and Sing, together with YotSing, Charles Tom, Lon Sam, Hoo Hung, Joe Ling, and Too On, joined theFirst Presbyterian Church on the invitation of long-time chair of thePresbytery's outreach to non-English speakers, Henry Boies. Boieswas a gunpowder manufacturer and one of the town's prominentreformers. Many other eminent Scranton men were also congregantsincluding Judge Alfred Hand and E. B. Sturges. (36) The Chinese attendedchurch and Sunday School each week and practiced their English betweenclasses. Their hard work bore fruit. After two years they were able toentertain their teachers with readings and recitations, almost all inEnglish. By way of thanks they hosted a cake and ice cream reception atwhich they presented their teachers with gifts of Chinese pottery,banners, tea, and candy. (37) A few years later Sing married the youngand attractive Jennie Shaffer as the bride's mother looked on withpleasure and approval. Newspapers across the state reported theremarkable story. (38)

Doo introduced himself to influential members of the Scrantoncommunity and soon became well known and widely respected. Former mayorEzra Hoyt Ripple became an investor in Doo's laundry. The FranklinAvenue Rescue Mission invited Doo to lecture on Chinese culture andsociety. The Scranton Republican reported Doo's family ties to themilitary governor of Canton and other high-ranking Chinese officials. Itnoted Doo's visit with the Reverend Stearns of Germantown in its"Personals" column. Doo encouraged this favorable publicity.When his cousin Soo Hoo On was baptized, he raced to theRepublican's offices to ensure that the milestone was widelybroadcast. The reporter with whom he spoke described Doo as "welldressed," "very devout," and "very earnest."(39)

After establishing his laundry Doo opened an import store andbrought coveted Asian goods to Scranton. He sold "Chinese crockeryin great variety, Fans, Cards, Trays, Jewel Boxes and Lacquered Ware,Richly Embroidered Shawls, Handkerchiefs, [and] Napkins. BeautifullyWorked screens and Hanging Ornaments ... beautiful Chinese lilies ...Toys in great variety ... the largest and most varied stock ofunadulterated Chinese and Japanese Teas, Pure Coffees, Spices ... fancy,useful and unique articles, many of which were never seen in Scrantonbefore." (40) He purchased or started a half-dozen additionallaundries, hiring his countrymen to run them. (41) In 1894 he returnedto China to bring his wife.

The town's newspapers gushed with compliments upon meetingMrs. Doo. They declared her "as pretty as a wax doll" adornedwith "an assortment of her rare jewelry." (42) Mrs. Dooadopted the assimilationist approach of her husband. She registered withthe tax collector under the terms of the Geary Act and declared herintention to become a resident. (43) She began taking instruction in theChristian religion and the English language. (44) She acquainted herselfwith members of the Scranton community. Some patrons were said to cometo Doo's shop for the express purpose of catching a glimpse of hispretty wife. (45) That summer, when a large quantity of fireworksexploded in Doo's store, blew the plate glass front window and doorinto the street, and set the store's interior on fire, theDoos' neighbors and fellow Presbyterian congregants, Judge and Mrs.Alfred Hand, took them in. (46)

The community noted the Doos' assimilation with approval. WhenMrs. Doo gave birth to a baby girl a few months later, the Tribunereassured its readers that there would be no "beating of tom toms,incense burning or other unusual things." Soo Hoo Doo was aChristian, it reminded them, "enlightened, and Americanized, eventhough his nationality denies him the rights of citizenship." Itfound the newborn exotic--a "little olive skinnedCelesto-Americanese"--but noted that the baby "kicks its toesand sputters and grunts the same as the ordinary Caucasianyoungster." Doo was found "smiling the smile that usuallyadorns the visage of a newly made father." When a reportersuggested that he name the baby "Scranton," Doo replieddiplomatically that "possibly the name might do." (47)

Tragically, baby Scranton died. Little Jennie arrived ayear-and-a-half later. Doos neighbors described her as a "verypretty baby" "blessed with unbound feet" that her parentsintended to keep that way. Unlike her mother, whose feet were bound whenshe was a girl in China, Jennie "will be as able to pedal a bicycleor float gracefully along the streets in due time, as any other Americanmaiden." (48) As Doo's wealth increased his family continuedto grow. Several years later, when Annie was born, Doo again introducedhis children to reporters. They found Jennie "a bright-lookinglittle girl" of seven and Harry "a stocky little chap with abeaming Celestial face and sprouting a que--a miniature copy of Doohimself." They relayed Doo's assessment that Harry was a"very good boy." Young William was too young for theinterview, but Doo's introduction revealed his politicalsophistication and his very American willingness to allow his son tocarve out his own identity. William was the given name of arch politicalrivals William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. In explaining hisselection of William as the name for his son, Doo remarked, "Notknow whether William McKinley or Bryan ... [W]e let him say which."(49) After a while Doo adopted Western dress. A photograph from 1902shows him with his black hair parted to one side, cut to the tops of hisears in front and gracing his shoulders in back. He is beardless, butwears a thin, handlebar mustache not unlike the one Ezra Hoyt Ripplewore at the time. A dark, wide-lapel jacket covers a dark vest. Underthem Doo wears a white upturned detachable collar framing a dark necktiefashioned into a heavy Windsor knot.

