The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1897-04-15

an American swell. He was always
laden with jewelry, wearing rings on
every finger; diamond ftuds, q dia-
mond-studded watch, and chain made
of nuggets Of gold. Fung Ching was
his name, but his white friends among
the gamblers and politicians Of the
West dubbed him Little Pete, and
that name chung to him up to the
time of his death.
Beyond doubt Little Pete was the
most feared man within a thousand
miles of San Francisco. He ruled
white men as we'll as Cinnamon, con-
trolled all of the lower courts in San
Francisco which have jurisdiction in
the Chinese quarter, fixed juries with
out the slightest difficulty, was boss
of local politics and bosom friend Of
Boss Buckley, the politician known to
the Cinnamon as the "Blind White
Devil" From this influence he OBJ
tanned large income, for no China
man in trouble could get along with
out Little Pete. Innocent or guilty,
he would be pushed along by means
Of perjured witnesses furnished by
Pete until he was ready to purchase
that individuals assistance; then he
would be saved by the means former
" used to ruin him. From a dozen
gambling houses which he ran, the
race tracks which he controlled, and
from the traffic in the women of his
race, Pete derived an enormous income
which, with money obtained in other
ways, made him millionaire in few
years.
Some idea of the influence which
this under sized Monaghan exerted in
San Francisco may be gained from
the fact that year before his death
he was indicted twice for jury fixing
and for putting perjured witnesses on
the stand and twice for bringing girls
to this country from China for immor-
al purposes. Yet he was never tried
on any of these indictments and prob
ably never would have been. Even
when officially ruled off every race
track in the West for bribing jockeys
to run other mems horses to suit him,
he continued to go to the tracks and
no one ever attempted to put him out.
The indicting and the ruling off were
commonly supposed at the time to
have been done simply to stop the
clamor which arose over some of Lit
tie Pete's most fragrant offenses, and
no one was surprised at his immunity.
The most horrible part of Little Pete's
business was his traffic in human be-
ings. He is said to have imported as
many as 500 Chinese girls and to have
sold them for prices ranging from
81 900 to $1,000 each to keepers of
houses of prostitution in the West.
Only two months before his death a
steamer brought him consignment
of twenty-four girls and month be-
fore that thirty three we're imported
by him. No one has ever ventured to
say how Pete managed to land these
girls, but he did land them in spite of
the Federal authorities. And very
few of them we're ever sent back.
Such was the man who started the
feud between the See Yups and the
Sam Yups. Murder has followed
murder for two years. The See Yups
have sentenced Sam Yups and Sam
Yups have retaliated, and in the West
a sentenced Chinaman is as good as
dead. Nothing can save him. The
police have never succeeded in doing
anything with these banded murder
ers. The minute they began to inves-
tigate the plots they encounter wall
of transformation and perjury. The
murders are all carried out in the most
careful way. There are arrests, and
three times out of five the prisoner is
caught holding the smoking revolver
with which the murder was committed.
To anybody who knows anything
about highlander murder, however,
this means little. The man who COM
mits the murder always shoots from a
crowd of friends. No one can see who
did the shooting, and the moment it
is over the weapon is snatched from
the hands of the murderer. If any
body is chased by the police it is the
man with the pistol. The murderer
is never caught. No amount of de-
tective ability will unearth him, and
the fate of the men arrested lOno de-