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Origin of Chinese Laundry: How Chinese-Americans Turned Discrimination Into Opportunity

One of the oddities during the Gold Rush years of San Francisco was the extreme imbalance between males and females. It is believed the ratio was like 20 to 1. And remember, back in the 1800s, men do NOT do laundry... It was supposed to be women's work or domestic servant's work. Most men don't even know how to do laundry. Not to mention two buckets of fresh water would cost a quarter. This resulted in some very odd pricing, such as the cost of laundering a dozen shirts being $8-12 dollars, due to very few women available to do the laundry. A few men will try, but give up after a while after they either destroyed the shirts or lost all the buttons. The situation was bad enough, laundry was sent across the ocean to be laundered. A ship can carry back several hundred dozen pieces of laundry. 

Hawaii, seeing an opportunity, started to offer $6 per dozen washes and a much faster turnaround.   

Some folks in Chinatown recognized the profit potential, being close to the port and observing the laundry being unloaded, and decided to open their own laundry in San Francisco. They do not have the "it's a women's job" attitude to overcome and working hard is not a problem. The first documented Chinese Laundry in San Francisco was Wah Lee, who charged only $5 for one dozen shirts. Soon, hundreds of men and women were doing laundry in a nearby pond that became known as "Washer Woman's Lagoon". So much washing was done, that the little lagoon turned into a cesspool by the 1870s, and had to be filled in completely. 

Chinese Laundry circa 1881 (public domain image)


Another factor that led to the growth of the Chinese laundry was growing xenophobia in the US. Chinese was pushed out of the mining fields by 1851 amidst increasing competition and discriminatory laws such as the "Foreign Miner's Tax" of 1850, which tried to levy $20/month tax on only foreign miners. It was replaced with a slightly more reasonable $4/month "foreign miner's License Tax Act" in 1852. The act was meant to tax non-White (mainly Chinese and Mexicans) but most Mexicans simply left for Mexico and many Chinese drifted back to the cities to get out of mining, and one of the few legitimate jobs available to them without English knowledge or specialized knowledge or training was laundry. Indeed, the 1920 census shows that nearly 30% of ALL employed Chinese in the US worked in laundries. The situation did not change until the attack on Pearl Harbor turned China into a valued ally, and Chinese-Americans were viewed more positively by the public, and the Chinese Exclusionary Act was finally repealed in 1943. 

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About the author

Kasey is a professional tour guide and amateur historian who specialized in Chinatown History and Tours. You will often find him guiding groups sampling delicious food and learning interesting historical tidbits about Chinatown most weekends.

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