Some Scranton Chinese ran afoul of white sensibilities. When threeyoung women visited his laundry late one evening for a puff on his opiumpipe, Yot Sing was publicly reprimanded in the local press. Sing haddone nothing illegal, yet that did not stop the editor from opining,"There are good and bad Chinamen.... There are reputable sons ofthe Celestial Empire in this city, but Yot Sing is not one ofthem." (50) Not long after, Sing left town. Doo appeared to havemastered the complexities of living as a minority in an alien and oftenhostile culture.

CHINESE SCAPEGOATING INTENSIFIES

In the 1890s the national mood hardened against the Chinese. Theeconomic crisis of 1893-94 sent unemployment rates soaring above 17percent. It was the worst depression in the nation's history. (51)As downtime at the mines and factories stretched from days into weeksand then into long months, workers' anger against big corporationsand big banks grew. In the campaign leading up to the presidentialelection of 1896, the eloquent William Jennings Bryan led a populistcrusade that sought to wrestle power from the wealthy elite and put itinto the hands of workingmen. Republican William McKinley emerged theultimate victor in that contest, but only by a narrow margin in thepopular vote. To bolster his support among workingmen, newly electedPresident McKinley appointed the popular labor leader Terence Powderlyas Commissioner of Immigration. The appointment gave the xenophobicPowderly an official, authoritative position from which to propound hishate speech. (52) Powderly used his position to intensify his assault onthe Chinese: "Chinese and American civilizations areantagonistic"; he proclaimed, "they cannot live and thrive andboth survive on the same soil. One or the other must perish." (53)

Powderly wasn't the only prominent person propounding abusiveracist speech. Academics from a wide range of disciplines embracedeugenics, the belief that socially undesirable traits such as povertyand illiteracy are rooted in bad heredity. In this view race rather thanproductivity determined the standard of living. To maintain the Americanstandard, immigration from low-wage countries such as China had to bestopped. Among the many eugenics advocates of the era was biologistDavid Starr Jordan, president of Stanford, who tirelessly advocated theidea that "the blood of the nation" determines its history. A"Jew is a Jew in all ages and climes," Jordan wrote. "Hisdeeds everywhere bear the stamp of Jewish individuality ... a Chinamanremains a Chinaman." (54) Scranton's men of influence embracedthis view. In his biographies of Scranton's elite, attorneyFrederick Hitchco*ck conspicuously highlighted the "daring pioneerstock" from which Judge Alfred Fland descended and the"splendid ancestry" of Henry Boies, both of whose families hadarrived in the eighteenth century. (55) The Tribune, the paper on whoseboard Ezra Hoyt Ripple sat, distilled the implications of eugenics forrelations with the Chinese. "The Occidental and the Oriental havebehind them too long and too different a past to mix well. They arebetter apart." (56) Though it was surely not the intention of theelite who espoused such views, their abusive speech helped unifyEuro-Americans into a united laboring class.

Inspired by an 1897 victory in the bituminous coal fields of theMidwest, the United Mineworkers redoubled organizing efforts in theScranton region. Miners of different nationalities banded together in1900, forcing owners to accede to their demands for higher wages andshorter hours. Just as they had done during the 1871 strike, Sturges andBoies chose the moment to initiate a reform campaign designed to sowdivisions. They formed the Municipal League whose stated goal was toroot out corruption in city government. Sturges contributed over $30,000of his own money to promote the effort. The League employed a legion ofundercover detectives who entrapped city councilmen accepting bribes andunlicensed saloons, gambling houses, and "houses of ill fame."They forced the resignation and arrest of many politicians, they closedvenues of vice, buL this time they did not disrupt the union.

In 1902 the miners approved yet another strike. More than 100,000miners, roughly 80 percent of the miners in the region, joined in.Wishing to avoid a long disruption to the nation's economy,President Theodore Roosevelt convinced owners and miners to agree toarbitration. United Mine Workers president John Mitchell declared aunion victory when the mine owners agreed to a nine-hour day and aten-percent wage increase. (57) Abusive racist speech helped win thatvictory. It also stoked hatred of the Chinese and emboldened theviolent. Doo and the other Chinese could not be trusted. "AChinaman remains a Chinaman."

DOO BECOMES A TARGET

Early one summer morning in 1899, three men entered the laundry ofEong Sing on Scranton's South Side and attempted to rob the till.Sing surprised them with a spirited defense and they soon fled, but asthey were leaving, one picked up a large rock and hurled it throughSing's window, sending shards of broken glass into Sing'sface. George Rosar, the building's owner, witnessed the attack andchased the assailants down the street.

The police investigated. Rosar and Sing were shown a police lineup.From it each identified John Cavanaugh as the attacker who hurled therock. Cavanaugh, thirty-four, worked as a day laborer, and boarded withhis widowed Irish-immigrant mother, a younger sister, and two brotherson Hickory Street in one of the tougher sections of the city. (58) Whenthe case came to trial, Sing and Rosar presented their stories. Dooacted as Sing's interpreter. The defense called Cavanaugh'smother, sister, two brothers, and a neighbor, all of whom testified thatCavanaugh was at home eating breakfast at the time of the attemptedrobbery. From the jury's perspective, the evidence was clear."Not Guilty," they declared. (59) The day after the verdictwas announced Wing Wah's laundry was burglarized. It was the thirdtime he had been burglarized that year. (60) Three years later, in theheat of the big Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, Doo became a target.

