The city passed an ordinance requiring owners of laundries in wooden buildings to obtain a permit. In 1880, 95 percent of San Francisco’s 320 laundries operated in wooden buildings. However, as more groups competed for work, prejudice against Chinese immigrants intensified. By the 1870’s, Chinese laundries were operating in all towns with Chinese populations. Typically, laundry work required long days of exhausting manual labor over kettles of boiling water and hand irons heated on stoves. A laundry was an ideal business for Chinese immigrants, since it required no special skills or venture capital, and Euro-American men considered it undesirable work. His small, leased storefront in San Francisco had a simple sign: “Wash’ng and Iron’ng.” Within a few weeks, the business had expanded to twenty washermen working three shifts daily. In 1851,Wah Lee opened the first Chinese hand laundry in the United States. However, growing anti- Chinese sentiment and restricted urban labor markets forced the increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants to seek other work. They became contract laborers who worked in the gold mines and on the railroads. With hopes of making a fortune in “Gold Mountain” and then returning to their families in China, thousands of young men left their impoverished villages in southern China to travel to California. The Chinese launderer stereotype appeared in popular culture and media.Īlthough the first Chinese had arrived in the United States in 1820, the first significant wave of Chinese immigration did not occur until soon after the California gold rush in 1849. Laundries opened throughout the country and became uniquely identified with this ethnic group. Significance: Chinese laundries developed as a major occupation for the first wave of Chinese immigrants who came to the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Definition: Important niche industry for Chinese immigrant families
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