that the Chinese laundrymen do a business of between $40,000 and $50,000 a week?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes, sir.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. How many laundries are there here in Boston? Mr. SULLIVAN. I don't know. These business men have gone into them somewhat.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Can you give us some idea of the number of laundries, the number of people employed in them, and some general information as to the laundries here?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes, sir. Then they are becoming great competitors of the restaurant people now.

Commissioner LENNON. Yes. I have tried them two or three times and I can't eat anything they turn out.

Mr. BUSIEK. I can eat after them all day.

Mr. SULLIVAN. They do well in some places.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. There are two points that you want to cover, Mr. Sullivan: One, to provide some penalty other than mere deportation of contrabands?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. The other, to provide some means to register those who, for some reason, were unable to register within six months? Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Will you hammer that into shape?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes, sir.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. And let us have the benefit of such other criticisms as you may have?

Mr. SULLIVAN. Yes.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Those are the vital parts of the proposed law. Will you see that I get a copy of Mr. Sullivan's suggestions?

Mr. BUSIEK. Yes.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Then I will take Mr. Sullivan's amendment and have it hammered to pieces in California by our sharpshooters out there. Mr. SULLIVAN. You are going to leave town right away?

Mr. BUSIEK. Yes, sir. This afternoon.

Has Mr. Marshall anything to tell us that you have not covered?

Mr. SULLIVAN. I think Mr. Wooley is the man who perhaps would say more than Mr. Marshall or any other man.

Mr. BUSIEK. Mr. Marshall is in attendance; Mr. Wooley is not, so far.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Is Mr. Marshall in attendance?

Mr. BUSIEK, Yes.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Well, you might call him in and see if he has anything to say. Mr. BUSIEK. I think Mr. Sullivan has covered the situation pretty well, but Mr. Marshall is one of the laundrymen.

TESTIMONY OF MR. EDWARD R. MARSHALL.

Mr. BUSIEK. Will you state your name in full, please?

Mr. MARSHALL. Edward R. Marshall.

Mr. BUSIEK. What is your business?

Mr. MARSHALL. Laundry proprietor.

Mr. BUSIEK, Are you a member of any association of laundry proprietors? Mr. MARSHALL. Of the Massachusetts association.

Mr. BUSIER. Are you an officer?

Mr. MARSHALL. No, sir.

Mr. BUSIEK. You were on a special committee, were you, to look after Chinese laundries?

Mr. MARSHALL. That was aside from the association. That was members of the association.

Mr. BUSIEK. You hired some of Burns's detectives to look into the matter? Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Mr. BUSIEK. I think Mr. Sullivan has covered the field very fully in regard to what the detectives' investigations disclosed, and conditions of the Bureau of Immigration here and in Washington so far as your committee worked on it, but we would like to get from you some idea as to the amount of work done by Chinese laundries in Boston and in Massachusetts.

Mr. MARSHALL, Well, I can not tell you about the State, but in Boston there are between 600 and 700 laundries; Chinese laundries.

Mr. BUSIER. Between 60 and 70?

Mr. MARSHALL. Between 600 and 700.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Between 600 and 700?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Is that possible?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir; and we estimate that they employ on an average of three men to a laundry.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Those figures are getting away from the figures we have had about Chinamen in Boston. There are between 600 and 700

laundries?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. And they employ three?

Mr. MARSHALL. I will take that back. There are between 500 and 600 laundries, according to the 1913 directory of the city of Boston. We estimate about three Chinamen to a laundry. There are a good many more in some.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. So that it would be safe to estimate that there are between 2,000 and 3,000 Chinamen employed in the laundry business in Boston? Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Mr. BUSIEK. Those are based on the directory?