Dressed in uniform, his shiny badge pinned to his chest and hisrevolver and club affixed to his belt, Detective Clifford strode intoDoo's laundry and insisted that Doo come with him to the policestation. Clifford said that a customer of Doo's, a Mrs. MinnieCarey, had sworn under oath that Doo had cheated her. According toCarey, Doo had "washed some fancy pillow-cases, torn them to shredsand artistically wrapped them under the guarantee that they were in goodcondition." "They were new," she insisted, "Now theywere worthless." The newspaper reporting the incident mocked Doo asseemingly "clueless" as he dutifully accompanied thedetective, although it did note that Doo stopped en route to the stationto secure the services of an attorney.

At the station house, Carey presented Doo with her damaged pillowcases. As soon as Doo felt the fabric he declared it "no good"and "old." The false accusation angered him. Doo was preparedto fight the charge right then and there, but on the advice of hisattorney he waived a hearing and entered bail. As he left the stationhouse, "A howl of laughter arose from those who had seatedthemselves on the back benches." Doo was furious. He began talkingearnestly with his attorney, swearing under the oath of Fung Chooi, theevil one, that he was innocent. Drawing his hand across his throat, hesignaled that he would permit his head to be cut off if he was lying.That afternoon he bought a chicken and, cutting off its head,demonstrated his idea to the satisfaction of all concerned. (61) Notlong afterward, Doo and his family left Scranton and returned to China.They weren't the only ones. Five of Scranton's ten Chineselaundrymen departed the city about the same time. (62)

Scranton police immediately put Doo's successor, Wing LeeLang, under surveillance. One afternoon they raided his place, found himrelaxing under the influence of opium, and arrested him. Opium smokingwas legal. They arrested Lang anyway "to serve as a warning toseven young men who [had] been frequenting the place," the policeexplained the next day. In its headline the paper mistakenly reportedthat Doo, not Lang, had been taken into custody. (63) When Doo himselfreturned to Scranton the next year without his family, he was met with adecidedly cool reception. The headline announcing his return expressednot welcome, but a reluctant fatalism: "Soo Hoo Doo with UsAgain." (64) Perhaps frustrated by these developments, Doo closedhis Scranton laundry and moved to nearby Wilkes-Barre. There he bought abuilding and lot on South State Street in the red light district nearthe downtown and opened a Chinese restaurant. (65)

"SO REPULSIVE IN ITS SUGGESTIVEN ESS": OPIUM DENS ANDWHITE WOMEN

In Wilkes-Barre Doo lived frugally and amassed property. Newspapersregularly commented on his wealth. (66) Things went well for him even asa growing national paranoia over Chinese opium smoking and their allegedseduction of white women intensified. A downtown Wilkes-Barrefamily-oriented penny arcade displayed the picture of a police raid on aChinese opium joint. "The room is occupied by the Chineseproprietors and some of their countrymen lying around on cots with whitewomen," an investigative reporter noted. Continuing, he askedrhetorically, "Is this a scene, so repulsive in its suggestiveness,fit for a child to view?" (67) That same year Owen Davis'sfour-part play Chinatown Charlie, the Opium Fiend opened on Broadway.The next year it toured the country with stops in Scranton andWilkes-Barre. (68) "It's like a slumming trip ... a slummingtrip with much that is revolting left out," declared the theatrecritic for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle when Chinatown Charliecame to his community. (69) The play evoked fascination and revulsion inequal measure. It provoked suspicion.

Joseph Ferguson was certainly suspicious. He was a local boy whoseflair as a dramatic actor attracted the attention of impresario CharlesFrohman, producer of over seven hundred shows and known for his abilityto develop talent. Frohman offered Ferguson a spot in one of histraveling theatrical companies but Ferguson refused, saying that hepreferred to stay closer to home. (70) Still, Ferguson's matineeand evening performances kept him out most nights. (71) What did hiswife Ann do all those evenings alone? Ferguson decided to find out.Hiding himself in a doorway, he waited. Ann emerged. Following at adistance, Ferguson saw her enter Doo's chop suey restaurant.Ferguson became enraged. He notified the police who obtained a warrantfor Doo's arrest. The police said they had long suspected Doo ofselling opium but had been unable to produce evidence. After midnightthey raided Doo's restaurant and found Ann smoking a pipe in anadjoining room. Seizing Doo, his opium outfit, and as much opium as theycould find about his restaurant and apartment, they marched him topolice headquarters. They turned Ann over to her husband. At the trialDoo's lawyer reminded the court that Doo was within his rights toown an opium outfit and to smoke for his own enjoyment. Ann refused totake the witness stand or to speak against Doo. Without evidence of anopium sale, the judge ruled in Doo's favor. Furious, Ferguson suedDoo, claiming $10,000 in damages for Doo's alleged debauchery. Annfiled for divorce, claiming her husband had deserted her several yearsearlier and that even before his desertion he was often in the companyof other women. Doo sued the City of Wilkes-Barre after it refused toreturn his opium outfit following his acquittal. (72)

Just as things were beginning to settle down, Doo received a letterfrom the Black Hand. "By the order of the Black Hand. Please giveus $1,000 and if we do not get this much, your head will be cut off....If you squeal you will be cut to pieces." (73) Below the message,sketched in black ink, was a villainous-looking, outstretched humanhand.

