"Immigration officials regarded most Chinese women as "slave girls and prostitutes" imported to work in brothels.  Chinese women who attempted to immigrate not only faced the humiliation experience of being considered prostitutes, but also found it difficult to prove that they were legitimately married."

"It was possible, by a rigid cross-examination of the women and their alleged husbands, to develop evidence sufficient to establish that, if a ceremony were performed at all, it was a mere mock marriage adopted for the purpose of defeating the Exclusion laws, or that the man was already married to another woman before his so-called marriage to the applicant had occurred.  Thus it has been possible to deport some of these women to the country whence they came"

"By 1900, the only Chinese women who could legally enter the United States were the wives and daughters of merchants, diplomats, and U.S. citizens.  Most of the women who managed to enter the United States did so as the wives and daughters of merchants, in part because upper-class women were treated with more consideration and also because merchants were the only ones who could afford to finance the immigration of individuals who could not go out and work.  Although many working-class men could support their families back in China in some comfort, few could accumulate the funds needed to pay for their wives and daughters to join them in America."

"During the 1920s, immigration legislation became even more restrictive.  In 1921, Congress passed a new law (57 Stat. 601) stating that foreign born wives of U.S. citizens could not themselves gain citizenship by derivation.  The search for a wife became even more difficult for Chinese men with the Cable Act of 1922.  This law dictated that any woman with US. citizenship even if native born, would lose that citizenship if she married a man who was an alien ineligible for citizenship. After the Exclusion Act of 1924, only the wives of merchants and diplomats could enter the United States legally".   In May 1925, the Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of Chinese alien wives of U.S. citizens. 

"The gender imbalance among Chinese in America left Chinese men with few attractive and available marriage partners.  In 1920 there were 695 Chinese men to every 100 Chinese women in the United States.  American born women tended to  be few in number and were inclined to accept only husbands from wealthier backgrounds.  Anti miscegenation laws inhibited Chinese men from looking outside the Chinese community for brides.  In California the first anti-miscegenation law was passed in 1872 to prohibit marriages between whites and blacks.  In 1906 it was amended to include Mongolians, the racial category that included Chinese.  Not until 1948 was this statute repealed.  Moreover, after 1921 any woman marrying a Chinese man without U.S. citizenship would be stripped of hers "

 ref:  Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home.

In 1930, Congress amended the 1924 act in response to negative reaction.  The amendement allowed wives of Chinese citizens to legallly enter the U.S., but only if they had been married prior to 1924.  Partly from this amendment, the ratio of men to women improved from 7:1 in 1920 to 3:1 in 1940, with Chinese women increasing from 12 to  26% of the Chinese population.

ref:  The Chinese Americans.

It is charged against us, that not one virtuous Chinawoman has been brought to this country, and that here we have no wives and children. The fact is, that already a few hundred Chinese families have been brought here. These are all chaste, pure, keepers at home, not known on the public street. There are also among us a few hundred, perhaps a thousand, Chinese children born in America. The reason why so few of our families are brought to this country is because it is contrary to the custom and against the inclination of virtuous Chinese women to go so far from home, and because the frequent outbursts of popular indignation against our people have not encouraged us to bring our families with us against their will.

It is charged that the Chinese are no benefit to this country. Are the railroads built by Chinese labor no benefit to this country? Do not the results of the daily toil of one hundred thousand men increase the riches of this country? Are the manufacturing establishments largely worked by Chinese labor no benefit to this country? Is it no benefit to this country that the Chinese annually pay over two million dollars duties at the custom-house of San Francisco? Is not the two hundred thousand dollars annual poll tax paid by the Chinese any benefit? And are not the hundreds of thousands of dollars taxes on personal property and the foreign miners' tax annually paid to the revenues of this country any benefit?

It is charged that all Chinese laboring men are slaves. This is not true in a single instance . Chinamen labor for food. They pursue all kinds of industries for a livelihood. Is it so, then, that every man laboring for his livelihood is a slave? If these men are slaves, then all men laboring for wages are slaves.

ref:  A Rebuttal to Racists.

 

year	Chinese immigrants	year	Chinese immigrants	year	Chinese immigrants	year	Chinese immigrants
1879	9.604	1895	539	1911	1,460	1927	1,471
1880	5,802	1896	1,441	1912	1,765	1928	1,320
1881	11,890	1897	3,363	1913	2,105	1929	1,446
1882	39,579	1898	2,071	1914	2,502	1930	1,589
1883	8,031	1899	1,660	1915	2,660	1931	1,150
1884	279	1900	1,247	1916	2,460	1932	750
1885	22	1901	2,459	1917	2,237	1933	148
1886	40	1902	1,649	1918	1,795	1934	187
1887	10	1903	2,209	1919	1,964	1935	229
1888	26	1904	4,309	1920	2,330	1936	273
1889	118	1905	2,166	1921	4,009	1937	293
1890	1,716	1906	1,544	1922	4,406	1938	613
1891	2,836	1907	961	1923	4,986	1939	642
1892	--	1908	1,397	1924	6,992	1940	643
1892	472	1909	1,943	1925	1,937
1894	1,170	1910	1,968	1926	1,751

"Chinese immigration into the United States:  An Analysis of Changes in Immigration Policies", Helen Chen, PhD dissertation, Brandeis Univ 1980.  Impact of the 1882 and 1924 Exclusion Acts on immigration in noted in italics.  Table from "Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home" Madelin Hsu, p. 67

"For more than a half a century a long wooden structure not only dominated the life of the town which became Oakhurst, but also determined how the County of Madera would grow. Begun in 1874, the lumber flume stretched for more than 50 miles from the mountains to the railroad in the San Joaquin Valley. At the time of its construction, it was believed to be the longest such flume in the world.

Certainly it was a novel way to move rough cut wood from the hills to the flatlands.

Five feet across at top of the V, the flume was built in 16-foot "boxes" or sections. During the two years it took to build the initial structure, virtually all the production of the California Lumber Company mill, primarily cedar, was used. Once construction progressed downstream from Sugar Pine, complete prefabricated sections were floated from the mill to the construction crews. 

At that time, Borden, located on the railroad some four miles south of where the town of Madera was to be developed, was the population and commercial center of that portion of Fresno County north of the San Joaquin River. A small elevation between the Fresno River and Borden prevented building the terminus there, however. 

Instead the flume followed the Fresno and a mill and lumber yard were developed along the railroad. The town was named Madera, Spanish for lumber. 

"It definitely was a thrill. Ahead the flume sloped sharply down and the two sides of the flume seemed to come together in the distance as two parallel lines seem to. Looking behind, the boat was going fast enough to be ahead of the water. I have no idea how fast it went, but believe me, it was fast enough going over some of the higher trestles." 

Others estimated the speed on steep parts of that 10-mile stretch of flume as 50 miles an hour. Whatever it was, it was a thrill in a V-shaped channel five feet wide and three feet deep."