Mr. MARSHALL. On the directory. We take this from the city directory. We estimate, as near as we can find out-and that is going to run our figures right up now-that they do $30 each a week, each employee in a Chinese laundry will do $30 worth of business a week. We may overestimate it on three to a Chinese laundry. We have been working on the old facts and figures, that they do between $33,000 and $36,000 a week in the city of Boston, but you see my statement just now is going to run that up.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. What proportion of the gross laundry business would that represent?

Mr. MARSHALL. That represents in their line about half.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Of the whole business?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Do they do half the laundrying in Boston? Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. In their particular line?

Mr. MARSHALL. In the starch work line, shirts, collars, and underwear, and such work as that.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. They do not do as a rule the large hotel work, sheets, etc.?

Mr. MARSHALL. They have not got to that yet. They are drifting in that direction.

Mr. SULLIVAN. That is what you call flat work?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir; household linen.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Their collective business you estimate is how much a week?

Mr. MARSHALL. That would be running it up. Those figures I have given, if they will average three to a laundry, guessing at that-some have four or five or six

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Yes.

Mr. MARSHALL (continuing). That would run it up you see, way up in the air.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Some estimates have been between $40,000 and

$50,000.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. A week or a month?

Mr. MARSHALL. A week. The fact is, and it might be interesting to know, that our business in the laundry business has increased. There is no new laundries practically started, although the population of Boston is increasing all the time, that the steam laundries are not going ahead at all in what we call starch work, that is the work the Chinamen do, we are making no gain in that. All our gain is in what we call flat work, bed linen, table linen, and so on, and it shows that the Chinamen are getting the rest.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Do they use machinery? Mr. MARSHALL. They are beginning to use machinery. much machinery they have.

We don't know how

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. What advantage has the Chinese laundry over the other?

Mr. MARSHALL. A decided advantage. To start with, that they do not collect and deliver their work. That is an expense to us of from 25 to 30 per cent.

Some have it lower than that, but some of the laundries, they collect it for 25 per cent, is the best they can do.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. The customers must go to the Chinese laundry and deliver the wash?

Mr. MARSHALL, Yes, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. The Chinese do not deliver?

Mr. MARSHALL. No, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. They do in California.

Mr. MARSHALL. They don't here. When they run up against that, that is 25 per cent which they have. That brings the price of a shirt, which we receive 12 cents for, to 9 cents. In our laundry we get even less than the Chinese get. Then, we have overhead taxes and insurance that will easily come up to 25 per cent more.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. A Chinaman has insurance and taxes?

Mr. MARSHALL. I don't think he has much of anything, that I can find out. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. He can't escape his taxes and insurance? Mr. MARSHALL. I don't believe he is taxed much.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. How about the labor? What proportion of your receipts are paid out for labor?

Mr. MARSHALL. The entire labor of collecting and delivering will average about 50 per cent. Some laundries run less and some more.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. About half the receipts are for labor?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. If you cut out the delivery end, what will go for labor?

Mr. MARSHALL. Oh, 25 per cent less.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. For every dollar you get in you pay out 25 per cent for inside workers?

Mr. MARSHALL. Some it costs more and some get it down a little less than that, but not in Boston.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. So far as you can estimate, how much of a Chinaman's pay roll goes for labor? I don't mean pay roll, I mean Chinese receipts goes for labor?

Mr. MARSHALL. I don't know what they pay those Chinamen.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. How many hours do those people work?

Mr. MARSHALL. We can not exceed 54 hours, but on the particular class of work that competes with the Chinaman we do not get more than 45 or 47 hours. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Do you know how many hours the Chinamen work a week?

Mr. MARSHALL. As near as we can find out they work 18 hours a day.
Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Seven days in a week?

Mr. MARSHALL. No, sir; six days. They don't work Sundays. They go to church Sunday in the forenoon and in the afternoon they go down to the gambling places. We know that they are increasing rapidly.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Could you give any estimate of the number of Chinamen in Boston?

Mr. MARSHALL. No, sir; I can not. I say that the directory will give upward of 600 Chinese laundries in Boston; laundries, not laundrymen.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Has your association kept tab on the increasing number of Chinese laundries from year to year?.

