But young Chinese men of the past century, called "coolies," were seen by many people as replacements for the African slave trade. Not that Chinese workers were openly called slaves, but the mid-19th century abolition of the slave trade (at least of most of the traffic from Africa to the Americas) created a need for laborers.

By 1850 a fairly active business moved young Chinese men to Cuba and other Latin American nations in place of African slaves. From 1862 the United States prohibited such trade in unwilling or deceived workers, but, in the midst of a Civil War, the force of the decree was somewhat blunted. And after the Civil War the United States welcomed laborers to work on various construction gangs (including railways), to raise commercial food crops and cotton, and to cook and clean in hotels, restaurants, and private homes. The country was growing. “quotation”

Some Chinese came as indentured laborers generally within the system of having their transportation paid by an employer. The first work done (often measured in years) simply paid back the price of travel.

Contract laborers arrived under a specific agreement—most often arranged by Chinese "middlemen," which included transportation costs, a monthly salary, and, on occasion, board and room. Typical annual contract wages in 1870, paid to the contractor who took a cut, were $8 to $10 in gold for field hands, $15 in gold for railroad workers. The Houston and Texas Central Railway paid $20 in silver a month.

And workers were, at first, welcome. The Galveston News spoke of the Chinese as "the best, cheapest, and most reliable laborers ever known."“quotation”

But, after a decade of welcome, local feeling toward such workers usually changed“quotation.” On the Houston and Texas Central line, over one hundred Irish workers walked off the job rather than work with "the pigtails." The Dallas Herald, making a general statement, called the Chinese "miserable yellow imbecile dwarfs." The motives for the comments were clear. Newly arrived Chinese would, indeed, work for a low wage. Conditions were worse in China. Soon the "locals," citizens of the earlier established society, whomever they might be, complained that they could not compete with the Chinese, and that the Chinese took too many jobs, and that the "heathen Chinese" corrupted society. These were common arguments—rarely true but occasionally effective in changing law—repeated to this day about immigrants. “quotation”

One labor condition worked against Chinese employment at the end of Texas’s Reconstruction period. Texas blacks were back under white control, not as slaves as they were before the Civil War but as "freedmen" in name only. An obvious reason for importing other laborers to take their place evaporated. “quotation”

The Chinese who were left in Robertson County after 1870 had to accept work as they could. Some nineteen Chinese men, in December of 1873, agreed to work for James S. and John K. Hanna on "Hanna’s Plantation." They signed up on a monthly basis until cotton-picking season. The nineteen men, whose signatures in Chinese are still crisp today on the original documents, agreed to work "twenty six working days per month . . . well and faithfully . . . from sunrise to sunset—reasonable time being allowed for dinner—& to obey all orders & to do all work relating or in anywise appertaining to said Hanna’s Plantation. . . . "

The Hannas agreed to "board said Chinamen, said board to consist of (12) twelve pounds of Rice & (4) Four pounds of Bacon or its equivalent and to pay said Chinamen at the rate of $18.00 Dolls. per month for first-class hands and ($15.00) fifteen Dolls. for second class hands. . . ."

James S. Hanna also entered into sharecropping agreements with some of the former railroad laborers in Robertson County. On December 13, 1872, Hanna completed a land use contract with Sin Yong and John See. This outlined a form of sharecropping, common at the time, allowing transient workers to farm part of a landowner’s property. The crop would be "shared" in varying percentages; the landowner usually offered farm equipment to those willing to work.

Part of this contract spells out the terms:

Under sharecropping, the "advances"—for food and necessities before the crop profits were available—could be generous and fair, or they could create crippling and permanent debt for the sharecroppers. But sharecropping was an opportunity for those with few other means of making a living in rural areas.

In the urban areas of Texas, first employments for the Chinese were in construction, the laundry or restaurant businesses, raising vegetables, or as servants. Texas law—and, of course, social prejudice—forbade noncitizens to enter most occupations (and United States law prohibited citizenship for Chinese). But turn-of-the-century law did not forbid property ownership by resident Chinese.

Laundry ownership, which quickly became a stereotype, became an actual monopoly in some places (El Paso, starting in 1889). Although resentment built, Chinese laundries operated in many communities until "steam washers" became common. A typical example was Wong Wun’s "House of 10,000 Washings" on North Stanton in El Paso. In 1897 he washed sheets for one dollar and "ladies’ drawers" for fifty cents. Both starched. A nearby laundry used the slogan "Cleaner than River Sand," which was not only an old Chinese maxim but also an insult to the Mexican women’s practice of washing clothes in the Rio Grande. The Chinese drove many of these women out of business.

In San Antonio a Chinese hand laundry offered to do shirts for 15 cents (2 for 25 cents). But prices increased, and steam machines, owned by others, became more common. More significantly, few younger Chinese entered the laundry business. Most Chinese hand laundries ceased business between 1939 and 1943; one survived in Austin until the early 1950s. “quotation”

Chinese-owned restaurants were possibilities in some areas; notable were the restaurants started by Sam Mardock of Tyler. (Such restaurants did not commonly serve Chinese food until after World War II when "Americans" began to acquire the taste.)

Many Chinese entered the grocery business over the years but were threatened in 1937 by an apparent effort to close them down. At this time the Texas alien land law (of 1921) prohibited aliens who were not eligible for citizenship from buying land outside any incorporated city or town—that is, rural land. The law was aimed against Japanese farmers in southeastern Texas and did not affect Chinese settlement.

In the cities, however, the Chinese could and did buy lots and open small grocery stores. And this, in San Antonio at least, was a popular occupation. By the 1930s urban Chinese operated dozens of grocery stores—enough to come to the attention of A.L. Becker, who not only directed the San Antonio Merchants Association but also operated a chain of groceries. Becker claimed, before the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs, that the Chinese were "secretive and seldom seen" and owned more than a hundred stores. He implied their "cheap method of doing business" and frugal living were unfair conditions of competition.

An amendment to the land law was proposed to extend the prohibition of ownership to urban areas.

Mrs. T.H. (Rose) Wu, representing the Chinese grocers, said the numbers were exaggerated and the complaints unjust. And the American-Chinese Citizens League in San Antonio mentioned that if the amendment passed, Japan might boycott Texas-grown cotton. Involved here were the feelings generated by the earlier law against Japanese farmers. The threat was enough to enlist some cotton producers in Texas to oppose the amendment. At the time Japan was a strong importer of Texas cotton just as Europe (including Germany) had been before World War I.

The amendment was not reported out of committee.

Because education was one of three virtues of Chinese life (along with family values and personal achievement), many second-generation Chinese Texans entered professional fields. The first known Chinese university student in Texas was H.Y. Moh (Mu Xiang-yue) who came to Texas A&M University in 1913 for a master’s degree. He returned to Shanghai to become a cotton manufacturer, but later Chinese students—many of these born in Texas—stayed.

Within two generations Chinese in Houston were working at the University of Houston, NASA, and in nearly every kind of business in the city. And this was true across Texas.

see notes
see bibliography