The Price of Salmon: The Scandal of the West Coast Salmon Canning Industry

By Max Stern

In 1922, San Francisco Daily News investigative journalist, Max Stern, posed as a down-on-his-luck cannery workers to uncover corrupt hiring practices and deplorable labor conditions employed by Chinese contractors and Alaska salmon canners. Stern's collective articles spotlighted the discrimination, exploitation, profiteering, and mistreatment of cannery crews and exposed the corrupt, abusive practices of the labor contract system.

In thirty-seven articles published daily between September 24 and November 8, 1922, Stern described his journey to Alaska, embarking from San Francisco and sailing to the shores of the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay, the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea. Stern shared with readers breathtaking accounts onboard American made bark, Emily F. Whitney, one of the notorious "Hell Ships." He vividly described risk and danger, labor unrest, fish waste, poor food and living quarters, and the industry's impact on the Chinese gang which included a striking diversity of workers from many races and national origins.

Stern's trip was the most unusual newspaper assignment of the year. His work is an exposé of the scandal of the coastwide salmon canning trade, which eventually led to the collapse of the Chinese contract system. The writing covers a lot of ground, including early twentieth century recruiting practice in San Francisco, living and working conditions aboard a "Hell Ship" and in Alaska, race and nationality, immigrants, capitalist system during 2nd industrial revolution, salmon canning trade, San Francisco underworld, Chinese contract system, Alaska canneries and natives.

More real than fiction, Stern's adventure aboard a "Hell Ship" to Alaksa was filled with suspense and drama. It was a deep dive into of the underworld of the salmon canning trade, populated by greedy owners, corrupt contractors, and Chinese Gang of many races, tongues, and nationalities. Desperate men were pressed to surrender to "Man's inhumanity to man.". It is a remarkable piece of journalism and literature of the American West in the early 20th Century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667834597

Book preview

cover.jpg

© 1922 SAN FRANCISCO DAILY NEWS

© 2022 JAMES CHIAO & PHILIP CHIAO

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-66783-458-0 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-66783-459-7 (eBook)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For stories of Chinese cannery workers, please visit

https://chinesecannerylaborers.home.blog/

For more information about the editors, please visit

www.facebook.com/ChiaoBrothers

The original preview as published in The Daily News, September 22, 1922.

In spring of 1922, San Francisco Daily News reporter, Max Stern, joined a Chinese gang and made the trip north aboard a windjammer Emily F. Whitney and sailed from San Francisco(1), passing Cape Flattery(2), to Bristol Bay by way of Unimak Pass(3). The ship departed San Francisco in mid-April, and did not arrive in Nushagak(4) until June, 33 days later.

On his return trip, with the help of his fisherman friend, Tom, Stern was able to travel from Dillingham(1) 10 miles downriver to Clark’s Point(3). Once there, Stern took a mail boat, a steamer, to Seward(9). He stopped at many places along the way, including Ekuk(3), Unalaska(4), False Pass(5), Chignek(7), and Karluk Bay(8) to visit canneries. From Seward(9), Stern traveled to Ketchikan(10) before finally arriving in Seattle(11).