Doo panicked. The Black Hand was an Italian American extortionracket that was active in the area. Just the previous year the ReverendCharles Palducek, rector of St. Johns Slavonian Catholic Church innearby Freeland, had his throat cut and his head bashed in by anassailant who knocked on his door late at night and later claimedallegiance to the terrorist group. A local cobbler's murder wasattributed to the Black Hand as well. (74) Despite the intimidation, Dootook his letter to the police. A second letter arrived and again Doostood his ground. (75) The Black Hand's threats ceased butDoo's peace did not return.

That September police raided Doo's restaurant, arrested fourmen and three women, and charged Doo with keeping a bawdy house. It waseight in the morning. Doo explained that the suspects were waiters andwaitresses. (76) In October Doo was accused of harboring two younggirls. The charges were dropped after the charity matrons who lodgedthem confessed to their confusion over the identity of the abductor.(77) Later that same month a man arrested for theft testified that hehad exchanged his stolen goods for liquor at Doo's restaurant. Halfthe town showed up at court the next day to view the hearing, only to bedisappointed when they learned that the court had withdrawn the chargeagainst Doo for lack of evidence. (78) The following January, cityhealth inspectors compelled Doo to clean his restaurant under penalty ofclosure. (79) In February it was Doo's turn to call the policeafter two patrons got into a fight and wrecked his place. In March thepolice again arrested Doo for keeping an opium joint. (80)

Doo decided it was time to fight back. Using an approach that hadworked well for him in the past, he marched into the offices of theWilkes-Barre Record and told his side of the story. "I am a muchabused American citizen," he insisted. He said he was born in SanFrancisco, taken to China by his parents as a young child, and that hereturned as soon as he was old enough to work. He boasted of hisfamily--a wife and four children--of his membership in the GraceReformed Church, and of his vote forjudge H. M. Edwards, a Welshmanknown throughout the commonwealth for his impartiality and fairness,"a judge after Socrates' own heart... one whom kings could notcorrupt." (81) The opium charge was dropped after Doo'saccuser withdrew his testimony, swearing that members of the policedepartment had encouraged him to make false charges. Two days later, thenew mayor-elect announced he would be firing seventeen policemen andthat he had asked Doo to join his new police advisory board. (82)

It was too little, too late.

The next month James Buckley broke into Doo's storeroom andstole three giant jars of molasses, having been told they were filledwith opium. Disappointed with the molasses, Buckley tried to extortmoney from Doo, saying he would testify to finding opium unless Doo paidhim. Again Doo refused. Doo charged Buckley with larceny and had himarrested. Buckley charged Doo with perjury. (83) Later that month,exhausted by events, Doo closed his restaurant and took a briefvacation. (84)

The assaults commenced the moment Doo returned. He was againcharged with running a "disorderly house," said to be visitedby "wives of prominent men" in the company of "partiesother than their husbands." (85) The former police chief served asprosecutor. When the judge issued a guilty verdict the following day,the newspaper headlines read: "Soo Hoo Doo and His Black HoodooWhich the Police Had Much to Do," implicitly acknowledging that Doohad been framed. (86) Doo appealed and was granted another trial on thegrounds of "certain errors made by the court." (87) Doobrought his own suit against three policemen, charging them withextortion. Doo testified that when he refused to pay the police arrestedhim, not once, but several times. (88)

Perhaps optimistic about his prospects for justice, Doo, nowforty-four, married Belle McCullock, twenty-three, a white woman who hadworked as a waitress in Doo's restaurant. Gossips described Belleas "rather a good-looking young woman. She is tall and slim ofbuild. She dresses fairly well." (89)

On the day of his trial Doo came well-prepared. To counter policecharges of "nightly orgies" and frequent requests to"preserve order," his attorney called neighborhood residentswho testified that Doo's place was not a disorderly one and thatthey had not been disturbed. Doo himself proved to be an excellentwitness. Asked to describe his restaurant, he told of the many Chinesedishes he served, ranging in price from 10 cents to $8 and over. Themore expensive dishes, he said, he served mostly to the actors andactresses who frequented his establishment. He insisted that he kept hisplace as orderly as possible. When asked about his patrons'character he explained that they arrived in carriages and cabs after thetheaters closed and that he had no way of knowing whether they were ofgood or bad repute. Doo then took the offensive. He testified thatpoliceman Harkins demanded $100 from him and threatened to raid hisplace if he did not pay. When Doo refused; Harkins raided. Doo claimedthat other policemen had made additional demands on him for money; thatJames Puckley and policeman Phillips had him arrested on the charge ofperjury and also confiscated a quantity of supposed opium which turnedout to be molasses. Doo flatly denied that he sold opium or cocaine andsaid he did not allow opium smoking in his place. Opium smoke could bedetected from two blocks away, he noted. It would have ruined hisbusiness. Doo denied selling liquor and harboring women of ill repute.(90)

The next morning the court reconvened to hear closing arguments.The prosecutor was scathing in his derision of Doo, hovering over him ashe maligned his character. When closing statements were complete thejurors retired. After less than an hour's deliberation theyreturned with their verdict: Guilty as indicted!

