Questions | Yonkers | Chinese Communities
Life in a Laundry: Chinese in Pre-World War II Yonkers
Document 5
Vocabulary
Premium: Amount of excess paid over the value, in this case, similar to interest. Whey: A Chinese tradition to gather money for beginning new businesses.
Invariably: Always.
Principal: Sum of money lent and yielding interest.
"Suppose I have an established laundry, and want to borrow two hundred dollars at a certain percent premium, but I cannot find any one Chinaman who is able to loan me the amount. I put up a notice in Mott Street that upon such and such a day I wish to make a "whey" of twenty men, who all are supposed to be situated like myself, each wanting to borrow two hundred dollars. When we twenty borrowers all come together, we each put down ten dollars. Then each one secretly writes upon a slip of paper the amount of interest he is willing to give to get the two hundred dollars. These slips are carefully sealed and thrown into a bowl. At a given time they are opened, and to the highest bidder goes the two hundred dollars, less the interest, which is invariably deducted immediately from the principal. Frequently as high as four dollars is offered for the use of ten dollars for a single month. In such cases each of the nineteen other borrowers gives to the lucky one only six dollars apiece for the ten dollars apiece which they make him pay next month. Then the next highest bidder gets the two hundred dollars, less the interest he offered, and so on, until the entire twenty, at twenty different times, have obtained the use of this two hundred dollars; but the one that comes the last, having offered the least interest of them all, reaps the harvest of the "whey." This method is adopted by most Chinese laundrymen, in New York and other large cities, to open new laundries."
Document 5: Excerpt from Wong, Chin Foo. "The Chinese in New York." Cosmopolitan 5 (March-October 1888): 297-311.
Document 5 Short-Answer Questions
- How did some Chinese obtain a "loan" so that they could begin a laundry business?
- Why did you think that the Chinese did not simply go to a bank for a loan?
- How would the "whey" system effect the number of Chinese laundries that were able to begin business?
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