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Article Excerpt
This volume of Chinese America: History & Perspectives includes several essays on Chinese labor guilds, labor unions, and the apparel industry. The following write-up is intended to provide relevant background information to better help the reader understand how each essay is related to a particular stage in history and how they are interrelated. This write-up is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the complex issues surrounding the apparel industry
CHINESE IN THE APPAREL INDUSTRY
The identity of the first Chinese in California to have sewed apparel for the market is now lost in the historic past, but the shortage of females, who would have normally been hired as workers in the sewing trades in California, created a need that was filled by willing Chinese male "seamstresses," a phenomenon that distinguished the industry in the San Francisco region from the industry in the rest of the United States. Thus, by the late 1860s the Chinese impact on the industry was already noticeable so that Rev. A. S. Loomis noted that "Pantaloons, vests, shirts, drawers, and overalls are made extensively by Chinamen," and the 1870 Census counted 110 Chinese in the sewing trades. (1) As Chinese continued to enter the industry, the San Francisco Morning Call ran an article reporting the following on May 27, 1873:
Next, if not superior in importance to the Chinese cigar factories, are the Chinese clothing factories of which there are altogether 28, including 3 shirt factories.... These factories employ from 50 to 100 men each and their employees number in the aggregate about 2000.
By 1876, Chinese workers had become a considerable percentage of workers in the sewing trades in California, as shown in Table 1. (2)
However, these figures did not include the many Chinese working by the piece outside the factories. Rev. Otis Gibson estimated during the same period that 1,230 Chinese were "sewing on machines" and 168 were "working on clothing for Chinese." (3)
Four years later the 1880 manuscript population census counted the following numbers in the apparel industry shown in Table 2.
If tailors and seamstresses were included, the total number in the needle trades appeared to be no more than 2,000. (4) By this time Chinese were sewing most of the ready-made clothing and nearly all underwear. (5) Approximately 80 percent of the shirt makers were also Chinese. (6)
The Chinese community in nineteenth-century America was largely concentrated in California and was an overwhelmingly bachelor society with few females. San Francisco with its large Chinese population became the center of Chinese activities in the apparel industry. In 1885 the San Francisco Municipal Report tabulated 38 tailors, 2 shirt makers, 64 clothing shops, 15 ladies' underwear shops, 30 shirt factories, and 25 overalls factories, with 1,229 employees. Unlike the situation found in the larger society in America, where female laborers were used as sewing machine operators, the Chinese employed in the apparel industry in the San Francisco area was based on an all-male workforce.
However, even while the apparel industry centered in San Francisco was trying to grow, it faced stiff competition from large apparel manufacturers on the Eastern Seaboard, who had a greater and more efficient division of labor as well as newer equipment. Thus the industry was under great pressure to keep costs down to ensure profitability. This pressure served to spur the development of organizations to regulate and protect group economic interests, taking as models the guilds that had existed in China. (7)
In China's preindustrial economy, guilds were formed by merchants, journeymen craftsmen, or artisans in particular economic sectors to perform such functions as regulation of competition as well as resolution of disputes among members. The members were on a more-or-less equal basis, with little differentiation between managers and workers. As the economy expanded and production facilities increased in size and complexity, the different interests of management and workers came to the fore as a factor that required modifications of the guild structure to accommodate this situation. In some cases, two guilds emerged in the same industry, with a dongjia ("east house") guild representing the interests of managers and independent operators, and a xijia ("west house") or labor guild speaking for the workers.
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Due to the presence of a large Chinese population that was involved in a diversity of businesses, professions, and occupations in San Francisco, a well-developed merchant and labor guild system existed in the city. One researcher counted at least twenty guilds from the mid-nineteenth century through the early years of the twentieth century. (8) A merchants' guild had emerged during the early Gold Rush years, and by the late 1860s, guilds representing laundrymen, shoe makers, and cigar makers had also been formed. (9) Walter N. Fong's "Chinese Labor Unions in America" (this volume) describes the operation of the Chinese labor guilds in San Francisco. In the apparel industry, tailors formed Tongye Tang (Cantonese Tung Yip Tong). Workers in factories manufacturing white shirts, white uniforms, cotton lingerie, bathrobes, smocks, and flannel nightwear formed Jiongyi Hang (Cantonese Gwing Yee Hong), while workers in factories sewing clothing for laborers formed Jinyi Hang (Cantonese Gam Yee Hong). The essay "Chinese Guilds in the Apparel Industry of San Francisco" (by Him Mark Lai, this volume) describes these guilds.
However, guilds were not limited to the city by the Golden Gate. Honolulu, with a Chinese community comparable in size to that in San Francisco, had also developed a diversified economy, and at least eleven labor guilds were active there from the 1890s through the 1930s. In the apparel industry in 1904, dressmakers and makers of white uniforms formed Baiyi Hang (Cantonese Baak Yee Hong). The same year, workers at tailor shops formed Jinyi Hang (Gain Yee Hong). (10) There were fewer guilds in other regions in America. In the Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard, such groups would most likely be in connection with the laundry business. Such was the case in New York at the end of the nineteenth century when the Chop Sing Tong represented laundry operators in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Jersey City, while the Sing Me Hong represented those in Brooklyn and Hoboken. (11)
In San Francisco, most light industries with Chinese work forces had disappeared by the first decades of the twentieth century when implementation of the Chinese Exclusion acts front 1882 on made it increasingly difficult to maintain a Chinese male work force as workers retired or passed on. An additional factor was that these small factories could not compete with products from larger, more efficient plants in other regions. With the disappearance of the industries, the corresponding labor guilds also disappeared. The Chinese apparel industry, however, escaped the fate of these other light industries and managed to survive even though it was greatly reduced in size due to the smaller Chinese population in San Francisco as well as depressed economic conditions. Thus, in spite of the introduction of female workers to augment and ultimately replaced the aging male operators in the factories, by the early 1930s there were only about thirty garment factories in San Francisco Chinatown. Due to the fact that most of the factories were dependent on contract orders from large Chinese and non-Chinese firms, the workload at any one factory was not consistent. Workers would go from one factory to another as work was available. Workers were usually paid a set price per dozen. Hours were long and the pay substandard; however, workers could go and come as they please at the factory. As...
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