Chinatown, c. 1900 OrHi 3880

Like San Francisco, Portland attracted large numbers of Chinese. Chinese immigrants’ residential area became one of the city’s most distinctive features. The specifics of Chinese immigration to the Pacific Coast and the reaction of white workers to their presence are well known. Thousands of Chinese men were attracted to the California gold fields in the 1850s, and to railroad labor throughout the West from the mid-1860s through the 1890s. As early as 1868, the president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society, Leland Chin, told the Morning Oregonian that five ships were on their way from Hong Kong with 1,600 laborers to work on the railroad and to perform other manual work.

The Chinese in Portland became the object of class resentment. As large numbers of Chinese arrived, the Daily Oregonian denigrated them as a racial menace polluting some of the city’s “best streets.” The city council in May 1873 passed a resolution suggesting members resented the Chinese for working for low wages and for remitting funds to their families. The council encouraged contractors to not hire Chinese on pain of losing future contracts. Mayor Wasserman, himself an immigrant from Bavaria, vetoed the resolution because he found it in violation of treaties between the United States and China. When a fire broke out in August 1873 allegedly in a Chinese laundry, letters to the Oregonian attributed its origin to white “incendiaries” committed to driving out the Chinese. (The city directory of 1874, however, said that the fire, though initiated by an arsonist, broke out in a furniture company at First and Salmon streets.) Harvey Scott in the Oregonian, and his sister, the suffragette Abigail Scott Duniway  in the New Northwest, sympathized with the Chinese when they were attacked. But they too depicted the Chinese through stereotypes.

Chinese men settled close to Second and Oak streets, which had become so segregated by 1880 that the federal census designated it a separate enumeration district, containing over 1,500 Chinese men — and no one else. When the many Chinese servants were added to the segregated laboring class, Chinese were already 12 percent of the city’s population, greater than in any other American city except San Francisco. The city directory reflected their unique status by collecting data. While data on persons eligible for citizenship — “whites,” “colored,” and “Indian” — were tabulated by ward, with no reference to sex or age, data on the Chinese was tabulated with no reference to political subdivisions.  For cultural reasons, Chinese women rarely left their families to come to America, and many who did come soon returned. Men stayed to develop community, accumulate savings, and, in some cases, to sustain businesses.

The two- and three-story structures along Second Street near Oak housed many restaurants, a few pools halls, several theaters for Chinese opera, and shops for groceries, crockery, and herbal medicines. The newspapers and police, however, focused on the use of drugs that seemed both exotic and detrimental to white Portlanders. The “opium dens” seemed more menacing than the nearby saloons and brothels for white transients, because they were sequestered in rooms accessible only by “dark, winding passages and doors fastened and guarded, sometimes requiring a guide.”

In 1885, when fear of Chinese labor competition led white workers in Tacoma to drive the Chinese out, many resettled in Portland. Civil authorities, despite the small police force, seemed better prepared than their counterparts in Tacoma to retain control of the streets. Local workers in East Portland in February 1886 drove between 100 and 200 Chinese workers across the river, and a Chinese camp at Guilds Lake was also attacked. To suppress vigilantism and protect their own buildings, Portland’s Mayor Gates deputized prominent bankers and merchants like Henry Failing, Bernard Goldsmith, and Ben Selling as well as several hundred of their friends. Sporadic violence persisted, and, according to various accounts, simply petered out, with many Chinese moving on.

Nevertheless, the growth of the Chinese population more than kept up with that of the city as whole. During the great flood of 1894, the Chinese were conspicuous in assisting people to safety. As the city was rebuilt and land along First and Second streets was claimed for small stores, storage lofts, and offices, many Chinese moved to the north side of Burnside, where they rented more rooming houses and store fronts. By 1890 Portland’s churches sought to win the Chinese to the Christian faith.  Baptists, Presbyterians, and the United Brethren had opened missions in the Chinese district, with Sunday services, Sunday schools, and Chinese preachers. But the tremendous growth of Portland from 1900 through World War I, and the arrival of many thousands of immigrants from Japan and Eastern Europe, meant that the Chinese became submerged in a multi-racial working class.

© William Toll, 2003

Themes: Social Relations,Towns and Cities

Regions: Portland Metropolitan Area

Date: 1860 - 1900

Author: William Toll

Summary:
Chinese immigrants arrived in Portland beginning in the 1850s. Primarily laborers, shop keepers, and farmers, they established an ethnic enclave along the streets surrounding Portland’s waterfront.