Doo had prepared for this possibility. Upon hearing the verdict, hejumped out of his chair, ran down the court aisle, and charged out thedoor. He boarded his one-volt-powered Duryea car, drove it to nearbyPittston, hailed a rowboat to cross the river, and took refuge in thehome of one of his wife's relatives. When the police finallylocated him there, secreted in a cupboard, they arrested him, hauled himback to Wilkes-Barre, and threw him in jail. A few days later Doo'slawyer arranged for his release by pointing to errors in the legalproceedings. Still, the judge refused Doo's request for a newtrial. Doo took his appeal to the State Superior Court. (91)

Doo was feeling the pressure. Tension between him and his new wifegrew. After he had rented and furnished a nice home for her mother,Belle insisted that the two of them move in. Doo refused and theyquarreled. By summer their quarreling had grown heated. Terrified, Bellewent to the police saying that Doo had hung a rope from their basem*ntceiling and threatened to hang her with it. "Once he said that hewas going to hang himself on it," Belle added. (92)

In November the Superior Court reversed the lower court and grantedDoo's request for a new trial. (93) Doo and Belle reconciled, movedto Scranton, and opened a Chinese restaurant on Penn Avenue. The newtrial took place in July. After hearing the evidence, Judge Fuller tookspecial pains to remind the jury of the fundamentals of the law."Because Doo is a Chinaman should not influence [your]decision," he instructed them. If "a guilty verdict bereturned ... it should be on the evidence introduced." Beforeclosing he publicly criticized the police. Wasn't it strange, heremarked sarcastically, that Doo's allegedly rowdy place shouldhave existed within five hundred feet of the city hall, a place"where municipal virtue was enthroned." In the opinion ofattorneys following the case, the judge's instructions were"somewhat in favor of" Doo. Many predicted a not-guiltyverdict.

After a long day of deliberations, the jury declared itselfirrevocably deadlocked. A hung jury meant a third failure for theprosecutor and after compelling Doo to pay court costs he reluctantlydropped the case. In summing up, Judge Fuller denigrated formerWilkes-Barre mayor Frederick Kirkendal's cleanup as "a slightspasm of civic virtue," suggesting that civic vice had been therule in his administration. The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader bristled atthe rebuke. Without defending the legality of police actions, andconceding that Kirkendal had made "many many mistakes," itcommended the mayor for trying to address "shockingconditions" and criticized the court for allowing those conditionsto continue through "legal technicalities, acquittals anddisagreements in court." (94)

After the trial, Doo sold his Scranton restaurant and returned toPhiladelphia. There he oversaw a tiny empire of Chinese restaurants andlaundries scattered throughout the region. He worked with thePresbyterian church in ministering to the Chinese community. (95) In1912 Doo and Belle's son Cecil was born. (96) Still, the"thousand cuts" he had endured extracted their toll. A yearlater, while in Trenton awaiting the arrival of relatives fromPhiladelphia and New York, Doo collapsed from acute pneumonia and died afew hours later. He was forty-nine years old. Newspaper accounts ofDoo's passing mentioned his arrests, the "abundance oflitigation," and his having served time in the county jail. Not onementioned the prosecutor's failure to convict. (97) Doo hadtriumphed in the court of law but in the court of public opinion he wasroundly defeated.

Doo's story illustrates the remarkable degree to which atleast one nineteenth-century Chinese immigrant embraced America'sdemocratic institutions and ideals. It also illustrates the frustrationsof an assimilated immigrant like Doo when confronted with a racistideology that insisted he could never assimilate.

Not all Chinese who followed a similar path shared Doo's bleakfate. In related work 1 reconstruct the stories of Moy Toy Ni(1861-1955) of Oshkosh and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, known locally asCharley Toy, and of George Wong (190688) of Waterville, Maine (aka WongHor Ting, Wong Wan Song, and George Wan Son). Both found communitysupport for their struggles against racist laws and ideologies. (98) Iremain puzzled by the ineffectiveness or perhaps unwillingness ofprominent Scranton citizens like E. B. Sturges, Ezra Hoyt Ripple, AlfredHand, and Henry Boies who supported Doo in the 1890s to come to hisdefense. Perhaps these reformers were offended by Doo's opiumsmoking. Perhaps Scranton's (and Wilkes-Barre's) long historyof violenl conflict had irrevocably eroded the trust needed to maintainpersonal bonds across cultural and racial divides. We know that Sturges,al least, rejected anti-Chinese ideology. At a public lecture followinghis travels in the Far East in 1902, he spoke out against the suggestionthat the United States impose Chinese exclusion in its newly acquiredterritories of Hawaii and the Philippines. "The country needs theservices of the Chinaman," Sturges declared, "not only in thePhilippines, but also in the states." "They are an element inthe world's make-up that cannot be ignored.... We cannot livewithout them." (99) Perhaps Sturges tried but failed to help Doo,much as he had failed years earlier in preventing the election ofconvicted embezzler Frank Beamish as the city's mayor. In any case,Doo's story shows that where communities cannot or will not standup against racist speech, its targets fall prey to its viciousconsequences. Doo seems to have understood this. At the conclusion ofhis third trial he left town.

