By Kathryn Reisdorfer

The Chinese have been in the news in Prescott lately, and, just as in the past, they seem to be annoying some people. As a researcher, I am very interested in understanding the complex historical source of that annoyance. Now, of course, the concern is primarily an economic one-the archaeological dig looking for Chinese artifacts is delaying the construction of a public parking lot in downtown Prescott.

It did not surprise me, and perhaps it will not surprise readers, to find out that the earlier concern was also based, in part, on economics. 

Although the Chinese performed necessary services in mining towns in the West, some people resented the fact that they were such effective economic competitors. Recently I have been researching an incident that happened in 1909, which definitely is tied to economic competition. It involves Charley Hong, a prosperous Chinese man who was the owner of the Bon Ton Cafe in Jerome. 

Hong, who had been around for over a decade, had weathered a number of "bust" periods in Jerome. It was in another slump in 1909. Depressed copper prices had dampened some people's spirits because copper was the mainstay of that mining camp. We all tend to be a bit testy when our economic plans are threatened, so it didn't seem unusual to me when I read that Charley King, a local constable, raised objections to the business practices of the restaurant owner, Charley Hong. After all, King's wife had just opened a cafe of her own. 

What happened was that a few months after Mrs. King opened her cafe, Constable King reported to Jerome's Mining News that Chinese men had been apprehended as they were foraging the refuse boxes of a meat market. King alleged that they were using the discarded meat to serve to unsuspecting patrons in a local restaurant. "What restaurant was that?" Bill Adams, the editor of the News asked. Then he answered his own question: "[I]t was the Bon Ton restaurant that was warned, and it was a Chinaman from the Charley Hong restaurant that was captured in the meat market with the goods on them." 

Adams immediately initiated a campaign aimed squarely at Hong, but it quickly encompassed all of the approximately 35 Chinese men living in Jerome. The viciousness of the editor's assault shocked me as I read the weekly newspaper during the three months following the initial allegations. Not only did Adams attack the Chinese in nearly every editorial, but he also printed front-page stories lecturing readers about the nastiness of the Chinese, and he spread inflammatory paragraphs and blatantly anti-Chinese poems throughout the newspaper. 

Adams first alleged that the Chinese were filthy. He said there were maggots in the soup at the Bon Ton and that the Chinese washed their open sores in the kitchen of Hong's restaurant. While his accusations border on the irrational, at least they were connected with the food and the restaurant in question. Then, amazingly, he flew to another topic. He began to accuse the Chinese of sexual misconduct. 

After reminding his readers that Chinese were not allowed to reside-literally they could not sleep-in Bisbee, Adams explained to readers why the Chinese were dangerous: "During the past two months the News has been informed a number of times that chinamen on the streets of Jerome when women and young ladies were passing have been seen to act in a manner that made the blood of the Americans who witnessed their actions boil with indignation." 

The implication was that Chinese men were a threat to the white women in town. Adams followed this up by reprinting a story from a Phoenix paper that reported the arrest of a white woman and Chinese man who were living together immorally. It did not matter, the newspaper said, that the two had been married in New Mexico seven years previously. Such unions-marriages between Chinese men and white women-were illegal in the Territory of Arizona. This arrest was supposed to serve as an example to others. 

After playing his first sex card, Bill Adams harangued readers with accusations that the Chinese were unfairly undercutting the going price of a decent lunch. "For eight and one-third cent [sic] per meal more than it costs you at one of those filthy Chinese restaurants," he wrote, "you can eat at any white restaurant in town . Food that is cooked by white people in a clean kitchen ." 

So, according to Bill Adams, cleanliness, sex and money were problems when it came to the Chinese. But there was another side to the squabble, and that side heated up very quickly. You see, Jerome had two newspapers. It just so happens that the other paper, the Copper Belt, was owned and edited by a woman, Laura Nihell, the only female editor in the entire southwest at that time. The problem was that she was using her paper to defend Hong. 

Bill Adams did what seems to have come naturally to him: he accused her of vague sexual improprieties. Nihell was married to a tinsmith in Jerome, and she was the mother of two young-adult sons. One of them, outraged at what the male editor was saying about his mother, physically attacked Adams on the street. 

Laura Nihell made an attack of her own, but it was verbal. She maintained that the only reason Adams was raising such a furor about the Chinese was that Hong had cut him off because his running bill was delinquent! 

It was at about this point that the story hit the Prescott papers, and it was juicy enough to make the front page, along with other recent stories, like President Taft's visit to town, Sharlot Hall's impending appointment as Territorial Historian and comments like, "America for Americans," and "The Italian-Chink war is now slumbering in the downy bed of a cessation of hostilities." As Richard Sims pointed out in a recent article on the Chinese, at least some vocal people in 19th century Prescott were not fond of Chinese residents. 

When the Prescott Journal Miner reported on the quarrel in Jerome, it claimed that the incident "started over a comparatively trivial matter and the resulting fight between the two newspapers of the town degenerated into personalities . Feeling at Jerome is now said to be at a white head, for King and his supporter, W. S. Adams of the Jerome Mining News, and Mrs. Nihell of the Copper Belt, all have their friends." 

After the Prescott paper printed several front-page follow-ups, the story died down in Prescott, superseded by the tragic murder-suicide of a prominent local couple. However, the negative attitude against the Chinese resurfaced regularly afterward, just as it had before. 

Faced with local hostility that was exacerbated by newspapers' printed insults, most of the Chinese left Prescott, Jerome, and all the other mining camps in the West. Some returned to China; others went to urban centers, like Portland and San Francisco, where there were large, well-established Chinese communities. 

They are celebrating the Chinese New Year there now. Huge, brightly colored paper dragons are passing through Chinatown in San Francisco amid music and joyful shouts. They used to do that in Jerome and Prescott, and I must add that many Arizonans enjoyed those festivities. They were glad to live in colorful places among people from all over the world-people with common goals: to enjoy freedom, happiness and prosperity and to live, as the Chinese saying goes, "in interesting times." 

(Kathryn Reisdorfer is a professor at Yavapai College and has recently completed an inventory of historic documents and artifacts in Yavapai County) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (pb113f4i9). Reuse only by permission.
This Chinese Joss House stood on Granite Street not far from the future site of the garage. Among other reasons, the economics of an archeological dig have been cited for tension over the project. 1909 Jerome was the scene of economic tension involving the Chinese that evolved into name calling by the local newspapers.