Table of Contents

Introduction

From the Editors

Foreword: Daily Newsman Sails for North on Salmon Ship

1: Daily Newsman Sails to Alaska With Salmon Fleet

2: Worker Must Buy Job With Order for Outfit Placed

With Labor Contractors

3: Reporter Signs Up With S. F. Firm to Work

in Alaska for Chinese Boss

4: Ancient Ships Form Fleet That Sails North Each Spring

5: Signs Unseen Contract, Held Like Prisoner Aboard Ship

6: Chinee Gang Throws Its Unedible Food to Gulls

7: Three Kinds of Gambling on Alaska Hell Ship

8: Stern Can See Through New Mattress; Cheated of Coat

9: There’s More Than One Way to Profit Off Chinee Gang

10: Culls Form Chinee Gang; Mutiny Unlikely

11: Fishermen Form Crew on Alaska Salmon Ship

12: Salmon Boat Sets Sail; Off for the Far North

13: 30 Nationalities on Alaska Salmon Ship, Stern Finds

14: Cup of Water a Day Given Men for Drinking, Washing

15: Storm, Headwinds Followed by Calm on Salmon Cruise

16: Strong Union Wins Decent Conditions for Fishermen

17: 180 Men, 4 Small Lifeboats on Alaska Salmon Vessel

18: Alaska Fisherman’s Work Is Difficult and Dangerous

19: Stern Awakens Chinaman by Sitting on Him; Gets In Bad

20: Finds Lack of Water Revolt Cause in Great Unwashed

21: In Chinee Hold, Shorty Dons Nightie and Does Hula-Hula

22: After 33 Days at Sea, Reaches Salmon Field

23: Men Quartered in Rooms So Low They Cannot Stand

24: Bunkhouse Gable Waves; Tide, When In, Dampens Its Floor

25: Economic Chains Tie Alaska Cannery Workers to the Job

26: Stern Organizes Quartet With Aid of Three Negroes

27: Chinese Gang Members Pay $5 Each School Tax

From $170, Season’s Pay

28: Finds Alaska Packers’ Bunkhouses Sanitary

29: Stern, With Salmon Fleet Two Months, Owes $14.80

30: Fishermen Throw Shoes Into Sea to Win Luck For Season

31: Unrest in A. P. A. Cannery in Spite of Better Conditions

32: Alaska Salmon Fields Stripped; Fish Wasted

33: Alaska Canneries Clean, Fish Carefully Packed, Says Stern

34: Packing Corporation Head Condemns Labor Contracts

35: Striking Codfishermen Say They Made Only $20 a Month

36: Alaskans Threaten to Clean Up the Salmon Canneries

37: It’s Always Been Done, Is Excuse for Labor Contract

Appendix 1: Myron Young Denies Stern’s Story

Appendix 2: Complain & Lawsuit Against Young and Mayer Co.

Appendix 3: Biography of Max Stern 1884 -1950

Appendix 4: Emily F. Whitney

Appendix 5: Cress P. Hale (Pioneer Alaska Salmon Canner)

Appendix 6: Glossary

Appendix 7: Nautical Terms

Introduction

A century after San Francisco Daily News investigative journalist, Max Stern, posed as a down-on-his-luck cannery worker to uncover corrupt hiring practices and deplorable labor conditions employed by Alaska salmon canners, former cannery workers and brothers, Jim and Philip Chiao, have republished Stern’s valuable work, an exposé, entitled The Price of Salmon.

In thirty-seven articles published daily between September 24 and November 8, 1922, Stern described his journey to Alaska, embarking from San Francisco and sailing to the shores of the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay, the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea. Stern shared with readers breathtaking accounts of the notorious Hell Ships. He vividly described risk and danger, labor unrest, fish waste, poor living quarters, and the industry’s impact on Alaska Native people, who were still reeling from the deadly effects of the Spanish influenza pandemic in Bristol Bay three years prior in 1919.

Notably, The Price of Salmon recounts stories of Stern’s laborious role in the cannery’s Chinese Gang and the striking diversity of workers who provided essential labor but remained oft-forgotten in the annals of the canned salmon industry. Stern’s collective articles spotlighted the discrimination, exploitation, profiteering, and mistreatment of cannery crews and helped put an end to the corrupt, abusive practices of the labor contract system.

At the time of The Price of Salmon’s printing, Bristol Bay was (and remains) the largest red salmon fishery in the world. Nearly sixty years before Stern’s voyage to Alaska, the Pacific salmon industry got its initial start in California in 1864 and soon spread north to the Columbia River and Puget Sound. Canners built the first cannery in Southeast Alaska at Old Sitka, 1878, with canneries in Cook Inlet, Cordova, Karluk, and Chignik quickly following. By 1884, the Arctic Packing Company established the first cannery in Bristol Bay, near Dillingham, on the Nushagak River, not far from Stern’s destined Alaska Salamon Co. cannery, in 1922.

The Price of Salmon introduced readers to an array of historical actors, including immigrants from the fishing nations of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean whom Bristol Bay salmon packers employed to catch salmon from sailboats—the aptly-named Iron Men of Wooden Ships. Taking the center stage, however, were the historically marginalized, multicultural processors, the Iron Men of the Canning Line. Stern notes that as many as thirty different nationalities made the trip north to Bristol Bay:

Chinese, Guamese, Nicaraguan, Portuguese, Spaniards, Mexicans, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Colombians, Panamanians, Santa Domin­gans, Haitians, Finns, Russians, Letts, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, Germans, Norwegians, Irish, Negroes, Icelanders, Sicilians, and English—all these went into the brew that made up our polyglot crew of salmon packers.