NOTES

Abbreviations: AL, Allentown (PA) Leader; DC, (Rochester NY)Democrat and Chronicle; HDI, Harrisburg (PA) Daily Independent; LDN,Lebanon (PA) Daily News; LC, Lebanon (PA) Courier and Semi-WeeklyReport; MCI, Mount Carmel (PA) Item' MD, Montrose (PA) Democrat;MMFP, Manitoba (Canada) Morning Free Press; NYT, New York Tribune; NYS,(New York) Sun; ODN, Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Daily Northwestern; PG,(Pittston, PA) Gazette; PI, The (Philadelphia) Times; RT, Reading (PA)Times; SR, Scranton (PA) Republican; ST Scranton (PA) Tribune; STr,Scranton (PA) Truth; TET, Trenton (NJ) Evening Times; WBR, Wilkes-Barre(PA) Record; WBL, Wilkes-Barre (PA) Leader; WBT, Wilkes-Barre (PA)Times; WBTL, Wilkes-Barre (PA) Times Leader; WUL, Wilkes-Barre (PA)Union Leader; WW, Weekly (Milwaukee) Wisconsin.

(1.) PI, Aug. 30, 1887.

(2.) Ancestry.com, New York Chinese Exclusion Index [databaseonline] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 1998). Original data:United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Index to'Chinese Exclusion' Case Files of the New York District Officeof the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, ca. 1882-1960 (NewYork). National Archives and Records Administration-Northeast Region(New York), [April 1998], Chinese Exclusion Case file 14, 1100. Doo wasconsistent in giving 1865 as his birth year but he varied his reportingof his year of immigration. When interviewed by immigration officers hegave his year of entry as 1877. To 1900 census takers he reported 1888.To 1910 census takers he reported 1878. Doo, Soo Hoo, enumerator'smanuscript, 1900; Census, Scranton Ward 8, Lackawanna, Pennsylvania;Roll: 1420; Page: IIA; Enumeration District: 0071; FHL microfilm:1241420 and Doo, Soo Hoo [Goo, Mon Y (sic)], Enumerator'smanuscript, 1910 Census Scranton Ward 8, Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Roll:T624_1359; Page: HA; Enumeration District": 0084; FHL microfilm:1375372.

(3.) K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan, eds., Claiming America:Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), vii. For a son'sdelightful account of his Chinese immigrant parents see PardeeLowe's Father and Glorious Descendant (Boston: Little, Brown,1943).

(4.) For studies noting large discrepancies between census countsand contemporaries' estimates of the Chinese population see YongChen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 59; Bernard P Wong, AChinese American Community: Ethnicity and Survival Strategies(Singapore: Chopmen Enterprises, 1979), 18; and David B. Holmes andWenbin Yuan, Chinese Milwaukee (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing Co.,2008), 11.

(5.) Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and theAnti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: UC Press, 1971); SuchengChan, This Bitter-Sweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture,1860-1910 (Berkeley: UC Press, 1986), 40-41; Stanford M. Lyman, ChineseAmericans (New York: Random House, 1974); Ivan Light, "From ViceDistrict to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns,18801940," Pacific Historical Review 43 (1974): 367-94; SandyLydon, Chinese Gold: The History of the Chinese in the Monterey BayRegion (Capitola, CA: Capitola Book Co., 1985), 222; Shirley Sui-LingTam, "Police Round-Up of Chinese in Cleveland in 1925: A Case Studyin a Racist Measure and the Chinese Response" (Master'sthesis, Case Western Reserve University, 1988); Charles J. McClain, InSearch of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination inNineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: UC Press, 1994); K. Scott Wong,"The Eagle Seeks a Helpless Quarry: Chinatown, the Police, and thePress. The 1903 Boston Chinatown Raid Revisited," Amerasia Journal,22, no. 3 (1996): 81-103; Victor Jew, "Exploring New Frontiers inChinese American History: The Anti-Chinese Riot in Milwaukee,1889," in The Chinese in America: A History from Gold Mountain tothe New Millennium, ed. Susie Lan Cassel (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press,2002), 389-410; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War AgainstChinese Americans (New York: Random House, 2007); Scott Zesch, TheChinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (New York:Oxford University Press, 2012).

(6.) Light, "Vice District."

(7.) WW, Mar. 23, 1889.

(8.) ODN, Mar. 30, 1890.

(9.) NYS, Dec. 4, 1882; Batya Miller, "Enforcement of theSunday Closing Laws on the Lower East Side, 1882-1903," AmericanJewish History 91, no. 2 (2003): 269-86.

(10.) From the archives of the Oakland Tribune as quoted inLawrence M. Friedman and Robert V Percival. The Roots of Justice: Crimeand Punishment in Alameda County California, 1870-1910 (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 108-9.

(11.) Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U.S. 703 (1885) cited in AlanRaucher, "Sunday Business and the Decline of Sunday Closing Laws: AHistorical Overview," Journal of Church and State (1994): 18.

(12.) Timothy Brook, Jerome Bourgon, and Gregory Blue, Death by aThousand Cuts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

(13.) Mark H. Haller, "Historical Roots of Police Behavior:Chicago, 1890-1925," Law & Society Review 10, no. 2 (1976):303.

(14.) Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

(15.) Stanford M. Lyman, "The 'Chinese Question' andAmerican Labor Historians," New Politics 7, no. 4 (new series),whole no. 28 (Winter 2000).