Mr. MARSHALL. We are completely in the dark as to that, because they have not been classified. We have got them in the directory to separate the Chinese laundries from the other laundries. The Chinese laundries go by streets. It is easy to find them in the directory.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. You couldn't tell this commission, for example, how many Chinese laundries there were in Boston four years ago, two years ago, etc.?

Mr. MARSHALL. I can not now, but we have some figures on this. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Will you furnish those to the commission? Mr. MARSHALL. I can. I have heard it stated what they were; but I don't remember.

Mr. BUSIEK. If you will compile those figures and hand them to Mr. Sullivan, he will see that the commission gets them.

Mr. MARSHALL. I understand they have increased vastly in the number of hands they employ.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. In what?

Mr. MARSHALL. In the number of hands these Chinese laundries employ.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. The same laundries may be doing a much larger volume of business?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. You could not, of course, determine that at all? Mr. MARSHALL. No, sir; we can not find out the population of the Chinese. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. When was this concerted effort made, Mr. Marshall, to stop the smuggling of Chinese, so far as your people are concerned? Mr. MARSHALL. Six or seven months ago.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Tell us the story.

Mr. MARSHALL. Well, the story is this: The Chinese problem has always worried the American laundrymen, and I was talking with a friend of mine in the machinery business-laundry machinery business-and he suggested, he said, "Why, it is a simple proposition for you people. Those Chinamen, if you want to raise some money, it seems to me you could kill them all right." With that statement to work on I went before the executive committee of the Massachusetts Laundrymen's Association, of which I was a member of the executive committee at that time, and I sprung that proposition on them, and they didn't seem to understand it. I gave it to them two or three times, and my idea was that the Chinamen in the United States-and I firmly believe now that 90 per cent of them are here illegally; if that could be shown they could be all put on board the boats and deported out of the country. I thought if the laundrymen of the United States could raise a kind of insurance of $60,000 we could employ the Burns Detective Agency and accomplish that fact. I found out that the laundrymen throughout the United States were not as much interested in the Chinamen as we are here in Boston, because of the fact that they all seemed to be coming this way, and so that was dropped. I figured out then and there, and read a list off of the amount of money that I thought we could raise, and we totaled up after I had it set down $9.000 and started a campaign against them here, and I set down a list of the cities, and we left out Salem and Lowell, the poverty-stricken cities, and did not raise any money there, but we did raise $6,000 or $7,000, anyway; and we employed the Burns Detective Agency.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. What has been accomplished thus far? What is there to show for the result of the work?

Mr. MARSHALL. Nothing, only to discover that there is a number of them in here illegally. That is as far as I understand it. I have not followed it as closely as some of the others, although I received daily reports from the Burns people; I read them over and filed them away. There is quite a good many of them in here illegally that they know where to put their hands on them.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Has any effort been made thus far to deport those who are in here illegally?

Mr. MARSHALL. No effort as far as I know.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Then the mere information will do you no good if it is made no use of?

Mr. MARSHALL. We fear that those $6,000 or $7,000 that we have raised, among 30 members only, you understand-we took it out of the association's hands because we could not get to all those small laundrymen and the thousand and one people in the business, so 30 of us raised this fund in amounts of $300, $200, $150; we would not accept less than $50.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. How many white laundries are there in Boston? Mr. MARSHALL. I couldn't tell you exactly. Steam laundries, I presume there are 18 or 20. I would have to guess at that.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Have you got this in mind, when you made the other estimate of the Chinese laundries, when you make that will you also make an estimate of the other laundries and approximately the number of employees in them, the total number?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. You raised this fund of how much, $6,000? Mr. MARSHALL. Between $6,000 and $7,000.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. That was from 30 laundries?

Mr. MARSHALL. Yes, sir. Some of them that subscribed have not paid up. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Yes. Now, you have located a great many contrabands, but you have not made any effort to deport them?

