The Weiser signal. [volume] (Weiser, Idaho) 1890-1904, 1900-02-22
Sad Story of Lower Life in San Fran
cisco.
WOMEN WORK FOR CHINAMEN
Astonishing Necessity to Which White Women
and Children Have Been Brought.
wens Drury in San Francisco Star.

Wells Drury in San Francisco Star
A few days ago | visited Chinese
fruit packing house in this city where
women and white children work for
Mongolian named Lew Hing at
wages less than he would be COM
PEELED to pay men of his own race.
1t is not an inspiring spectacle to
see a score or more of white women
and fifty or sixty boys and girls
working in cellar under sidewalk
and bossed by Chinaman, but it is
fact, and these women and children
who hold these places consider them
selves lucky to have a chance to earn
even less than Chinese wages
Lew Kings establishment is at $40
Stockton street, and his business is
to put up canned fruits and vege-
tables, tomatoes being his specially.
The age of the women employed by
Hing range all the way from 18 to
70 years, and the children from 7
to II.
The visitor who goes to see these
Caucasians Shaving for their Mongol-
ian master will be struck by the fact
that the place joins the ''lmperal
Chinese Consulate, !" where digni-
taries of the Celestial Empire
dwell in as much grandeur as that
part of the city will afford.
The cellar in which these white
women and children work for their
Chinese master is reached by rude
stairway that is defiled with all kinds
of decayed fruit and vegetables, but
it is after the main cellar floor is
reached that the revelation of filth
becomes overwhelming. At first
glance the spectator sees but a few
white women at work over the toma-
to cans and cutting bins, for unusual
strength and endurance are needed
for such tasks. The floor is covered
with slush to the depth of quarter
of an inch, and the nostrils are as
sailed by all the noxious vapors that
decomposed vegetation can furnish.
1t is with difficulty that person car
walk on this slippery floor, and China
men are employed to lift the heavy
boxes and push the cars containing
the canned fruit and vegetables
The white women who work in this
department stand on scantlings t(
keep out of the all-pervading slime
and ooze. Each woman has for Wis.
avis leathery Chinaman, skilled il
his trade of handling fruit and inde
fatigable in his work. Day in ant
day out these women stand there
each doing a mans work for less thai
Chinese wages. If they did no
work for less than Chinese wages qt
Chinaman would hire them, for th'
Chinaman always gives his country
men the preference, other things be
ing equal.
Passing through the tomato can
ming section to another part of tn
cellar under the sidewalk, the mail
force of white women and children
will be found. Their task is to pre-
pare peaches and pears for the can
ming process Even to this depart
ment the noisome food extends
formed by condensed steam from tn
engines and the huge boiling vats il
which the fruits and vegetables ar
prepared Here as elsewher
throughout the place the operative
have to stand on pieces of timbe
and lumber to keep themselves FIRE
from the wet floor. Their shoes ar
never dry and the skirts Of the VIC
men are damp and bedraggled. A
every table the whir of the peelin