The sun., 1919-08-10

EtES longs OF SnlnaLoWn were
three-the Hip Sing Tong,
the On Leong Tong and the
Four Brothers Society-and for more
than ten years they made Doyers, Pell
/. and Mott streets run red with blood
s while they fought for supremacy.
Their hatchet men roIied up an ap-
) palling casualty list.
For long time the killers OF the
tongs scorned the weapons of the
white devils ana used the hatchet,
sharpened to a razor's edge, and the
dagger. but at length they adopted the
revolver, the bomb and other murder
tools OF the white man. During the
2 last years OF the tong wars there were
many Cinnamon found dead in their
hunks with the gas turned on.
For years these three tongs had the
Z field 10 themselves in Chinatown, but
in 1911 or 1912, only a short time be-
fore the peace of Chinatown was
> signed in 1918. there appeared the Kim
Ian Association, an organization of
y the cadet branch of the Chinese Free
masons The Kim Lans had their
2 killers too, and II was only a short
9 while before they became involved in
bitter war with the Hip Sings, the
tong that the notorious Mock Duck
captained in his palmy days and led
TO victory in many a battle with the
On Leongs. But the Kim Lans came
too late to achieve much of a place in
Chinatown's history. The principal
feat of their killers was the murder of
the ferocious Yee Toy. the chief gun
man Of the Hip Sing Tong. who was
shot down in front of a Pell street
gambling den in 1912 while he stood
waiting, with other Hip Sing killers
in calling distance. for good shot at
an on Leong man. The Hip Sings
were particularly bitter against the
Kim Lans because they charged the
Kim Lans with having hired out to
the On Leongs to kill all the Hip Sing
gunner. So the Hip Sings imported
hatchet men from Philadelphia and
San Francisco, and many were the
killers who died.
The origin OF the Chinese tongs is
known only to Cinnamon, and China
men will not tell the truth about
them. The word tong means an as
sociation. or a secret meeting place,
and the Hip Sings and the On Leongs
were associations, while the Four
Brothers Society was more of a fra
ternal organization. Any Chinaman
could join the Hip Sings or the On
Leongs provided he could be Of use
TO the organization, but to be a mem
Der of the Four Brothers a Chinaman
had to be born into the society. He
must be either Low or a Chu or a
Tching or a Quong. The story told
among Cinnamon is that many thou
sands Of years ago, before the Chinese
ever knew of race OF white devils,
a man named Low was travelling
abroad in China and sat himself down
by a well to rest. Soon there came
another Chinaman whose name was
Chu, and then third whose name was
Tching, and finally fourth who called
kirSself Quong.
FabIed Origin of ''Four Brothers,"
Low and Chu and Tching and Quong
talked and each liked the others
Therefore they decided that thence
forth and forever they and their de-
scendants would be as brothers, and
so 1t came about that the Cinnamon
whose names are these are born into
the Four Brothers Society. The -Four
Brothers probably did less killing dur
ing the tong wars than did the Hip
Sings and the On Leongs, but when
they did kill It was to some purpose
and when they did declare war they