(16.) W David Lewis, "The Early History of the Lackawanna Ironand Coal Company: A Study in Technological Adaptation,"Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1972): 437.

(17.) Eliot Jones, The Anthracite Coal Combination in Pennsylvania(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 24; Lewis,"Lackawanna Iron and Coal," 424, 437.

(18.) Phebe Earle Gibbons, "The Miners of Scranton,"Harper's New Monthly Magazine 55 (November 1877): 916-27; John E.Bodnar, "Socialization and Adaptation: Immigrant Families inScranton, 1880-1890," Pennsylvania History 43, no. 2 (1976):147-63.

(19.) Gibbons, "Miners of Scranton"; Robert P Wolenskyand Joseph M. Keating, Tragedy at Avondale (Easton: Canal History andTechnology Press, 2008).

(20.) Frederick Lyman Hitchco*ck, The History of Scranton and ItsPeople, vol. 1 (Scranton: Lewis Historical Pub. Co., 1914), 48992.

(21.) Vincent J. Falzone, "Terence V Powderly: Politician andProgressive Mayor of Scranton, 1878-1884," Pennsylvania History 41,no. 3(1974): 289-309.

(22.) Terence Vincent Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859-1889(New York: A. M. Kelley, 1890), 423-24.

(23.) Saxton, Indispensable Enemy, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whitenessof a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); David R. Roediger, TheWages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class(London: Verso, 1999).

(24.) Samuel C. Logan. A City's Danger and Defense(Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers, 1887), 6-7.

(25.) Hitchco*ck, History of Scranton, 487, 493; SR, Apr. 9, 1919.

(26.) Philip S. Foner, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 (New York:Monad Press, 1977).

(27.) Logan, A City's Danger, 99.

(28.) Logan, A City's Danger, iii; PT, Aug. 9, 1877; Nov. 29,1877.

(29.) Falzone, "Terence V Powdery."

(30.) WSG, Jan. 30, 1884.

(31.) PEG, Apr. 6, 1885; WBR, Nov. 30, 1886; STT, May 9, 2013.

(32.) Harold W. Aurand, "Diversifying the Economy of theAnthracite Regions, 1880-1900," Pennsylvania Magazine of Historyand Biography (1970): 54-61; Scranton Board of Trade, "Board ofTrade Will Celebrate 50 Years of Achievement and Unselfish Service forScranton on December 12," Scranton Board of Trade Journal 14, no. 1(Nov. 1917): 9.

(33.) SR, May 12, 1894.

(34.) M. W. Lant & Brother, Scranton City Directory 1879-80(Scranton: Republican Steam Printing House, 1879).

(35.) SR, Oct. 19, 1893.

(36.) Hitchco*ck, History of Scranton, 230, 252; SR, Apr. 9, 1919.

(37.) WBTL, Mar. 25, 1890.

(38.) SR, Jan. 21, 1894; LDN, HDI, WBT, ST, PT, AL Jan. 22, 1894;HD1, Jan. 23, 1894; LC, Jan. 24, 1894; WBUL.Jan. 26, 1894.

(39.) SR, May 9, 1892; Aug. 10, 1892; Feb. 19, 1894.

(40.) SR, Dec. 14, 1892.

(41.) WBT, Feb. 19, 1907.

(42.) ST, Jan. 2, 1894; MMFP, Apr. 16, 1894.

(43.) ST, Apr. 26, 1894.

(44.) ST, Nov. 9, 1895.

(45.) WBT, Feb. 19, 1907.

(46.) ST, July 6, 1894.

(47.) ST, Nov. 15, 1894.

(48.) ST, May 14, 1896.

(49.) ST, Apr. 2, 1901.

(50.) SR, Dec. 24, 1891; Dec. 25, 1891.

(51.) The rate pertains to the nonfarm sector. David R. Weir,"A Century of U.S. Unemployment, 1890-1990," in Research inEconomic History, ed. Roger L. Ransom, Richard Sutch, and Susan B.Carter (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1992), table D3: 341-43; Susan B.Carter and Richard Sutch, "The Great Depression of the 1890s: NewSuggestive Estimates of the Unemployment Rate, 1890-1905," Researchin Economic History 14 (1992): 341-76.

(52.) Delber L. McKee, "'The Chinese Must Go!'Commissioner General Powderly and Chinese Immigration, 1897-1902,"Pennsylvania History (1977): 37-51; Lyman, "The 'ChineseQuestion."'

(53.) Terence V Powderly, "Exclude Anarchist andChinaman," Colliers Weekly, Dec. 14, 1901, 7.

(54.) David Starr Jordan, The Blood of a Nation: A Study of theDecay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit (Boston: AmericanUnitarian Association, 1906), 7, 9, 10; Thomas C. Leonard,"Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era," Journal ofEconomic Perspectives 19, no. 4 (Autumn 2005): 207-24.

(55.) SR, Oct. 20, 1924; Hitchco*ck, History of Scranton: 227, 249.Hitchco*ck apparently had no admiration for Powderly. In his two-volume,1,038-page chronicle of Scranton's turbulent history, three-termmayor Powderly's name appears only four Limes.

(56.) ST, Jan. 31, 1900.

(57.) Donald L. Miller and Richard E. Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal:Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985).

