The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
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The Six Companies and the "Coolie Trade"
At the heart of the Chinese community in San Francisco was an organization called the Six Companies. Also known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the Six Companies arranged for a variety of services for the Chinese community, organizing a private patrol force for Chinatown, assisting with translations, securing necessary permits, organizing a Chinese Boy Scout Troop, and establishing health and hygiene programs. The Six Companies also represented the entire Chinese community throughout the U.S., dealing with local and national governments on issues such as immigration and persecution.
Refer to the section on Business and Politics in the collection's Special Presentation to learn more about the Six Companies. Search on Six Companies for letters, photographs, and reports pertaining to this powerful organization.
- Why were the Six Companies formed?
- What services did they provide?
- How was the organization governed?
In the early 1800s, Britain began importing laborers from China and India to its colonies in places such as Cuba, the Hawaiian Islands, and Peru. Once there, these laborers, called "coolies" after a term used in India, experienced a situation tantamount to slavery, working long hours, and suffering physical abuse and bondage. With the influx of Chinese immigrants to the western United States, many Americans feared that the slave trade was taking root on their own soil. People who wished to exclude Chinese immigrants from the United States pointed to the immorality of slavery as a reason, often accusing the Six Companies of running a "coolie" slave trade.
Use the Subject Index heading, Anti-Chinese Movement & Chinese Exclusion to browse texts for references to the Six Companies. In its 1901 publication, Some reasons for Chinese exclusion. The American Federation of Labor claimed:
". . . the Six Companies were formed for the purpose of providing means and transportation — but few having sufficient to come on their own account — binding their victims in exchange therefore by contracts which virtually enslaved them for a term of years. They became the absolute chattels of the Tongs, or companies, and were held, and to this day are held just as ever, into strict compliance with the terms entered into, not by any moral obligation, but by fear of death."
Search on slave, coolie, and contract for other evidence of the popular belief that San Francisco's Chinatown harbored an illicit slave trade run by the Six Companies.
Although most Chinese immigrants came to the U.S. of their own free will, the belief in the slave trade took hold even in the U.S. government, whose Senate discussed a bill "To Prohibit Contracts for Servile Labor" in July 1870. In his speech before the Senate, Eugene Casserly, of California, quoted the following findings of a committee appointed to investigate the population of Chinese laborers in California:
"Those people are under a Government as absolute and perfect as any that ever existed, which system of government is maintained and enforced in this State, so far as the Chinese are concerned, wholly independent, outside, and in derision of the authority of the State of California, as well as that of the Government of the United States. This system of government is maintained and enforced by what are known as the 'six companies,' and is, in fact, an imperium in imperio, in derogation of the dignity of our national and State Governments, and in contempt of their lawful authority. This Chinese Government in California has its officers, its tribunals, and executioners of its decrees. It has been demonstrated by the police authorities of our principal city that individuals have been repeatedly imprisoned in Chino-California prisons, flogged, beaten, otherwise maltreated, and their property confiscated under the authority and by the command of this chino-California Government . . ."
- What does Casserly's speech suggest about why people might have suspected the Six Companies of running a slave trade?
- What other factors might have compelled the government to create a bill prohibiting slave labor?
- What does the speech suggest about other reasons why the U.S. government might have wanted to do away with the Six Companies?
The Committee of the Chinese Merchants of San Francisco responded to assertions of a "coolie" slave trade with the assurance that "The Chinese in this Country are not slaves or surfs of any description but are working for themselves." Francis M. Thompson quoted the committee in his speech on Chinese immigration before the Professional Club, in which he explains the origin and activities of the Six Companies and closes with a summary of newspaper reports of abuses perpetrated against Chinese:
"The papers of the Pacific Coast for the last ten years have been teeming daily with reports of outrages arson, robbery and murder committed by whites against the Chinese, and I find 70 pages of closely printed matter composed of items like this — . . . May 26.56 From the Sonora Democrat — One China man was found killed on the river last night and another was driven into the rain and drowned . . . April 20 — the Butte Record says five men entered a chinese camp one mile below Oroville and secured #1000. There were 10 China men old residents, and they tied them by their cues to the tent poles and robbed them — And so on for 70 pages — So that I can hardly help believing that these 100,000 odd Chinese have received during the last decade as much abuse from the bousted white race on our western, shores, as the whole 4,000,000 of Africans in the South — "
- How does Thompson's description of the Six Companies differ from that of Eugene Casserly?
The prevalence of such hate crimes and the passage of discriminatory legislation led the Six Companies to defend the Chinese community through the courts. Carroll Cook, counsel for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in San Francisco, was involved in a number of cases involving the treatment of Chinese residents in California, Texas, and the Arizona Territory in the early 1900s. Search on Carroll Cook for correspondence on behalf of the Chinese Benevolent Association. The collection also includes an excerpt from a newspaper including an inquiry by Carroll Cook regarding the robbery and murder of Sing Lee in Terrell, Texas.
- How did the role of the Six Companies change over time?
- Why do you think the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association employed Carroll Cook and other Caucasian attorneys?
- What place does the Six Companies have in the history of American civil rights?