An Intimate World: Race, Migration, and Chinese and Irish Domestic Servants in the United States, 1850-1920 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Andrew Theodore Urban IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advised by Donna Gabaccia and Erika Lee June 2009 © Andrew Urban, 2009 Acknowledgements While I rarely discussed the specifics of my dissertation with my fellow graduate students and friends at the University of Minnesota – I talked about basically everything else with them. No question or topic was too large or small for conversations that often carried on into the wee hours of the morning. Caley Horan, Eric Richtmyer, Tim Smit, and Aaron Windel will undoubtedly be lifelong friends, mahjong and euchre partners, fantasy football opponents, kindred spirits at the CC Club and Mortimer’s, and so on. I am especially grateful for the hospitality that Eric and Tim (and Tank the cat) offered during the fall of 2008, as I moved back and forth between Syracuse and Minneapolis. Aaron and I had the fortune of living in New York City at the same time in our graduate careers, and I have fond memories of our walks around Stuyvesant Park in the East Village and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and our time spent with the folks of Tuesday night. Although we did not solve all of the world’s problems, we certainly tried. Living in Brooklyn, I also had the opportunity to participate in the short-lived yet productive “Brooklyn Scholars of Domestic Service” (AKA the BSDS crew) reading group with Vanessa May and Lara Vapnek. Dave Madden, a friend from high school and another New Yorker, also ended up in graduate school, albeit in sociology. Our “interdisciplinary” friendship has been an important part of my life for many years now. I am grateful to have received the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from University of Minnesota for the 2007-08 academic year, and the University of Minnesota Law School Alumni Fund Fellowship in Legal History for the 2008-09 academic year. These fellowships came at important moments in my research and writing, and allowed me to dedicate full attention to the task at hand. In addition, I am i grateful to have received the College of Liberal Arts Dissertation Research and Conference Grant, which allowed me to travel to Dublin, Ireland, to present and workshop the material that would eventually become chapter four. While conducting research at the regional branch of the National Archives in San Bruno, California, I had the good fortune to meet Vincent Chin, an independent researcher who has been diligently digitizing documents and records pertaining to Chinese immigration. Vincent suggested that I take a look at the certificates of identity for the Columbus refugees, since it was his understanding that they had worked as servants and cooks. He was of course correct, and it was his suggestion that led me down this particular path. His advice constitutes the sine qua non of chapter six. The range of interests and expertise covered by the faculty at the University of Minnesota is quite frankly amazing. Professor Tom Wolfe deserves thanks – my cohort was certainly lucky to have him teach the “methods” course we were all required to take during our first semester in graduate school. In addition, the influence that his seminar on “Culture and Governmentality” had on this dissertation should be evident. I would also like to thank Professors Jeffrey Pilcher, Josephine Lee, Elaine Tyler May, and MJ Maynes for suggesting key articles and books during the course of my research and writing. In no case that I can recall did any of their suggestions not pay off. Lisa Norling deserves special thanks for suggesting that I read Amy Kaplan’s article on “Manifest Domesticity,” which would ultimately provide an important theoretical framework for this dissertation. Professor Tom Bender graciously allowed me to participate in the writing seminar he conducts at New York University, and as a native ii Californian lent a keen eye to my arguments about San Francisco’s political and social environment in the late-nineteenth century. Professors Doug Hartmann and Anna Clark have served as members of my dissertation committee and I am indebted to both for their enthusiastic support, and their sharp, helpful critiques. Doug’s sociology seminar on theories of race and ethnicity, which I took as a first year student, revealed to me just how complicated things are…in a good way. Anna’s seminar on British history reminded me that I would be foolish to study Irish immigration only through the lens of an Americanist. In both cases, their teaching convinced me that I needed them on my committee. Professor Kevin Murphy is technically only a member of my committee and not an advisor, yet his willingness to read anything I put before him often made his relationship to my dissertation seem more like the latter. Outside of this dissertation, I am grateful that I had the opportunity to work with Kevin on numerous public history projects, and to talk with him extensively about public history’s place in the university. I greatly admire Kevin’s commitment to public scholarship, and only hope that I can live up to the standard that he has set. Donna Gabaccia’s arrival at the University of Minnesota during my third year can be best described in meteorological terms: it was as if a warm front carrying immense stores of energy had swept through the Twin Cities, transforming all in its wake. Having now completed my dissertation, I cannot imagine what it would look like (or more importantly, what would be missing) had I not had the chance to have Donna as an advisor. It seems nearly impossible to count the ways in which Erika Lee, who has been my advisor since day one, has supported this project. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to take a seminar with Erika and work as her iii research assistant. As I wrote this dissertation, I never once felt that Erika was not interested in what I had to say. Perhaps more importantly, I never once felt that she did not have faith in me to clarify, strengthen, and expand upon my arguments. In February 2005, a fuzzy shiba inu monster entered my life – named Shelby in honor of a landlord who ended up deciding that he was not going to allow dogs in his building after all. Despite her frequent attempts to sabotage my efforts to complete this dissertation by walking across my computer, attacking random pieces of furniture, and batting at me in order to indicate that, yes, it was time to pet her – I would not trade these distractions for anything. My family and soon-to-be family have been supportive in many ways, and have always been willing to hear me go on about my topic. I am grateful to my grandmother Adelle Urban, my aunt Sue Urban, and my mother-in-law- to-be, Mary Heater. I wish that my grandfather and grandmother, Ray and Rose Rosenblum, were still with me. In particular, I owe a debt to my grandmother Rose, who fascinated my sister and me with her personal accounts of historic events. I will never forget her calmly explaining to us how her mother locked her and her sisters in a room when the Russian soldiers stationed in Romania, where she was living in 1917, began to boisterously celebrate the Bolsheviks seizure of power (!) –the power of such stories undoubtedly inspired in me an appreciation for the past. Growing up in Maryland, dinner at the Urban household was not for the faint of heart. I for one would like to apologize for the occasions when my language became a bit too profane. Nonetheless, I am thankful that my parents, Janet and Ted, raised me in a manner that emphasized the benefits of being able to hold one’s own in an intellectual and political argument. Their love of books, museums, and critical thinking – and their iv ability to share this – made me who I am. On a practical level, my parents have also served as proofreaders and editors for various portions of this dissertation. Their help and love is obviously boundless. I wish all the best for my sister Claire, who is now in her second year of law school and focusing on public interest immigration law. It has been wonderful that recently our interests have overlapped – with obvious disciplinary differences – and I hope Claire knows that even though I believe that the law is nothing but a social technology used to maintain the spurious authority of the state…the world still needs more people like her willing to do battle on the ground. Nicole Heater and I first met in September 2001, fittingly as co-workers at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Since October 2002 she has been my partner in all senses of that word. I will always remember in particular, when she took me on a trip to Brownsville so that we could track down the building where Margaret Sanger briefly operated the first public birth control clinic in the United States, before she was arrested. Wandering the streets of Brownsville looking for this abandoned building, I remember being awestruck about having found someone whose curiosity about the past mirrored mine. I look forward to a lifetime together and celebrating her accomplishments as a landscape architect. The sense of awe she inspires in me has not diminished, but only grows stronger… v Dedication To Nicole… vi Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One Governing the Home: Domestic Service and the Question of Immigrant Labor 22 Chapter Two “Burned Steaks” and “Domestic Anarchy” Irish Servants and the American Home 47 Chapter Three “John Chinaman to Her Rescue!” Chinese Labor and the Domestic Service Question 87 Chapter Four “An Alien Mob of Idlers, Tramps, and Criminals” Irish Immigrants and the 1870s’ Anti-Chinese Movement in San Francisco 138 Chapter Five Domestic Service in the Age of Exclusion 186 Chapter Six The Columbus Refugees: Servants to the Nation? 233 Conclusion Domestic Concerns, Global Issues: Domestic Workers and Immigration Policy in the Present 285 Bibliography 319 vii List of Illustrations Frederick Keller, “Reasons Why the Anti-Coolie Bill had no Effect,” The Wasp, 1879 25 J.