Questions | Yonkers | Chinese Communities
Life in a Laundry: Chinese in Pre-World War II Yonkers
Document 3
Vocabulary
Inexhaustible: Unending.
Patronage: Business, support.
TO THE PUBLIC:
MEN FROM CHINA come here to do LAUNDRY WORK. The Chinese Empire contains 600,000,000 (six hundred millions) inhabitants.
The supply of these men is inexhaustible.
Every one doing this work takes BREAD from the mouths of OUR WOMEN.
So many have come of late, that to keep at work, they are obliged to cut prices.
And now, we appeal to the public, asking them will they be partners to a deal which is only one of their many onward marches in CRUSHING OUT THE INDUSTRIES OF OUR COUNTRY from our people by grasping them themselves. Will you oblige the AMERICAN LAUNDRIES to CUT THE WAGES OF THEIR PEOPLE by giving your patronage to the CHINAMEN?
We invite you to give a thorough investigation of the STEAM LAUNDRY BUSINESS of the country; in doing so you will find that not only does it GIVE EMPLOYMENT TO A VAST NUMBER OF WOMEN, but a great field of labor is opened to a great number of mechanics of all kinds whose wages are poured back into the trade of the country.
If this undesirable element "THE CHINESE EMIGRANTS" are not stopped coming here, we have no alternative but that we will have California and the Pacific Slope's experience, and the end will be that our industries will be absorbed UNLESS we live down to their animal life.
We say in conclusion that the CHINAMAN is a labor consumer of our country without the adequate returns of prosperity to our land as is given by the labor of our people to our glorious country.
Our motto should be:
OUR COUNTRY, OUR PEOPLE, GOD, AND OUR NATIVE LAND.
Pioneer Laundry Workers Assembly, K. of L. Washington, D.C.
Document 3: “China’s Menace to the World,” Thomas Magee, Knights of Labor. Washington, D.C., 1878. From “African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907. Library of Congress. Available online at www.loc/index.gov.
Document 3 Short-Answer Questions
- Who wrote the above document?
- Who did laundry work before Chinese laundries began doing it?
- Judging by Document 4, what attitude did white labor have towards Chinese immigrants?
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