Chinese Acting Badly

It is generally known that Chinese laundrymen suffered hostility and even physical violence from communities all over the country. In addition, they sometimes faced harmful actions from other rival Chinese laundries in their neighborhood. Several examples that I posted several years ago on a different blog, illustrate some wicked reactions by competing Chinese laundrymen.

Cut-rate pricing offered a way to increase patronage, but at the expense of other laundries.  For example, in 1896, Sam Sing, a laundryman in Alexandria, Virginia, accused a nearby competitor, Ah Moy, of sending anonymous obscene letters to Sing’s wife. It was suspected that Moy may have been motivated to send these letters because Sing had cut his laundry prices to gain more business at Moy’s expense. Moy, being single, may also have been motivated by jealousy of Sing who seemed happily married with two children.

Two years later, another bitter battle developed among some laundrymen in Washington that also involved conflict over cut-rate laundry prices. Moy Gee You, aka Hop Sing as well as Ah Sing, was the only laundryman offering cut-rate prices, which the Chinese laundry union opposed. They retaliated by accusing him of mailing obscene literature. The plaintiffs admit they paid off Moy Gee You to hold the line on higher laundry prices. They charge he did not live up to their price-fixing contract, and should be required to refund the money he had received to fix prices.

It is interesting that in both cases, the way chosen to get back at someone was to accuse them of sending obscene mail. You could get your opponent in trouble with the authorities and he would have to spend time and money defending himself.

 

Chinese laundrymen often faced stiff competition from white-owned laundries, which often had newer and better steam-operated machines. In one encounter in Indianapolis with the threat represented to their laundry business when a white laundry opened, two Chinese took the rather drastic action of allegedly dynamiting the building of the new competitor.