(58.) Ancestry.com, 1900 United States Federal Census [databaseonline] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2004). Original data:United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of theUnited States, 1900 (Washington, DC: National Archives and RecordsAdministration, 1900). Census Place: Scranton Ward 6, Lackawanna,Pennsylvania; Roll: 1420; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 0068; FHLmicrofilm: 1241420.

(59.) ST, July 7, 1899.

(60.) SR, Oct. 24, 1899.

(61.) SR, Feb. 20, 1902.

(62.) J. James Taylor, Scranton Directory for the Year 1900(Scranton: Taylor's Directory Co., 1900); J. E. Williams, ScrantonCity Directory (Scranton: Republican Print, 1902).

(63.) SR, June 28, 1902.

(64.) SR, Jan. 26, 1903.

(65.) WBTL, Feb. 1, 1906.

(66.) MD, Aug. 12, 1901.

(67.) WBTL, Feb. 6, 1906.

(68.) WBTL, Feb. 4, 1907.

(69.) DC, Nov. 2, 1906.

(70.) WBTL, Jan. 30, 1907.

(71.) MCI, Feb. 5, 1907.

(72.) WBL, Feb. 18, 1907, Apr. 29, 1907, May 4, 1907; WBT, Feb. 18,1907; May 1, 1907; STr, Dec. 3, 1908; WBR, May 6, 1907.

(73.) WBL, July 11, 1907; STr, July 12, 1907.

(74.) NYT, Feb. 16, 1906; MCI, Oct. 30, 1906.

(75.) WBR, July 13, 1907.

(76.) WBL, Sept. 13, 1907; STr, Sept. 14, 1907.

(77.) WBTL, Oct. 12, 1907; WBL, Oct. 14, 1907; WBT, Oct. 15, 1907.

(78.) WBR, Oct. 22, 1907; WBL, Oct. 23, 1907.

(79.) WBTL, Jan. 23, 1907.

(80.) STr, Mar. 5, 1908; WBR Mar. 5, 1908.

(81.) WBR, Mar. 14, 1908; STr, Nov. 6, 1913; Pittsburgh Eisteddfod,"Honorable H. M. Edwards," in Royal Blue Book: PrizeProductions of the Pittsburgh Eisteddfod (Pittsburgh: Press of AmericanPrinting Co., 1916), 53.

(82.) WBTL, Mar. 19, 1909; Mar. 21, 1909.

(83.) WBR, Apr. 20, 1908; Apr. 23, 1908.

(84.) SR, Apr. 24, 1908.

(85.) WBTL, Sept. 15, 1908; STr, Sept. 16, 1908; PG, Sept. 16,1908.

(86.) SR, Sept. 17, 1908.

(87.) WBTL, Dec. 1, 1908.

(88.) STr, Oct. 15, 1908; SR, Sept. 17, 1908.

(89.) WBTL, Aug. 4, 1909.

(90.) WBR, Jan. 30, 1909.

(91.) WBR, Feb. 1, 1909, Feb. 4, 1909, May 21, 1909, May 22, 1909,May 24, 1909; WBT, May 28, 1909; WBTL, May 20, 1909.

(92.) STr, Aug. 4, 1909.

(93.) STr, Nov. 16, 1909; WBR, Nov. 16, 1909.

(94.) WBTL, July 1, 1910, July 4, 1910; WBR, July 2, 1910, July 4,1910; STr, July 2, 1910.

(95.) STr, Sept. 8, 1910.

(96.) Ancestry.com, U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLSDeath File, 1850-2010 [database online] (Provo, UT: Ancestry.comOperations, 2011). Original data: Beneficiary Identification RecordsLocator Subsystem (B1RLS) Death File (Washington, DC: U.S. Department ofVeterans Affairs).

(97.) TET, Jan. 10, 1914; WBTL, July 23, 1914; PG, July 23, 1914;SR, July 24, 1914; WBR, July 24, 1914.

(98.) Author. See also Huping Ling, Chinese Chicago: Race,Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870 (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 2012), 41, for evidence of prominent Chicago Chinesewho "cleverly and deliberately cultivated broad personalconnections with influential figures in the larger society."

(99.) Sturges and his wife traveled in the company of Col. and Mrs.Henry Boies. On their passage to China they boarded the same vessel thattransported Doo and family. Sturges reported that the two men metonboard and that Doo furnished him with an introduction to the Chineseemperor. SR, Dec. 12, 1902; ST, Dec. 12, 1902.

Caption: Figure 1. Chinese by County: Pennsylvania, 1880 and 1900.Sources: Chinese by county: 1860 through 1890: Michael R. Haines andInter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States,1790-2002 [Computer file]. ICPSR02896-v3. Ann Arbor, MI:Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research[distributor], 201006-21. doi: 10.38860CPSR02896.v3. 1900 through 1950:Hand-transcribed from published census reports. County boundary shapefiles from: Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, RonaldGoeken, Mathew B. Schroeder and Mathew Sobek. Integrated Public UseMicrodata Series: Version5.0 [Machine-readable database], Minneapolis:University of Minnesota, 2010.

Caption: Figure 2. Soo Hoo Doo and Family, 1902. Source: UnitedStates National Archives and Records Administration-Northeast Region(New York). Case number 14.1100. Box 93.