At the heart of The Price of Salmon, however, are the Chinese cannery workers, whose skillset and traditions shaped the industry’s labor landscape and directly linked Alaskan canneries to the broader Pacific World. Chinese began arriving in the United States in significant numbers during the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855. Starting in the late-1860s, a steady flow of Chinese immigrants entered the United States to work for companies building the transcontinental railroads. Nearly all Chinese immigrants came from the Guangzhou area and the eight counties adjacent to Guangzhou. By 1869, rail lines connected the country from coast to coast, and soon after Chinese laborers gained work in West Coast salmon canneries, starting in early 1870s. By the mid-1880s, they formed the basis of fish processing work from Astoria, Oregon, to Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Canners relied on highly skilled Chinese workers to conduct nearly all tasks required to can salmon. They soldered all the cans, received the fish on the dock, and tossed the salmon into bins from the boats. Chinese butchers cleaned virtually every salmon by hand—about three to six per minute. Chinese men fed the cleaned salmon into the cutting machine, which sliced the salmon transversely in sections to the exact length of the can and the filling machine, which filled the cans with salmon. Chinese inspectors carefully weighed the cans, adding ‘patch,’ or small pieces of salmon, to the lightweights. While machines topped the cans with lids, crimped the edges, and partially soldered them into place, Chinese tinsmiths expertly sealed by hand a central vent in the lid, which, in those days, was left open to let hot air escape. After Chinese tinsmiths closed the vent, they placed the cans in large trays and lowered them into a square wooden tank filled with hot water to inspect for leaks. The Chinese tester removed defective cans with a pair of tongs, while additional Chinese tinsmiths quickly remedied the flaw. Finally, Chinese workers placed trays of cans into large pressure cookers, called retorts, for cooking. Once removed, the most skilled worker would pass a tenpenny nail over the hot cans, striking the top of each. Simply judging by the sound, wrote U.S. Fisheries Inspector Jefferson Moser, the expert worker knew whether there were any defects. Once labeled, the Chinese prepared the salmon product for shipment south. Because poorly prepared canned salmon could be deadly, canners highly prized the Chinese workers’ canning expertise.¹

Despite their valued skills and contributions to the canned salmon industry, Chinese immigrants faced bitter racial discrimination in the late nineteenth century, especially in regions along the Pacific slope. Boom and bust economic conditions prompted labor leaders to scapegoat the Chinese, while newspaper headlines popularized the phrase, the yellow peril. The mostly out-of-work white laborers blamed Asian competition for depressed wages. Xenophobic fears sparked brutal violence against Chinese communities throughout the West Coast, peaking in the late 1870s. Instead of protecting the Chinese workers, U.S. politicians passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which banned immigration from China for the next sixty years.

The shortage of Chinese workers caused by the Chinese Ex­­clusion Act compelled canners to mechanize the canning operation. By 1900, the only part of the cannery not mechanized was the butchering process, which could not supply enough salmon to permit the canning machines to operate at full speed. In 1902, a former mining camp cook named Edmund A. Smith developed an apparatus that removed the fins and split and cleaned the body cavity. Introduced during the 1904 salmon season, Smith’s invention proved to be a great success. The butchering machine processed forty salmon per minute, the equivalent of an eighteen-man Chinese butchering gang. As a result, Smith Cannery Machines Co. unapologetically dubbed its product the Iron Chink, a name by which it was called well into the twentieth century.

Because unskilled workers could operate the Iron Butchering Machine, the device eventually displaced the Chinese butchers, the aristocracy of the cannery crew. The technological addition increased the percentage of lesser-skilled and less-expensive workers and reduced fish house laborers to mere machine tenders. By the time Stern arrived in 1922, the so-called Chinese Gang consisted mainly of Mexicans, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Polynesian, and Filipino workers.

To supply the diverse workforce, canners relied on Chinese labor contractors, the primary focus of Stern’s exposé. In addition to hiring the cannery laborers, the contractor was responsible for feeding the crew, managing the processors, assigning work tasks, and paying the workers at the end of the season. The contractor’s agreement with the fish companies stipulated a guaranteed minimum amount to receive up to a certain number of cases packed. The agreement served as an assurance that canners would pay the contractor, even if it were a poor salmon run.

One of the most influential and infamous labor contractor agencies in San Francisco included Quong Ham Wah and Company, owned by Lem Sen, who supplied workers for the Alaska canned salmon industry. Lem Sen partnered with Emil Mayer and Sam Young to recruit cannery hands. Quong Ham Wah Co. hired the Chinese laborers while Mayer and Young recruited the Mexican, Filipino, Puerto Rican, and African American workers. According to Stern, Mayer and Young accessed the diverse groups by subcontracting with a minority representative who used family ties and social networks to entice their countrymen into cannery work with a promise of uena trabajo, mucho dinero or good work, much money.