Mr. MARSHALL. Why, we were confronted with the fact before we started in on this campaign, one of the committee and myself went down to the Immigration Bureau, and they told us that it was absolutely of no use to bring those cases before Judge Hayes and gave us a lot of talk that I don't remember. Then we went on raising funds, and we had everybody we know of shadowed by

the Burns people; they shadowed more people, really, than we wanted them to shadow; and then we went down and couldn't get any action on account of Washington, and were confronted with the statement that they did not have any funds to work with down there. I was not one of the parties who went to Washington, but we don't seem to be able to get action. We were told several weeks ago that they were going to go up to Pittsfield and pull a number of Chinese in there illegally, and our counsel here volunteered to go up with them, but we have not got them started; they have not got the biased judge there. Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. Is your association in position to furnish testimony in regard to those contraband Chinese?

Mr. MARSHALL. So far as the Burns people have secured it.

Mr. SULLIVAN. I have offered these four folios here, hoping that you would return them to me.

Acting Chairman WEINSTOCK. What effect would it have if this commission went to Washington and had Mr. Larned and Mr. Caminetti come before us and show cause?

Commissioner O'CONNELL. That will be the result later. There are some other people in Washington, too.

Mr. SULLIVAN. I might say this, that from my observation of this situation while in the United States attorney's office, and which have been confirmed by further investigations both at Washington and here, and particularly from reports that have been brought to us of opinions held by the Chinamen down in Chinatown, Boston particularly and Massachusetts generally, is a sanctuary for smuggled Chinamen. This is a sanctuary for smuggled Chinamen. If they can get in here they are safe.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. That seems to be the preponderance of the evidence that we have.

Mr. SULLIVAN. It is like in the old days, if the criminal could get within the Temple in medieval days it was a sanctuary for him.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. A city of refuge.

Mr. SULLIVAN. It is a city of refuge, and Massachusetts is a State of refuge for them because they are inactive.

Mr. MARSHALL. They are becoming arrogant, and it is a singular incident that most of them in the last few months, they have adorned themselves in very fashionable clothes. They tell me if you go out to the beach you will find them trying to catch the girls. And the reason they are coming here is because the people are in sympathy with them. The atmosphere here is of an æsthetic nature, and they want to go down to the church in the morning and down and gamble in the afternoon. There are dens of iniquity here in Boston, and that is why they congregate here. I could go on here and tell you a whole lot of stuff about their lustful methods, and the diseases which they have brought into the laundries, and things of that sort. It is really an appalling condition. We have become much discouraged, the people who have spent all this money, for fear we are not going to get this action, and all this timber we have hewn down and lain in the sun, it is going to become warped and it will be of no good.

I for one think our own salvation is in the way of newspaper publicity. perhaps we will try and raise a fund and let the people know what they are really up against. I assure you that many of us people who are in the laundry business to-day would not be in it if we were not in it and have to stay in it under the present conditions that are confronting us with this yellow peril. Mr. SULLIVAN. It is just as Mr. Marshall says, some of those dirty, filthy, diseased fellows who are here contrary to law and attending churches and Sunday schools in the morning, and, as we know, the gambling places on Sunday afternoon, receive their greatest protection and comfort from a lot of sentimental Sunday-school teachers. Why, they have gone so far-it is absurd— they went so far that they entered into this Columbus Day parade here last year; wasn't it?

Mr. MARSHALL. The last two years.

Mr. SULLIVAN. Made a very great display. They are very quick to catch on, pay court where there is some profit going to be yielded to them will affect any form or any custom in order that they may be understood to be harmonizing themselves with American life and to be in sympathy with it.

Commissioner O'CONNELL. Have you any idea, Mr. Sullivan, how many families there are here?

Mr. SULLIVAN. I have not. I don't think there are a great number. Commissioner O'CONNELL. From the highest estimate it is around 25 I think,