Tong Wars by Scott D Seligman

Author:Scott D Seligman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-20T09:38:32+00:00

The Port Arthur Restaurant on Mott Street in April 1910 after the shooting of Chu Moy Yen. The building to its immediate right, No. 11, was owned by Charlie Boston and housed a brothel. It was nearly blown up in 1912 in an effort to assassinate a senior On Leong officer.

Captain Richard E. Enright, a fourteen-year veteran who was named acting head of Elizabeth Street when Captain Galvin was transferred to Coney Island for his health by Commissioner William F. Baker, sent out all his reserves and requested backup from other stations. More than a hundred extra police flooded the quarter, and visitors were urged to stay out of Chinatown. Everyone waited for the next shoe to drop.

Several newspapers blamed the outbreak on the killing of Bow Kum. Others cited the suppression of Chinatown gambling and the Elsie Sigel murder. They also pointed to tensions stemming from the recent decrease in the Chinatown population. An informal census by Captain Galvin the previous year had suggested that in the wake of the closing of the gambling halls and the exile of the single white women, more than half the residents of the Chinese quarter had relocated, leaving little more than a thousand Chinese where twice that number had lived. And the decrease even in Chinese visitors to the quarter—most white tourists had stopped coming after the Elsie Sigel murder—was pronounced: out-of-towners had dwindled from five to six thousand every Sunday to fewer than a thousand. The New-York Tribune went so far as to predict that Chinatown would pass into history within six months.

Following the Sunday shootings, two Chinese merchants not connected with either of the feuding parties asked Judge Foster to mediate once again. The On Leongs were said to be willing; the conflict had been unwanted and bad for business, and they were eager for a settlement. But the Four Brothers refused. “I am willing to do all in my power to aid in restoring peace in Chinatown,” Foster told the New York Times. “But the difficulty is that the Four Brothers is reluctant to be a party to such a conference. A few days will show what can be done.”

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It actually took more than a few days to show what could be done, and it wasn’t much. Mediation lasted for the rest of April. Terence J. McManus, attorney for the Four Brothers, submitted a draft peace protocol on April 13, but no approval was forthcoming from the On Leongs.

Judge Foster, however, was not alone in his labors. Even as McManus set to work on a new treaty, parallel negotiations that did not require interpretation had begun. The Chinese minister in Washington sent the first secretary of the Chinese legation to New York to broker a settlement. Together with Yung Yu Yang, China’s New York consul as of late the previous year, he met on April 14 with Tom Lee and Mott Street merchants and then headed over to Four Brothers headquarters. He told the newspapers that the legation was taking no sides in the matter.

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