William H. Farrand. Autograph Letter Signed on paper embossed “Golden Gate”. San Francisco, March 11, 1889. 5.5 x 9”, 16pp. to George S. Riley, [Texas?]
A long and literate account, by an observant “Eastern Tenderfoot” from Rochester, New York, who had sailed from New York City on a visit to “Frisco”, half the letter devoted to a view of Chinatown, the city’s “great curiosity”.
Farrand details all his observations, likes and dislikes – the mild climate, the abundant flowers, the smoke-filled air from coal-burning, the fleas, the grand homes on Nob Hill, Golden Gate Park, the U.S. Mint and, finally, the 50,000 Chinese, who occupied “one of the most valuable parts of the city”, in the “the very heart” of the business district. “Why not get rid of them?”, he wondered he was told “it was an impossibility. If they do not own, they will pay higher rents than others…” They were not confined to the laundry business, but also manufactured jewelry, ladies’ underwear and tailored men’s suits sold “for about one half what an American tailor would make the same thing and… in just as good style… perfect imitations”. In general, “their economy in living is such that no white man can compete with them…and I am not at all surprised that the cry went up that no more be permitted to enter. They get all they can from the Americans and give nothing in return.” Even their food was imported from China
In a Chinese boarding house, Farrand saw the food prepared and eaten with chop-sticks, which “they handle…. so deftly, that they put away the food almost as rapidly as one would with a spoon.” In a room “which we would have considered too small almost for a single person” he saw thirty Chinese smoking opium, the air so thick with smoke that one could almost eat it. To us it was simply stifling…”, with no windows for ventilation, merely holes bored through a door. In one six-floor building, twelve hundred Chinamen sleep every night!”, which explained how tens of thousands could be “quartered within the compass of only a few blocks”.
Farrand visited a theater where 180 actors ate and slept beneath a small stage, performing in a eight-hour play,acting out a “fierce” battle, with facial contortions” which were “terrible to behold”. Their “costumes are very rich, being made of silk and embroidered with gold and silver..” The orchestral music was “something diabolical”, with “ the clashing of an immense pair of cymbals, and the unearthly screeching made by scraping upon the highest notes of several fiddles without any tune,,,” The audience of 2000 never applauded but intensely followed every word and physical movement. In an alley behind the theater, he saw preparations for a funeral, with the corpse surrounded by candles, “to keep away the witches” and roast pigs placed at head and foot of,the body which was guarded by “special policemen to prevent the high-binders from stealing” valuables that adorned the deceased.”
A graphic description of San Francisco Chinatown, ten years after the Kearney era, by an intelligent, if prejudiced, Caucasian tourist.