Accusations of Trafficking in the Victoria Chinese Mission
Prominent Chinese merchants in Seattle level explosive allegations against the superintendent of a Chinese mission in Victoria, accusing him of extortion and human trafficking.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Several Chinese merchants in this city make an emphatic reply to the statements of Rev. J. E. Gardner, the superintendent of the Chinese mission at Victoria, in regard to the traffic in Chinese women in that city. They not merely deny Gardner's charges, but make serious charges against him. Gee Heo and Wong Seng, representatives of the Chinese Aid Association, and Quong Chong called at the Post-Intelligencer office yesterday and united in the following story of Mr. Gardner's motives in aiding in the prosecution of the charge against Lee Fook Bow of entering the United States illegally: 'Mr. Gardner has been in charge of the Chinese mission at Victoria for about ten years. There is not a single Chinaman in Victoria who likes him, because he does not attend to his mission school but devotes his time to outside business. When a Chinaman brings his wife over to Canada he threatens to testify at the custom house that she was brought over for prostitution unless the man gives him money. If the man refuses he takes the woman to the rescue home and keeps her there for six months or more and then sells her to any Chinaman who wants a wife. He smuggles Chinamen and women into the country himself. He has girls 16 or 17 years old and sells them to men for $300 to $400 each. Mrs. Lee Fook Bow told me that Gardner went to her in the jail and told her if she would go to Victoria with him he would pick out a better husband for her; that Lee Fook Bow was no good. He poured a drug out of a bottle into a glass and wanted her to drink it; it was something to make her mind him.' An attempt was made to see Gardner and get his reply to these charges, but he had left for Victoria.
This story highlights the vulnerability of immigrants to predatory actors who exploited the era's restrictive laws and social biases. It serves as a reminder that moral authority in the turn-of-the-century Northwest was frequently weaponized by those in power to control and marginalize the Chinese community.
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