Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1906-05-31
Chinatown Secrets.

Not until the earthquake shook the
rickety houses to the earth, to be de-
stroyed by fire, did the authorities of
San Francisco realize what manner Of
place was the much advertised China.
town, the Mecca of all tourists in Cal.
ifornla, the spot in which twenty-five
thousand Chinese lived like 80 many
prairie dogs.
When the high winds which came
after the fire blew the same ashes away
the yawning mouths OF tunnels which
the police had long suspected, were
revealed. Entrance to these passages
was so carefully hidden that only the
leader Of the Tongs, who used the
damp dungeons for places of meeting
or to plot the death of victim-the
same room often acting as the execu-
tion dungeon once the marked man
was taken below the level of the
street-knew.
One of San Francisco's alert de.
tectives, said to be the best posted man
on Chinatown, stood at the corner Of
Bartlett Alley and declared: "For
years l have been trying to reach the
tunnels which | knew to exist under
this Chinese city. What goes on down
there one can only conjecture, but it
is ten thousand times worse than
the sins and vices which are practiced
by these Mongolians in the streets
and gambling houses you can see from
this corner. Girls in the bloom Of
youth are smuggled over the Canadian
border, brought here in the night and
confined in dungeons, perhaps never
to look upon the light of sun again,
although they may live for years.
Very few white men have visited
the underground passages, certainly
none of San Francisco's police force,
for every man in the department Was
watched when he entered Chinatown,
and the surveillance did not cease
while he remained there. Secretary
Tsing. a prominent member of the
Chinese aristocracy, stationed for po-
litical reasons in the Chinese legation
at the capital of Peru, was member
in high standing in a society of con-
siderable political influence in China,
with powerful branch in San Fran.
cisco. He took two white men to the
theatre in Chinatown and boastfully
declared that the real secret of China
town had never been revealed. He
conducted the men to the rear of the
stage, slid a secret door back and mo-
toned for the men to follow him. For
one hour, STOPPING until their backs
were strained, the men silently fol-
lowed guide to look upon complete
new Chinatown, the tunnel leading
past scores of doors to dungeons,
against the bars of which some mis-
fortunates pressed their faces, toiump
back from the fares of Pickering
miners light which Using carried.
Under this Chinese city were hum
dreds OF women and children. Their
voices mingled refrain or echoed the
gloomy murmurs of some who were
suffering. Huddled in groups about
small FIRE, made from balls of coal
dust which Chinese prepare, were
merchants who mad returned from
their shops on the street level to these
holes in the wall to plot and invent.
The odor of opium was nauseating
The revulsion of feeling was overpow-
ering. When the street was reached,
after climbing a fight of stairs to the
kitchen of a chop suey "joint. the
breath of foul air even In this hole
was refreshing by comparison.
Hundreds of men went to their
deaths each year in Chinatown with
out an inkling of the tragedies being
known TO the police. 1t was easy to
bury the dead under the tunnels, one