Beschreibung:

Broadside/leaflet, Chinese characters on orange paper, 7 x 9.5”, 1pg. printed by the Chinese and Western daily newspaper, ca. March 1906. Undated and names a “Shalin Company” we’ve been unable to identify; our historical speculation - that this was issued by an ill-fated white-owned clothing store weeks before the Earthquake - is based on the specified Chinatown address of “816 Duban Street”. “Duban” was the commonly-used Chinatown version of Dupont Street – renamed Grant Avenue (of Flower Drum Song fame) in 1908. At the turn of the century, Dupont Street was notorious as a hotbed of Tong society assassins and prostitutes. But early in 1906, 816 Dupont took on new local notoriety when a white businessman had the temerity to open a men’s clothing store there, possibly the first non-Chinese shop in the heart of Chinatown. A San Francisco newspaper reported on March 10, 1906: “Chinatown Residents Resent Introduction of Caucasian Shops / They Hoot at Store Established by a White Man / Assemble on Street and Injure His Patronage / Police Judge Issues Warning to the Boycotters", The businessman is not named, but we believe he was the source of this broadside, printed by the progressive Chinatown newspaper of Ng Poon Chew, in an attempt to attract business from “Chinese friends” – offering anyone who spent at least 50 cents in the shop a ticket for a weekly lottery with such prizes as “big clock”, or a gold “dagger/dart”. Moreover, the store promised to sell quilt covers and other woolen goods at a “low price - lower than cost, like 75 cent socks priced at 30 cents. These incentives did not deter the informal “boycott” detailed by the newspaper, which would soon be forgotten because a month later, much of Dupont Street was destroyed by the earthquake and fire. We suspect this broadside may have been preserved because of its association with an uncommon episode in Chinatown history.