Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold MountainA social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families. |
Contents
The Chinese Must Go__________________________________ | 14 |
Chinese Enter The Laundry Business ____________________ | 40 |
Challenges To Chinese Laundries _______________________ | 75 |
Chain Migration of Laundrymen________________________ | 107 |
The Hard Laundry Life _______________________________ | 126 |
Lives Of Chinese Laundry Children _____________________ 147 8 Chinese Laundries in Historical Perspective ______________ | 200 |
Bibliography __________________________________________ | 224 |
| 236 | |
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