Tong (organization) - History

History

Prior to the 1840s few Chinese emigrated to the United States or Canada, although large numbers had left China, particularly Fujian and Canton, since the seventeenth century to seek their fortune in southeast Asia and Taiwan.

After settling in San Francisco and other California cities, Chinese workers faced hostility from their American peers who felt threatened by the Chinese who worked for lower wages. As labor unions and angered workers became more aggressive, many Chinese felt pressure to leave and go east, where they heard life would be less dangerous. As a result many Chinese immigrants moved to cities such as New York and Boston where today there are large enough populations to build communities known as "Chinatowns".

Many Chinese soon organized voluntary associations for support and protection. These focused around their originating district in China, family name, native dialect in the case of Hakka speakers, or sworn brotherhoods. Unfortunately, as Ko-lin Chin has asserted, many of these volunteer societies did not have the financial ability to fund community events or look after their members, and those that did tended to focus inward and provide help only to their own members. As a result, many tongs with little or no hereditary financial value had to either disband or operate activities such as gambling houses. This transformed them from benevolent associations to providers of illegal services. Notably, many of the illegal tong activities were legal in China, but not North America. The early Chinese populations in the United States and Canada were overwhelmingly male in nature, a situation that became worsened when sex-restrictive immigration laws were passed in 1882 in the USA and 1923 in Canada respectively. (see Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 For this reason tongs participated heavily in importing women from China both for marriage and to serve as prostitutes. A large percentage of the "tong wars"—disputes between the rapidly growing and powerful tongs—of the 19th and early 20th century often centered around these women. In the early years they employed "hatchet men" or boo how doy as hired killers to fight the bloody street battles that ensued over turf, business, and women.