Newspaper Research

("The Way We Worked", https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/way-we-worked/)

The newspaper article I read was "FRISCO'S WHITE SLAVES" published on the The Canton Times on February 9, 1900. This article discussed women and children who worked for the bare wages from Chinese fruit merchants in San Francisco and mentioned that white women in Philadelphia's Chinatown were no better than Mongolian slaves, this is a clear sign of the term "wage slavery". These women and children worked for less than Chinese laborers and are ruined by the Chinese labor force. They chose to employ women and children because they consented to work for less. This was not surprising to me because women and children back then were considered to be "weak" and easy to take advantage of. What was somewhat interesting is that these Chinese employers did not hire Chinese children, only white. The "Chinese boss", Hing, was described like a slave owner, with his pen and paper out supervising the children working in his cellar and on the sidewalks. A detail, which bothered me, was that these children did not know any better and looked up to Hing in awe. The oldest women was around 70 and the youngest child was around 6. They all worked in fear and under the conditions of smelling rotten vegetation and noisome odors with limited ventilation. The article also mentioned how women were addicted to opium and could only get it form Chinese biddings. This all, in fact, was considered good times with plenty work in San Francisco according to the Canton Times.