Not Only This;
They Had Burrowed To A Depth Of A Story Or Two Under The Ground, And
Through This Ran Passages In Which The Chinese Transacted Their Dark And
Devious Affairs - As The Smuggling Of Opium, The Traffic In Slave Girls
And The Settlement Of Their Difficulties.
In the last five years there was less of this underground life than
formerly, for the Board of Health had a cleanup some time ago; but it
was still possible to go from one end of Chinatown to the other through
secret underground passages.
The tourist, who always included Chinatown
in his itinerary, saw little of the real quarter. The guides gave him a
show by actors hired for his benefit. In reality the place amounted to a
great deal in a financial way. There were clothing and cigar factories
of importance, and much of the Pacific rice, tea and silk importing was
in the hands of the merchants, who numbered several millionaires.
Mainly, however, it was a Tenderloin for the house servants of the city
- for the San Francisco Chinaman was seldom a laundryman; he was too
much in demand at fancy prices as a servant.
The Chinese lived their own lives in their own way and settled their own
quarrels with the revolvers of their highbinders. There were two
theatres in the quarter, a number of rich joss houses, three newspapers
and a Chinese telephone exchange. There is a race feeling against the
Chinese among the working people of San Francisco, and no white man,
except the very lowest outcasts, lived in the quarter.
On the slopes of Telegraph Hill dwelt the Mexicans and Spanish, in low
houses, which they had transformed by balconies into a semblance of
Spain. Above, and streaming over the hill, were the Italians. The
tenement quarter of San Francisco shone by contrast with those of
Chicago and New York, for while these people lived in old and humble
houses they had room to breathe and an eminence for light and air. Their
shanties clung to the side of the hill or hung on the very edge of the
precipice overlooking the bay, on the verge of which a wall kept their
babies from falling. The effect was picturesque, and this hill was the
delight of painters. It was all more like Italy than anything in the
Italian quarter of New York and Chicago - the very climate and
surroundings, the wine country close at hand, the bay for their lateen
boats, helped them.
Over by the ocean and surrounded by cemeteries in which there are no
more burials, there is an eminence which is topped by two peaks and
which the Spanish of the early days named after the breasts of a woman.
The unpoetic Americans had renamed it Twin Peaks. At its foot was
Mission Dolores, the last mission planted by the Spanish padres in their
march up the coast, and from these hills the Spanish looked for the
first time upon the golden bay.
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