Preface: Following the previous section.

From 1850 to 1852, California’s gold production reached its peak; afterward, output declined rapidly. Large mining companies took over the industry, pushing out small independent miners. Free prospectors could no longer dig enough gold to survive. White laborers began to lose their jobs, go bankrupt, fall into debt, and drift into homelessness. At the time, white workers demanded high wages, regular rest, and union protection. Chinese miners, however, worked under a contractor labor system: dozens of men crowded into shacks, living on cheap rice, dried fish, and wild greens, never complaining or causing trouble. White miners spent on alcohol, meat, lodging, and entertainment; Chinese workers survived on extremely low-cost consumption. It was said that a white miner could spend an entire week’s earnings in seven days, while a Chinese miner spent less in a month than a white miner spent in a week. Tensions escalated.

In 1852, local governments in California officially joined the campaign to drive Chinese miners out by passing the Foreign Miners’ Tax. Although the law ostensibly applied to “foreigners,” it was enforced almost exclusively against Chinese miners. It required every Chinese miner to pay three dollars per month, a fee that was later raised arbitrarily by local authorities—sometimes to as high as twenty dollars. Three dollars at the time was roughly equivalent to a week’s wages. White miners and political leaders were explicit in their reasoning: “We can’t compete with the Chinese, but we can tax them out.”

The state outsourced tax collection to private white tax collectors, a system strikingly similar to the modern outsourcing of immigration raids to ICE. These collectors rode into mining districts to target Chinese workers: if they refused to pay, they were beaten; if they paid, they were extorted further; if they tried to flee, they were dragged back; if they resisted, they were killed. Collectors were legally entitled to take a $1.50 commission from every three dollars collected. In practice, three or four white men would ride in on horseback, armed with weapons, chains, and ledger books. They would shout, “Chinese miners, come out!” Chinese miners were required to carry a tax receipt at all times; if they did not have it, the collector declared them delinquent and fined them double.

Even more notorious was the 1853 People v. Hall case. In Nevada County, northern California, a white man named George Hall, along with two other white men, publicly shot and killed a Chinese miner named Ling Sing. Multiple witnesses—all Chinese miners—saw the murder. Chinese witnesses reported the crime and testified in court; the trial court found Hall guilty. Hall appealed to the California Supreme Court.

In 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled that Chinese people could not testify against white people in court. The court relied on an old statute prohibiting Black people, Native Americans, and “mulattoes” from testifying against whites. It reasoned that the “Mongolian race” belonged to the same “inferior” category, that Chinese testimony would “contaminate” the judicial system, and that allowing Chinese to testify would cause white society to “fall prey to barbarous races.” As a result, the white killers were acquitted. Importantly, this was a state supreme court decision, not a local ruling, which made it binding as statewide legal precedent.

In 1856, the Shasta County expulsion occurred: white miners claiming that Chinese were taking their jobs organized a hundred men, looted Chinese camps, destroyed tools and food supplies, drove dozens of Chinese miners down the mountain, and threatened to kill them if they returned. Police stood by and did nothing.

In 1858, in Weaverville, Trinity County, white residents held a public meeting and declared a “Chinese Removal Day,” ordering all Chinese miners to leave the county by sundown. Whites escorted them at gunpoint, seizing tools, gold dust, and cash. Between 300 and 500 Chinese miners were expelled.

In 1862, the Humboldt County expulsion took place—a countywide, officially coordinated purge. After white mobs assaulted several Chinese residents, the mayor, vice mayor, and local officials convened and passed a motion to remove every Chinese person from the county. The next day, whites formed squads, went door-to-door, and drove all Chinese residents to the docks. One hundred fifty-three Chinese people were forced onto a ship and dumped near San Francisco. Arcata became a “Chinese-free city” for more than sixty years.

San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose, and other cities all carried out “Chinatown clearing” campaigns: police led arson attacks on Chinese neighborhoods; cities invoked “public health” or “sanitation” to dismantle Chinese housing; repeated expulsions pushed Chinese residents into increasingly impoverished margins of the urban landscape. San Francisco’s Chinatown was burned multiple times. Oakland’s early Chinatown was relocated repeatedly because whites complained it was “too close.” Police, judges, and local militias nearly always took the same position: they did not protect Chinese residents and often helped remove them.

This forced Chinese workers to rely on one another for protection and survival—laying the groundwork for the later development of tongs and Chinese organized groups.

Early Chinese associations in Oakland were fundamentally systems of mutual aid, arbitration, and protection. But without judicial protection, these organizations inevitably developed a coercive or “enforcement” side. Internal disputes in Chinatown could not be reported to the police, so the tong became the “internal court.” Young laborers out of work turned to tongs for livelihood. Corrupt white police accepted payments from tongs and granted them unofficial tolerance. Over time, the boundary between mutual-aid organizations and underground power structures blurred.