The subcontractors brought potential hires to Mayer and Young’s business, S. Young Tailoring Company, a San Francisco-based gents furnishings store. There, the tailors recruited up to 1700 workers annually with the guarantee of being the sole provider of cannery workers’ clothing and supplies. As fresh recruits signed contracts, Mayer and Young outfitted the cheated cannery worker with poorly made clothing, bedding, and other supplies, paid for by the men at the cost of nearly half of their seasonal wages.

Stern described Mayer and Young’s shady transaction:

"I was assured that the money for the outfit would come out of my wages, and I didn’t need the cash. The slip was in the form of a printed bill. On the head was the firm’s name:

The S. Young Tailoring Co., Alaska Outfitters, Gents’ Furnishing Department. The prices seemed pretty high,

but I figured that the articles must be exceptionally good.

I was going to a rigorous climate and on a cold trip and needed clothing and covers of the best and heaviest variety, even if they did cost more.

Instead, I had been given shoddy shoes that would let in the water at first wearing, imitation woolen underwear, and half-cotton shirts, and there was no mackinaw nor socks at all. My cheap bedding might have done service in a California labor camp in summer time. It would certainly not suffice for an Alaskan spring. My bill totaled $62.75. It was a big one for a summer job that would only net me $170 at most."

While traveling to the canneries as the crew bosses, Stern’s The Price of Salmon describes how the subcontractors found multiple ways to separate cannery workers from their money. One of the most egregious methods was food supply. Contractors received a daily per capita sum from the cannery owner for provisions. But instead of using the funds to sufficiently supply the crew, contractors served relatively inexpensive rice, tea, and salmon or scrap fish from the cannery while pocketing a significant proportion of the money. In addition, some contractors bought the supplies through their own import/export businesses, which generated even larger profits for themselves.

Profits made by the subcontractor also came from operating the slop chest. Originating from the Old English sloppe, meaning clothing, the slop chest was a maritime word for store. Contractors knew that if they fed men inexpensive rice, tea, seaweed, and scrap fish, they would be motivated to pay exorbitant prices for American food and cigarettes, and even alcohol from the slop chest.

Finally, subcontractors cheated the diverse crew through gambling. They stacked the odds by hiring professional gamblers who took advantage of their countrymen aboard the sailing ships or passing the time in the bunkhouses. Stern described a scene prevalent on cannery ships and bunkhouses throughout Alaska:

The meager space forward of the rows of bunks was alive with men. They had gathered into three groups. Each group of standing or crouching creatures was lit by the dim light of candles. The air was tense with the things that have made the Alaska salmon ships [and canneries] as famous in the western underworld as Monte Carlo is to the sporting rich—gambling.

Table shows the exorbitant prices charged for food, etc. for which cannery hands are compelled to buy from the slop chest conducted by the subcontractors. From the Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the State of California: Alaska Salmon Canneries, 1912.

It is well-known that contractors added opium to the list of provisions—intended to keep unhappy cannery crews stoned and pacified. Likewise, subcontractors provided moonshine and marijuana. However, cannery crews employed several other ways to cope with poor, discriminatory, and exploitive treatment. Cannery workers supplemented their meager diets by keeping gardens. They gathered plants and shellfish and bartered with the local Alaska Natives living near the cannery. Stern reveals that music and song served as a lifeline for cannery crews:

One of our favorite means of entertainment was singing. Three colored boys and I made up a quartet, and each night we would go through a long repertoire in one of the smoky huts, packed tight with men of many nations and many colors.

At the end of the salmon season, subcontractors deducted money spent at the slop chest and gambling. A California Labor Bureau report in 1912 noted that the average deduction per man from one subcontractor payroll was $128.42 and the end-of-season pay was $34.58. The corrupt system proved true a Mexican expression frequently apply to the Alaska salmon packing jobs: mucho trabajo, poco dinero Lots of work, little money.

Because salmon canners viewed the diverse crew as merely a source of labor rather than individual people, owners tended to ignore the hiring contractors who exploited and often cheated the workmen. Stern’s most persuasive, heart wrenching stories include the unsympathetic deaths of his fellow cannery hands—forgotten and discarded men who paid the ultimate price for salmon. On arrival at the Alaska Salmon Co. cannery, Stern